10:04 by Ben Lerner

I've read one book by this author before Leaving Atocha Station and I began my review of it with the words "Probably the most compelling first person narrative I have read. " Here again it is written in 1st person. Its title is from the time on the clock tower in the movie Back to the Future and this book also does somersaults with time. It is about an author who has written a story in the New Yorker on the strength of which he has been given a huge advance to write his first novel. But he has much going on in his life including a potentially fatal health diagnosis, the prospect of becoming a father and in exactly what capacity following his female friend, Alex's request to him to help her conceive a child, another friend exhibits 'totalled art' , the art written off by insurance companies after damage, he has a course on Whitman to prepare for his students, he is on a writing retreat at Marfa in Texas from which he turns out a epic poem, and his thoughts are always being distracted . It is through these aspects that Lerner writes this book which essentially is about how writers write. It meanders, philosophizes, ponders the big and the small. It takes a bit of submersion to feel the book, to tease the different threads that are jumbled together, narrative not as we usually are presented with it. But hidden within are some writing gems - one for me was his story about The Challenger Disaster. If you've read Atocha and enjoyed it, read this one. If you've never read Lerner, read slowly, dont rush it, and immerse yourself in his images, lyrical descriptive analyses based on the fleeting glimpses of this that and the other.

Book Review: Butcher’s Crossing By John Williams, narrated by Anthony Heald

Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great characters - Miller, Charley - really felt in the landscape, some very well written atmospheric sections - the snow storm, the river crossing, the fire. Good storytelling. Fine read.


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Book Review: Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang

Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author has created a world that is immediately recognizably set in history yet is has a fantastical thread running through it. It feels a bit like a modern day Harry Potter meets His Dark Materials with its Institute of Translators in Oxford, its magical multilingual runes written on silver to power a steampunk world, all overlaid with imperial colonialism, systemic racism and exploitation overtones of the East India Company's ruthless commerce. An author to watch and read more of.

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Book Review: The Prague Orgy by Philip Roth

The Prague Orgy by Philip Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I clearly am having a spell of Kafka themed reading (see also my review of Ian McEwan's The Cockroach

This is a short book in Philip Roth's Zuckerman series sees his novelist Nathan Zuckerman off to Prague to recover a handwritten unpublished Yiddish manuscript of stories by the dead father of an exiled writer. Set in the time of the Soviet occupation this is part adventure yarn, part serious commentary on writing and politics. I liked this better than McEwan's Brexit fiasco.

Book Review: Interior Chinatown by Charles Wu

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

AudioBook Review: Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, narrated by Kathleen Wilhoite

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Before Christmas I attended a short online course at City Lit, London on Epistolary novels. One of the extracts the tutor used was from this novel. I'd never heard of it, never heard of the author, never watched all the TV shows she has written (eg Arrested Development). A comic novel about a mad cap family based in Seattle, father works at Microsoft, mum a washed up architect frustrated by the parochrial housewives, mothers and assorted figures trying to get her to be part of the community at Galler Street School where her only child, gifted daughter Bea goes to school. Sitting somewhere on the spectrum , Bea has written up the various communiques to and from her mother, antagonistic neighbour Audrey in a fight over brambles and a run over foot, her remote based PA Manjula in India, another Galler Street parent Soo-lin who becomes her husband's admin, the schoolteacher. These open the book. As I read the first few pages I was pleasantly surprised by the flow, indeed the speed of the text, it flew off the page. It is most definitely not a book I would normally have picked up but I borrowed it from our library and wow! One of the best reads in a long time. Not a great book, but a superb read. The audible narration by Kathleen Wilhoite is 5*, she nailed it, her narration captures the character of Bea. Check out her interview where she talk about what it is like to record an audiobook. I was amazed this was her first one, she had met Maria Semple at writing class!
If you want a great read to become immersed in, to laugh, smile and giggle at and lift the spirits during a winter's day as grey as Seattle, then pick up this book now!

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AudioBook Review: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, narrated by Bernadette Dunne

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Previously I have only ever read Shirley Jackson's famous short story The Lottery and I promised myself that one day I would read her novels.

The first thing that struck me about Mary Kathleen was her age. 18! Never! She's a child. A child with OCD at the very least. The second thing that struck me was just how well Shirley Jackson showed that character. I loved the touch of humour, its honest craziness was wonderful. 5* on character portrayal. Made my think of the Adams Family. The characters just leap of the page and some of the scenes are incredibly visual eg when Uncle Julian is showing Mrs Wright round the dinning room.

"“Madam.” Uncle Julian contrived a bow from his wheel chair, and Mrs. Wright hurried to reach the door and open it for him. “Directly across the hall,” Uncle Julian said, and she followed. “I admire a decently curious woman, madam; I could see at once that you were devoured with a passion to view the scene of the tragedy; it happened in this very room, and we still have our dinner in here every night.”
"“Alas,” Uncle Julian said. “Then, on either side of my brother, his daughter Constance and my wife Dorothy, who had done me the honor of casting in her lot with mine, although I do not think that she anticipated anything so severe as arsenic on her blackberries. Another child, my niece Mary Katherine, was not at table.” “She was in her room,” Mrs. Wright said. “A great child of twelve, sent to bed without her supper. But she need not concern us.”

The choreography of it is superb. As it is in the scene of the girls escape from the burning of house. I am intending to watch the movie version https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5952138/ and I hope it translate well, although I know for me the actor playing Uncle Julian is nowhere near frail or old enough to match my impression of him from the book.

I agree Mary Katherine is not your traditional unreliable narrator because act actually what she sees is she does so with incredible clarity - she sees through Charles immediately. I listened to the audio which was well read by Bernadette Dunne , and I noticed that at the point where she starts the first the narrator slowed down as if to emphasize Mary Katherine's thought process in action. I'm not sure whether if I had just been reading the text I would or would not have put that sway to it. I'd be interested to hear how those of you just reading the text saw that episode - did she do it deliberately or just clumsily?

I am left unsure of why both women are such damaged characters. Was Constance an agoraphobic only after the trial? What caused Mary Katherine to be so? If we believe Mary Katherine did the poisoning knowingly then what caused her to be so disturbed at an age before the deaths? I've listened to the link Dan supplied and still feel she is less a 'witch' than a stumbling child using the burying of trinkets as somewhat of an extension of the "Step on a crack, break your back / step on a line, break your spine" chants we all heard in childhood as a means of establishing order in what she perceives as a chaotic world, establishing her safety zone just as Constance establishes her by never leaving the house.

And why does Uncle Julian keep asking whether it happened or not? It here I suppose is the poisonings nothing anything else. His moments of coherence and moments of incoherence/forgetfulness, staged and not, make him unreliable or more reliable? If anyone is living in an alternate reality it is Constance with her food fetishes, cooking frenzies, and hot flushes for Charles.

The ending needs consideration as well. Here the alienated sisters have returned into their new decrepit half destroyed safe zone, shored up by vines and hidden behind cardboard and junk, seeing the real world only through a peephole. What minimal contact they had had with the outside world dwindles away until they become the ghosts of other's childhoods. It is in many ways a very sad ending - and oh that last phrase "Oh, Constance,” I said, “we are so happy.” The mad women have sequestered themselves away; and they will be happy there until they die; and when they die, no one will ever know.


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Short Story Review: Half Light by Tayari Jones

Half Light by Tayari Jones
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Short story about twins Amelia and Camelia Hall who have identical faces but look nothing like each other in all other respects. They are on a mission to retrieve a portrait of their mother painted by Jacques Toussaint. While still in ‘till death do us part’ mode dermatologist Amelia had given the portrait, originally given to her by her mother, to her musician husband in return for one of his songs written on paper. He ended up with it after their divorce where Camelia had acted as Amelia’s attorney. This retrieval is of course illegal and we all know that the best plans go wrong in this case when they meet the much younger, cake baker, Melanie in the ex’s kitchen
This is the second short story I have read by Tayari Jones, the trouble is I’m just not normally interested in the domesticity of family lives that she writes about but I have to say this one held me so much more that my previous read, Dispossession. Once again this was a free Audible Original and I’m glad I listened to this one.

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Short Story Review: Dispossession by Tayari Jones

Dispossession by Tayari Jones

My Rating 2*

Mothers and sons, the American dream soured, families split, daily life struggles, low paid work, evictions. All mirroring the narrator’s own past. Not really my sort of
but if you like Tayari Jones then this free Audible Original production of her short story may be for you.

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Short Story Review: The Didomenico Fragment by Amor Towles

The Didomenico Fragment by Amor Towles
My rating: 4 *

Percival Skinner has financial troubles as regards his retirement planning. He is an art assessor and is approached by dealer, Sarkis, looking for a certain painting by the Renaissance master Giuseppe Didomenico. It happens to have been owned by his ancestor who divided up the painting giving a piece to each of his children. Over the generations these children carried on the tradition until the inheritance was reduced to a fragment. Most had been sold, except the one owned by his young nephew Peter, his wife Sharon and their son 10 year old Lucas. Skinner is offered a 10% finders fee if he could arrange for its sale which could secure his future retirement. And so he hatches a plan to get his hands on the fragment, but of course things do not go actually as he planned.
It is classic Towles - great characters, well constructed story which he packs so much.
The Audible recording of this short story is narrated by actor John Lithgow. He does it marvellously. If you want a way to pass a very entertaining hour I can highly recommend this one.


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Book Review: The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the third piece by Towles that I have read, they are all different, they are all well written. In Lincoln Highway the storyline itself is quite thin but it is a storyline packed with tales, a story made up of stories. I loved the way Towles used the device of Prof Abernathy’s Compendium to give voice to Billy, to explore the characters, and to scaffold the whole storyline. So how does one end such a necklace of stories, why with a clasp of course. A completion of the circle with all the characters in their correct places. 

Correction, this was actually the 4th piece by Towles I have read, how could I have forgotten his short story The Line.

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Short Story Review: Bullet in the Brain By Tobias Wolff

Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is the pivots in this short story which are superbly crafted to great effect, ratcheting the reader like a cooker dial.
(available for listening on Audible Plus and for reading in the collection The Story Prize: 15 Years of Great Short Fiction ed Larry Dark)

Book Review: The Color Purple by Alica Walker

The Color Purple by Alice Walker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I listened to the author herself narrate this book, it was excellent. Very befitting what is probably one of the best book ever written in my opinion. I had not re-read it since it fist came out, but so so pleased I did. It still tugs hard at my heart, I love its structure, its voices, its characters and its storyline. Just perfection.

No wonder it won both the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. I remind myself that at the time it was controversial, written in the 'folk speak' of Celie in her letters first to God and then to her 'lost' sister Nettie, it was the first time an African American woman had won the Pulitzer. It has been filmed by Steven Spielberg albeit without the essential relationship between Celie and Shug (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088939/) , and made into a stage muscial ( https://www.theatricalrights.co.uk/sh...)

Back in 2007 for its 25th anniversary The Guardian wrote this review of book and author (https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...).

Although I have not read the book In Search of the Color Purple: The Story of Alice Walker’s Masterpiece by Salamishah Tillet, there is an interesting article by Tillet on the Legacy of The Color Purple (https://newrepublic.com/article/16116... ) who "offers up a history... on how sexism within the Black community - and the white establishment's preference to frame racial injustice in terms of concerns facing Black men - stood between The Color Purple and recognition as "an American Masterpiece"". In this reader's humble opinion, it always was and still is. A highly recommended reread.

Book Review: Leaving the Atocha Station by Adam Lerner

Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
 

4* Probably the most compelling first person narrative I have read.

It is a rambling, uncertain, fictional (?) memoire of American student, Adam Gordon's time in Spain. He's drunk and /or drugged up for a lot of it, a poet supposedly writing but with no intention of completing the work required by his scholarship - his project is “a long, research-driven poem” exploring the legacy of the Spanish Civil War about which he knows nothing - instead he is hiding behind the supposed inadequacy of his Spanish as he negotiates friendships and lovers, translators of his poems, reading Tolstoy, Ashbery and Cerventes in a spaced out stupor. We are taken on a full-of-self-doubt, thoroughly engaging impressionistic drift through his time in Spain to the finale of a panel discussion on Literature Now and the launch of his poetry in translation pamphlet -

"was I in fact a conversationally fluent Spanish speaker and a real poet, whatever that meant? It was true that when I spoke to her (Teresa) in Spansh I was not translating, I was not thinking my thoughts in English first, but I was nevertheless outside the language I was speaking, building simple sentences with the blocks I had memorized, not communicating through a fluid medium. But why didn't I just suck it up, attend the panel and share my thoughts in my second lanagueg without irony? They wanted the input of a young American poet writing and reading abroad and wasn't that what I was, not just what I was pretending to be? Maybe only my fraudulence was fraudulent"

The writing is very engaging, oftimes funny. Clearly the author has a way with words and a little research showed me that he is in fact a published poet. The Audible audio version of this his first novel is well narrated by the author himself and I found it very good to listen to, helping me truly 'hear' the voice of his main character and get the book's humour.

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Book Review: Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is an ambitious novel, a well crafted story about lives shattered by drug addiction, by depression and by dealing with people suffering from both these illnesses. At the same time, it is an author's homage to a friend and her work which she uses as the basis for her central character Gifty's research.

The big things in the life of Ghanian - American Gifty have been religion, family and science. She looses her family - her father back to Ghana, her brother's life to opiods, her mothers to subsquent depression; she looses her faith along the way but finds it again; her science always seeming to be the questioner, the doubting Thomas, and yet the embodiment of all her hope.

The novel's structure is complex, lots of flashbacks, a hotchpotch or the past and the present, of reality and her internalisation of it, her constant quest for answers to questions which are often in themselves questions, all rendered in the first person. And therein lies my dilemna as a reader because I can see her achievements in this as a writer, but also its flaws for me as a reader.

For me, all the internalisation of her thoughts, the detail of the science and the education system in which the character grows up in the southern state of the US where evolution is not because of fundamentalist religious beliefs and the Pentacostal Ghanian church's repetivitive evangelicism made it an oppressive read. When she is describing the Ghanian pastor and all his shouts of "Amen?" to his loud and responsive Hallelujahs of his congregation, and having witnessed this myself in a Nigerian church, I am reminded of the United Free Church in Scotland where I once saw a vicar with equal fervour condem fire and brimstone from a pulpit to an equally deafing but totally silent congregation, likewise bowed in conformity. Perhaps readers of a more spiritual disposition will not be so impacted by this and see the novel very differently.

Whilst I felt the character of Gifty, but I also felt the book only came alive when she spoke about her brother, to a lesser extent her mother, with the other minor characters of Raymond, Anne, Katherine and Han only serving to fill out, round off her life story.

I would have loved to have given this book a 4 for ambition but alas for this reader some parts of it didn't come off 100%, so it is a 3 for a read.

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Book Review: My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A short novel, not even as long as its 191 pages would suggest. It is told in the first person voice of the Lucy Barton of the title. Growing up in a very poor, somewhat ostracized, social excluded rural family, she finds her escape route through education finally becoming a New York based writer.

This conversationally toned story is based round her extended stay as an adult in hospital following a post operative infection during which her long not seen mother visits. In her way her mother loves her, but I have to say I found their relationship weird to say the least, certainly nothing like my experience of mothers. I couldn't relate to any of her familial relationships. She sees adrift in the city without much in the way of solid relationships. I didn't actually like Lucy. She repeats herself a lot, she is vague where I wanted her to be precise - both in terms of things she mentions has having seen, which are no doubt real, but she doesn't name them, so the reader either just goes with the flow or heads of to Google the place, the person eg she talks about a sculpture, she meets an author Sarah Payne - I still have no idea why as a writer she used a named real author - maybe Payne is more famous in the US, but not here.

The dysfunctionality of her birth family, mother, father, siblings strings out throughout the book and tumbles over into a dysfunctional marriage family which with the only show of gumption - ruthlessness as she calls it - in the whole book she leaves, but again the read doesn't really know why. So she is and the book is unsatisfactory because its so vague. Yes I understand she didn't want to write about abuse - how often has that been done - but her childhood trauma, being stuck in the van with the snake - real, imagined or metaphorical - only puts me into the pragmatic, down to earth mother's voice - Silly girl!

Near the end of the novel she writes "I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can't even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine." For me this sums up this book and what the author has achieved in writing this story, and shows how the horros and deprivations of childhood impact the manner of adult lives. As her charcter says in the book So sad, so sad.

ashramblings verdict 3* I read this prior to reading the short story collection Anything Is Possible with my face to face book group. I know several friends who have recommended her writing to me, but this didn't exactly 'blow me away' more likely to be like the cheese her character's college room mate gets from her mother, will not throw it away, but doesn't want or like, so leaves it on the window ledge to overwinter. Let's see how aromatic the novel is after a period of 'maturation' and as an intro to her short stories.

Book Review: Of Mice and Men by John Stienbeck read by Clarke Peters

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck read by Clarke Peters
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I listened to this read by Clarke Peters not realising to begin with who this name belonged to - as soon as I heard his voice it was distinctive and recognisable. Yes, we know him from The Wire and many other movies and he has one of those voices which I love and boy does he narrate this one well. It is a well known story, one I had not reread since John Steinbeck was my chosen author to study for my Higher English exam, some 50 years ago!

ashramblings verdict 5* it is a classic story what more can be said except to give this one a 5* for narration as well. Highly recommended

Review: IQ by Joe Ide

IQ by Joe Ide
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I sped through this riveting, fast paced, first in series thriller is a modern take on the Sherlock Holmes meme set in gangland LA. Recommended by a member of my in person book group, it is packed full of character and humour. The excellant narration is by by Sullivan Jones who I am pleased to see also narrates Book 2 in the series Righteous and released only this week Book 3 Wretched. This book is screaming for a TV adaptation or movie. If you want a thriller for the beach or the winter nights, this is the one.

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Review: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've had the book for ages but held back to read it with my in person book group. It is one of those "couldn't put down" books - the Audible version read by actress Cherise Booth is a 5 star narration to my mind . Easy to see why it won the 2011 National Book Award winner for fiction.

It is the story of one family's survival through hurricane Katrina in rural Mississippi. Set as 12 days/chapters leading up to the phenomenal description of their Katrina encounter in chapter 11, this is a very human story. its final chapters truly touched me. The description of the storm and the family's flight and fight to survive could only have been written by someone who themselves survived.

Some people might find the dog fighting scenes hard to handle but they are crucial to the book - in fact Skeet's dog China is actually a character in the book; others may find the casual attitude to sex disturbing particulary for such a young narrator, 15-year-old pregnant Esch, but surely we all find the overwhelming familial love heartwarming as we grow to know the family - widowed father Claude, Randall, Skeet, Esch and Junior.

The writing is extremely good, the author exceptional in her ability to convey the poverty of the family and their bonds of loyalty and love.

ashramblings verdict 5* A knock out read I can't recommend enough.

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Review: Jazz Poems

Jazz Poems by Kevin Young
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After a long wait I finally got a copy of this Everyman Anthology of Jazz Poetry. Loving the music I thought this is a book that needs a place on my shelves. Delving in last night for the first time, I was not disappointed. I found old favourites and some new delights.

One of the new delights was Langston Hughes's poem The Trumpet Player.

• The text can be found online at https://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems....
• You can listen to Hughes himself read this work and others on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/2kvceU... .
• You can read more about the man at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...

This poem encapsulates the personal and collective experience of African Americans in a portrait of a jazz trumpeter - stanza 1 is about weariness from the slave experience, stanza 2 is about change specifically the taming of natural hair, stanza 3 is about jazz music, stanza 4 is about desire, to see moonlight on the sea, stanza 5 is back to him playing, carried away by the music, and stanza 6 about how music smoothes away all his troubles.

What strikes me is the structure, the minimal punctuation, the smoothness of its reading. There is the repetition of the opening lines The Negro/ With the trumpet at his lips making it like a musical refrain,

After first reading I am in awe at the final two stanzas - how he inverts the more normal sentance structure in

(The Negro)
Does not know
Upon what riff the music slips
It's hypodermic needle
To his soul -

and how he turns the needle into a positive vehicle for deliverying the suppression of his troubles, rather than the destructive delivery of escapism via drugs that plagued many a musician.

Trumpet Player

The Negro
With the trumpet at his lips
Has dark moons of weariness
Beneath his eyes
where the smoldering memory
of slave ships
Blazed to the crack of whips
about thighs

The Negro
With the trumpet at his lips
Has a head of vibrant hair
Tamed down,
Patent-leathered now
Until it gleams
Like jet-
Were jet a crown

The music
From the trumpet at his lips
Is honey
Mixed with liquid fire
The rhythm
From the trumpet at his lips
Is ecstasy
Distilled from old desire-

Desire
That is longing for the moon
Where the moonlight's but a spotlight
In his eyes,
Desire
That is longing for the sea
Where the sea's a bar-glass
Sucker size

The Negro
With the trumpet at his lips
Whose jacket
Has a fine one-button roll,
Does not know
Upon what riff the music slips
It's hypodermic needle
To his soul -

But softly
As the tune comes from his throat
Trouble
Mellows to a golden note.



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