Category: Books

Books: My Brilliant Friend. A Novel by Elena Ferrante, 2011

This is the second novel by Ferrante that I read and it was a disappointing experience. It traces the friendship of two girls – Elena and Lila in Naples of the 1950s. As the publisher’s description has it – the novel is set in “the poor but vibrant neighborhood” in the outskirts of the city. The phrase “poor but vibrant” is a horrible cliche which firstly does not mean anything and secondly by juxtaposing poverty and vibrancy masks a disdain for poverty which (thank God…) can be at least “vibrant”…At the beginning of the novel the girls are eight years old. Ferrante tries to imbue the details of their life with great significance – social and psychological which the two child characters cannot sustain. That is the problem with all novels about children – or stories told through the point of view of children – they are “retrospectively” excessively and annoyingly smart. The adult narrator transpires through the fake child’s point of view and imposes her heavy schematics on the child’s experience.

I guess, I have no patience for the drama of a lost doll.

In addition, the novel has dozens of characters – all very “vibrant” and “tough” – and the epic picture of a poor neighborhood, industriously built by Ferrante, feels like something I have read and seen (reference — Italian neorealism) many many times before. The literary style that attracted me to this author in The Days of Abandonment now hangs in thin air, inflated and vain, unsupported by a story worth telling.

Books: Nine Inches. Short Stories by Tom Perrotta

Perrotta knows his suburbs. The stories in this collection sound like studies for a TV series – and he is making one based on another of his books “Leftovers”. He has found his genre and this is not a condescending statement. BTW, Election, based on Perrotta’s novel is one of Alexander Payne’s best films.
Suburban life according to Perrotta is deeply disappointing. His characters are under-performers who struggle to regain their life after a single faux pas; their stories – light versions of “after the Fall”…His male characters are infantile, his female characters — bitches with hearts of gold.
The book jacket quotes a critic’s definition of Perrotta as the “Suburban Steinbeck”. This is an oxymoron! He is nothing like Steinbeck and neither is he a Chekhov – lacks Chekhov’s contempt for human pettiness…

Books: A Glass of Blessings. Novel by Barbara Pym

I read this novel because it was recommended by Adichie, the Nigerian novelist and author of “Americanah”. I can see why she was interested given Nigeria’s anti-gay laws.

This is the type of British fiction where you come across sentences like this: “I was glad to be alone in my room, with the view over the garden, well polished mahogany furniture, pink sheets and towels, and  a tablet of rose-geranium soap in the washbasin” or like this: “He is the kind of person who ought to have a steady unearned income.” There is a Jane Austin feel to it and the whole plot revolves around a mysterious Mr. Darcy type of character who disturbs the church going and charitable tea party routine of the heroine, a young rich bored Londoner. The great twist here is that Mr. Darcy is gay. A delightful reading. A very subtle novel about sexuality and homosexuality without these topics ever being mentioned or touched explicitly – a 70s novel…

The Days of Abandonment. Elena Ferrante, 2002 (Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein, 2005)

Ferrante is one ferocious writer. What a tight, powerful prose, a “turn of the screw” narrative! Her style reminds of the classical 19 c novel, most of all — Tolstoy. The story of an escalating passion-slash-madness brings to mind “The Kreutzer Sonata.” Anna Karenina is also invoked by the protagonist herself (“Where am I? What am I doing? Why?”) as the thoughts of self-destruction become overwhelming.
This short novel enacts Everywoman‘s nightmare: the threat of the young blonde, betrayal, abandonment, lost beauty, aging, self-loathing, alienation, hate, loneliness – all fears, complexes and guilt, entangled in one hard knot. Ferrante writes without a shred of sentimentality, she does not nurture illusions or promise happiness. Through all the stages of the protagonist’s downfall and madness, Olga remains an honest narrator. She observes herself dissecting herself – and does that not coldly bur rather passionately, mercilessly.

As Olga pulls the pieces of her soul together slowly, it is not hope that she offers at the end, but solace: “There is no depth, there is no precipice. There is nothing.”

Looking forward to reading Ferrante’s other novels.

The Star of Istanbul. Robert Olen Butler, 2013

This untalented book is marketed as a historical thriller. It does not offer a single thrill unfortunately. No matter how hard the author tries to create “atmosphere” or be historically accurate, no matter how many times he uses words like “Hun”, “swell”, or “aft” – everything from plot to bottom rings fake. I wish the writer had a sense of humor because the novel could become a good parody. The action takes place during WW I and the main character, a journalist and American spy, engages in endless pursuits of two German spies while wearing ridiculous disguises. This constant “following” constitutes the bulk of the novel while most of the time the reasons for the following escape us. The love subplot between the journalist and one of the German spies, a world-famous film star, who eventually turns out to be an Armenian, on a mission to kill Enver Pasha, is an awful unimaginative cliche. The love scenes start with “we started” and end with “we were done” with a couple of tasteless sentences tucked in between…And no, the hero is nothing like Eric Ambler’s journalist character.

This author has a passion for unnecessary detail and has filled almost 400 pages with that. He is also a Pulitzer Prize winner with 14 books under his belt and teaches creative writing…

A lot of paper has gone into that book. Can’t they have something like “straight to e-book”policy for this kind of work…

Rachel Kushner. The Flamethrowers, 2013

It is an ambitions book, a stab at “great literature” and it works…

One of the big American novels from recent years.

 It offers a sweeping representation of radicalism – in life and art – in Italy and New York of the 70s. Reno, the main character, a young girl who wants to make it in the art world in New York of that time, guides us through the lofts, studios, galleries, and pubs of modernist NY and her observations draw the sad picture of art once trying to be “revolutionary” and “subversive” to the point of its annhilation and its becoming an obscure ornament pinned on the big egos of self-absorbed, manic, and sad people posing as artists. Tragically, the only thing beyond this “radical” art world depicted by Reno/Kushner that has a greater claim to authenticity, is the lurking menace of political violence and terrorism. Reno’s brush with the underworld of Gianni and his comrades (the Italian Red Brigades) is a sobering experience which feels almost like a nightmare and can be told only in a matter-of-fact language which describes actions but does not attempt to wrench out meaning. While the art world is stylistically exuberant, narcissistic, and ridiculous, the Italian radicalists, indulge in a different kind of self-importance – the scary claim on ultimate justice, and on delivering that justice. By punishing and killing.

 There is a lot more in this novel except the story or Reno and her passage into adulthood and her initiation into cynicism — for what else can we call her coming to terms with reality…The narrative involves heavily metaphorically laden images of metal, rubber, and velocity (the Valera motorcycle), the fetishes of industrialism, film stock, photography, futurism, war, etc… In the end, there is a sense of too much “research” being ingested into a fictional work. In the end, one may wonder if the novel’s complexity is not an effect of the diligence of this research, of the too many important themes being juggled with (a sense that lingered in me after reading Don DeLillo’s “Libra” or “Underworld”). But the writing occasionally is so good, that it redeems the author for having been so ambitious.

 I shouldn’t be complaining about this, actually – it is a rich book and reads with pleasure. That is rare.

Arthur and George. Julian Barnes, 2006

I have to admit the book was a bit disappointing. The introductory chapters were extraordinary -especially the part on George growing up in the vicarage. Barne’s potential for mimicing a nineteenth century writer’s style is amazing. The rest though was somewhat boring and banal, the intended suspense did not work, the intricacies of the supernatural and Arthur’s fascination with the above are more ridiculous than anything else.

Kafka on the Shore. Haruki Murakami, 2002 (English Translation 2005)

Haruki Murakami sucks. The book is a prefect example of a senseless, though artful, concoction of literary references and popular postmodern devices. It sounds like a 101 course in Comparative Literature. It could be written by anyone who has taken a literature course on that level and has read a Marques novel, (or Tolkien in the worst case….) with a pinch of Pynchon – and I mean here the leeches falling from the sky, the door to a different reality, the quest for a magical stone, the divine idiot talking to cats, the Hegel quoting prostitutes, the American pop-culture icons (a Johnny Walker as a cat-murderer….??! – did I really read that?…), the elementary reductionist references to Aristotle, Plato, and Chekhov, the mystifications of some spiritual “depth”, the Oedipal plot, the transsexual character, the menstruating teacher episode, and the entire existentialist scam that Murakami perpetrates on the unsuspecting reader….And the writer’s “Japan-ness” hanging on by sentences like “His penis was hard as porcelain.”!?…

Murakami’s success as a writer is one more indication of the snobbery of the reading public who can’t think for themselves and indulge their provincial pseudointellectualism by letting the literary scam artist flatter their vanity misleading them to believe that they belong to an “educated” reading club (which unfortunately they are not…Far from it…).

Oracle Night. Paul Auster, 2003

“Oracle Night” sounds like an exercise for “Brooklyn Follies”. While the former contains mostly summaries of stories, plot outlines, skeletons of possible narratives, in the latter the stories have flesh, mood, and the sense of joie de vivre (as well as joie d’ecrire).

And of course, in both works, everything starts with someone buying a notebook. Auster makes writing look so easy and so exciting…

In the 2003 work, the story that lacks closure — the story of Nick Bowen, is the most fascinating one–full-scale dramatism taken to a dead-end. The framework story – that of the protagonist Sidney Orr, has a beginning, middle and end, but refuses to explore the drama that is contained in it – the drama of betrayal. Auster seems to avoid that and turns it into a sentimental illustration of friendship, generosity, forgiveness or (I am not really sure what… may be – true love?!)

The Dream Life of Sukhanov, A Novel by Olga Grushin, 2006

My first problem with this book is the way the author was introduced on the dust-jacket of the book – she turned out to be the first Russian to ever get a degree from an American University, an interpreter for President Carter during his visit in Soviet Russia, a descendent of a dissident social sciences professor who taught in the 60s in Prague, and finally – a Research Analyst at a law firm (after getting a BA from Emory). Well, anybody who is slightly familiar with reality (especially the East European one of the 60s-90s) can’t help noticing that there is something wrong with this glorious picture.

That set aside, Grushin is not entirely devoid of literary talent. Her style is good, although comparing her to Nabokov and Chekhov, as some of the (marketing) reviewers do is quite a stretch. Grushin has tried to write a novel about a Russian totalitarian typage, an artist who has sold his beliefs and his talent for material comfort and a secure position in the totalitarian hierarchical scheme of Soviet life. She is tracing his downfall at the time of the perestroika. An ambitious and complex task! The author is very deft describing the culture and mores of the totalitarian intelligentsia – a fact that suggests her first-hand knowledge of that culture. The attempt to seek a redemption for her character in religion – Sukhanov’s seeking refuge in a deserted Khram – is unconvincing and too much of a (Russian) cliche to provide closure for the drama of the hero…
There were some nice images here and there (although the general sense was of a dragging narrative) – for example, the well written scene of the hero observing the reflections of the totalitarian city in the Moscow river – and the shimmering reflections suggesting a city trapped down, under the water — the mystical alternative for a better world…