Breakfast At Libraries: February 2014

Sunday, 23 February 2014

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road was published in 2006 but it's taken me eight years to get round to reading it. Given that I particularly like dystopian, post-apocalyptic fiction, this is surprising. I suspect that, subconsciously, I was just scared to read it because I suspected it would be unrelentingly bleak.

And bleak it certainly is. The opening lines talk of 'Nights dark beyond darkness and days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.' That pretty much sets the underlying tone.

The Road tells the story of an unnamed man and an unnamed boy, making their way through a decaying, barren, ash-strewn landscape in the wake of some terrible, unspecified disaster. The eco-system has been completely destroyed; there is no wildlife, no vegetation, and so little sunshine that the father fears his son will succumb to rickets. There are very few people left - the man and his son frequently come across long-dead human remains - and those human beings that have survived have resorted to unspeakable savagery, including cannibalism, to survive. The man and the boy are, as the man often reassures his son, 'the good guys' who are 'carrying the fire'. What isn't clear is whether they might be the only good guys left alive.

With them they have an old shopping trolley stuffed with meagre possessions. The man is suffering from a lung complaint and coughs blood when his son isn't looking. Their only food supplies are tins scavenged from abandoned houses and shops; they are often starving. The only fresh food they consume throughout the entire novel are some mushrooms that have managed to grow in the ash. It says everything about their condition that their most valuable and prized possession is a pistol with two live cartridges, reserved for the all too likely event that they will be caught, for food, by others.

The Road is exquisitely written, and there are times when the experience of reading it is like reading an extended poem. The grim lyricism of the descriptions are in direct contrast to the short, stark but touching and revealing exchanges of dialogue between the man and his son, whose relationship is one of the most movingly portrayed I've seen in fiction, a single speck of tender purity in a brutal, decaying world.

The cover of The Road promises that it is 'a work of such terrible beauty that you will struggle to look away'. I can't argue with that. I would be hard-pushed to say that I 'enjoyed' The Road - it's among the most harrowing, desolate books I've ever known - but at the same time, I feel glad that I've read it.

Saturday, 22 February 2014

The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood

Some years ago I spent a year working as a press officer in the criminal justice system and was heavily involved in the press briefings for a case in which a child had been murdered by another, slightly older, schoolmate. It was disturbing yet fascinating case but despite everything - the older boy had deliberately lured the younger one to his house before killing him, then hid the body before getting on with homework - I found it very hard to see the killer as an inherently evil monster, and the scowling, acne-scarred mugshot all over the local press, bore almost no resemblance to the frightened, bewildered and desperately sad young boy I saw in the dock. I've been interested in the way society views child criminals ever since, which was what prompted me to pick up this book.

Alex Marwood's The Wicked Girls centres around two women, Amber and Kirsty, who, aged 11, were found guilty of abducting and murdering a small child, and last saw each other on the day they were convicted. Now in their late 30s, they have long-established identities and have built themselves new - but very different - lives. Only when their paths cross by coincidence during a spate of murders in Whitmouth, a rundown fictional seaside resort on the south coast, do their second chances threaten to melt away.

There are three plot threads running through this dark, contemporary suspense novel. First, there's the matter of the serial killer apparently on the loose in Whitmouth, where Amber lives and where Kirsty is covering the story as a freelance journalist; second is the story of both women's ever-present fear of having their pasts discovered. The third, told in flashback, is the story of the terrible day in the mid-80s when Amber and Kirsty, under their old names, met for the first time and killed a four-year-old girl, making for unsettling but revealing and all too plausible reading.

For me, the serial killer story is actually the weakest of the three. It sometimes seems to be present purely as a means of shoving Kirsty and Amber together, and I also guessed fairly early who the 'Whitmouth Strangler' would turn out to be. That said, the novel's focus on the media coverage of the Whitmouth murders is interesting and insightful (Alex Marwood herself is a journalist writing here under a pen-name) and this part of the book also supports one of the book's principal questions: how well do we really know the people closest to us?

The Wicked Girls is let down just slightly by what seems to me to be slightly lazy stereotyping of supporting characters: the stalkerish, anorak-wearing loner, the dark-haired 'handsome brute' type who charms all the girls in the fairground, the cold-hearted businesswoman, the middle-class husband who resents his wife's career. Given that the book is partly about confounding expectation and the dangers of taking people and situations at face value, I didn't feel this pre-fabricated approach to character development sat particularly well in what is otherwise a shrewdly perceptive narrative.

However, the only characters that really matter are the wicked girls themselves, Kirsty and Amber, and Alex Marwood has done a great job with them. I don't find it entirely plausible that Kirsty would have chosen news journalism as a career, given her circumstances, but this is a small matter and not one that worries me a great deal. Overall, Kirsty and Amber are complex and occasionally, as real people are, surprising ,and their story is a thought-provoking and gripping one.

Sunday, 16 February 2014

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch is Donna Tartt's long-awaited third novel, and weighs in at close to 800 pages. A rambling narrative full of tangents and episodic subplots, it's reminiscent of a modern version of a hefty Victorian novel, almost Dickensian: a tale of the changing fortunes of an orphaned boy and the impact upon him of his own poor decisions and his relationships with those he meets on his journey to adulthood. There's an unrequited love for a tragic, damaged childhood sweetheart, there are long periods of sickness and fever, there's a wicked stepmother, kindly benefactors, sinister criminals, long and treacherous journeys, threats of being 'sent away' to school, an unwise engagement. One could certainly never accuse The Goldfinch of being a novel that lacks scope.

It opens with 13-year-old Theo Decker, suspended from school for a minor misdemeanour, visiting a New York museum with his art-loving mother. During the visit, a horrific incident rips the museum, and Theo's life, apart. As he escapes the aftermath, he takes with him one of the museum's most famous exhibits: The Goldfinch, a priceless painting by Carel Fabritius.

Estranged from his absent father and terrified of being sent to live with possibly abusive grandparents that he has barely met, Theo is left at the mercy of the adults around him, very few of whom have his best interests at heart. As Theo grieves for his mother and searches for some sort of purpose in a life that seems empty and directionless, the stolen painting simultaneously becomes a comfort and a burden, a talismanic connection to his final moments with his mother and a lone reminder that there are still shreds of beauty in a hostile world, and yet at the same time a symbol of Theo's guilt, fear and self-loathing.

Far from concise, The Goldfinch is heavy on description and detail, with each stage in Theo's life - his stay with the wealthy but brittle Barbour family, his relationship with his estranged father in Las Vegas, his attempt to turn his life around in New York - the subject of long digressions. And yet each is so perfectly realised, so vividly described and full of colour, that not once did I find myself bored.

Perhaps the most rambling section deals with Theo's friendship with Boris, a mercurial loose cannon of a character somewhat reminiscent of a teenage Eugene Hutz. Like Fabritius' Goldfinch, Boris is both a blessing and a curse. Boris' friendship is a burning spark that reignites bereaved, displaced Theo's lust for life and provides an anchor of affection, even love, that Theo has lacked since his mother's death - yet at the same time, it's Boris who introduces 14-year-old Theo to alcohol, to shoplifting, to drugs. Another character later likens Boris to the Artful Dodger, and this comparison is largely accurate - Boris is not the baby-faced, cheeky urchin of the musical Oliver! but is certainly not unlike the manipulative, cunning, eerily adult child pickpocket of Dickens' original novel, who takes Oliver under his wing and saves him from starvation on the street, but at the same time draws him into a dangerous adult world of violence and crime.

Much of The Goldfinch deals with these sorts of contradictions, with the duality of relationships, objects, people and places. Its emotional and philosophical range is as ambitious as its narrative one, and I found myself caught up in, and gripped by, this novel. It's very difficult to like Theo Decker at times: plagued with survivor's guilt, he's self-destructive, easily led, suffocated by his own regrets and, like the father he despises, irresistibly drawn to risk-taking and deception. Barely a chapter passed when I didn't want to reach into the pages and shake him by the shoulders at best, stage a full-scale intervention at worst. And yet I never stopped caring about him or, oddly, the painting of the title, which assumes a significance far beyond that of a work of art.

The Goldfinch's one weakness for me is its final chapter, in which far too much is spelled out by the narrator, which, while beautifully articulated, would have been better left implied. I had already drawn my own conclusions about what Theo might have learnt during the course of the narrative, and I didn't find it especially illuminating to have it summarised for me in this way. A few pages that drag are hardly a problem in a 771-page novel, but it's a pity that those pages were the last 10 or 20 pages in the book.

Saturday, 8 February 2014

The Uninvited by Liz Jensen

The Uninvited is the third of Liz Jensen's novels I've read. Like the previous two, The Rapture and The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, it features sinister children who appear to have mysterious, possibly psychic abilities. It also returns to The Rapture's theme of a world teetering on the edge of dystopia. I can't quite decide whether this means Liz Jensen is shamelessly recycling ideas or whether she has simply invented her own genre, but because I enjoy her work so much, I'll veer towards the latter.

The Uninvited begins with two apparently separate phenomena which seem to be occurring worldwide. One is a spate of murders committed by otherwise non-violent children, and the other is a series of incidences of industrial sabotage. The novel's narrator Hesketh Lock is an anthropologist whose Asperger's Syndrome, while problematic when it comes to social interaction, provides a degree of detachment that's useful in his job as a troubleshooting consultant specialising in analysing corporate cultures and behaviours.

Hesketh, sent by his employer to investigate seemingly unconnected sabotage attempts in large industrial firms across the world, soon begins to notice patterns and similarities which, he argues, can't possibly be coincidental - and what's the connection with the sabotage incidents and the sudden outbreak of murders by young children?

The matter-of-factness of Hesketh's narrative style is comic and tragic by turns in contrast to the drama, and indeed horror, of the events he describes, and his blunt honesty, despite his ex-partner Caitlin's cruel jibe that he is 'a robot made of meat', is endearing. Even more endearing is his love for Caitlin's young son Freddy, which is unconditional yet strangely unsentimental. When the world is falling apart in ever more disturbing ways and chaos begins to descend, it's Hesketh's unceasing rationality that seems far more compassionate than the kneejerk hysteria of those around him.

If I was to compare Liz Jensen's work to anyone else's, I'd say there are shades of John Wyndham there, perhaps similarities to Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. There are strong science-fiction elements to The Uninvited, and it has the tight plot and tense mystery of a thriller, but it's so much more than that. The clues that build up to the story's conclusion don't just come from the plot, but also from the language and behaviour of the characters. For instance, Hesketh has taught Freddy to respond to the phrase 'I don't know' by replying 'Not yet': this is just a rather sweet affectation between the two of them, but comes to seem chillingly significant later on.

The overall vision of The Uninvited is a bleak one and it's not always a comfortable read, but there are sparks of hope there and it's not without humour too. Liz Jensen is fast becoming one of my favourite writers.