Five words from the blurb: boy, mother, dies, father, disappears

I have had a run of disappointing books recently and so I was craving something special. Anatomy of a Disappearance had everything I was looking for and so I’m pleased to report that my reading slump is now officially over.

The book grabbed my attention from the very first line:

There are times when my father’s absence is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest. Other times I can barely recall the exact features of his face and must bring out the photographs I keep in an old envelope in the drawer of my bedside table. There has not been a day since his sudden and mysterious vanishing that I have not been searching for him, looking in the most unlikely places. 

The central character, Nuri, was a young boy when his mother died, but his father failed to adequately fill the gap created by her death. This book could be described as a coming-of-age story, showing the difficulties Nuri faced growing up without his mother, but it is so much more than that – there is a touching love story and compelling mystery contained in this book too.

The plot is further complicated by the fact that his father is a political activist in constant fear for his life. One day all their fears come true when he vanishes in the middle of the night. The book is based upon the author’s own experiences (Hisham Matar’s father was abducted by Egyptian secret service agents in 1990) and this creates a realistic narrative, filled with subtle emotion.  It also gives an insight in the life of families living in limbo, not knowing if their loved ones are dead or alive.

Anatomy of a Disappearance is short and easy to read. I finished it in a single sitting, compelled to continue by the engaging plot. I was impressed by the number of different issues convincingly covered in such a small number of pages. The simplicity of the prose means that this book will have broad appeal, but it also has a subtle depth that will keep fans of literary fiction happy too.

Highly recommended.

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Five words from the blurb: Devon, English, town, quiet, privacy

Twitter has been full of love for this book and so I decided to jump on the band-wagon and read it too.

King of the Badgers is set in the fictional seaside town of Hanmouth, Devon and shows how the community is affected when a eight-year-old girl goes missing.

The writing was vivid, quickly building up a snapshot of modern English life. The observations of the class divide were particularly astute and I admired the quiet, realistic subtlety of the interactions between the characters.

I initially loved this book, but once the scene had been set I began to become frustrated. There was no forward momentum and because the pace of the book was painstakingly slow my mind began to wander. There were many points at which I almost gave up, but just as I was considering abandoning it something always  happened to briefly grab my attention again. The problem was that the book felt disjointed and apart from being a “State of the Nation” novel there seemed to be no real thread to hold the narrative together. Some of the individual scenes were fantastic, but together they offered no real entertainment or insight.

The street had been done up in stages. Only one house remained untouched. No magazine recommendations had been implemented here. The garden did not have a path made out of the fragments of smashed plates; mirrors were not embedded in the wall of the garden. There were no monochromatic planting schemes in that front garden, and no ironic or amusing use of artificial grass, garden gnomes or other ornaments; nor did it contain unironic and amusing abstract sculptures.

If you are happy reading about English life in all its trivial and repulsive detail then I recommend this book, but if you are after any kind of plot then I’d stay away. Despite my criticisms I’d be very surprised not to see this on the Booker shortlist this year, so if you are Booker bagging I recommend that you get hold of a copy now!

Five words from the blurb: Messiah, New York, healing, enraged, controversial

James Frey is clearly courting controversy with this book. The title and Bible-like lay-out of the text will cause offense to some people before they’ve read a single word. Frey ensures that this outrage is continued by filling the first chapter with an unusually high density swear words – the concentration of which isn’t repeated anywhere else in the book.

I had no plans to read this book, but a copy popped through my letter box from the publishers and once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. The basic premise is that the Messiah is alive and living in New York. I found the concept interesting as anyone in our society who claims that they can perform miracles or speak to God is generally not taken very seriously.

Each chapter is written from the perspective of a person who comes into contact with Ben Zion (the supposed son of God). Initially the narrators know little about the man, but as the book progresses we hear from those who are closer to him and so more information is revealed.

I loved the first half of this book – it was fast paced and entertaining. In many ways it reminded me of a Dan Brown book, but with better structure and less historical research.

The text was initially a lot less controversial than I had expected from the cover. Whenever a potentially controversial statement was made it was balanced by another character expressing the opposing view, or by one so charming that few could disagree with it:

Biblical stories were written decades, and sometimes centuries, after the events they supposedly depict, events for which there is absolutely no historical evidence. There is no such thing as God’s word on earth. Or if there is, it is not to be found in books.
Then where is it to be found?
In love. In the laughter of children. In a gift given. In a life saved. In the quiet of morning. In the dead of night. In the sound of the ocean, or the sound of a car. It can be found in anything, anywhere. It is the fabric of our lives, our feelings, the people we live with, things we know to be real.

Unfortunately the book went downhill towards the end. We started to see the ways in which Ben Zion ‘loved’ everyone and I felt that James Frey was just trying to throw as many controversial scenes into the text as possible. It wasn’t necessary for him to sleep with everyone (male and female) and I was inwardly groaning as he made a girl pregnant and then took her for an abortion. It wasn’t necessary and just undermined what could have been a good book.

I also struggled with the writing style in the last 100 pages – it became overly sentimental and more like something written by Mitch Albom than the faster pace of the first section.

I found much of the book entertaining, but ultimately I was disappointed by the way in which controversial scenes were added to the text for no good reason. This book is guaranteed to start a conversation, but unfortunately it isn’t going to be a very intelligent one.