Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Dear Mr. Franzen, you are one ANGRY mo-fo. Overpopulation, globalization, environmental terrorists, actual terrorists, hipsters, Republicans and Democrats are all equally loathed in this 500 page tome. Having not read The Corrections despite Hammill’s praise in this very blog, I had no idea what to expect; all I knew was that the Publishing Establishment salivate over this man. He was on the cover of Time magazine with the heading of ‘Great American Novelist’ for Chrissakes – as far as I can tell, he’s written two books of note. Not twenty. TWO. Americans are well lazy.

However.

This is brilliant. Engrossing, unexpected, unflinching. We all know people like this and hope that we don’t turn out like them. Characters jump around the chapters, get all sweaty and dirty, are benched by Franzen and then called up again when you thought they’d been sidelined from the game permanently. Shaky marriages and ungrateful children run alongside bigger plotlines of environmentalism and corruption, and the only time it got slightly bogged down where the more in-depth explanations of political lobbying which was lost on this little black duck (hey, so my uni major was Lit and not Politics. So sue me). I think one day, I managed to work an eight hour day and still read 250 pages. I was hooked.

I advise anyone reading this to shell out for this over your Christmas break and spend a couple of solid days reading. Enjoy.

Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

This book has a kind of interesting genesis: Wolfe was one of the 'new journalism' movement's founders, and this was his first work of fiction. It was originally serialised in Rolling Stone. The serialisation could easily account for if not excuse the fact that it's about 200 pages too long, until you discover it was drastically rewritten before becoming a novel. Whoops.

There was a point in the middle where I kind of wished someone would sneak up on me and tear out some pages from the middle, but then, by the end, I COULD NOT stop reading it. At least 10% of that was because I was sick of the sight of it, but I can't attribute all my enthusiasm to that. When you're hungry, and someone hands you a deep friend hunk-of-shit burger you tuck in, unthinking, and then before you know it you're half way through, bad bread forming a difficult ball in your mouth and over-friend bits of fried stabbing you in the palatte. You realise your situation and are disgusted. Craving something nutritious, fresh, crunchy etc, you plow on regardless, until you're brushing crumbs off your shirt and wondering why you feel slightly nauseous. And then it's over, you move on. Why we do this, no one knows. Well: Book, burger, the similarities are obvious.

You know when two really hot people have a baby, and it's hideously ugly? Or when two really athletic people have a baby, and it's a total unco? It was kind of like Dostoevsky and DeLillo had a baby and it was Bonfire of the Vanities: it was neurotic and minute in it's analysis of humanity, but over written and dull, full of stereotypes and contained not one single woman with more than 2 dimensions. Some parts of it are very clever, and funny, and there's no doubting that dude is asking some great questions. And maybe it's meant to get monotonous?

I'd say leave it on the shelf unless you need a doorstop.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

This blog has for one thing highlighted my eclectic tastes in books, for I am just as impressed by McCarthy’s cannibalistic on the road missive as I am by this sweet tale of Second World War covert book lovers.

A loan from Sam’s sister, it was a lovely book to read. Perfectly pleasant, likeable characters and a yesteryear charm (that in most cases I would usually find unbearably saccharine and twee) are deftly presented by author Shaffer. Her heroine Juliet is kick-arse in her own 1940s way, refusing marriage proposals and having a homo best friend, and has this sensible yet whimsical quality about her (Amber, you may very well hate her...I’m just saying she had her own charms). Adding to the book’s appeal is the back story of the author; a 70-something librarian known in her family for her exceptional storytelling, sits down and pours out this book, only getting too ill to quite finish it. In steps her niece Annie and puts the finishing touches on it. You would never guess that essentially two people have authored it as the voice and narrative are seamless. Book goes onto become a worldwide publishing smash, and while it’s a shame Shaffer didn’t live long enough to see it, kudos to her for writing it all. Better late than never I reckon.

Oh, and did I mention that the whole book is written in letters? Again, a somewhat dated way to write a novel, but it really did complement the era and made me yearn for all the letters I’ve sent over the years, and how rad it is to receive one in the post. The whole thing really is a bit of a love letter to books, with the main characters meeting via a book that used to belong to Juliet ending up in Guernsey and friendship born out of mutual love of Charles Lamb (how many people have I become friends with based on their bookshelf? Methinks quite a few, and a case in point: when Josh and Brock visited our house a year or so ago, he exclaimed “Nik-nik! We practically have all the same books!”) No surprises there kiddo.

The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

With train rides and boats and pistols and hotels and Mr. This and Madam That and no forensics to get in the way - that's how I like my murder stories. In addition to these crucial elements, this little gem, set across the 20s and 30s, also covers a range of other topics one ought to be familiar with, like the Greece/Turkey conflict, and the political unrest in Serbia -don't you know? - and travels through Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Switzerland and France where things are tidily resolved.

It's also one of those fantastically self-referential pieces of prose where the main character, Latimer, is a British author of detective fiction. How, you might ask, does the author nail this character so cleverly? Genius.

On the whole, this was perfect plane/beach/pool/cocktail reading, without being, ah, brain-damaging. Ish.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

This one came highly recommended by my Dad, who raves about McCarthy’s prose and his themes of ‘amoral violence.’ So recommended in fact, that before I had the chance to read the book, he took me to see the movie, which was pretty amazing, but also wrist-cuttingly (yes I know this technically isn’t a word) Grim with a capital G.

But in this case I’m glad I’d seen the flick pre-book, because I’m not sure I could have quite grasped the apocalyptic landscape without a visual prompt. And it was a rare case of neither book nor film disappointing; I thought both stood on their own very well. To sustain a novel with just two main characters, without names, as they walk across a land destroyed by an unknown and unnamed phenomena is quite a feat, and one that McCarthy handles with unquestionable skill. Basically he has a million different ways to describe this void world, and each of them hits their mark in creating this bleak, hopeless no-man’s land. It’s actually quite an extraordinary journey with Man and Boy, and their sparse dialogue manages to do so much with so little; their conversations about whether or not they’re the good guys, and the part where the Boy talks about carrying the fire...well, it just about breaks your heart.

It’s one of those books where the author has managed to, very cleverly, ask All The Important Questions, without beating the reader about the head with them. I dare anyone to read this book without spending the next few days hypothesising about what they would do in the Man’s situation; I came to the conclusion that I would have definitely used the bullets when I had the chance and ended it all. But then it niggles at you – the very essence of humanity is our hope that the next day will be a better one, and the idea that being a parent means to protect and not harm. It’s powerful stuff and worth the discomfort.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

There is no doubt the author of this book is a massive show-off. Not only is every chapter named after a great important novel, a narrative convention is to pepper the main character’s thoughts with lines from hundreds of books and texts; which is quirky, but can get fairly tedious (‘Cockatoo Mobile Library’, Lovelock, ’10). But you know what? Ms Pessl gets away with it because Special Topics is a cracking, highly original read so haters will just have to suck it up.

Blue Van Meer is our precocious main character, a gifted teenager going through a school each semester with her academic dad as he follows university work across the country. At Blue’s latest school, a mysterious teacher, one Ms Hannah Schneider, invites her to be part of a special club, The Bluebloods, who seem to hate her but tolerate her due to Hannah’s interest in her. When Hannah takes the group camping and is found hanging from a tree (not a spoiler – it’s in the first chapter and book’s back cover), the real conspiracy around Blue’s whole existence begins to unravel in the most fascinating and unexpected ways. It’s kind of like a gothic Sweet Valley High novel, with misfits instead of perky blonde twins.

And Blue for all her annoying intellectualism, has endearing flashes of being a normal teenager and not one of those totally unbelievable too-grown-up-to be-real characters, like the meltdown she has after being told she kisses ‘like a tuna’. No amount of Joyce quoting and brain power can soothe the sting of an insult like that to an adolescent.

I liked that I was about halfway through the book and I couldn’t see where the plot was heading, or exactly figure out what the character’s motivations were; usually this would frustrate the hell out of me, but Pessl’s rhythm and turns of phrase kept me hooked.

“Jade and Lu were still developing nations. And thus, while it wasn’t fantastic, it wasn’t too terrible for them to have a backward infrastructure and a poor development index. But Hannah – she should have been much further along. She should have already established a robust economy, free trade, peacefulness – it wasn’t looking good for her democracy.”

And then when the book kicks into final gear, it really barrels towards a ripping finish. You may be a little bit of a show-off Ms Pessl but I forgive you.

Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung

I won’t go so far as to say ‘unpolished turd’ but this book had all the fizz of a flat bottle of softie. As I did the directionless browse in the bookstore (see Hammill’s Winchester review), the blurb got me: “This book does not begin on a boat. Nor does it contain any wild swans or falling leaves” which I thought was a clever nod to the influx of Asian memoirs in recent years. I’d also recognised Pung from a few Age bylines, so it was a tantalising combination of leftie writer and learning more about other cultures and feeling as part of a global community (see Stuff White People Like).

There’s no doubt Alice is likeable, has her heart in the right place and had an interesting upbringing, with her family displaced in a refugee camp as they fled from the Khmer Rouge. It purposely avoids the heaviness of books that have gone before it like ‘The Killing Fields’ and ‘Before They Killed My Father’, instead focussing on the more suburban challenges of growing up Asian in Australia. Unfortunately this material is clumsily handled; the comedy is a bit forced, as are the tender moments. I wanted to know more about Alice’s parents, but you got the distinct sense that Alice herself was viewing them from the outside looking in, so there was never that much insight into their lives.

Like Judith Lucy’s autobiography, I would have happily read Unpolished Gem as a Good Weekend feature, but as a whole book it feels a little flimsy.