Category: 2010

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2010 Booker Prize

The Betrayal – Helen Dunmore

 Long listed for 2010 Booker Prize

WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS FOR THE SIEGE

I loved The Siege so was looking forward to reading The Betrayal, but unfortunately the sequel wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped.

The Betrayal is set 10 years after the Siege of Leningrad and follows Anna and Andrei, the young couple we first saw in The Siege, as they rebuild their lives. They no longer fear starvation, but life under Stalin isn’t easy. Andrei is a doctor at the local hospital and at the start of the book he has to make the agonising decision of whether or not to treat the son of a senior secret police officer. The young boy is seriously ill and if he fails to recover then Andrei knows his family will be brought to the attention of the authorities – something no one wants to happen.

The Betrayal is very different in style to The Siege. The Siege was packed with vivid descriptions, but The Betrayal focused on dialogue instead. This meant that the book had a much faster pace, but I didn’t feel as immersed in the Russian landscape. The claustrophobic emotion was still present, but at many points I thought that the plot moved too quickly for the reader to fully appreciate the gravity of the situation.

Much of book reminded me of Child 44, but the complexity of Tom Rob Smith’s book meant that I preferred his book. If you aren’t familiar with life in post-war Soviet Russia then The Betrayal is a good place to start, but I think that anyone familiar with this period of history will be disappointed.

I found the first section of the book quite annoying to read as it contained many references to events in The Siege:

The frost is all over them like fur. Anna drew as if only drawing would keep her alive. Here’s Marina, alive again, carefully peeling off the top, painted layer of papier mache from Kolya’s toy fort. There is nourishment in the paste that held the layers of newspaper together. They will cook and eat the papier mache.

I’m sure that people who read the first book ten years ago appreciated the reminders, but since I only read it last week I found it overly repetitive. I don’t think that readers need to know everything that came before as the events of the second book were shocking enough to stand alone.

Despite my criticisms I was gripped throughout this fast paced book and loved the ending. The Betrayal isn’t in the same league as The Siege, but it was still a good read.

Recommended.

Will The Betrayal make the Booker short list? 

I’m not sure. I think this is one of the books that the judges will discuss for a long time, being middle of the list it will either miss out or just scrape through. My hunch is that it will be ranked 7/13 in the Booker list and fail to make the cut. Its inclusion would be a pleasant surprise for me though.

Did you prefer The Siege or The Betrayal?

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2010 Chunkster

The Passage – Justin Cronin

I’m afraid that I’m the type of person unable to resist hype. If everyone is talking about a book then I need to be able to join in that conversation. The Passage seemed to be one of the biggest books of 2010 and so I had to find out why everyone was talking about it.

The Passage is about vampires and if that sounds off-putting then don’t believe those that tell you otherwise – trust your instincts and don’t get drawn in as I was.

The Passage started off very well. I loved the first section in which we were introduced to Amy, a six-year-old girl abandoned by her mother; and an FBI agent recruiting death row prisoners to research a new virus. The writing was beautifully crafted and the pace was fast  – I just had to know what happened next!

Unfortunately everything went wrong about 200 pages in. The book jumped forward in time, the pace slowed and I became bored. At about the 250 page mark the book jumped forward another 90 years and things became even worse. We lost all the wonderful characters we’d been introduced to and were suddenly faced with lots of random people, all trying to build a new life after the world was devastated by the vampire virus. Unfortunately it didn’t ring true for me. I think my main problem is that I don’t believe in vampires and so can never be scared of them. It all just seemed silly to me. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters as there were too many of them and so I didn’t care what happened to them.

The glass behind them didn’t so much shatter as explode, detonating in a hail of glinting shards. The air blew from his body as he was knocked across the room. It was only later that Peter would realize that the viral had come in right on top of them. He heard Sara scream – not even words, just a cry of terror.

At the 400 page mark I nearly gave up, but I felt that I’d already invested too much time to do that and so persevered until the end. I was unaware that The Passage is the first in a trilogy, so didn’t realise that I’d be left hanging after completing nearly 800 pages. That did annoy me a bit, as I had hoped to at least be rewarded by an ending.

I’m sure I’ll love the films, but in an unbelievable world I need emotional connections to draw me in. I won’t be reading the rest of the trilogy.

Opinions seem to be divided:

….a mind-blowing book. S Krishna’s Books 

…sillier than I had hoped it would be… Rhapsody in Books

Overall a very interesting concept, but the execution left something to be desired… Devourer of Books

I hope that readers will suppress their sizeist tendencies and embrace this mesmerizing, epic tale.  Lovely Treez Reads

Categories
2010 Other Prizes

A Life Apart – Neel Mukherjee

I have a soft spot for Indian literature and so when I saw the phrase ‘Winner of India’s Premier Literary Prize, The Vodafone Crossword Award 2009’ on the back of this book I picked it up straight away.

A Life Apart is essentially a coming-of-age novel focusing on Ritwik, an Indian homosexual. The story begins in 1980s India with the death of Ritwik’s mother. I was treated to a vivid Indian atmosphere and an instant sense of empathy for Ritwik. Unfortunately everything went downhill after the first chapter, but there were enough interesting passages to keep me reading through the remaining 300 pages.

After the death of his mother Ritwik decides to leave India to study in England. All that wonderful Indian atmosphere was lost and I found myself reading the type of immigration tale that I have read countless times before. Ritwik then exercised his new-found freedom by having sex with numerous strangers. These graphic encounters held no interest for me and there were several points where I considered giving up on the book entirely. I was occasionally treated to flashbacks of Ritwik’s troubled childhood in India, but these were too brief for me. I wish the whole book had concentrated on these instead of his modern, British life.

Intertwined with this narrative was Ritwik’s attempts at fiction writing. This story-within-a-story was set in 1900 and followed Miss Gilby, an English woman teaching a Bengali family:

…the most Beautiful & Useful English Language & the ways of Ladies of your Progressive Nation.

This story was well researched and I learnt a few interesting facts about Colonial life, but the characters failed to connect with me and so overall this narrative didn’t leave much impression on me either.

A Life Apart is a beautifully written piece of literary fiction, but I felt it tried to combine too many elements, leaving me unable to develop an emotional attachment to the characters.

Recommended to those with a passion for immigration stories who have a high tolerance for graphic sex scenes.

Other bloggers seemed to enjoy it much more than I did:

A must read, a full ten out of ten from me. Savidge Reads

Mukherjee’s poetically sublime prose is a real beauty to behold… Rob Around Books

Categories
2010 Booker Prize Recommended books

Room – Emma Donoghue

 Short listed for 2010 Booker Prize

Room is the best book I’ve read this year. It tells the story of a woman who has been abducted and imprisoned in a single room. The book is narrated by her five-year-old son, Jack, who was born in captivity and protected from fear by his mother. On his fifth birthday she tells him the truth about their situation and Jack is shocked to discover that there is a world outside their four walls. His simple, happy life is crushed as they plot their escape and he realises that the world is much more complicated than he ever imagined.

I had heard a lot of hype about this book and wondered how it could possibly live up to the ravings I’d seen flying around the Internet. When I read the first few chapters I was a bit sceptical.  The writing style took some time to get used to (five-year-olds have a very different way of looking at the world!), but once I grew to appreciate the truth about Jack’s life I was gripped. I read the whole book in a single day, unable to tear myself away from the pages.

Jack’s mother shelters him from reality so we have to read between the lines to see the horrors that she is subjected to, but I found the insight into our society more disturbing than the physical abuse. The book asks important questions about what makes us happy and the way we look after our children. In many ways it reminded me of Flowers for Algernon, another wonderful book that questions our values.

Room is easy to read and will have broad appeal. I’m sure I’ll be thinking about Jack for many years to come and I know that since finishing the book I’ve been looking at the way I spend time with my own sons slightly differently.

It is a modern classic that will continue to be enjoyed many years from now.

Highly recommended.

Will Room win the Booker Prize?

I would love to see Room win the Booker prize, but I’m not sure it will stand up to multiple re-reads. The joy is in the way it makes us look at the world around us – the things we take for granted and the way we often forget the simple pleasures of life. I’m sure it will become a best seller and it has a very good chance of winning the Orange Prize 2011, but I think a more literary novel will scoop the Booker this year.

Categories
2010

Luke and Jon – Robert Williams

A few people suggested that Luke and Jon might make the Booker long list and so I tried to squeeze it in before the announcement. Unfortunately it didn’t make the cut, but I’m really pleased that I read it as it was a fantastic book.

Luke and Jon is an engaging, but depressing novella. The book begins with the death of Luke’s mother and so we see how a child copes with bereavement. It was moving, but heartwarming to see him slowly accept the tragedy and then blossom into an independent person.

When I dreamt about Mum it was different. It would be simple everyday things. We would be walking through town on a Saturday morning, on our way to the butcher’s, or we would be in a supermarket and I would try to sneak more chocolate into the trolley and she would catch me and make me put it back on the shelf. Every last dull detail, every sound rang true, everything exactly as it was a few months before. That’s what made the mornings so horrible.

Luke is helped on his journey by becoming friends with Jon, a strange boy with his own secrets. The book is very short so it is hard to explain the plot without giving anything away. All I can say is that this book deals with themes of bereavement and bullying. The length and simplicity of the prose would make it an ideal book to initiate discussions on these topics with teenagers, but this isn’t a YA book. It is a book that will appeal to all ages.

The intense emotion of the book reminded me of Beside the Sea, but I found that the vaguely hopeful ending of Luke and Jon lessened the powerful impact. I guess that this is because novellas are too short to develop a plot that is complex enough to satisfy my needs and so I rely on raw emotion to affect me. This emotion was abundant in the first half of the book, but as Luke began to cope with the loss of his mother the impact was lessened. Am I weird for preferring a book that is desperately tragic?

Recommended if you enjoy emotional books.

Categories
2010 Other Prizes

Illustrado – Miguel Syjuco

 Winner of  the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize

Illustrado begins with the discovery of an author’s body in the Hudson river. The victim was about to publish a controversial novel exposing the corruption present in the Philippines and although the New York Police are convinced that there is no foul play, others suspect that he was murdered. The novel’s narrator, Miguel Syjuco (yes, he is named after the author!) was being mentored by the victim at the time of his death. He heads to the Philippines to try to discover the truth, writing a biography of his teacher in order to gain as much information about the man as possible.

The premise of the novel is quite basic, but the structure is complex and often difficult to understand. The book contains extracts from the fictitious controversial novel, blog posts, newspaper clippings and weird dream sequences. I can’t fault the writing quality, but there were many times when I couldn’t see the relevance of the passage I was reading and was confused about what was happening.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have struggled with blog posts in books before, unfortunately Illustrado is not an exception to this rule. Perhaps I’m just behind the times, but I found all the blog posts, especially the comments, very irritating. The book also contained annoying sections from emails and texts:

His Nokia tring-trings. Our forlorn protagonist sits up in bed and fumbles in the  darkness. He looks at the bright screen of the cell phone. It’s a text message from his old pal Markus: Welcm bak, bro! Old skool tunes all week @ Club Coup d’Etat. Our crew will be there, with Charlie. My treat. DJ Supermodeldiva spinning phat beats. When the screen dims, the hotel room seems to get smaller.

Illustrado is clearly pushing the boundaries in novel writing, but there were many points when I thought it over-stepped the mark – being too clever/innovative for its own good. The passages may be an accurate reflection of modern life, but I often found myself cringing as I read them.

The book reminded me of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño in that both books benefit from being studied – requiring multiple re-readings to really understand what is happening and a study guide to pick up on all the subtle references. Unfortunately I didn’t have the benefit of a study guide or an informed reading partner and so I felt as though I missed out on much of the book’s depth. I recommend reading this book with several other people in the hope that you will all spot different things, as I imagine you’d have a long wait for the study guide!

I’m afraid that I was too irritated by this book to consider re-reading it, but I think it is an important book and some people will love uncovering its many literary layers.

The Picador website has some wonderful interviews with Miguel Syjuco and further information about the book.