
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
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The Enigma of Room 622 by Joël Dicker
Translated by Robert Bononno
Narrated by Chris Harper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Just the tonic! I needed a riveting, engaging book. This is a murder mystery written within the framing story of a writer writing a novel about solving an unsolved murder mystery whilst coping with having been left by his girlfriend. The murder is solved by unwrapping the case as if a writer was about to write a book about it, as each layer is unwrapped the clues are there to help the reader, but of course the plot seems to twist and turn.
I will not say anything about the plot twists as that would absolutely spoil the book. Suffice to say the way the book is written swings back and back quite freely on different timelines within the story and I now some folks don't like that but it didn't cause any issue for me keeping up with when we were. I read this almost 600 pg book in 4 sittings, and would have done it in 3 if I'd been more organized about other things.
I'd never come across this author before I read this review in World Literature Today (WLT). Its very pleasingly narration meant I enjoyed the book so much I've ordered two of his others books from my local library The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair and The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer
Ghost Music by An Yu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really had no idea what to expect when I started this book as I knew
nothing about it or its author, and only had a passing recommendation
from someone I only recently met. But it was unputdownable.
It
is a first person narrative by a young married childless woman piano
teacher, Song Yan, living in Beijing. Her mother in law comes to live
with them. She had trained as a concert pianist but had chosen married
life. But that is not going well and she realises she doesn't really
know her husband at all when she discovers first that he had a sister.
Other revelations follow. The strains of her marriage and the strains of
living with one's mother in law take their toll. She receives a series
of mysterious and unexpected deliveries of Yunaan mushrooms, her husband
and mother in law's province. Although addressed to someone else, these
cannot be returned as there is no return address. Her mother in law and
her set about cooking the mushrooms that continue to arrive each week.
Then she receives a letter from Bai Yu, her father's favourite concert
pianist who walked away from his career and disappeared years ago. That
letter ignites her and she goes to its address, one of the old courtyard
hutongs in the back alleys of old Beijing.
These are the events
around which this beautifully written and told story is crafted. How
that is done is nothing short of extraordinary. With all the
hallucinogenic effect of mushrooms they percolate into her dreams, she
sees then in cupboards, growing from floorboards, in her walls and there
is news that her husband's home town is covered in an orange dust. The
effect is magical, making this anything but a domestic drama novel. But
this is NOT magical realism. For me it is far more reminiscent of the
best ghost stories ( The Turn of the Screw, The Others https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230600/, The Orphanage https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464141) but with shades of Nostalgia https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086022 as if they had been blended by Tarkovsky in his own special way he had with colour, music and movement.
Throughout
the book music plays a central role - her relations with it, with the
piano, with the children she teaches, and at perhaps the most intimate
of ways the untouching shadow-playing with Bai Yu. I'm no musician but I
am sure someone will write about the choice of the pieces that are in
this book. Debussey's Reverie is the main one and I did look it up -
"Reverie is not full of excitement and explosions of colour...but..is
calm, peaceful and priorities atmosphere and reaching a dream like
state. Often used for mindfulness and meditation" quote from https://classicalexburns.com/2022/08/... . That choice can be no accident. It totally fits.
This book HAS to be made into a movie and scored appropriately. But making a movie of this will take a deft hand, as so much is in what is not said, in the gaps between the notes, those moments which are 'more resonant than the mere absence of sound' . And it is here that this novel indicates to me a great writing talent. It handles these equivalent to off camera moments well, it handles silences well, by using the ghostly hallucinations to explore the understanding, coming to terms with and resolution of the ordinary everyday strains and constraints of life and marriage.
Audio version is beautifully narrated by Vera Chok who has also narrated An Yu's only other novel Braised Pork
I really urge you to read this book.
Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My in person book group mentioned that they had never read any Muriel Spark, not even The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie!
So we, of course, had to rectify this. As a fellow Scot I recall she
was on my secondary school reading list over 50 years ago (TPMJB and The Ballad of Peckham Rye)
and the movie version with the marvelous Maggie Smith came out around
then as well. I suppose the success of the movie may have been the
reason why many people had not read the book. Over the years I have at
least read The Abbess of Crewe, The Girls of Slender Means, The Driver's Seat but none of her later ones . I also recall watching a documentary in praise of her by Ian Rankin, sadly I've not found this available in full online. But there is a BBC Interview with her available of Youtube ; another BBC celebration of her by Kirsty Wark and the National Library of Scotland has her Archives .
Loitering
with intent was a fast and very enjoyable read. A retrospective first
person narrative of a writer, Fleur Talbot recalls the time she spent of
her first novel and her job with the mysterious Autobiographical
Association and its founder and leader Sir Quentin Oliver in the period
1949-50. This is a self help group therapy club for upper class misfits
led by a power maniac. When does live and literature become one? Fleur
notices that her novel seems to be foretelling what is happening in real
life. Then the only typescript of her novel is stolen.
The
novel is high melodrama. It is also a farce worthy of Brian Rix,
Alistair Sim and Alec Guinness. I loved the character of aging Lady Edwina, Sir Quentin's 'mummy', whose 'fluvative percipitations' disrupts everything, everywhere. If you read it will sound so outdated
nowadays, but go with the flow and I do not think you will be
disappointed. The writing will sweep you along. Not surprisingly it was
shortlisted in for the Booker in 1981, along with Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers (one of my 5* for both movie and reads) the year Salman Rushdie won with Midnight's Children. The Audio verison is narrated by Nadia May. A thoroughly enjoyable read
Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Cockroach by Ian McEwan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
When I started reading this novella from Ian McEwan I was reminded of the classic The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka,
but very quickly the notion of a homage was dispelled and we are into
the realm of political satire.
****SPOLIER ALERT****Jim Sams, UK PM has
been transformed into a cockroach yet, but he is still PM, in modern day
Britain but not quite as we know it, although everything sounds
familiar. Reversalism rules, reverse-flow economics is the norm and the
traditional money markets preferred by the 'Clockwisers' are no longer
in power, now people have to shop to afford to buy their jobs. The
previous PM in order to placate the Reversalist wing of the Tory Party
had called a Referendum on reversing the money flow. The old and the
poor swayed the vote and faced with "Turn the Money Around" upswell he
'resigned immediately and was never heard of again' .
James Sams a
clockwiser had emerged as a compromise candidate now had to guide a
Reversalist economy in a Clockwise world. ' we will deliver Reversalism
for the purpose of uniting and re-energising our great country....by
2050... the UK will be the greatest and most prosperous economy in
Europe....we will move swiftly to accelerate and extend our trade deals
beyond St Kitts and Nevis.... '
Any Brit will hear resounding in her ears echoes of the misjudged Cameron EU Referendum .
James
wrestles with his first Tweets, tries to get the US President to adopt
Reversalism, there's a fatal fishing dispute with the French, a leak and
a Foreign Secretary called Benedict that needs dealing with. A false
story is planted by a female colleague with the media to discredit and
shame the Foreign Secretary who then has to resign and goes off to lead
the rebels.
With the ultimate passing of the Reversalism Bill,
James in his speech says "we have come to know the preconditions for
such human ruin. War and global warming certainly and, in peacetime,
immoveable hierarchies, concentrations of wealth, deep superstition,
rumour, division, distrust of science, of intellect, of strangers and of
social cooperation."
One can't but feel McEwan enjoyed writing
this book, and from a reader's perspective it is short, speedy read
which occasional bring sly smiles to one's face, but is it a great piece
of creative writing?, I felt McEwan struggled to maintain his PM as
cockroach character and Sams reverted to the PM as human in this
reader's mind for large parts of this book. Maybe it is a book that
inevitably had to be written. Could it have been written with the same
of better effect without the cockroach transformation? That I feel that
could have been a better book. Sadly, not one of McEwan's better books -
for me an interesting idea that didn't quite work.
I listened to the audio version admirably read by Bill Nighy.
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages....."
from As You Like It by William Shakespeare
I think this completely sums up this book. Reading Charles Yu highly experimental fiction mean you step into a world where everyone is an actor and the world itself is the production set. Roles are based on race, age and gender. Everyone is limited Willis Wu dreams of eventually progressing from Generic Asian Guy to Kung Fu Guy. Written as a script, laid out as such on the page this is a novel novel. This is a satirical sociopolitical commentary on the effects of the various political Acts restricting Asians in America through the 1800 to recent times. Well worth a read, it won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction