A quick tour through my reading of 2009.
The year was dominated by several mammoth works of fiction. It began with A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz, which was long, slightly flawed, but generally breezy and enjoyable. Then followed Roberto Bolano’s 2666, a very difficult and ultimately impenetrable work:
2666 is a difficult book. Its length, its voice and its intention. At times I am unclear, at others there’s a breakthrough and I begin to understand. Bolano’s view of the world is so unique that it’s often very difficult to keep in step with him. Reading 2666 is often like examining the world, as we all do, up close. Like Bolano, we need to take a step or two back in order to take in the whole view. And sometimes it’s hard to remove the blinkers.
David Peace’s Red Riding quartet also kept me very busy but it was Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones which really became the marathon of all reading challenges:
The Kindly Ones was rewarded with the attention that it ruthlessly demanded from me. But it wasn’t easy. It’s an absorbing book, but also an infuriating one. At times depressing, and rarely uplifting, but one revealing talent in the author, and one stretching the reader. In my case, almost to the limit – the most demanding book I’ve ever read. But I’ve never said that good literature shouldn’t be difficult. If you are a real reader – and I think you are – there’s no option but to try this.
It was certainly a challenge I am pleased to have faced. Less demanding than The Kindly Ones but still requiring total attention from the reader was the much discussed Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Her study of Thomas Cromwell was a fascinating and well written, albeit often infuriatingly slow, read. Less demanding still, Stephen King’s thoughtful Duma Key has kept me occupied during December.
Strangely, this heavier fiction has proved the best reading this year. Where I’ve tried to balance it with lighter reading, the less demanding books haven’t stayed in the memory; so much so that the absence of reviews for these novels from these pages becomes quite telling. One exception is One Day by David Nicholls, a light novel that is nevertheless very engaging and moving:
The stir this novel is causing is well deserved; it’s one of the best British novels I’ve read for years. Certainly there with Jonathan Coe and Nick Hornby on top form, and a book I was expecting to be a lightweight read has proved to be one of extraordinary depth and quality.
Other highlights of 2009 include eventually getting round to Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith. Breath by Tim Winton was perfect reading whilst on an Australian holiday, The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas was depressing but brilliantly written, and there’s my obligatory Neil Gaiman choice Startdust. And although I only managed to pick up two non fiction books this year, Gig by Simon Armitage and The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin are both highly recommended.
Hilary Mantel won this year’s Booker Prize. Well deserved, although I would have given the honour to Sarah Waters. The gong for my book of the year goes to The Little Stranger:
The Little Stranger was my introduction to Sarah Waters, and I have come away very impressed. Her latest novel is a brilliantly written study of the shifting changes in the English post-war class system. It is beautifully paced, full of subtle observations and quite simply a pleasure to read. It is also one of the most effective, chilling and original ghost stories I have read for some time. I finished The Little Stranger a few days ago but, still thinking it through, I have been unable to start a new book.
Some critics were lukewarm in their reaction to The Little Stranger, thinking it wasn’t on par with her previous fiction. This inspired me to read some of her other novels atlhough strangely, following two attempts, I was unable to get through The Night Watch.
I’d like to finish with a word about David Peace’s Red Riding, another difficult writer who managed to engage me in 2009:
After finishing the Red Riding series I was still confused, but rather that Peace not giving all of the answers I do think they are there; it’s just that he makes the conclusion and his smattering of clues hard for the reader. This is a difficult and exhausting body of work to take on but ultimately a very satisfying one. It’s bold and challenging crime fiction. You’ll really read nothing else like it.
David Peace was much heralded in the early part of 2009, although the publication of Tokyo: Year Zero saw the beginning of the Peace backlash. I have to agree that the second part of the Tokyo Trilogy was a shocking disappointment, and the reviewers who called him Britain’s greatest writer now no longer mention him at all. A shame but, like them, I’ll be looking for new authors to rave about in 2010.
In 1969 David Bowie was inspired to write his breakthrough Space Oddity after seeing Kubrick’s 2001. For a film full of memorable themes and moments, possibly the scenes that stay in the memory are those that involve HAL, the softly spoken computer. Duncan Jones’ Moon pays some homage to 2001 with GERTY, a machine voiced impeccably by Kevin Spacey. Jones is of course David Bowie’s son, which brings our introduction full circle and gets the oft mentioned paternity of the director out of the way.
The other science fiction film that Moon reminds of is Silent Running, both in its theme of a lonely man in space and of its simple yet striking set design. Here, Sam Bell is our isolated spaceman of the future, in charge of a mostly automated mining operation on the moon. He’s been working for three years with only GERTY for company, and communicates with his family by recorded messages (he’s been told that the live communications feed is faulty). Bell fills his free time running on a treadmill and pusuing his hobby of woodcraft. He’s woken every morning by his alarm playing The One and Only by Chesney Hawkes. There is a clue in this song.
Bell’s tenure on the moon is almost up and he is about to head home. However, he is haunted by brief glimpses of a strange woman and then, during some routine work outside the base, is involved in an accident. He wakes up being tended to by GERTY in the infirmary, but things are not quite as they should be. The computer forbids him to go outside again but, after eavesdropping on an apparently live conference with Earth (remember the live feed is supposed to be broken), he gives GERTY the slip to investigate the scene of his accident. He returns carrying a casualty; it’s another Sam Bell.
But it isn’t really giving too much away to reveal that this is a movie where a man appears to meet a double of himself. And as Bell, Sam Rockwell is a revelation. He is such a skilled performer that he appears to act with himself with ease. For the majority of the film Sam Bell interacts with another Sam Bell. It’s entirely believable and although the film plays its trump card very early, it stays intriguing throughout. Once the plight of the two Bells becomes evident the film becomes very moving in parts, and the plan the two hatch to solve their riddle is very well thought out.
Moon is likely to be my film of 2009. It was a joy to watch throughout, and Jones proves that huge budgets are not what make good science fiction. The attention to small detail, such as the post-it notes stuck on GERTY and the crude “smiley” interface used to indicate his mood, are a joy. This film is intelligent, thoughtful and brilliantly acted. And, like the very best science fiction, it stays in the mind for a long time afterwards.
Even though you might be able to bend them a tiny bit, you can never change the laws of time. Even a passing Dalek could tell you that. This chilling premise was the idea behind The Waters of Mars, the latest Doctor Who special that edges the 10th Time Lord closer to his doom. Whilst I’ve found the previous two specials, The Next Doctor and Planet of the Dead, depressingly unmemorable this latest story is one of the best in recent years. There are themes that continue to stick in the mind and monsters that continue to scare the very young. David Tennant gives his best performance to date.
Thankfully The Waters of Mars provides a little more than just filler as a lead up to the Christmas episodes. After his lightweight guest turn in The Sarah Jane Adventures Tennant is stretched as an actor by writers Russell T.Davies and Phil Ford. Perhaps his run as Hamlet has helped, but never have we seen the Doctor veering so dangerously between the good and bad decisions we’ve so long trusted him to get right. What’s interesting about The Waters of Mars is that although the background tale of the doomed Earth colony in 2059 is pretty good by Who standards, it’s the finer details of the Doctor’s increasing loss of grip that is so compelling. On a better day, in a brighter universe, I’m sure that he’d have no trouble in sorting out this apparently low grade mess. But the laws of time have reared their dominant head, and the last of the Time Lords is looking like he’s had enough of them.
This story has been billed as the scariest ever Doctor Who, and judging by my daughter’s reaction to it I would go a long way to support that. The monsters aren’t that sophisticated; essentially humans turning into water dribbling zombies, but it’s often the simple things that disturb. And possibly this simple scare factor is there for a reason; many of the strands in The Waters of Mars are very adult. Arriving, as he tends to do, just as the nasty things are kicking off, The Doctor realises it is the day when the entire Mars colony (on the Bowie Marsbase – a nice touch) are wiped out. History tells that Adelaide Brooke (Lindsay Duncan) destroyed the colony in a nuclear detonation, presumably to save the Earth from the menace of the water monsters. This is told by each of the colonist’s obituaries flasing across the screen, telling us they all died on that day in 2059. And even though The Doctor has appeared in the nick of time there is nothing he can do. Some things are just set in time.
Brooke’s plight was beautifully played by Duncan and especially by Tennant, as he explains just why he cannot intervene. There’s a reference to The Fires of Pompeii and a fantastic scene showing Brooke as a small child, uncharacteristically spared by a Dalek in a sequence belonging to The Stolen Earth from the end of Season Four. And, like the end of Season Four, The Waters of Mars leaves the very best to the closing scene. Brooke and The Doctor’s final parting was unexpected, disturbing and quite moving. Never has the Doctor angered any one so much, and with such devastating results. And what’s best is that although The Doctor’s shocking behaviour in this episode was well documented, I did think he had redeemed himself somewhat towards the end. Only to have my hopes horribly dashed.
All in all, one of my favourite ever Doctor Who episodes, and the is way now expertly paved for the final two Tennant stories which begin on Christmas Day with The End of Time.
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