Skagboys (Irvine Welsh)

Regular readers of this blog will know that Irvine Welsh is one of my favourite contemporary writers, so I was extremely excited when the publication date for 'Skagboys', the oft discussed prequel to 'Trainspotting', was finally set for late April. The thought of delving into the rich backstories of Welsh's greatest creations was a stimulating one, for sure.

But here's the thing: prequels are tricky beasts. Ask anyone that saw 'The Phantom Menace'. Once the initial rush of seeing much loved characters as their younger selves wears off, any slightness in the plot will be ruthlessly exposed. 'Skagboys' manages to avoid this fate, but I have to admit that it may be one for the fanboys (of which I am one) and not necessarily a masterpiece...and here's why...

The genius of 'Trainspotting' is that it was effortless and visceral social commentary that exposed all of the ills and evils of Thacherite Britain. Welsh never needed to erect an enormous sign saying "SOCIALISM GOOD, CAPITALISM BAD" or to create scenes specifically to let us know that working class Scotland was hung out to dry during the 80s. All of this became apparent through the episodic structure of the novel, the small moments, the anecdotes, the seamless pop culture referencing. 'Skagboys' seems to fall into the trap of jumping up and down shouting "IT'S ALL THATCHER'S FAULT!" in rather a clumsy way. If the intention of the book is to correlate Conservative government with unemployment and drug abuse, then it's certainly successful, but there's no finesse about the way this is achieved and it's all too simplified and contrived to truly convince. Where 'Trainspotting' told a story that happened to have enormous cultural and political significance, 'Skagboys' seems to strain so hard that it becomes a political tract that just happens to have a plot. 'Trainspotting' had an episodic structure that was almost kaleidoscopic. There was no real sense of time: ten years could have passed, or one. It was disorienting and beautiful. 'Skagboys' aims at the same kind of multi-voiced, episodic narrative, but sticks to a much tighter and more linear chronology, and is probably less of a compelling book for it.

There are other issues, too. The characters don't seem to adequately grow (in the sense that by the novel's end the characters don't seem 'Trainspotting' ready), and though their speech and mannerisms are right, their narratives often seem to reflect the voices of the narrators from teen novels in their naiveté. There seem to be contradictions too, and some of the characters' actions seem to be parodies of how Welsh thinks we want them to act (a scene where Begbie batters two rivals with an iron bar, Sickboy attempting to break into the pimping game, Renton's philosophising about junk). Worst of all, it turns out that Renton's reason for trying heroin in the first place is not, as we'd been led to believe, his disabled brother or his general dissaisfaction with life, the universe and everything, but...wait for it...peer pressure. Yes, in a scene set in a party held after a Northern Soul all-nighter, Renton refuses the offer to chase the dragon and then feels like a coward, ending up tracking down Swanney soon afterwards. I thought that was pretty anti-cimactic. Of further concern is that many of the events we experience directly here, we already knew about, because they were frequently mentioned as backstory to 'Trainspotting'. Renton's brother? What more could we learn about him that we didn't already know from the original novel? Renton's time at Aberdeen University? Yep, we knew about that too. Renton's stint on the Hook of Holland ferry run? Covered in 'Trainspotting'.

I was struggling to explain why all of this was the case until I read around the interviews Welsh did around the publication date. Turns out that most of 'Skagboys' was in fact retrieved from a stack of floppy disks Welsh had begun writing 'Trainspotting' on back in the late 80s. Never having written a novel before, Welsh just started writing, and then kept writing. At a certain, fairly arbitrary point, he made a cut, and he began to polish the latter half, which would become 'Trainspotting'. Welsh did not think about the material he had left out too much until a few years ago, when he sent the disks off to be restored. What came back became the basis of 'Skagboys'. I think that Welsh perhaps did not edit the piece as much as he could have done. It feels like what it probably is: lively but unpolished juvenalia.

However (and this is a big however)...I still loved the book, for all its flaws. Because the fact is that Welsh is a writer who knows how to weave a story that keeps a reader hooked in. It's a page turner. You want to read about the rogues, the ne'er do wells, the innocents caught up in the brutality of 1980s social deprivation. The glorious rendition of the Leith dialect is as vital and thrilling as ever, and there are enough laughs, loves and shocks to keep you invested throughout. Of particular interest were the small sections woven through the narrative entitled 'Notes On An Epidemic', which detail the way that first, Scottish independence was eroded, then Scottish industry was decimated, leading to an increase in intravenous drug use, and finally, tragically to HIV/AIDS taking a horrific death grip over Edinburgh. Added to the 'Junk Dilemmas' sections familiar from 'Trainspotting', these chunks of text help to give the novel some gravitas. Renton's Rehab Journal is an interesting insight into his character that you don't necessarily get elsewhere in this book, while Spud is for me the undisputed star, funny, self-deprecating and oddly practical. There are also some truly memorable and fascinating moments to cherish, but I won't spoil those for you.

What an odd reading experience 'Skagboys' is. It took me only a week to read, I wanted to read it as often as I could, and it was a real blast spending time with all of those characters I knew and loved again, but all the time I was reading, I knew that it was flawed in a way 'Trainspotting' most definitely was not. Perhaps if the social commentary aspect of the novel was less heavy handed, if the editing had been tighter (this is a much longer book than 'Trainspotting'), 'Skagboys' would've been an unqualified success. As it is, it reads like a talented writer reshaping an old manuscript and relying on the power of his characters and iconic setting to see him through. 'Skagboys' is enjoyable and eminently readable, but lacking the power of the seminal novel it "sets up".

Damned (Chuck Palahniuk)

You have to hand it to Chuck Palahniuk, he's certainly never short of ideas. Since his mind melting transgressive debut 'Fight Club' he's written about the politics of identity ('Invisible Monsters') coma patients ('Diary'), scam merchants ('Choke'), and a Chinese spy undercover as an exchange student ('Pygmy'). He's tackled multiple literary forms too: horror ('Haunted'), oral history ('Rant'), and an ensemble cast narrating porn ('Snuff'). Despite his consistently interesting ideas though, I've often found that Palahniuk's books are often less effective than the innovative ideas that drive them. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that only 'Fight Club', out of his published oeuvre, has a truly satisfying narrative arc. His books are always enjoyable, but can sometimes feel throwaway and lightweight, as if the idea itself is more important than the story.

Despite my reservations about Palahniuk, he is always an engaging read, so when I read about 'Damned' before it was published this winter, I was keen to get hold of it as soon as I could. Out of all of his recent concept driven novels, this one promised the most. The narrator is thirteen-year-old Madison Spencer, daughter of a Hollywood producer and a famous actress. At the beginning of the novel, she finds herself in Hell, and proceeds to tell the reader, in scabrously witty fashion, how the underworld really works. The structure of 'Damned' is based on the works of Judy Blume, with each chapter beginning "Are you there Satan, it's me, Madison..." and then going on to relate either an episode that shows us our narrator getting used to hell, or a reflection on her earthly life. Madison's closest cell mates are a jock, a freak, a brain and a prom queen, riffing on the idea of the high school stereotypes being thrown together as they are in classic Brat Pack films from the 80s. Once we get to see outside of the cells, it becomes clear that much of the book's humour is based around the fact that Hell doesn't seem to be too bad a place: most of the inhabitants are employed as telemarketers, ringing up the living to ask them pointless questions about chewing gum flavours. Yes, it turns out that all telemarketing calls come straight from Hell and that if you have an unlisted number, you are more likely to be called. Madison turns out to be very adept at her job, even making some friends among the living, notably a Canadian girl with AIDS who our heroine assures that Hell is not bad at all, and that when she inevitably dies, she should look her up. It also turns out that demons are wage slaves too, with one memorable scene having a bored and nonchalant demon conducting a polygraph test on Madison to see if she was damned mistakenly. Customer service in hell is apparently particularly bad and often dependent on bribing various demons with chocolate bars. Figures.

The landscape of Hell has all of the gross-out landmarks you might expect Palahniuk to come up with- an ocean of semen, a mountain of toenail clippings, landfill of partial abortions- and most of the asides about life in Hell are amusing and bring a smirk to the lips, if not necessarily a hearty chuckle. Madison is very keen to inform us that dying with a sturdy pair of shoes on is very important, as there'll be a lot of wading through detritus in the underworld. The misadventures of Madison and her motley crew are definitely engaging, but I think the kind of bildungsroman structure that Palahniuk adopts doesn't really suit the satire he thinks he's making, so that all of the things incidental to the plot are very well done, but the actual plot itself- Madison building up self-confidence, making friends with fellow dead teens, finding out why she was damned and building herself into Hell's most poular inhabitant- is rather slight. Like characters in Judy Blume novels, Madison was unpopular with her peers and had parental issues, and  therefore works through these issues one at a time, only in a fashion more cynical and cuss ridden than Judy would favour. The language that Maddie uses is quite distinctive and her voice stays relatively fresh throughout, but the events don't. After a while the narrative gets repetitive and that's quite a feat, because this is a short book. Then, there's suddenly a plot twist involving the long awaited appearance of Satan at the end that I found nothing short of silly, and un-necessary to boot. The author even leaves the door open for a sequel, and indeed, that seems appropriate, as the entire book seems to be shouting for Hollywood to film it, bearing such similarities as it does to John Hughes' seminal work 'The Breakfast Club', though I find the possibility of a film unlikely, given how much Middle America would react against the content of the plot.

I have mixed feelings about 'Damned'. As a throwaway comic novel, I really enjoyed it, other than the last couple of chapters, where a dumb plot twist irked me. The problem is that I don't think Palahniuk intended for this to be a throwaway comic novel, I think he thought he was writing a mordant satire on modern life, but the targets he picks- celebrities, health freaks, bureaucracy, famous villains from history- have been satirised so many times that it's a little like shooting fish in a barrel. What I'll probably remember most about the book is that Hell is full of telemarketers. That, at least, was a humorous concept worthy of a man of Palahniuk's twisted imagination.

The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood)

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am a re-reader of almost obsessive proportions. I can't resist dipping into old favourites on a regular basis, because I do find that every time  re-read a book, I find something new that I hadn't noticed before. Plus, it's just an enormously pleasurable thing to do. If you enjoyed it once, you should enjoy multiple times, at least that's my view.

I have been an avid fan of Margaret Atwood for many years now. She's one of the five or six authors who I read everything by, so she's very special to me. I first encountered her writing during A Level English Literature, as I studied the seminal dystopian novel 'The Handmaid's Tale', and from then on I gradually tracked down her other books and read those too. 'The Blind Assassin' was the first Atwood novel that came out after I'd heard of her, so it was something of a momentous publishing event for me. It came out in 2000, but I was a poverty stricken student then, unable to justify spending money on beautiful hardbacks, so I had to wait until the autumn of 2001 to buy it in paperback in a promotional student evening at Borders in Brighton just as I was starting my PGCE. Despite the fact that teacher training is an arduous and time consuming process, I still found time to read regularly, and this book kept me on the edge of my proverbial seat during that first reading. Since then, I'd read it on another two occasions, but not since about 2006, so when I was scanning my bookshelves about a month ago for reading matter, I decided it was about time I read 'The Blind Assassin' again.

Generally speaking, there are two types of Atwood novel: those that deal with gender politics and destructive relationships ('The Edible Woman', 'Surfacing', 'Lady Oracle') and those that are more dystopic in flavour ('The Handmaid's Tale', 'Oryx and Crake', 'The Year of the Flood'). 1996's 'Alias Grace' was an interesting departure in that it examined an infamous Canadian murder case of the 1840s, and interrogated more thoroughly the relationship between history, fiction and truth, while not abandoning Atwood's interest in the female identity. I therefore see 'The Blind Assassin' as a continuation of Atwood's literary interest in Canadian history, since the majority of the novel takes place in the years immediately before and after the Second World War. The book says a great deal about how Atwood sees Canada's development as a nation and a great deal about class, gender and power also. I see 'The Blind Assassin' as Atwood's second best novel, chiefly because her earlier books dealing with women and relationships, as much as I love them, tend to come across as a little petulant and a little too obvious. Certainly, her work in the late 1970s and early 1980s can often appear like self-plagiarism (a female narrator and protagonist fights to preserve their identity in the face of a challenge from patriarchal authority), especially if one reads them in sequence. What we have with 'The Blind Assassin' is a far more subtle, meaningful and balanced examination of the position of women in Twentieth Century society, and most importantly, it gives a much truer account of how the phenomenon of love fits into all the gender politics. It helps that the writing itself is also more natural, the words of a writer who knows her craft fully. 'The Handmaid's Tale' will always be her most profundly powerful work, for me, but few books speak of the heart and from the heart like 'The Blind Assassin' does.

A beautifully memorable prologue that begins "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge" establishes the novel being framed as the memoirs of Iris Griffen (neé Chase), a former heiress and society beauty, now aged and fallen from grace following a series of contrversial incidents that occurred around and immediately after the war. It becomes clear fairly early on that these memoirs are intended for the eyes of Iris' estranged niece Sabrina, though there are also many asides directed at Myra Sturgess, the daughter of the servant who brought Iris and her sister Laura up. The memoirs tell the tragic story of the Chase family, once prominent yet honest industrialists who fall on hard times come the depression, causing Iris to be married off to a business rival for an injection of capital, only for that business rival, Richard Griffen, to turn out to be a dishonest shark and a bully, with eyes not only on Iris, but also the sensitive, strange and stubborn Laura, only fifteen at the time of Iris' marriage. Interspersed with this reflective first person narrative is the eponynous novel within a novel 'The Blind Assassin', purportedly written by Laura Chase before her suicide, a modernist masterpiece telling the story of an affair between a young society woman and a sharp-tongued man on the run. Within that novel is also another story, a pulp tale told to the nameless young woman by her lover, about a blind assassin on a fictional planet full of exotic fictional elements with strange names. A further layer is added by the inclusion of historical artifacts like gossip columns, obituaries and newspaper reports which both foreshadow and shed light on the story told us by Iris.

What's wonderful about the book is the way that it takes on its themes with such sensitivity and gravitas. Iris is completely uncompromising about the way her ageing body is failing her, discussions of which inform her envy of the young and her own reminiscences of her youth. Rarely have the mechanics and terrors of old age been analysed in such a poignant yet brutal way. Canada's place in the world is put into perspective several times in the novel: in Iris' account of how the fictional town of Port Ticonderoga came to be, with the way Toronto high society is represented as a kind of desperate facsimile of London high society, in the descriptions of Iris' dastardly sister-in-law Winnifred and her flapper friends trying desperately to do whatever is "in" elsewhere in the world. Canada in the twenties, thirties and forties is shown as parochial and backwards, yet not immune to the pressures of the era. The Wall Street Crash, The Great Depression and the fear of Communism all feature prominently, and there are brief echoes of the strife that would tear Europe apart, too. Atwood weaves these enormous historical events seamlessly into Iris' narrative, showing the impact such large events can have on the individual. The position of women is of course central to the novel, with both Iris and Laura, in different ways, struggling against the lives that have been mapped out for them. Other female characters- Winnifred as the power behind Richard's throne, the bohemian artist Callie Fitzsimmons as the lover of Iris and Laura's father Norvall Chase, the indefatigable servant/surrogate mother Reenie Hinck- show the different paths a woman might take within the era, making the novel a kaleidoscope of female possibility. Ultimately though, this is the story of how Iris lost and then regained her independence, but only at a terrible, terrible cost to herself and her sister, and the aching sadness of this would turn even the hardest hearts to doughy softness, as would the overarching love story between the two protagonists of the novel-within-a-novel, a twist in the tale which is obvious very early on, but nonetheless enormously affecting. The last pages of the book are some of the saddest you will ever read.

I am so glad I re-read 'The Blind Assassin'. It's beautifully written, impeccably controlled, sheds light on an important part of twentieth century history and provides us with one of the greatest fictional love stories ever told. The lessons of the novel- seize the day, allow no regrets, protect oneself from the predations of the unscrupulous, remember those who have gone- have always stayed with me, and I think they always will. Reading Atwood is always an emotional rollercoaster, and always leaves me profoundly sad and philosophical for a long while afterwards, but such things are meant to be felt. This is a clever book and a book full of feeling. It's essential reading for everybody.

Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell)

David Mitchell is one of those rare writers who can conjure enormously complex postmodern narratives which, when read, actually come across as brilliantly simple and organic storytelling. It's not, of course: I can't even conceive of how much research, travel, plotting and planning went into this book. It's an absolute literary behemoth, the type of book that leaves you walking away shaking your head at the sheer audacity of it. I suppose that Mitchell shares this quality with his nearest analogue, the great Salman Rushdie, but then, Rushdie was always a little too wrapped up in his own brilliance, whereas Mitchell seems admirably modest and unassuming. It somehow makes his books even more likeable.

I start this review with that preamble because I'm not even sure of how to start summarising this book for you. It has so many layers that I could still be writing about 'Cloud Atlas' tomorrow and not be close to finishing. So I guess I'll try and give you the short version. As with Mitchell's debut novel 'Ghostwritten', 'Cloud Atlas' consists of a series of interconnecting stories that are thematically and textually linked. The conceit of the novel's structure is that each character reads or watches the narrative of the previous character, but each narrative is interrupted halfway through. As the sixth arc closes in the middle of the book, the story arcs are closed in reverse order until the reader ends with the story that began the book. We thus move both forwards and backwards in time, towards the ultimate philosophical revelation that everything changes but humanity's essential selfishness does not. Furthermore, each of the protagonists in the book possess a comet shaped birthmark, indicating that they are one soul being reborn into different physical vessels. It is truly a wonderful experience to join the dots of Mitchell's narrative framework and yet also get caught up in each individual story.

The stories span such a range of historical periods and regions that it's impossible not to be impressed, especially as Mitchell manages to make each of them seem entirely authentic. He also experiments with a multitude of genres: a journal, a series of letters, a crime thriller, a burlesque, an interview and an oral memoir. His characters are equally diverse, as are his locations. We start with Adam Ewing, an American notary on a voyage across the Pacific from Australia to San Francisco who is, unbeknowst to him, being preyed upon by a charlatan doctor. This section is probably the most humdrum but it introduces one of the novel's defining philosophical conceits: that man inherently preys upon those weaker than himself. This is seen in the way Ewing witnesses the colonial rapacity of the English and the Dutch, as well as the recounted story of the island people the Moriori, who were themselves colonised by the Maori, who proved themselves "apt pupils" in the dark art of colonialism. It is also evident in the way Ewing himself is taken advantage of by the man he thinks is a doctor and his friend. Ewing's journal is read by the would-be composer Robert Frobisher in the early 1930s while he is staying at the Belgian chateau of the syphlitic composer Vyvan Ayres and working as his amanuensis. Frobisher writes to his friend and lover Rufus Sixsmith of the way in which he has inveigled his way into the graces of Ayrs' wife as well as how he is funding himself through finding rare books and selling them to a broker on Greek Street. The novel's title is taken from this section, as Frobisher is writing a musical work of his own, 'Cloud Atlas Sestet', six interconnecting movements which endlessly descend and ascend, much like the characters in the novel do. Frobisher's letters to Sixsmith are read by the protagonist of the next section, Luisa Rey, an investigative journalist embroiled in the attempts of an all powerful nuclear energy company to cover up the fact that their new reactor could be unsafe and cause a disaster. The strongarm tactics of the energy company throw light into the darker side of capitalism. The Luisa Rey mystery is read in the early 2000s by Timothy Cavendish, a hapless vanity publisher who happened on a huge hit after his gangster client killed a smug book reviewer. Cavendish escapes the attentions of his client's brothers only to wind up in a dictatorial nursing home, having been tricked into thinking it was a hotel by his brother. Cavendish's struggles are seen  by Sonmi-451 as a film after she escapes her life as an indentured fabricant worker at Papa Song's (a thinly veiled analogue for McDonald's). This section comes across as an even darker version of Huxley's 'Brave New World', as all work in Nea So Copros (Korea) is undertaken by fabricants who are brutally executed after 12 years of service. This dystopic world is brilliantly rendered through Sonmi's recollections of her life as a server and a her later life as a revolutionary. Mitchell cleverly uses brand names already in existence as eponyms: so personal televisions are "Sonys" and coffee is "Starbucks". The rapacity of capitalism in this section is portrayed as all consuming, leading inevitably to the end of humanity as we know it. I have always been a huge fan of dystopian fiction, so this section had me on the edge of my proverbial seat. The recording of Sonmi is watched by the next viewpoint character, Zachry, a tribesman on Hawaii whose tribe is threatened by the even more primitive, but very warlike Kona. Zachry is visited by Meronym, a member of the last known advanced society. Zachry's people worship Sonmi as a deity, without knowing anything about her history. This section is written in a form of broken English argot, which like any such effort (Orwell and Newspeak, Burgess and Nadsat) absolutely takes you in once you get past the initial page or so.

The finale takes the entire second half of the novel and is by turns dazzling, elegiac, haunting and triumphant. Having to wait for the conclusion of each narrative makes you want to turn each page that bit quicker. It's a book to obsess over, a book to devour and yet a book to savour too. I've noticed that there has been something of a backlash against this book in recent years, almost as if the universal acclaim it won when it came out is now seen as somehow indecorous. I cannot for the life of me imagine why anybody would not see this novel for what it is: a dazzling postmodern gem and a book which will be regarded as the undisputed classic of the 2000s. This is a book which will be studied and thought about for many years. I already want to re-read it.

Atomised (Michel Houellebecq)

Existentialism is widely held to be the experience of one's own freedom of thought and responsibility and the angst created by the realisation that all of our acts are essentially futile. In France, this school of philosophical thought has long been prominent, and I personally first encountered it while studying A Level French, when I studied Albert Camus and his seminal novels 'L'Étranger' ('The Outsider') and 'La Peste' ('The Plague') in the original French, with later re-reads in translation. As an impressionable and angst-ridden teenager, these books had a profound effect on me and seemed to fit my world view better than anything else I had come across. The master of modern Existentialist Fiction is another Frenchman, Michel Houellebecq, whose novels have caused a substantial stir with their frank (some would say pronographic) representations of modern sexuality and their blunt take on the phenomenon of death. A substantial theme in Houellebecq's work is the decay of modern society, and his debut novel 'Atomised' ('Les Particules Eléméntaires' in the orginal French) takes on this theme with wit and brio.

The plot is narrated by a detached third person figure of complete omniscience, who cooly and logically tells us of the lives of two half-brothers, Michel Djerzinski and Bruno Clément. Michel is an introverted molecular biologist who once dreamed of being a physicist like his hero Nihls Bohr and has no interest in sex, women or friendship. As the novel opens he is taking a leave of absence from his post at the university to rethink his existence. Bruno is a theoretical libertine, a sex addict who has no outlet for his lewdness and for whom therapy for his sex addiction has no effect whatsoever. The opening of the novel sees  leaving therapy and on his way to a hippy retreat where he hopes he will find the meaningless sexual encounters he so craves. The brothers are entirely different, but their inability to make sense of the modern world is the same, and through them, Houellebecq is able to make the ultimate Existentialist point: that it is love that holds the human race back.

'Atomised' has an interesting structure, in that it begins in 1999 with Michel taking his leave of absence, then recounts the dysfunctional childhood the brothers experienced, then moves into the brothers experiencing chances at redemption that ultimately fall flat, and finally to the ultimate revelation that a scientific discovery made by Michel changed humanity forever. I did find the very last section of the book to be forced and found it unsuccessful in applying a kind of 'Brave New World' dystopian feel to the novel. It felt very tagged on, to me, even though it was clear from the start that the narrative was being framed by knowledge of a very different future to the present being described.

Overall, this novel has a dark, broodingm, foreboding tone that makes it fit perfectly into the troubled years leading up to and following the last millenium. The characterisation of the two protagonists is perfectly observed and the plot has plenty of dark nooks and crannies to hook the reader into continuing to turn the page. Is this as good a book as its influences? No, not at all. But is it a significant achievement in the field of Existentialist literature? Absolutely.

The Prague Cemetery (Umberto Eco)

One of the most thrilling times of my life was the two years I spent studying A level History under the tutelage of an incredible, eccentric, brilliant Italian woman who brought the turmoil of the Nineteenth Century to life in vivid detail. We focused particularly on Italy, Germany, France and Russia, discussing diplomatic scandals, failed revolutions, empire building, wars and nationalist fervour at great length. That love for Nineteenth Century history has never left me, and I still read around the subject regularly to this day. One fascinatingly poisonous current of cultural ideology that ran through the century was the growth of Anti-Semitism, a current that led inexorably to Hitler and the Final Solution in the mid Twentieth Century. From pamphlets detailing Jewish conspiracies against the Christian world to the growth of Social Darwinism, the grim path to genocide is easy to trace. With all of this in mind, when I picked up the masterful Italian novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco's latest novel 'The Prague Cemetery' and found that it was about these events and how they came to be, I was desperate to read it. I duly placed it on my Christmas list and my mother duly obliged. Having been absorbed in it for the past fortnight, I'm very glad I asked for it. This is a quite brilliant book.

'The Prague Cemetery' is a picaresque historical novel with a notably postmodern structural conceit. The Narrator (note the capital 'N') begins the tale by observing a seedy area of Paris surrounding Place Maubert, in which an elderly gentlemen is sitting down to write. At this point, this observed man, the main character of the novel, Captain Simone Simonini, takes over, writing about a crisis of identity in a diary on the advice of an "Austrian Jew" (who turns out to be the one and only Sigmund Freud, at that time working on his theories in Paris). This crisis was precipitated by the discovery of a cassock and wig in his apartment, a fact that confused and disturbed him. It transpires that Simonini has an alter ego, the Abbé Dalla Piccola, who alternates writing in the diary whenever Simonini has recounted an event incorrectly or whenever he has recounted some crime the priest wishes to chide him about. The narrative is thus split between the Narrator, who "interprets" the writings of Simonini and Dalla Piccola whenever they become too feverish or convoluted, Simonini, whose recollections of his life in espionage, forgery and villiany drive the plot forward for the majority of the book, and Dalla Piccola, whose horrified and moralistic didactism seasons the narrative at key points, until the two alter egos are ultimately reconciled at the end (the implication being that Freud's suggested therapy has worked).

Simonini's story begins with his obessessive hatred of the Jews, created by both the stories of his grandfather, an eminent man of Piedmont, the foremost kingdom in Northern Italy in the mid Nineteenth Century and also by the Jesuits who were his tutors. So vivid are these warnings about the Jews that Simonini "dreamt about [them] for years" and believes them to be "vain as a Spaniard, ignorant as a Croat, greedy as a Levantine, ungrateful as a Maltese, insolent as a Gypsy, dirty as an Englishman, unctuous as a Kalmuck, imperious as a Prussian, slanderous as anyone from Asti" as well as "adulterous through uncontrollable lust" which apparently, for Simonini, accounts for the large population of European Jews at the time the novel is set. This section is incredibly well written by Eco, bringing across as it does the fanaticism of the zealot and the irresistably comic voice of Simonini which carries the reader through a whole swathe of European events. After a meeting with Freud and some other Pyschiatrists at a restuarant, Simonini begins the tale of his life in a fashion almost reminiscent of the Bildungsroman, with a series of events in his early adult life leads to his recruitment into the Piedmontese intelligence service. And it is at this point that things get really interesting.

The diary, shared by the two alter egos, takes the reader through many of the momentous events of the Nineteenth Century (Garibaldi's conquest of the Two Sicilies, the reign of Napoleon III, the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune, the Dreyfus Affair) while Simonini, egged on by most of Europe's Intelligence Organisations, begins to write, commision and edit a number of texts which describe a secret meeting between rabbis in a cemetery in the Prague ghetto in which they hatch a conspiracy, apparently involving masons, Jesuits and Satanic ritual, which will topple the Christian nations. The idea is that one man, Simonini, is actually responsible for the infamous 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion', published in 1905, the book that a young Adolf Hitler read and described as his warrant to wipe out the European Jewry. This is much more than dry historical fiction, however. There is a kind of bathetic, ludicrous humour that leaps from the page, with all of the real life historical figures being somehow absurd. The system of espionage and counter espionage among major European powers is endlessly satirised by the way Simonini is often hired to do the same job by multiple agencies. The loose ends are tied up in a satisfying ending, but the ending is completely left open. This is a true "novel of ideas" and its ambition and scope is quite staggering really. 'The Prague Cemetery' shows how easily and alarmingly ideas about race can lead to terrifying, chilling consequences, with Eco even noting in an endpiece that all of the figures in the novel bar Simonini and his priestly alter ago were real, and even Simonini is a collage of several real people who helped to spread the Anti-Semitic message around Europe. As a character, Simonini is a true work of art: a bravura anti-hero, a malcontent, a glutton obsessed with fine food, a murderer, a forger, a spy, a liar, a disguise artist and a master storyteller.

This book is a demanding but utterly rewarding experience, the kind of book that makes you wish that more authors put in this kind of effort and scholarship. It gives a reader everything they could want: scope, drama, humour, acutely observed characters, beautiful prose, grand locations, a page turning plot full of conspiracy and mystery, and of course, beautifully striking orange and black cover art....I'm such a sucker for a good cover.

Umberto Eco, my cap is officially doffed to you. Everybody should read your book. Immediately.

Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris: The Colossus of Mars (Arvid Nelson, Carlos Rafael and Paul Renaud)

Having adapted Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1918 pulp novel 'Warlord of Mars' to comic book format, Arvid Nelson next turned his hand to writing a series of prequels to John Carter's adventures on Barsoom (Mars) that went into the backstory of his love interest, the luscious Dejah Thoris, princess of the twin cities of Helium. Set four hundred years before the arrival of Carter on Barsoom, this volume collects the first six issues of the Dejah series together to form a complete narrative explaining how the cities of Greater and Lesser Helium were unified and how the city of Zodanga became reknowned for treachery and a sworn enemy of united Helium.

The narrative opens with civil war between the Heliums being interrupted by the overlord of all the Red Martians, the Jeddak of Yorn, ordering that hostilities cease immediately. He takes our heroine, the incomparably busty Dejah, into captivity, little realising that his cowardly but kindhearted son will take it upon himself to free her...but not before his dastardly father has unearthed an all powerful ancient war machine which threatens all Barsoom, from the civilisations of the red men to the tribes of the green.

I think this run of prequels was definitely a good idea. Freed from the shackles of Burroughs' original stories, Arvid Nelson really manages to cut to the chase and write an all action story with plenty of twists, turns, treachery and derring do. Dejah's character really benefits from being centre stage and not overshadowed by John Carter, becoming less a damsel in distress and more a female warrior badass in the mould of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Elektra. The artists manage once again to capture the world of Barsoom in a very impressive manner, and Dejah herself is rendered in a stunningly sexy fashion true to the original tales. She's surely the hottest character in comics.

Now I've read both the comic book adaptation of 'Warlord of Mars' and this first volume of 'Dejah Thoris', I am now champing at the bit to read Dynamite's next two prequel offerings from Barsoom, 'Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris: Pirate Queen of Mars' and 'Warlord of Mars: Fall of Barsoom', both of which are soon out as trade paperbacks. If you want a fun and engaging read with some jaw dropping artwork, you could do worse than checking out these titles.

Warlord of Mars (Arvid Nelson, Steven Sadowski and Lui Antonio)

One of the most productive avenues for authors of comics is mining pulp fiction of the early twentieth century. It was while browsing through various Conan titles on Amazon that I came across this adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'Warlord of Mars'. Seduced immediately by the gorgeous art and pulp storyline, I ordered it just before Christmas.

This trade paperback collects the entire first run of Dynamite's 'Warlord of Mars' comic. The tale starts in post-Civil War Arizona, where John Carter, late of Virginia's army, is mysteriously transported from a cave to the red planet, known to locals as Barsoom. There he finds a race of four armed green warriors, the Tharks, who are mostly savage and brutish, apart from a few heroes, such as Tars Tarkas, who Carter quickly befriends out of mutual respect. The atmosphere of Mars makes Carter un-naturally strong and quick, and with his martial training on earth, he becomes a peerless warrior and chieftain among the Tharks. But then, one fateful day, he realises that the green men are not alone on Barsoom: the Tharks capture a princess of the "red men" (physiologically the same as humans, but red skinned) who is a compelling, scanitily glad, passionate beauty. Dejah Thoris immediately becomes Carter's raison d'etre, and he daringly jail breaks her...and this is just the start of their adventures together.

The comic strip is framed by an opening section penned by "Edgar Rice Burroughs" explaining how "Uncle Jack" told him these stories and left him these manuscripts, and also by a closing section which inventories the technology of Barsoom. I don't read a lot of comics/trade paperbacks/graphic novels, so to catch my eye, a work of this genre has to stand out from the crowd. This does just that, a rollicking adventure, economically told and gorgeously illustrated, complementing rather than replacing Burroughs' original pulp adventure, styaing true to the world, the characters and the vision. Recommended.

The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes)

The Booker Prize for Fiction (or "The Man Booker Prize" as it's called these days) creates excitement and debate around the literary world like no other award. Over the years, it's been awarded to works of genius (Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' in 1981), works of excellence (Margaret Atwood's 'The Blind Assassin' in 2000), works of solid literary merit (Pat Barker's 'The Ghost Road' in 1995) and works which were merely good (Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things' in 1997). Interestingly enough, I hadn't read a Booker winner since 2001, when Peter Carey secured the prize with 'The True History of the Kelly Gang'. None of the winners since then had piqued my interest enough to pick them up. I've perused the displays of Booker nominees in the bookshops, sure, but not bit the bullet. So it was a pleasant surprise to pick up 'The Sense of an Ending' in Waterstone's back in October and have my interest well and truly piqued. Registering my interest, my girlfriend put this under our Christmas tree for me, and here we are.

A tightly structured and beautifully written little novella, 'The Sense of an Ending' is predicated on the fact that our memories and recollections can in fact be trumped by actual historical documents, which may place ourselves in a less favourable light. The novella asks the very pertinent question "what is history?". Is it the song of the victor or the self-delusion of the defeated, or indeed both? Is there such a thing as history if we cannot understand the history of the historian? What kind of power does the distorting hand of time hold over us and can we ever come to terms with this? These philosophical musings are masterfully woven into Barnes' plot, so we become painfully aware of our own failings, just as the narrator and protagonist, Tony Webster, becomes painfully aware of his. It's an unsettling, dark and nasty little tale, just as most of the best books tend to be, at least in my view.

The book begins in a modest public day school in London in the early 1960s, where three friends- the narrator, Tony Webster and his close friends Colin and Alex  are joined for the final year of school by the enigmatic and intelligent Adrian Finn. Together, the boys pretentiously float around the sixth form, and like all cliques, revel in their superiority over their peers. When they are separated by university, Tony meets a girl, Veronica Ford, who turns out to be something of a manipulative succubus, and after a visit to her family one summer turns the relationship sour, she ultimately leaves him for Adrian. Infuriated, Tony writes them both (what he thinks) is a strongly worded but broadly magnanimous goodbye letter and cuts them both out of his life. We then get a brief run down of what happened to Tony during his adult life, including the news, in his early twenties, that Adrian had committed suicide. This is only half the story. It is the other half of the story that is really compelling. A letter arrives from the solicitor of Veronica's recently deceased mother. And here, the tragedy begins.

I enjoyed this book a tremendous amount, and finished it in a mere day. The prose style is musical, stark and haunting, and Barnes has a keen eye for what sort of things rise from our past to trouble our psyches.I found all of the characters entrirely believable and Tony's narrative voice is controlled and painfully self-aware. Motifs recur and rear their heads like hydra, and certain phrases stick with you, bore into you. This is real fiction, ladies and gentlemen, and it's the most lurid compliment I could pay this book when I say that it reminded me most of Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History' and Margaret Atwood's 'The Blind Assassin', two books which also take a compellingly bleak look at the past lives of their narrators. I can unreservedly say that last year, the Booker judges chose an absolute humdinger. How it stands up to history remains to be seen, but as of right now, I think this is a book destined for future greatness.

Breaking Dawn (Stephenie Meyer)

So here I finally am again, at the end of my comprehensive re-read of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga. I will say this, dear reader, the last book of the series, 'Breaking Dawn', is a doorstopper and a half, nearly eight hundred pages in hardback. Fitting in a book of that size around work commitments is an achievement, let me tell you. At times, I rather dreaded the proposition of wading through it, and wished fervently that I had not committed to re-reading the series, especially given the amount of exciting little literary novellas I was given for Christmas sitting on my shelves unread. In the end, all I really needed was an extended period of reading time to immerse myself into Meyer's world again, and that time presented itself in a series of train journeys last week. Given that set of circumstances, 'Breaking Dawn' is an absolutely fantastic read, with a few genuinely jaw dropping passages. This book is escapism personified, and to the detractors of this series, I will say this: there's nothing wrong with escapism.

'Breaking Dawn' begins as Bella Swan prepares for her wedding to Edward Cullen, and for the immortality that will follow. Mercifully, Meyer doesn't go into too much detail about these preparations, and the wedding is done and dusted fairly quickly, with a brief altercation with Jacob the only event to impinge on the harmony. Edward and Bella's honeymoon off the coast of Brazil is a bit more painful to read, particularly the rather cringy sex the still mortal Bella has with the very much immortal Edward, but the queasiness I felt while reading this subsided as soon as Bella's mysterious pregnancy manifested. We then switch perspectives to Jacob Black, which in itself is very interesting, as it starts weakly- Jacob initially turning out to be even more irritatingly angsty than Bella- but suddenly becomes the most compelling and best written part of the book, as we watch Jacob's hostility to the Cullens turn into protectiveness, respect and friendship as he helps them nurse the sickening Bella, who is being murdered by her own quickening child. At the moment the child is born, half-vampire and half-human, we switch back to Bella's narrative, and her new life as a vampire, which swiftly comes under threat from the dreaded Volturi, who desire the death of her miracle child and the acquisition of the "talented" individuals of the Cullen coven...but as you can probably guess, there is, unlike in 'Wuthering Heights', which Meyer has cribbed so consistently through the series, a happy ending...

Things I liked about this book: the genuine growth of the primary characters, who finally evolve out of the teenage archetypes Meyer had imprisoned them in for the duration of the first three books; the introduction of many more vampires and their various special abilities; Jacob's narrative voice which is surprisingly well executed after its initial chapters; the 'OMG' moments I experienced when I realised that Bella was pregnant and when I realised that Jacob had imprinted on Bella's daughter (that section is the best bit of writing in the entire series). Things I disliked about this book: the fact that there was not an apocalyptic battle between the Volturi and the Cullens/Quileutes; the fact that even four books in, Meyer can't resist dancing with cliché at least four times a page; dodgy descriptions of vamp sex; the fact Edward and Bella name their daughter Renesmée, surely the single dumbest name of all time.

Overall, you have to say that Meyer achieved something memorable here, one of the most successful teenage fiction franchise in history, a franchise that rewrote the myths on vampires and werewolves, captured the imaginations of millions and provided some damn fine page turning thrills. Yes there's some issues with her prose style, yes there's some issues with character development, but nobody can argue with her ability to spin a yarn. Hats off to you Steph. 100 million teenagers can't be wrong, can they?