The winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was announced yesterday. I did a terrible job of predicting the winner – failing to mention any of the finalists. I blame this on the fact that I haven’t even heard of any of them!
Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet
I am trying to read all the Pulitzer winners, so will read Tinkers at some point.
Have you read Tinkers?
Have you heard of these books?
Long listed for Orange Prize 2010, Short listed for Guardian First book Award, Winner of the Betty Trask Award
I had heard The Rehearsal mentioned a few times in 2009, but when it was included on the Orange long list this year everyone started talking about it. The Rehearsal seems to divide opinion, with a roughly equal split between those who love the book and those who hate it. I must admit that the premise didn’t appeal to me, but I don’t like being unable to join a heated book discussion and so I reserved a copy from my library.
The book centres on a sex scandal involving a teacher and his pupil. The narrative travels forwards and backwards in time, following a group of pupils who gossip about the event and members of a drama school who decide to put on a play about the sex scandal.
The book is quite confusing to read, as you are never really sure which scenes are part of the play and which are ‘real’. I’d read about 50 pages of the book when I re-read Claire’s review in which she pointed out that chapters starting with a day of the week were about the school pupils and ones titled with a month were set in the drama school, but although this information helped a lot I was still confused about many things.
The book realistically portrays teenagers, managing to capture that uncertainty and awkwardness. I was particularly impressed by the insecurites of a younger sibling:
No, Isolde says, ‘I will make the same mistakes, but by the time I do they won’t seem interesting because you’ll already have done it, and I’ll only be a copy.’
The teenage banter was witty and insightful, but the plot was almost non-existent. I was particularly disappointed by the ending, as the book just stopped without reaching any real conclusion.
I am still trying to decide if I liked The Rehearsal or not. I can’t work out whether this book is genius, or just trying too hard to be clever. If The Rehearsal had been written in chronological order I suspect it might have been a fairly average read. Does confusing your readers make a book incredibly good, or does it just hide any flaws in a cloak of confusion? Despite my uncertainty The Rehearsal is the most impressive book I’ve found on the Orange long list so far and I’d be happy to see it win.
Overall I enjoyed reading this book for the individual passages, but it was too clever to work as a novel for me.
Did you enjoy The Rehearsal?
Can a book be too clever?
I am compiling some data on e-readers for a blog post I am currently writing.
If you own an e-reader it would be really helpful if you could fill in the short survey below. I will summarise the data for you at some point in the near future.
I will be interested to see the results as I haven’t yet purchased one – will you persuade me to buy one?!
Thank you!!
Long listed for the 2008 Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.
Little Face was one of the best thrillers I’ve ever read, so I was very keen to try another one of Sophie Hannah’s books. Hurting Distance is the second book in series. I think you can understand it without having read the first, but you would miss out on a few of the small plot lines that continue from one book to the next. If you want to follow the lives of the police officers then I recommend that you read them in order.
Hurting Distance is much darker than Little Face. The whole book revolves around a serial rapist, so it is quite disturbing in places. The story is told through the eyes of Naomi who was raped three years ago and didn’t report the crime. Robert, her lover, vanishes but the police don’t believe it is worth investigating. In a desperate attempt to get them to take her seriously Naomi accuses Robert of rape, using the details of the crime that was committed against her all those years ago.
The book then became a fast paced investigation, packed with unexpected twists and turns. There were a few too many unlikely coincidences for my liking, but on the whole it was an enjoyable read.
I don’t think it was quite as good as Little Face, but I remain a big fan of Sophie Hannah and look forward to reading the rest of her books.
I was totally gripped. Novel Insights
Despite its plot implausibilities, HURTING DISTANCE is a gripping tale. Euro Crime
There is suspense and a lot of twists without it being over complicated….. Savidge Reads
Sophie Hannah’s new book A Room Swept White
Have you read any of Sophie Hannah’s books?
Which one did you enjoy the most?
I enjoyed Sadie Jones’ last novel, The Outcast
Small Wars is set on Cyprus during the 1950s Emergency, a time when the British defended Cyprus against a colony of Cypriots determined to form a union with Greece. The book follows Hal, a young British soldier who is posted to Cyprus. He brings his wife and daughters with him, but their relationship is put under pressure by the fear of violence.
I’m afraid I wasn’t a big fan of Small Wars. The pace of the book was quite slow and there were several long, meandering sections where I began to lose interest. The writing was simple and easy to read, but this simplicity meant that the real horror of some situations wasn’t adequately described:
The people were made to lie down on the floor of the trucks, because there were so many of them, and if the soldiers made them lie down, they could be layered to make room. There were reports of suffocation from this stacking of live bodies, but later, the British, investigating, found no bodies.
In the hands of a different author that same scene could have been very hard to read. I can imagine the fear of those poor people, but reading the above passage provoked no emotion in me. The same is true for much of the book – there were some terrible events, but they were rushed over and so the horror could be largely ignored.
The main theme of Small Wars was the way war can affect relationships. The book concentrated on characterisation rather than plot; this gentle observation of the feelings will be of interest to some, but I’m afraid it was all too quiet for me.
Recommended to those who want to read about war in a quiet, gentle way.
What others had to say:
It’s a complex study, yet it’s easy to read and progresses very quickly! S Krishna’s Books
….notable for its psychological depth and characterizations. California Literary Review
….this follow-up shows that she is no one-hit wonder. Times Online
Have you read The Outcast or Small Wars?
Do you think this book has a chance at making the Orange short list?
Blindness is one of my favourite books, so I was intrigued by its sequel, Seeing.
Seeing is set in the city that was affected by the blindness epidemic four year ago. The city holds an election, but when the votes are counted 70% of them are blank. They hold another election the following week and this time 80% of the votes are blank. For some bizarre reason (that I couldn’t grasp) the authorities panic, declare a state of emergency and all hell breaks loose.
It pains me to say this about an author I love, but I’m afraid I couldn’t finish Seeing. It started off reasonably well as I’m already used to Saramago’s unique writing style, lacking in punctuation.
…but we are dealing here with humans beings, and human beings are known universally as the only animals capable of lying, and while it is true that they sometimes lie out of fear and sometimes out of self-interest, they occasionally lie because they realise, just in time, that this is the only means available to them of defending the truth.
The book described the elections which were held on atmospheric rainy days, but as you may know I’m not a fan of politics and I think the political satire in this book just went over my head. I didn’t understand why a low turn out in an election led to the events and the lack of a central character meant that I didn’t really care what happened. We view the city almost from above and so the personal emotion that made Blindness so powerful was lacking.
The plot was meandering and had almost disappeared entirely by the 150 page mark. I started to skim read and found that nothing was happening many pages later. I looked up a few online reviews and discovered that other people had a similar problem – there was no plot in the second half of the book. The effort required to read it was too much and so I decided to give up.
Recommended to those who enjoy political satire.
(DNF)
Have you enjoyed any of Saramago’s lesser known works?
Or had similar problems with them?
