Headcrusher (Alexander Garros and Aleksei Evdokimov)

I first read this book back in the Spring of 2006, having been seduced by its catchily brutal title. As soon as I read the pithy comparison on the blurb ("Russia's 'Fight Club' and 'American Psycho' rolled into one") I decided to give it a go. I enjoyed it immensely, a memorably high octane and hugely fun piece of transgressive literature. Then I gave my copy to a good friend for their birthday and I forgot about it for quite some time, until I re-read 'Fight Club' and it forcibly sprang back to my conscious memory. A quick surf on Abe Books and a copy was winging its way to me through the post, ready to be the last read of my Easter break.

Following the demise of the USSR at the start of the 1990s, the Latvian capital Riga has become a playground for go-getting Capitalist playboys and girls who have embraced designer clothes, exclusive bars and trendy restaurants with complete alacrity. Vadim Vadaev is an employee in the press office of preminent bank REX, an institution which, in a tidy piece of symbolism, has as its emblem a gigantic bronze Tyrannosaurus Rex, known as "Murzilla", wearing a crown. Dissatisfied with his meaningless job writing publicity for this monstrously successful organisation, he expresses his ire in a series of vituperative rants hidden deep in the files of his work P.C, as well as in his obessesion with the eponymous ultra-violent video game 'Headcrusher' (described as some kind of time-hopping cross between 'Tomb Raider' and 'Grand Theft Auto'). Ultimately, his disgust at the designer clad Capitalist drones, his ludicrously power-mad bosses and the stupidity of working class Latvians he is forced to mix with on his daily bus to work lead him to a turning point which leads to him completely transgressing the boundaries of society. Upon discovering his boss Andreii "Four Eyes" Voronin reading the incriminating files on his P.C, Vadim instinctively caves his superior's head in with the bronze statue of Murzilla, an ironic death for a representative of greed through the agency of its physical manifestation. From this point, the more outrageous Vadim's crimes become, the more successful he becomes. Free from the restrictions of conventional morality, he acts instinctively at all times, secure in the knowledge that the authorities are too inept to stop him. He can take what he likes.

This is an irresistible, barnstorming narrative, cunningly quirky and always engaging. Vadim is entirely recognisable in the role of rebellious drone, and the authors cleverly draw a link between the world of the video game and Vadim's surreal journey into mass murder and epic theft. Here, Garros and Evdokimov effectively satirise the complaints of the many parents' organisations from the 1990s who claimed that in-game violence would lead inevitably to a generation of disturbed, barbaric, murderous teeenagers. The authors are also merciless in their depiction of post-Capitalism Eastern Europe as an absurd, warped version of the West, a copy-cat society thoughtlessly in love with the power of the possession. We get glimpses of the old Riga in the figure of Gimniuk, a booming boor of a security guard, in the old men on the bus swigging from gigantic bottles of pilsner and in the incessant sleet that assails all. The narrative voice is never anything but cynical, laughing behind one hand at the absurdity of it all. Nothing is immune from their comical eye.

Unlike 'Fight Club', where the narrator questions, even abdicates from, his own sanity and unlike 'American Psycho' where it is questionable whether Bateman commits his atrocities at all, 'Headcrusher' has Vadim grow more lucid as the fog of Capitalist ideological rules lifts. He is not guilty, not desiring of a reckoning that will end in his punishment. He plays the game to win, and does, which makes this book considerably more light hearted than the two English language novels it has been compared to. In a way, this book is actually more reminiscent of a good Guy Richie or Quentin Tarantino film, where violence is blackly humorous and often just plain humorous (think of the moment in 'Pulp Fiction' where Vincent accidentally blows Marvin's brains out as the car goes over a speed bump). I don't think I have ever found violence as funny as this, aside from in the very best Jacobean Tragedy. In our mordantly satirical twenty-first century world, violence is as hilariously meaningless as everything else.

The regular reader of this blog may well have noticed that many of my choices so far surround novels with a hefty quotient of violence, madness, reckless consumption and anti-capitalist sentiment. It's certainly true that these are some of the main things that pique my interest when it comes to choosing reading material. If you have similar tastes, 'Headcrusher' is a fantastic read, especially during its middle third, which rockets along in rollercoaster fashion. If nothing else, this book will certainly give you a few ideas about how to cope with irritations in the work place...

Morvern Callar (Alan Warner)

Literary history is filled with infamous, confrontationally beautiful opening lines. Who could forget "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen" from 'Nineteen Eighty Four', "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect" from 'Metamorphosis', "People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles" from 'Less Than Zero' or "Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know" from 'The Outsider'. Well, to that hallowed company you can add the first line of Alan Warner's 1995 debut 'Morvern Callar': "He'd cut his throat with the knife." With that stark statement, we are introduced to a new existentialist narrator, the laconic, amoral Morvern, a twenty-one-year-old shelf stacker for whom the suicide of her older, upper middle class boyfriend is an opportunity to be grasped rather than an occasion for mourning.

Indeed, it seems that her dead boyfriend, who is never named, intended Morvern to be set free from the fences her class and location have put up around her, given that he leaves her everything he has. He asks only that she sends off his novel, so that he can gain some posthumous fame. In a moment of blind inspiration, Morvern deletes his name and substitutes her own, gaining herself a nice little advance cheque in addition to all the money in the deceased's account. She also disposes of his body in a rather unique fashion, never telling anybody of his demise. They have, she says, "broken up". In the early part of the novel, Warner paints an especially bleak portrait of life in a port town in the extreme north of Scotland, from the supermarket where Morvern used to have to wade through blood and bone in the butchery department to the archaic pubs and working men's clubs Morvern tours with her friend Lanny. Existence here seems to exude a kind of sinister desperation reflected by the inclement weather. This is small town life at its most insular, and Warner paints it in a vivid and convincing manner throughout. The fact that Morvern is utterly indifferent to everything- sex with strangers, her boyfriend's horrifically grisly suicide, the love of her foster father, her friendship with Lanny- adds to this feel, making every page of stark prose entirely fascinating. She is truly a worthy successor to the likes of Meursault in the line up of great existentialist characters. The fact that her attitude does not change when her windfall leads her to two extended, extravagant tours of the Med show that she is completely dead to joy, but equally, not depressed in any way...she just exists.

I was utterly absorbed in Morvern throughout as she has so many obsessions that speak of control. She endlessly lists songs she listens to in a new cassette walkman, going so far as to give the reader full tracklistings of various compilation tapes. She continually refers to her cigarette lighter with the alarmingly specific choral refrain "I used the goldish lighter on a Silk Cut" (a technique also used in 'Fight Club' where the narrator has several of these stock phrases, for example "I know this because Tyler knows this"). One of her Christmas gifts from Lanny is a pedicure kit, which she uses to continually re-paint her toe nails throughout the novel, and several times a day during her Mediterranean excursions. As she spends more time on holiday she develops an addiction to tanning (a control motif familiar from Ian McKewan's 'The Cement Garden'). Her decisions are so hard-edged and pragmatic, instinctive and amoral, never clearly explained to the reader.

I've read various opinions on this book around and abouts, and I must say, I think a lot of people have missed the point when they say that 'Morvern Callar' is some kind of bildungsroman, with Morvern "learning about her womanly soul" and "going on a journey of self-discovery". For me, the whole point of the book is that she has no desire to learn about herself or the world around her. She does not care about anything at the beginning of the book, nor at the end. The absurdity of human existence is laid bare throughout, and our attachment to possessions and places is questioned with a forensic, critical eye. This is brilliant book, with Warner equally assured in both Scottish and Spanish settings. He does something many authors strive to do but few truly achieve: he creates an original, charismatic and memorable voice for a literary character.

The Drought (J.G Ballard)

I've always had an interest in dystopian fiction, ever since my teenage experiences with 'Animal Farm', 'Lord of the Flies', 'Nineteen Eighty Four' and 'The Handmaid's Tale', an interest that grew to the extent that my undergraduate dissertation was written on the concept. J.G Ballard wrote several novels that are best categorised as environmental dystopia, a hot topic in these times of global warming and natural disasters. I suppose that readers often judge dystopian writers on the accuracy of their prophecy, and Ballard's 'The Drought' is uncanny.

The novel begins as a massive, unprecedented drought has the world in its grasp. A film of pollution on the seas prevents the evaporation that causes cloud formation and the resulting effects are profound, with agricultural areas turned into enormous dust bowls, rivers drying up, and the fabric of society beginning to unravel. In the lakeside town of Hamilton, Dr Charles Ransom spends one last summer on the rapidly drying lake, gathering his thoughts. The town is now almost deserted, with the people of the interior heading for the coast, where massive efforts to desalinate the seawater are apparently ongoing. Part 1 of the novel sees Ransom interact with those still by the lake, the Prospero-esque tycoon Richard Lomax, his grotesque servant Quilter, the innocent teenager Philip Jordan, zookeper Catherine Austen and the militant reverend Howard Johnstone. As the town burns and the fishermen of the lake go feral, Ransom finally departs for the coast. It is only then that the true dystopian horror begins.

My only criticism of this novel is that it is extraordinarily slow to get going, especially considering the fact that it begins in medias res. I almost gave up after the first five chapters, which seemed to consist of little except Ransom's rum conversations with fellow lake dwellers. He certainly is not a hero you warm to in any way, a man almosy indifferent to the chaos that surrounds him, and not somebody who appears to have any kind of sympathy for his fellow man. However, my reservations were kept at bay by the concept, which I loved- world dries up, everything goes to hell in a hand cart- and I'm glad I perservered, because around sixty pages in, business picks up with a horrific description of Mount  Royal zoo, with the images of dead fish floating like "putrid jewels" in the water particularly and memorably grotesque, and from then on, the novel is compelling. The flight to the sea, when it takes place, is realistic and heartstopping. The chaos at the beach, the abandoned cars, the violence of panic, all are convincingly realised.

Part 2 of 'The Drought' begins ten years after events at the beach, with humanity clinging on in grim, survivalist fashion. Anyone who has read Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' will find a lot of similar ideas and motifs here, though Ballard deliberately injects hope absent from the later text in having Ransom make the journey back to Hamilton in search of  a forgotten water supply inland. Any further plot details would spoil your enjoyment of the novel, so I'll leave it there, but suffice to say that the circularity of the narrative and the black humour of the ending are extremely satisfying.

J.G Ballard is undoubtedly deserving of his place in the canon of dystopian writers. When one considers that this novel was published in 1966, it is astonishing how much of what Ballard writes about has come true. Famine in Africa, the Sahara desert growing with each passing year, the world's temperature creeping up, the selfishness of Capitalist interests. I could go on. This is a fascinating dystopic piece based alarmingly in fact and yet more evidence that man is forever his own destroyer.

Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk)

The best writers, to my mind, always have something meaningful to say about the societies that spawned them. Fitzgerald chronicled the decadence of the Jazz Age, Steinbeck the grim graft of day to day survival during the Great Depression. Orwell looked at the political currents of his day and imagined how they might turn out in the future, whereas Atwood examined Feminism and Anti-Feminism alike and how these two movements truly affected women. The trick that Chuck Palahniuk pulled off with his debut novel 'Fight Club' was to illustrate in graphic, lucid fashion the crisis of late twentieth century Western masculinity. What happens, in an age of soaring divorce rates, when a generation of men are raised only by women? What happens when white and blue collar workers are disenfranchised and ignored? What happens when Capitalism sits enthroned above us, a grotesque, bloated idol we cannot escape?

This is undoubtedly a novel of big ideas and part of its genius is the simplistic, hypnotically cinematic way in which they are delivered to the reader. The novel starts in medias res, with the un-named narrator atop a fictional sky-scaper with a gun in his mouth. The man who holds the gun is named Tyler Durden, and he has taught the narrator much about anarchy. It is from this predicament that the narrator's reminiscences about Tyler Durden and the Fight Clubs unfold. Palahniuk has stated in interviews that his inspiration for 'Fight Club' was 'The Great Gatsby' and you can certainly see why: the disciple tells the story of his hero, whom he loves despite his tragic flaws. The twist here, as I'm sure everybody knows already, is that the narrator is Tyler Durden. Tyler is a personality created by the narrator who could do all of the things the narrator wanted to do and could not. Ultimately, Tyler takes control of both of their destinies in a way which is never anything but compelling. The staccato syntax and choral repetition of certain phrases give the novel a unique feel, as does the flat, emotionless, pitiless fashion in which it is narrated. This is nihilistic reportage even Camus could be proud of.

There are a number of explicit criticisms of contemporary society that the novel makes in rapier fashion. We have become obsessed by greed and personal gain. We do not question the actions of our leaders. We do not experience the pain of others, nor care about this fact. The insomnia of the narrator is a metaphor for the way in which we sleepwalk our way through our lives, allowing things to happen to us, rather than making things happen. Our narrator cannot feel any kind of emotion, so attends self-help groups, where the second hand emotion gives him enough peace to sleep. Little does he know that this will lead to the birth of Tyler, which will forever change the way he deals with the world in front of him. The explosion that tears its way through the narrator's condo, destroying all of the carefully collected Ikea furniture and "tasteful" art is a punch to Capitalism's kidneys; forced to rebuild his existence from scratch, the narrator, aided by Tyler, chooses to transgress society's boundaries: to live in a rickety, written off house in the paper packing district, to give no thought to possessions or wealth, and most importantly, to fight on Saturday nights in the dingy basement of a bar. Palahniuk tells an anecdote in the Afterword about having a black eye that nobody ever asked him about. He figured that in the modern world of work, what you did in your own time did not interest anybody. They would not want the salacious details. We live in a sanitised world where nobody wants to know the ugly truth about anything. This is where the idea for 'Fight Club' comes from. The first and second rules of Fight Club are "You do not talk about Fight Club" because when they are at Fight Club, these men are not the same worker drones they are in the week, and the work they do at Fight Club gives them the self-confidence and calm to cope with anything: "Nothing can piss you off. Your word is law, and if other people break that law or question you, even that doesn't piss you off."

This transgression strikes a chord with young, directionless men all over the country. This is the point where Tyler becomes a messianic figure and the second stage of the process begins: Project Mayhem, an anarchist backlash against the establishment which takes the form of increasingly destructive criminal acts, until the narrator becomes uncomfortable with this, which is how the narrator finally discovers that he is Tyler Durden. Even his love interest, Marla Singer, a fellow support group emotional parasite, has known him as Tyler Durden. And Tyler's works will live on after him. The narrative is, at its best, dizzying and hypnotic, with each repeated phrase, rule or homemade recipe for destruction leaping off the page, signposts of madness, or of truth.

This was another re-read, and, like 'Trainspotting', a book which has been somewhat overshadowed by an excellent film adaptation. If you've seen the film, which most people have, you'll know what happens, which is why I've indulged in more spoilers than I typically would've done in a review, but even so, when you read the book, it is still shocking, still breathtaking. I think this is due to the savage, deceptively simplistic prose and a narrative voice as distinctive as anything in literature. So if you have only seen the film version of 'Fight Club', I urge you to read the novel. It is a late twentieth century marvel, and most importantly, it speaks with great clarity concerning the times in which we live.

Trainspotting (Irvine Welsh)

Anyone that knows me well knows that I am a chronic re-reader. I am one of those readers who knows their favourite books intimately; I can turn to a favoured passage at will, I'm able to quote a killer line to an assembled throng in the pub or staff room in the blink of an eye. Every time you approach a work of literature anew, you find something different to love or to think about, and this, I think, is the primary reason I so often peruse my bookshelves and choose an old friend to read. Sometimes these repeat reads are motivated by a reminder of those books that pops up on television or by a memory of a choice scene that suddenly springs to mind. Sometimes I just don't fancy making the effort to read something new. As my teaching career has gone on, the latter reason has come into play more and more. It's a mentally exhausting and insanely busy profession, and I don't have the time I used to have. In fact, part of the reason for starting this book review blog was to force myself to read books I hadn't read before. I suppose I've done quite well, five previous entries, all on books I was reading for the first time. This is my first re-read review since I started No Trick Dispels. So I guess that with the preamble over I should get on with the review proper.

I wanted to re-read 'Trainspotting' because I'd recently read two other Welsh books, one good ('Filth') and one disappointing ('Ecstasy') so it felt logical to revisit his masterpiece to see what makes it tick. There's been so much written about this book (and the attendant, box-office busting film adaptation) that in a way it's difficult to add anything, other than my own observations. I worried about this for all of thirty seconds, but then I remembered that that's the point of a blog anyway, and I stopped worrying.

It's important to point out, of course, that 'Trainspotting' the novel is a very different beast from the film that made it so famous. While the film is a linear narrative focused around Renton, the novel is narrated by many characters, as well as a filtered third person voice from time to time. There are many characters in the novel, who, sadly, did not end up in the film, including Rab "Second Prize" McLaughlin, Begbie's wife June, escapee Stevie who has managed to successfully get out of Leith, and teenage goth Nina. The character of Matty got fused with Tommy for the purposes of the film (although Tommy gets HIV in the novel, he is still alive in his council flat by the time the books ends- it is Matty who is the victim of Toxoplasmosis). Renton is a considerably less attractive figure, completely alienated from any kind of emotion beyond disgust (one particularly infamous moment that didn't make the film has him screw his pregnant, recently-widowed sister-in-law in the toilets of a hotel after the funeral of his brother). The genius of the fractured narrative is that it forms a kaleidoscopic, dissonant choir of dysfunction. Sometimes the individual stories seem to bear little relation to each other, but each one contributes something to our knowledge of life in Leith. What Welsh was able to do, which nobody had been able to do previously, was give a voice to the disenfranchised of Leith, a generation of working class youth who were offered nothing and responded with self-destruction. The anger and resentment at the chattering middle classes of Edinburgh and the swathes of tourists in town for the festival seeps through the narrative like a weeping sore. This isn't exploitative or pornographic literature, it's social realism that feels almost Dickensian at times.

It's a common misonception that 'Trainspotting' is "about" heroin. In fact, it encompasses so many aspects of the human condition, from births to deaths, from joy to despair, from comedy to tragedy. Heroin use is certainly a key plot marker and structural device (the novel's parts are entitled Kicking, Relapsing, Kicking Again, Blowing It, Exile, Home and Exit) and in a kind of homage to William Burroughs, there are short sections called Junk Dilemmas (#63 to #67) describing some of the realities of heroin use. There's also the fact that the final act of the novel sees the gang selling drugs rather than buying them. Renton's final betrayal of his friends is expertly done, much better than the film, which I felt overdramatised this part. It's Renton's understated opportunism that nakes that section work so well.

Another tired cliché about this book is that the dialect sections are "difficult" to follow. Only if you're a moron. The rhythms of Leith-speak are beautifully rendered and add another layer to Welsh's portrayal of the everyday realities of life amongst what the Victorians called the "submerged tenth" of society. Reading the novel again, I think it's the dialect that truly makes the book the punch to the solar plexus it is. In particular, Renton's observation about Begbie gets me every time: "He really is a cunt ay the first order. Nae doubt about that. The problem is, he's a mate an aw. What kin ye dae?" The characters' idiosyncracies are beautifully observed throughout, with Mark's pseudo-philosophising and anti-Scotland diatribes, Spud's describing himself and everyone else as "cats", Sick Boy's imagined conversations with an approving Sean Connery and Stevie's discomfort at returning home all rendered with a sure and memorable touch.

Welsh has often been hailed as the writer who best transferred to page the spirit of the punk generation, and this is evident in Renton's contempt for those who invent a positive national identity, with his famous observation that Scotland is the lowest of the low because it is "colonised by wankers". The cultural and historical references are spot on here, in a way that they aren't in his later works: they are seamlessly worked into the fabric of the plot rather than shoved in your face. An Iggy Pop gig attended by Tommy, Hibs and Hearts struggling against the Old Firm throughout the 1980s, Thatcher's criminally anti-working class policies, the yuppie boom in London, Edinburgh's transformation to respectable tourist destination, all are flawlessly observed. This novel is a seriously important historical document, in a similar way to Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' or Waugh's 'Vile Bodies'.

In concluding this review, I would like to recommend that everybody re-reads a favourite book from time to time. I've often taken this habit to extremes, but it's well worth the effort when a book is this good. It took me only two days to re-read this book, and my respect for it has only increased as a result. 'Trainspotting' is one of the best books of the Twentieth Century, of this I have no doubt. If you've only ever seen the film, you seriously need to read the book. The parts you remember from the film are rendered in stunning, visceral prose and the parts that didn't make the film are hidden gems. Throughout the three hundred and fifty or so pages, there's not a single bum note played. With all this considered, it's perhaps not surprising that Welsh has found it hard to match this towering achievement of a debut novel. Classics never get old. I'm certain I'll be re-reading this again before very long.

The Pregnant Widow (Martin Amis)

I hesitate to once again start a review with an anecdote concerning cover art, but, well, I couldn't really resist in the end, because it was again an important consideration in my choice of reading matter. I really don't understand why publishers release large format/hardcover versions of novels with beautiful front covers only to then release a paperback with a cover image of utter banality. Such is the case with Martin Amis' 'The Pregnant Widow', a book that I'd thought about buying ever since it came out last year, and one that I finally bought when I walked into Waterstones last week and saw that the paperback had been released with a cover photograph that makes it look like some kind of airport bonkbuster (Google the novel's title to see this monstrosity). Nervously, I walked upstairs, away from the displays of new releases, towards the 'A' section. To my relief, a lone copy of the original large format version was sitting on the shelf (see image to the left). I clutched it closely to my chest and gleefully paid the fourteen quid...who cares if I could have got it for half the price? Books are artefacts to be cherished and I want the nicest covers and spines...call me an aesthete.

Anyway, to paraphrase Polonius, onto the matter, the matter that I read. 'The Pregnant Widow' takes its title from the Russian thinker Alexander Ivanovich Herzen, who posited that all revoloutions lead not to the immediate anointing of new, successful generation, but to a period of chaos and flux where nobody sees any immediate benefits. This is the metaphorical pregnant widow Amis refers to (just in case anyone missed the point, he also quotes Herzen in an epigraph and in the novel itself). The novel is primarily set in the summer of 1970, in the immediate aftermath of the sexual revolution, that loosening up of societal codes regarding pre-marital sex that went hand in hand with the advent of rock music, the contraceptive pill and the end of post-war austerity. Women, suddenly, are in control of their own destiny as never before. Women can act like men, if they so choose. What Amis is at pains to point out is that this is no simple thing for either young men or young women to get their heads around and that, for this first generation to have their adolescence and young adulthood entirely in a sexually emancipated world, the world after the revolution caused many emotional difficulties. The summer of 1970 is, in this novel, presented as the year of sexual trauma.

The novel primarily takes place within this one summer, with the odd jump forward to the early 2000s for the sake of historical perspective, and later on, a few chapters that chronicle, in a fairly pithy fashion, the later events caused by this summer. Keith Nearing is a twenty-year-old student of English Literature on holiday in Italy with his girlfriend Lily, her best friend Scherezade, and a revolving group of acquaintances and friends. They are all staying in a castle in Campania, and do little except sit by the pool, drink heavily and read. From the very beginning, sexual tension fairly crackles in the heavy Mediterranean air as Keith tries to navigate the new sexual currents of the era. His relationship with Lily, who is not often described physically, but is implied to be of fairly average appearance, is curiously sibling-like. Their sex is functional, their dialogue filled with peppy back and forth banter. Lily hides her lack of self-esteem by playing games with Keith's libido, suggesting that he should find Scherezade more attractive than her. Scheherezade is a towering beauty in possession of enormous, perpetually naked breasts (Amis here indulges in a fair bit of pornographic description of said breasts, which are often being smothered in olive oil by the pool). Eventually, Lily's goading and Scherezade's guileless displays of her body spark in Keith an obsession with Scherezade. Little does Keith know that a third girl, Gloria, is the one person present who truly understands the power that has been invested in women by the Sexual Revolution, and her machinations (as well as her exceptionally womanly arse) complicate matters for Keith, not just for the duration of summer, 1970, but for the rest of his life...

I enjoyed 'The Pregnant Widow' a great deal for a number of reasons. Amis intuitively understands how significant single episodes can be in the context of a life, and invests the narrative with a reflective, elegiac quality which gives each word tremendous weight. There's that heady mix of humour and sadness present in the very best E.M Forster novels, and a great understanding of the naiveté of university educated youth. The dialogue is tremendous throughout, particularly between Lily and Keith, and Amis does a great job in capturing Keith's pretentious habit of quoting and analogising great sheaths of literature to illustrate his points (a dubious quality shared by yours truly). Keith (and Amis, one suspects) believes that the entire history of the English novel can be summed up by two questions- "Will she fall? How will she fall?"- and spends the Italian summer reading his way through them, from Samuel Richardson to D.H Lawrence, and wondering what will be done by novelists now that the question is a moot one. The point is that the women of the novel do not cope well with their emancipation, and neither do the men of the novel know how to take advantage of their emancipation (one is certainly left thinking that Keith's pathetic scheming to have sex with the various women in the castle is responsible for his emotionally crippled older self). This is the crux of the Hezen idea- being young in 1970 meant that it was too early to take advantage of the new freedoms and too late to subscribe to older values. Amis makes a very convincing case for this.

There are a few flaws that prevent this being an unreserved triumph: Keith's life as a fifty-something is not fully fleshed out, which leaves one wondering why one should care that the summer of 1970 affected him so deeply, and there are certain sections which come across- perhaps not intentionally- as slightly patronising about women and Feminism. In some ways, Amis might have been better off without the sections set in the modern day, though I admit that the perspective they add is important to the overall feel of the book...I just wish they were better executed.

'The Pregnant Widow' is an excellent study of relationships, of youth, of an entire era. It is smart, ambitious, funny and hard to put down. It's definitely Amis' best novel since 'London Fields' in my view, and therefore well worth reading. Just make sure you pay for the nice cover, otherwise I'll get upset, ok?

Ecstasy (Irvine Welsh)

Another month, another Irvine Welsh to review. I picked this up in a charity shop back in November, despite the fact that I had so many other unread books on the shelf. I'm such a hopeless book buying addict. Anyway, fresh from reading 'Filth', I popped this in my bag to read on a coach journey to and from London, the return leg of which turned out to be so epically traffic delayed that I had pretty much finished it by the time I got home.

'Ecstasy' (subtitled 'Three Tales of Chemical Romance') is a collection of three novellas which are loosely linked by the themes of love and drug taking. The first, 'Lorraine Goes To Livingston', concerns Rebecca Navarro, an author of best selling romantic fiction who suffers a stroke and, during her convalescence, discovers the dastardly deeds of her pornography loving husband and cooks up a revenge scheme with her young scots nurse. A bizarre sub-plot focuses on a necrophiliac television personality of their acquaintance who gives generously to a local hospital in return for, ahem, "access" to the recently deceased. The novella is narrated in the omniscient third person and structures the action quite ingeniously, with the actions of each of the characters finally intertwining at the end in a manner strangely reminiscent of Jane Austen. The narrative is punctuated by extracts of Rebecca's unpublished work in progress, a formulaic Regency romance which transforms into a poronographic romp to spite her husband's ambitions for yet another money spinning novel he can live off of. In all honesty, although it is enjoyable enough, even amusing at points, 'Lorraine Goes To Livingston' is quite lightweight and not particularly impressive as a whole. It feels like Welsh is often experimenting with form for the sake of it, and the character of Freddy Royle, the necrophiliac presenter, is deeply irritating, with the West Country dialect not translating as well to the page as Welsh's more familiar Scottish characters' dialects do. The endless references to nineties club culture feel forced and the plot of the story is too outlandish for it to truly work as social commentary.

The second novella, 'Fortune's Always Hiding', begins promisingly, but ultimately feels like a missed opportunity. Samantha Worthington is one of many victims of a drug called Tenazadrine (a very thinly veiled Thalidomide) and has been inducted into a brutal revenge scheme against its makers by a former lover, the German anarchist Andreas. However, this brutality has left her emotionally cold, unable to enjoy her life or her vengeance. It is a chance meeting with football hooligan Dave Thornton that transforms her life, not only because she is able to use him against the last living man responsible for Tenazadrine, its British marketing director Bruce Sturgess but also because she begins to feel again. The novella again suffers from a gimmicky structure, with present day first person narration from Dave and third person flashbacks from the perspectives of Samantha and Bruce. Furthermore, the supposedly heroic character of Dave is deeply unpleasant, with Welsh seeming to glorify hooliganism and misogyny in the most naive way possible. This is supposed to be a redemptive tale, the thug and the victim joining forces against corporate evil, but Bruce is too much of a pantomime villain for this to work, a mere parody of capitalist greed. This is sledgehammer sociology and it doesn't work. Aside from the incendiary prologue, the only moment that made me want to cheer was a brief glimpse of Mark Renton from 'Trainspotting' in one of Samantha's flashbacks about London's punk scene.

In some ways, 'The Undefeated' feels like the best thought out of these novellas, but it's still deeply disappointing; you can see what Welsh was trying to achieve, but he missed the mark as far as I'm concerned. Heather is in her late twenties and unhappily married to Hugh, twenty-seven going on forty-seven. Her narrative of bored middle class desperation runs alongside that of Lloyd, a veteran club-goer who worries that he doesn't get enough out of life outside of the E induced euphoria of the weekend. Lloyd is a much more familiar Welsh character type, and it's a relief to return to the familiar "Ah wis jist sayin, ken?" dialogue and the semi-stream of consciousness narrative. This type of writing, Welsh does well.  The plot, however, is weak, essentially revolving around multiple nights out and drug psychology in the case of Lloyd, and domestic drudgery in the case of Heather. You do certainly root for both characters in a way that you don't in either of the other two novellas, but the way in which their nascent relationship is painted at the end ruins the build up Welsh has given it. The heavy handed elucidation of the club scene, and ecstasy use in particular, doesn't help matters.

'Ecstasy' is a massive disappointment, three novellas which have their moments but ultimately feel disposable. I can only assume that back in 1996, with the film adaptation of 'Trainspotting' taking over the world, Welsh let the hype get to him and published something unworthy of his considerable talents. Poet laureate of the chemical generation he may be, but there's nothing poetic about this book, and nothing that future generations could use to piece together what nineties Britain was truly like.

Palo Alto (James Franco)

It's difficult in many ways to know whether one should admire James Franco or hate him. Not content with being annoyingly handsome, in possession of a very well respected acting career, hosting this year's oscars, studying for a Phd at Yale and dabbling in the LA visual arts scene, he's now turned his hand to writing as well. The gorgeous silver and blue design of the cover image actually drew me to leaf through this book before I realised who it was by. When I clocked the name on the front, I thought it was a coincidence (bear in mind I once taught a kid called Michael Jackson). But no, flick to the back and the author photo stares back in black and white, the son of the Green Goblin cast as brooding writer. I nodded sagely and proceeded to the counter.

It's worth pointing out at this juncture that Franco is published by Faber and Faber, which should be proof enough that he is serious about this storytelling lark. Read the first story and it'll become clear that this is no mere Hollywood vanity project; this is seriously good stuff. 'Palo Alto', set in the suburbs of the eponymous northern Californian city, is a short story cycle following a loosely connected group of teens through the trials of budding adulthood, which of course primarily revolve around intoxication, sex and violence, in that order. Put that baldly, I admit that this premise sounds horribly clichéd, but the Carver-esque poetry of the prose carries a great deal of profound message behind the seeming simplicity of the narratives. The short, clipped syntax, married to a darkly cinematic tone makes for a book that I found exceedingly difficult to put down, and certainly one that I will return to again and again.

Franco very much shows himself to be a worthy successor to the likes of Bret Easton Ellis (whose own short fiction collection, 'The Informers' works in a similar way) and J.D Salinger in chronicling just how disaffected and morally ambivalent middle class America can be. Self interest is the primary thematic marker, with each character utterly self-absorbed in a fashion I found very realistic, at least from my own recollections of teenage thought patterns. The darkness in these stories is never far away, yet never does it seem melodramatic or self-pitying, and never does the denouement to each story seem forced or obvious. It's hard to get attached to any of the narrators, but that's the point, they are a passing voices of their generation that form a chorus of flat noise. It works beautifully.

I particularly enjoyed the first story 'Halloween', which rather put me in mind of 'Donnie Darko' minus the Physics and Psychosis. The final story, 'I Could Kill Someone' is another mini-masterpiece, a profound study of homophobic bullying and the ever present nature of guns as a solution to American problems. The only story I didn't like was 'Chinatown', which I found was trying to be sexually unpleasant for the sake of being sexually unpleasant. The early nineties setting of all of these stories massively resonates with me, having grown up in that era too (I was particularly thrilled by a reference to the overdose of River Phoenix) and I was definitely pulled into the meta-world created by Franco.

James Franco is clearly a Renaissance Man in an age of cave people, and he should be applauded for embracing the arts so completely and for continuing to push himself. I truly hope that this book is the first of many, because he has an acute eye for detail and the ability to deliver a truly devastating kiss off. Although I would never go so far as to say that this book comes close in quality to the likes of 'Less Than Zero' or 'The Rules of Attraction', it's certainly no bad stab at the overall impression of those books.