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?

Eclipse (Stephenie Meyer)

Reading a multiple book series in sequence is always an interesting experience, it really highlights the depths and complexities of the mythology created by the writer, while also allowing the plot to flow from one book to the other without the reader having to try and remember the previous book's events. 'Eclipse' is, for me, the best novel in the 'Twilight' saga. While 'Twilight' and 'New Moon' go in for a great deal of teen angst and tortured romance, perhaps a bit too much for an adult reader, 'Eclipse' leans more towards action, suspense and a more thorough analysis of vampire and werewolf history. And it's all the better for it. On this re-read, I was genuinely absorbed, and some of the prose was actually quite technically proficient to boot.

In 'Eclipse', the dangers facing Bella grow ever more dire. Evil and cunning vampiress Victoria, who still bears a blood grudge against Bella for the loss of her mate James in book 1, sets about creating an army of newborn vampires (it transpires that newborns are stronger than established vampires, in a brute force sense at least) to take on the Cullen coven and allow Victoria to claim her revenge. Meanwhile, tensions heighten between the Quileute werewolf pack and the Cullens, until the threat of the newborns leads to an uneasy truce. All of this is complicated by the rivalry of Edward and Jacob, who both love Bella intensely and uncompromisingly, but know they must work together to keep her safe.

The main plot of the novel, as described above, is incredibly tense, well paced and with just enough information withheld to keep suspense at a premium. The final battle, when it takes place, is absolutely terrific, with some real heart stopping moments. The visit of the Volturi is maginificently creepy, and the ending, where Edward and Bella begin to plan their nuptials, sets us up nicely for the beginning of 'Breaking Dawn' and Jacob's heartbreak and self-imposed exile. There is notably less cheesy romance from Meyer in this one, with only a laboured extended reference to Heathcliff, Cathy and Edgar to describe the relationship between Edward, Bella and Jacob detracting from the enjoyability of the book. There are a couple of really magical passages in this one. Rosalie's description of how she became a vampire and why she believes Bella ultimately giving up her mortality is the wrong choice is the first of these magical moments. Meyer's character development is excellent here, allowing a previously unsympathetic character to gain our sympathy. The second spine tingling moment is Jasper's account of the vampire wars of the 1860s, which ironically seem to have run parallel to the American Civil War. As his expertise in handling armies of newborns is so integral to the Cullens' success in this book, his discussion of this time is truly fascinating. Another notable section that piqued my interest was the growth of the werewolf pack to include Seth and Leah Clearwater and the expansion of our knowledge of werewolf lore that this allows us into. Jacob gets the epilogue, allowing us a different narrator for the first time, and this, too is interesting.

I'd venture to say that this is the book where Meyer realises how best to optimise her formula: enough romance to keep the focus on Bella and Edward's relationship, but enough action to keep the reader busy. This is a very good piece of teen fiction and well worth your time...even more so than the other books in this series. Although my forthcoming re-read of 'Breaking Dawn' may change my opinion (as I ironically remember the most recent book the least well), my current view is that 'Eclipse' is a notch or two above 'New Moon' and 'Twilight'.

New Moon (Stephenie Meyer)

So, I'm now two books into my re-read of the 'Twilight' saga. I had mixed memories of this one. In many ways it's the most "page turning" of the saga, but as memory served, it also contains some of the worst passages of writing in the series, at least if one thinks about it technically, so I was definitely looking forward to reading it again and re-assessing it with fresh eyes.

'New Moon' follows on directly from the end of 'Twilight'. Bella and Edward are together and in love, which Meyer clumsily reminds us of through a whole laundry list of badly conceived 'Romeo and Juliet' allusions. Bella is studying 'Romeo and Juliet' at school. Bella and Edward are watching 'Romeo and Juliet' on DVD. Edward thinks Romeo is a fool. Both wonder if suicide is the only option for a bereaved lover. When people talk about hating the 'Twilight' saga for its schmaltz, passages like this are what make you understand their point of view. Of course, all this sledgehammer foreshadowing is leading somewhere, and when Bella accidentally cuts herself at the Cullen house and puts herself in danger due to Jasper's lower tolerance for the smell of human blood, Edward decides it would be better for Bella if he and his "family" left. In order to achieve this, Edward rather brutally tells her that he does not love her. Bella collapses in the woods in a trance of grief, and so begins Bella's love coma, where nothing is real for her and nothing matters to her. She walks, she talks, but she, to paraphrase 'American Psycho' is simply...not...there. Meyer actually employs an interesting structural device here by having empty chapters with the names of months heading them in order to show Bella's desensitised state. It is only when her father tells her that he is going to send her back to her mother that Bella seeks company to throw him off the scent. Enter her Native American pal Jacob Black, who Bella commissions to repair some motorcycles she found, in order to give her the kind of adrenaline rush she needs to hear Edward in her head...

It's only at this point, for me, where this book moves from bearable to page-turning. In 'Twilight', it was heavily hinted at that the Quileute tribe of Native Americans have a past with the "cold ones" and a link to wolves. Here, Meyer does a great job of revealing that Jacob's friends and then Jacob himself are in fact werewolves mystically created to fight vampires and defend Quileute lands. In establishing the bond of friendship between Bella and Jacob, Meyer creates one of the most famed love triangles in existence. Jacob falls for Bella, but Bella is obsessed still by Edward. And sooner rather than later, she will have to save his life...

'New Moon' does a good job of advancing the plot of the overall saga, but the structure of the book is unsatisfying, with the first third being Bella's misery under the microscope, the second third being the werewolf plot and the final third being the adventure in Italy saving Edward...with each of those sections having a great deal of unnecessary filler that Meyer would've been better off editing out, particularly the endless domestic or travelling sections (how many times do we need to hear about Bella preparing food for Charlie? Do we need an entire account of Alice and Bella's plane journey?). The dialogue is, at times, excruciating, and the worn out James Dean-isms spouted by Edward and Jacob quickly get tiresome. One interesting thing about the book, however, is that the primary hero- Edward Cullen- and the primary antagonist- the evil vampire Victoria- are off screen for the majority of the book. This is a brave decision on Meyer's part, and I think that it works well, because it gives her the space to establish Jacob as a major player.

If you look at 'New Moon' as one section of one giant book, it does what it should, but read in isolation, its flaws are probably greater than its achievements, despite the fact that the werewolf storyline made me want to pump my fist in the air with joy (everyone knows werewolves are cool). However, I think it is important to look at 'New Moon' in its overall context...which is to set up the edge of the seat cataclysms about to strike in 'Eclipse' and 'Breaking Dawn'.

Twilight (Stephenie Meyer)

I first became aware of Stephenie Meyer's 'Twilight' series about three and a half years ago when a lot of the more bookish students I taught began to ask me if I'd read them. It was hard not to notice the sheer popularity of the series, as the iconic cover, its symbolism so redolent of Eve's Fall from Paradise, was in the hands of so many students around the campus. My curiosity was definitely aroused, and I began thinking I should read these books, given they were such a talking point among the kids, and given that any interest in books needs to be encouraged as much as possible by any English teacher. The point where I went and bought the books was the point when the film adaptation of the first book was a month or so away from coming out. I read an article about it in 'Empire' and decided that I would read the books, see the film and see what the fuss was about.

So it was that between October and November of 2008 I read all four books in the series, and thoroughly enjoyed them. Now, I'm well aware that some people would hold them responsible for the bastardisation of literature and the dumbing down of romantic fiction, but Jesus Christ, don't be so serious. Do you know how many young people who were self-confessed non-readers are now avid readers? Do you know how many young people moved on from the 'Twilight' saga to the likes of 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Jane Eyre', not to mention 'Dracula' and 'Frankenstein'? This series, like Harry Potter before it, is literary catnip to young readers, and the value of that is incalculable. I get to see this on a daily basis and believe me, it's really important. If kids are reading, we live in a world worth living in. Which leads me to why I'm reviewing 'Twilight'  now, when everybody knows about it and has an opinion on it, even if they've neither read the books nor seen the films. What with the first part of the last film just having been released, I decided I wanted to re-read the saga before I watched 'Breaking Dawn: Part One'. So here we are.

I feel I should also defend the series against three other oft-held complaints: one, that it's badly written;  two, that it ruins the literary/mythical construct of the vampire; and three, that it isn't as good as the Harry Potter series. Well look, Meyer's prose style is not likely to be mistaken for George Eliot any time soon, but it's certainly not bad, particularly in the later books. And if it is occasionally overwrought and brimming with angst, bear in mind that this is a book ostensibly written for teenage girls. It's entirely appropriate for that audience. To address complaint number two, the glut of vampire myths from around the world leave any writer plenty of room to play around with the conventions. In my view, Meyer does some very original things with the source material and should be applauded for avoiding the 90s cliché of the "rock star" vampire. And as for the third, well, 'Twilight' is a very different beast to 'Harry Potter' and I'm not sure you can compare them directly. What I will say is that 'Twilight' moves much quicker and is much more economically plotted than Potter is. And if we're comparing stylistics, well, as irritating as Bella's first person narrative voice can get at times, it's certainly no worse than Rowling's bombastic omniscience in the later Potter books. Ultimately, I like both series because they got kids reading and because they're a fun diversion for an older reader taking a break from literary fiction. Because nobody can spend all of their time reading Goethe, after all.

The plotting and world creation is certainly the strongest element of 'Twilight': even if you're a sceptic, open the book, read the first chapter, and I defy you not to want to find out what happens next. For real. Bella Swan is a clumsy, broadly average, academic and underconfident Junior in high school. She moves from Phoenix, Arizona to Forks in the Pacific Northwest to be with her father, the local police chief, due to her mother marrying a baseball player who moves around regularly to find a spot with a Minor League team. Bella finds the idea of Forks mortifying. It is small, tight knit, rural and above all, rainy- in fact, the rainiest place in mainland America- so her adjustment is difficult. At the local high school, where the school population is the same size as her Junior Class back in Phoenix, she quickly becomes aware of a mysterious group of students who stand aloof from the rest of the school. Eerily beautiful, they fascinate her from the get-go. After becoming lab partners with the most striking of their number, one Edward Cullen, a series of strange events first estrange them but then bring them together. Eventually, Bella comes to an inescapable conclusion: Edward and the whole of his "family" are vampires. And she is in love with one.

'Twilight' makes use of literary tropes from all over the canon. Edward Cullen, tortured and noble, rude but charming, seems based on a synthesis of two creations of the Bronte sisters, Edward Fairfax Rochester and Heathcliff. Edward's decision not to feed on humans echoes that of Louis de Pointe du Lac from 'An Interview with the Vampire'. Bella's own clumsy yet forthright nature is just like Jane Eyre's, while the general sense of Gothic gloominess and mystique is familiar from 'Dracula'. The end section, meanwhile, where the obsessive hunter James explains his dastardly plans to Bella while she's helpless, seems to come straight out of the playbooks of various Bond villains. However it's the original touches Meyer adds that make this book more than the sum of its parts, and the way everything knits together is very satisfying.

Lord knows, 'Twilight' is never going to win the Booker of Bookers or anything. It isn't that sort of book. But there is room on the library shelves for all types of books, and it's important that teens have something accessible and memorable to read. Think about how bad children's literature used to be. Nowadays, there's much more to pique their interest, and thank goodness for that. So I forgive 'Twilight' for its cheesy dialogue, slim characterisation and overwrought emotions...because when it comes down to it, this book is a damned fun read. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Up In The Air (Walter Kirn)

There is no better birthday present than a well chosen book, in my opinion. Obviously, friends of mine are well aware that a good book is a present I will relish and thus I tend to end of with a backlog of books to work through. Walter Kirn's 'Up In The Air' was given to me by a wonderful friend of mine with excellent taste in books as a belated birthday gift almost two years ago, so it is with pleasure that I write this blog post, having finally got around to reading it and having rather enjoyed it. Appropriately enough given the subject matter of this novel, I began reading it on a plane, and was thus instantly in synch with the mood of the narrative. Ryan Bingham is a "Careers Transitions Counselor", a catchy euphemism which essentially means he helps companies to cut costs by shedding staff and then counselling said staff so that they do not feel agrieved by their dismissal. Ryan hates this job, but enjoys one aspect of it: the constant air travel he undertakes to complete his assignments. Ryan feels at home in "air world" in a way that he doesn't on the ground. The rituals, the food, the small talk at twenty thousand feet, he loves it all. He even loves the bland runway hotels he sleeps in and the identikit airline club lounges he drinks in with acquaintances he meets in "air world". Our hero has no need of friends and no need of a house (he let the lease run out). All he cares about is one thing: racking up one million frequent flier air miles before he quits his job at ISM. At this milestone, he will sit back and reconsider the path that his life has taken. As it turns out though, reaching this milestone is more complicated than he could possibly have imagined at the outset of the narrative, and it's the path he walks to reach his target which is important, rather than the  moment itself.

The narrative voice of 'Up In The Air' instantly appealed to me, chiefly because it is the kind of voice I'm so used to from some of my very favourite works: a kind of disengaged, emotionless, matter of fact monotone. This type of narration is perfect for a book of this nature, not only because it fits the character addressing the reader, but also because it gives a realistic sense of what it is to live in the way that Ryan Bingham does. It's also interesting to note that, as is common in postmodern fiction, the plot is a series of loosely connected events that only matter in so far as they help us to better understand the protagonist. Some of the obstacles that get in Ryan's way as he attempts to it his million include potential sexual partners, his sisters (one of whom is getting married in Ryan's final destination city but insists on creating a crisis that takes Ryan off schedule), his employer, clients and a mysterious corporation who may or may not be headhunting him. It's all perfectly readable, although one does get frustrated by Ryan's empty existential outlook at times.

One of the few disappointing things about 'Up In The Air' was the ending, which to me, came rather too far from left field and somewhatinvalidated a lot of the good work that went beforehand. It's also true that the author doesn't necessarily fully explore the reasons behind Ryan's obsessive quest. All in all, this is a stylish little book, but one that lacks substance and, ultimately, a bit of heart. It is, however, certainly worth reading, just as people have told me that the film is well worth watching. Now that I've finally read the book, I may well track down the film...

Beginners (Raymond Carver)

First of all, dear readers, I must apologise for the lack of posts recently. Although I finished re-reading Raymond Carver's 'Beginners' over the Atlantic Ocean on the way home from Chicago at the end of October, I simply have not found the time to write about it. Ok, obligatory blogger's apology done with. Now, to business!

This is a very special book to me for a number of reasons. I first read it in October 2009 on a train home from Birmingham, having bought it from Borders in the Bull Ring, after I had visited a very dear friend of mine for the first time in an age. The seventeen stories contained in the volume held me, obsessed me, and inspired me to change my own prose style. Revisiting it two years later seemed a no brainer.

Moreover, the story behind this book is a fascinating one. When Carver submitted these stories to his editor and mentor Gordon Lish in 1980, they were cut down to the "linguistic bone" and became Carver's most famous collection 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love'. Some of the original drafts were cut by as much as 78% for publication. Character names were changed. Titles were changed. Tess Gallagher, Carver's partner, who had loved the original stories, was horrified at the changes. Carver dedicated 'What We Talk About...' to Gallagher and promised one day to republish the original stories. As of Carver's death in 1988, this had not happened, and so Gallagher put her trust in William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll to restore the text. This process took twenty years, with the text finally being published in September 2009.

Having read 'What We Talk About...' many years ago, I was struck by how much richer and more human the extended versions of the stories are. From the first story 'Why Don't You Dance?', I preferred the 'Beginners' versions to the 'What We Talk About...' versions. In these restored narratives, Carver has the space to develop the motivations of his characters, the breadth to run the gamut of emotions. There is a wisdom and a profound sense of dignity about 'Beginners' that I think 'What We Talk About...' lacks. It isn't that the stories in 'Beginners' are of a completely different style- he was naturally a writer with an instinctive sense of economy- but they are less extreme in the staccato sentence structures and more assiduous about letting the reader know who these people are.

The themes presented by Carver include divorce, alcoholism, death and relationships. It is interesting that many of the concerns of America in the late 1970s and early 1980s are represented so frequently, with characters attending analysis and Alcoholics Anonymous. There is a sense of middle America and its fears, the way security can be ripped away in a moment. Several of the best stories are extremely dark and sombre in tone. In 'Tell The Women We're Going' a pair of men who grew up too quickly turn an afternnon of pool and drinking into one of rape and murder. 'So Much Water, So Close To Home' concerns the discovery of a body and the suspicions and rifts this creates in a small community. One of the very best stories, 'A Small, Good Thing' tells the story of parents who unexpectedly lose their son in protracted circumstances against the backdrop of menacing phonecalls from the baker who made their son's uncollected birthday cake. The ending to this one, however, is markedly more humane, heartwarming even.

Elsewhere, 'Gazebo' is an extended dissertation on alcoholics in relationships with each other, the title story 'Beginners' contains a masterful and extended dialogue section from which Lish first found the "what we talk about, when we talk about love" line, and 'Where Is Everyone?' is a first person narrative from the perspective of an alcoholic divorcee who hates his ungrateful children and takes refuge with his mother. All of these stories are incredibly subtle and moving, masterfully paced and beautifully written. Only a couple fail to satisfy: 'Pie' doesn't seem to go anywhere and 'Distance' seems to drag a little.

I found this to be a deeply satisfying re-read. The stories were certainly as good as I remembered them being, and it certainly helped pass the time on a long and tedious plane journey, just as it had originally helped pass the time on a long train journey...at any rate, this book comes highly recommended, particularly if you are a fan of Carver and his spare style...I'm convinced that if you read this, you'll see that his original uncut stories are in fact better, and that Gordon Lish did readers a disservice with his swingeing cuts of 30 years ago.

Everybody Loves Our Town: A History of Grunge (Mark Yarm)

Unless you were living under rock for the entirety of the early 1990s, you'll know all about Nirvana, the band that emerged from the provincial backwater of Aberdeen, Washington to bestride the musical world, led by charismatic enigma Kurt Cobain, equally in love with The Beatles and underground 80s punk, a genius songwriter who, it would seem, never wanted to be famous and ultimately succumbed to his personal demons, becoming one of the most famed and lamented rock 'n' roll suicides of all time. Since that tragic event, Nirvana's legacy has been one of t-shirt designs and slightly distasteful hero worship from the generation that followed Nirvana's orgiginal fanbase. Everything surrounding that time seems to have become distorted, warped, in the same way as with The Doors and Jim Morrison, or The Beatles and Lennon, or even with Amy Winehouse...

There have, of course, been many Nirvana biographies, from those cut and pasted from interviews with the press, to those claiming to be "official". There have been films and biopics, live films and reissued box sets. Every milestone anniversary is accompanied by those iconic pictures of Kurt Cobain, panda eyes boring into the camera lens. What these artefacts have failed to do is to fully contextualise Nirvana within the movement they were part of, that is, grunge. The other bands that found success immediately before and after Nirvana's landmark 'Nevermind' have often been ignored as the cult of death grew up around Kurt and a kind of redemption story formed around drummer Dave Grohl's new band, Foo Fighters. So what about those other bands? How did such a rich and diverse musical scene grow and thrive in the provinces of America's Pacific Northwest? How did Seattle suddenly become the centre of musical universe? These are the questions that Mark Yarm seeks to answer with his laudable tome 'Everybody Loves Our Town'.

The book is an oral history that seems to have the primary purpose of reminding people that there was a lot more to grunge than Nirvana. The author- or more accurately, editor- of the text begins with a note on the term "grunge". There have been many stories about how the term was coined over the years: the best guess, judging by chapter 17 of this opus, is that Mark Arm of Mudhoney found it in a 1970s music paper, used as an adjective when discussing guitar tone. He then used it when writing fake hate mail about his own high school band, Mr Epp and the Calculations ("Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure shit!"), which later led to record label Sub Pop using it to describe Arm's second band Green River ("ultra loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation"). Some time after that, music journalist Everett True was flown out from London to cover the emerging Seattle scene and used the word to describe the scene. Suddenly the word was everywhere, so much so that this word, with its richly evocative phonetics, was suddenly being applied to everything from bands to clothing. Which bands were grunge? Is the word only applicable to bands from Seattle, or also to more recent bands that have emulated the sound? Why did kids who called themselves "grungers" in the early 2000s not actually listen to grunge? It is a fascinating subject, and the interviews conducted by Yarm over a three year period tell a tale that is never anything but compelling.

Yarm's structure is largely chronological, which gives the book the page turning quality of a best selling novel, and also allows one to develop a widescreen sense of how the scene evolved. We start with the "proto-grunge" band The U-Men, who the major players in the scene that followed were avid fans of. Following their tale, we meet the members of Green River and Malfunkshun, who would later break off and combine into three of the quintessential grunge bands: Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone and Pearl Jam. Next we meet Soundgarden, the first grunge act to achieve major label success and in many ways the most stable of the bands in that scene, and then Screaming Trees and TAD, both of whom were largely responsible for the classic grunge "look" of flannel shirts and longjohns under jeans (Chris Cornell of Soundgarden explains this clothing preference as being partly to do with the area's inclement weather, partly to do with the cheapness of such gear and partly because of the fact that many band members from the scene had worked manual labour in local industries like logging). We hear all about the young Kurt Cobain (described by Melvins' Dale Crover as a "funny motherfucker") who by all accounts was not the tortured artist everybody would like to think of him as. We learn about the development of Sub Pop records, equally as fascinating as the tales about the bands that appeared on their infamous compilations. Later, we read about the almost ludicrous success of Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam, and the consequences of that success, ranging from heroin addiction to fatherhood to dealing with the rapacious mainstream press. Even during these sections, the multiple voices that make up the narrative ensure that the book never indulges in mythology or a glamourisation of rock star excess.

What really stands out about this book is the intelligence, DIY culture and originality of the musicians of Washington state, and the passion and integrity with which they recount their experiences. There's no self-pity or navel gazing from these people, even though, as a reader, you know that tragedy is around the narrative corner at almost every turn. Some of the passages about death are just heartbreaking, and yet the focus lies on remembering those people for the friendship they gave and the music they made. The deaths of Andrew Wood of Mafunkshun and Mother Love Bone, Stefanie Sargent of Seven Year Bitch, Mia Zapata of The Gits and of course Kurt Cobain himself all cast a shadow over the scene and how it is remembered. Two of Yarm's interviewees, Mike Starr, formerly of Alice In Chains, and Ricky Kulwicki, of Fluid, tragically died just before the publication of 'Everybody Loves Our Town'. Of all of the reflections on tragedy though, I was most touched by Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains' description of his band's vocalist Layne Staley: "people realise what the guy contributed and the amazing talent that he was...nobody's ever gonna know personally what kinda fuckin' guy he was. We do, and he was so fuckin' cool and badass." I think that says it all.

There's no doubt that the massive strength of this book is that it is told by those who were involved. There's no narrative bias or editorial comment to distract the reader from the multitude of stories that are told. As a text, it has told for the first time the story of a movement that had so much more to it than Nirvana, as great a band as they were. When I finished this book high over the Atlantic Ocean on my way to America, I determined that the first thing I was going to do when I got back was get on Spotify and listen to all of the bands I had read about. It's been an interesting couple of weeks of listening. This weighty oral history comes highly recommended to anyone interested in bands, music, but most of all, friendship.

Babylon Revisited (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

F. Scott Fitzgerald has long been one of my absolute favourite writers, both for the economical beauty of his style and for the sense of slow burning tragedy that ghosts through the pages of his books, a kind of prophetic spirit warning that fast times cannot last forever; sooner or later, somebody has to pay the bill. However, I'm far more au fait with his novels ('This Side of Paradise', 'The Beautiful and Damned', 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Tender Is The Night') than the huge array of short fiction he produced between the early twenties and his premature death in 1940. It was therefore entirely serendipitous that I discovered this collection of three of his most bittersweet stories in the book cupboard at school and decided to take it for the for the train journey home a couple of weeks back.

The titular story concerns the aftermath of the Lost Generation's sojourn in Paris during America's boom years. During this time, Fitzgerald reminds us, tips of hundreds of francs were thrown to waiters and bell hops with gay abandon, and life was one long boozy lunch that never ended. The crash in 1929 has changed this as the protagonist of the story, Charles West, returns to Paris, sober and now living in Prague, where he has gone into business. His daughter, Honoria, has been under the care of his wife's sister and her husband since his wife died as a consequence of one drink filled night too many. Fitzgerald masterfully rouses the reader's sympathies as a contrite Charles spends a heroic amount of energy trying to convince Helen and Lincoln to grant him his daughter back. Nobody will believe he has changed, not them and ironically, not his old drinking buddies, Richard and Lorraine, who spend the entirety of the story trying to get him back into bad habits. The whole story is a masterpiece of subtle and controlled tension.

'The Cut Glass Bowl' concerns a marriage gone wrong, society beauty married to a careless and brusque older man. The tension inherent in the partnership is symbolised by a wedding gift, an enormous cut glass punch bowl which becomes a motif of pure ostentation and excess, and ultimately a vehicle for tragedy, as it claims something from each of her beloved children. This story is perhaps less subtle and more direct, but it captures the feeling of entrapment in domesticity and societal convention very nicely.

The final story, 'The Lost Decade', absolutely reeks of poignance, with a man being shown around an office he used to work at and wondering at the advancements in architecture since he first left the company. Fitzgerald elucidates the feeling of dislocation felt by the man concerned and also the confusion of the youngster showing him around, until it becomes clear that the new/old man lost an entire decade to alcoholism, a fact that is especially poignant given that Fitzgerald himself fought and lost a battle against the bottle himself.

These three stories give an incredible insight into The Jazz Age which is the backdrop to all of his literary works. What I found most interesting was the parallels between the post-crash years presented here and the current financial crisis our own world finds it in, all of the soul searching and reflection on the wastefulness of the boom years. These stories are the flip side of 'The Great Gatsby', tales of diminishing returns as opposed to ostentatious largesse; small tragedies as opposed to giant ones.

Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics (Jonathan Wilson)

You may notice, if you've been reading this blog for a while, that I have so far reviewed only fiction. However, I have catholic tastes when it comes to reading material, and so, having had a brief internal debate about whether I should include non-fiction reviews or not, I decided in the affirmative. I love football, therefore I read about football, and thus, I am writing about football.

Sports writing has been on the up and up for some time now, with a whole host of academic, scholarly, meticulously researched books hitting the shelves and catering for us sports afficianados who want, as the epigraph of this book has it, to "understand the causes of things". Anybody who thinks that sports journalism is all raving red top articles will be swiftly disabused if they read a text like Jonathan Wilson's 'Inverting The Pyramid'. 

Narrative poems, during the Renaissance, would precede the poem itself with "the argument" a short summary of the poetic matter about to be presented to the reader. Wilson's "argument" in this book is that the game of football is less about players than the systems they perform in. Throughout the history of the game, a well drilled side of average players has almost always beaten a side of stars with no direction. In pressing this line of argument, Wilson traces the entire history of player formations and the tactics encouraged by those systems, and from this comes the title of the book: in football's early years, teams played a 2-3-5 formation which formed, when viewed from above, a pyramid. In these early days, defending was viewed as negative and contrary to the spirit of the game, and so only two outfield players, the "full backs" were tasked with defensive duties. However, as time has gone on, more players have been added to this defensive unit, so that the pyramid has been "inverted" (when the British press bemoaned Terry Venables' "Christmas Tree" in the run up to Euro 96, this is what they were railing against, a continental system adopted in preference to 4-4-2).

Wilson's analysis of the trends and historical antecedents of parts of the game we now take for granted takes him across the footballing world. He starts in Victorian England and then moves on to Montivideo in the early Twentieth Century as he traces the genesis of the pyramid system. He then progresses to café culture Vienna, where the "Wunderteam" first experimented with players shifting positions to confuse the opposition. Meanwhile, in England, Arsenal's Herbert Chapman shifted a man back into defence, thus creating the "W-M'" formation (so named because of the shape the players made on the pitch) which soon became ubiquitous. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Hungary became the best side in the world, humbling England 6-3 in 1953 as their players effortlessly shifted into areas England did not expect them to. Brazil was the home of the next tactical change, as 3-2-5 became 4-2-4, leading to their world cup triumphs in 1958 and 1962. Alf Ramsay, in 1966, created his "wingless wonders", an example of what Wilson terms "The English Pragmatism", while the World Cup of 1970 turned out to be the last time a team rolled their best players onto the pitch, told them to play, and triumphed. Total Football is the next subject on the agenda, a chapter Wilson shares between Ajax, Holland, Dynamo Moscow and the Soviet Union, as the principles of this vision of the game seemed to develop independently in two different locales. The comprehensive historical survey of the game's tactics ends with a discussion of the inevitable move back towards attacking players who can unlock massed defences.

One of the biggest strengths of 'Inverting The Pyramid' is its ability to move from continent to continent. Wilson has a particular affinity with Eastern Europe, and his discussion of Valeriy Lobanovski's Dynamo Kiev is particularly enjoyable and comprehensive, while he also goes to great lengths to explain the development of football in Argentina and Brazil. Another strength is his illumination of the great characters behind the tactics, from Jimmy Hogan, the great exporter of football expertise to Central Europe to Helenio Herrera, master of Catenaccio, the defensive system whose influence on Italian football persists to this day. Wilson's insights into all of these diverse characters give the book a real humanity, a warm beating heart beneath the cool, sophisticated skin of the prose.

For anybody who loves football, this is a must read. Not only is it brilliantly researched, well written and full of wonderful detail, it sweeps across a hundred odd years of football history while never losing sight of the argument made in the preface- that tactics are everything. Once you've read 'Inverting The Pyramid', you may well find yourself agreeing.