George has been having a bad time. He thinks he might have cancer, and is prepared to do something quite drastic about it involving a pair of scissors. His discovers that his wife is having an affair. His son has split up with his boyfriend. His daughter is getting married to an unsuitable man. And so on…
A Spot of Bother charts a family crisis from four different perspectives. It’s an enjoyable although fairly untaxing read, with its best chapters by far being those that deal with George’s own particular nightmares. Convinced he is dying, sure he is going mad, he begins to drift from one waking dream to the next:
The film was rather good.
Some forty minutes in, however, the camera lingered on the face of Christopher Lee who was playing the evil Saruman and George noticed a small area of darkness on his cheek. He might have thought nothing of it except that he remembered reading a newspaper article about Christopher Lee having died recently. What had he died of? George couldn’t remember. It was unlikely to have been skin cancer. But it could have been. And if it was skin cancer then he was watching Christopher lee dying in front of his eyes.
Or perhaps it was Anthony Quinn he was thinking about….
When he looked at the screen again he found himself watching close-up after close-up of grotesquely magnified faces, every one of them bearing some peculiar growth or region of abnormal pigmantation, each one of them a melanoma in the making.
He did not feel well.
Haddon handles George’s breakdown very well, and I challenge any reader not to be moved by his plight. His son, Jamie, is also very well drawn but I didn’t have as much enthusiasm for the female characters in the book because I suspected that Haddon wasn’t as excited about them either, or maybe George and Jamie are the only likeable characters in the novel. The story should really belong entirely to George, and although Haddon does tackle an interesting and worthwhile topic, I just wish he’d dipped his toe in the water a little more often.
What’s lacking in this novel is an original first person voice to take the reigns and really run with it. At times Haddon is content to coast along in a comfortable school of Nick Hornby/Guardian columnist turned author writing style, introducing such well worn characters as tedious toddlers, odd but sympathetic doctors, eccentric uncles and aunts and annoyingly over-smart sisters of lovers and friends of the bride. We do, however, get some interesting prose that seems to have crept in from the cutting room floor of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, references that could have been culled from the unusual although original imagination of a young boy:
His hands were shaking and there were ripples in the tea like in Jurassic Park when the T-Rex was approaching.
Suddenly she was in a great deal of pain and walking like the butler in a vampire movie.
He was lying in the centre of the bed with the duvet pulled to his chin, like a frightened old lady in a fairy tale.
Although there’s not enough of this type of writing, A Spot of Bother can be very funny, despite it dissolving into farce at times, such as in the climactic wedding scene. Fans of Tony Parsons’ suburban drama will enjoy this, although anyone expecting another Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time will be forgiven for not wanting to bother at all.
The other evening, my daughter picked up the copy of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak that I’d left on the kitchen table. I’ve found myself leaving it everywhere, it’s one of those books you can’t help carrying around with you. After examining the cover she asked me two questions. “What’s this book about?” and “who is the skeleton on the cover?”
Well, The Book Thief is about a little girl in Nazi Germany called Liesel. She is seperated from her mother and is fostered by a family who hide a young Jewish man in their basement, but more of him later. Liesel has a habit of stealing books, and stories – stolen, invented, overheard and untold – are at the centre of this novel. It’s about rash decisions, discovery, loss and the power and limitation of words…
Oh, and the skeleton represents Death, who narrates the whole story. So how do you really explain the horrors of Nazi Germany, a book that’s centred around them and – to boot – one that’s narrated by Death to a young child? The Second World War and the Holocaust are subjects that I try to revisit periodically with my daughter. I find it strange that many of her age group have never even heard of Adolf Hitler. What do you tell them ? How far do you go? But I’m going off topic. What was more difficult for me was explaining why I wanted to read a book – a story – about it all. And what makes what Death has to say so interesting?
I found The Book Thief difficult to get into. Partly because I wasn’t sure of the age group it’s aimed at. I suspect it is for quite a young audience, although this ceased to matter as I became accustomed to the style of the writing. The prose is written very simply but this becomes an asset to the unfolding story, especially as the length is nearly 600 pages. The other reason I was uncomfortable as first was the presence of the Death character, which in some reviews has been criticised. This all-knowing and ironic voice is irritating at first, but again it reveals itself as necessary to the power of the book as it gets going.
Zusak’s embodiment of Death does indeed know exactly what is going to happen; who is going to die and in what circumstances, how stories unfold, the winners and the losers. If you can imagine the events of The Book Thief being catalogued on a set of cards, it’s the great skill of how the cards that are dealt to you that makes the book work. Little teasers are laid in front of the reader in periodic bullet lists, which, although infuriating at first, you do get used to.
The power of words is brought home in several of the book’s scenes, but most effectively it’s with the Jewish fugitive Max Vandenburg’s relationship with Mein Kampf. When he is first introduced to us, ironic circumstances mean that a copy of the book helps to provide his key to escape. Later, in Liesel’s basement, he symbolically paints out Hitler’s words to write his own story on the fresh, clean pages.
Words provide comfort and torment to all in The Book Thief. At times, Max is little more than a ghostly figure in his basement retreat and can only utter a pitiful “sorry” or “thank you”. Similarly, when conscripted into the German army, Liesel’s foster father can barely compose a letter home. But words ease others through their tragedy; Liesel reads her stolen words to others as they shelter in an air raid, she also discovers and reads Max’s hidden notebook when he has gone.
Disappointingly, I was allowed to overcongratulate myself on my discovery of The Book Thief‘s themes before Zusak began to over-egg the pudding. In the closing chapters, he really makes sure that the reader knows that this is a book about words and what they can and cannot do, unfortunately spoiling some of the book’s subtlety. But there are other subtle sketches throughout, such as Liesel’s relationship with her foster father and her fondness for him, and with the mayor’s wife, whose library provides rich pickings for a book thief.
I’d wouldn’t quite rate The Book Thief up there alongside my other favourite recent anti-war novels Birdsong and Atonement, but I might tempt by daughter to pick it up properly in four or five years time. I hope she reads it.
Back to School
Thursday February 8, 2007
in books |
In a couple of his recent posts, Simon over at Inside Books has started me thinking about the books I studied whilst at school. Were they good choices? Did I benefit from them?
O Level Texts
From memory, these are the texts forced onto me aged 14-16:
- Travesties by Tom Stoppard
- The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
- Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift
- The poetry of Edward Thomas
- The Nun’s Priest’s Tale by Chaucer
- The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare
Stoppard is always a syllabus favourite, from this level right up until graduate. It’s his cleverness that excites the exam question setter. Tricks with words and plot, time and memory, Travesites – in its archness – tied in neatly with Wilde as a man with a failing memory (who once acted in a production of Earnest ) finds his reality slipping in and out of Wilde’s drama. Clever stuff. More than two decades on, Tom Stoppard still continues to irritate me.
I really enjoyed Shakepeare because you can discuss him endlessly but he’s not obviously trying to be clever. It’s achievable to argue from both sides of an argument because his plays are so rich.
A Level Texts
Aged 16-17, although bearing in mind I made my own choice to stay on at school:
- Hamlet and Measure for Measure by Shakespeare
- The Spire by William Golding
- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
- The White Devil by John Webster
- The Millers Tale by Chaucer
- Professional Foul by Tom Stoppard
- Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
More Stoppard. Why not Pinter, Orton or even Arnold Wesker?
Shakespeare and Beckett had the most effect on me here. Shakespeare for the same reasons as above. Beckett was just strange, none of us had ever encountered anything like this before. I’ve realised since that – oddly – the closest thing to it we did know was Shakespeare. Scenes from The Tempest are very pre-Beckett Beckett, although we didn’t know that at the time. Anyway, we were excited by Waiting for Godot. The humour, depth and, as I’ve said, strangeness of the play.
Golding – again a favourite of question setters. The Spire provided perfect examples of symbolism that you could discuss until you’re blue in the face. Unfortunately it’s a boring novel.
Chaucer? Well, you just get used to him. When I returned to my books as a mature student years later he was there waiting for me. As were Shakespeare, Hardy and Beckett. And – dammit – Stoppard.
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