The Book Tower

One of the advantages of having a sprawling collection of yellowing paperbacks is the delight of stumbling over titles you’ve forgotten about. I’ve recently rediscovered my small collection of Graham Greene novels, and realising that I have only read Brighton Rock and Travels With my Aunt I’ve decided to go on a Greene binge, aiming to complete The Power and the Glory, The Honorary Consul and The Quiet American in succession. If you don’t like Greene, look away for a while. Or prepare to be converted…

Set in Mexico during the religious persecution of the 1930s, The Power and the Glory follows the misfortunes of an unnamed Catholic priest. Often a little worse for wear from his favourite tipple brandy, this whiskey priest manages to stumble out of trouble as he is pursued throughout this outstanding novel. And it really is – I’d forgotten how good a writer Greene was. Written in 1940, this novel hasn’t dated whatsoever. The setting and cirmcumstances just serve as history and the writing, especially the dialogue, is particularly well written.

After recently reading so much Cormac McCarthy, in particular the Mexico-set All the Pretty Horses, I found a lot to compare between the two authors. Both have a way of delivering their stories with a degree of emotional detachment; we’re simply told the simple facts and left to make our own emotional responses – which we can’t help but do. In The Power and the Glory I couldn’t help but be drawn into the plight of the whisky priest. He’s a real and believable character with many dimensions, self-doubting and self-torturing. And it might be coincidence but I couldn’t help wondering if McCarthy has been influenced by this novel – there’s a familiarity about the encounters and recurring characters, the lengthy journeys into peril, even the pitiful prison scenes. Like McCarthy, there’s sometimes the worry that plot devices might get in the way of believability – with coincidence winning out too easily where loose ends are no more – but also like McCarthy the strength of Greene’s writing always wins out.

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In Life Class Pat Barker revisits the setting of the First World War, the ugly moment in history she so excellently helped to document in her Regeneration trilogy written ten or so years ago. This new novel begins just prior to the outbreak of war in 1914, following a group of students at the Slade School of Art in London. Paul and Neville are the boys, Elinor and Teresa the girls – both bringing torment to their male admirers in their own unique ways; Elinor indecisive over Paul’s affection, Teresa, an artist’s model, with her own estranged dangerous husband in the shadows.

So far so ordinary really. This group of students isn’t vastly different to a group from almost a century later, and it’s only occasional references to various antiquities such as a horse drawn cab that reminds of the historical setting, or the lack of any references to a burgeoning popular culture.

Life Class hits its stride with the outbreak of war. As Paul and Neville become volunteers in a makeshift military hospital in France (they are both rejected for military service on medical grounds), carefree student life full only of worries about artistic ability and female rejection are surpassed by the disturbing reality of wounded soldiers. Here Barker doesn’t hold back; her descriptions of the casualties are uncensored and grimly sobering.

Paul in particular matures as only a young man could in such circumstances. He meets another volunteer called Lewis who he slowly forms a close attachment to. Their relationship proves to be the best in the novel, subtle and understated. The pages are also interrupted but exchanges between Paul and Elinor, and they meet again when she visits him under the pretence of enlisting as a nurse. Love blossoms under extreme circumstances.

Fans of the Regeneration trilogy will love this. Barker manages to ask some interesting questions; is there any need for an artist in such awful moments of history – how can they contribute? Like her earlier novels set in this period, many real life characters are used in the fiction. Here, Henry Tonks is the critical tutor at Slade. The real life Tonks worked as a war artist in 1916, providing sketches to help the pioneers of modern plastic surgery, proving an artist’s worth in terrible times. A fascinating backdrop to a fascinating novel.

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‘We thought you knew what you were doing!’ shouted Ron, standing up; and his words pierced Harry like scalding knives. ‘We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do, we thought you had a real plan!’

Well I’m afraid it’s a little bit more complicated than that. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a slow burner indeed. Following a fantastic and dark opening, the novel takes its time to work its way to the Harry Potter conclusion. Rowling provides the final missing pieces of the jigsaw, with revelations revealing a deeper complexity to many characters, often confusing the allegiances of the reader as to who really are the good and the bad guys.

At times I found The Deathly Hallows long winded, but there are some excellent touches throughout – Rita Skeeter’s damning cash-in biography of Dumbledore is very witty, Harry revisiting his childhood home for the first time is equally tense, and Rowling explores the new adulthood of her characters very thoughtfully. And without revealing too much of the plot, you’ve probably guessed that this final instalment of the series finds the wizard world in chaos; following Dumbledore’s death the Ministry of Magic is largely in the hands of The Death Eaters with Harry and his pals in mortal danger as they race to defeat Voldemort.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows carries a lot of baggage; namely the whole Potter-wizards-Voldemort-Hogwarts mythology and backstory that I fully admit I had difficulty remembering. How come? Well, I read the first four Harry Potter books back to back in 2002 and have subsequently read the last three when they came out every other year. The back-to-back experience is certainly the best for understanding and enjoying the mythology and cronology; long intervals between instalments has left me struggling and The Deathly Hallows is full of references that just left me and my poor memory puzzled. I’ve raised this with die-hard Potter fans, but all I’ve had in response is a “hmmm…”, and I’ve left the room before they’ve had time to reach for their wand.

But fully grasp it all or not, there’s always one or two moments in a Potter book that make it worth reading; the giant spiders, Harry’s lessons with Lupin, the death of Sirius and the trips into the Pensieve with Dumbledore spring to mind although I am sure there are many more (usually anything involving Professor McGonagall, criminally underused in part seven). In the Deathly Hallows its the Pensieve again that provides some of the best written passages, with the final few chapters being the best that Rowling has ever written. In particular the chapter called Kings Cross is well worth waiting for, so brilliantly well written and touching.

So am I glad it’s all over? In many ways yes. There is still plenty of the Potter charm in evidence in The Deathy Hallows, I confess that the final pages brought a tear to my eye, but seven instalments is more than enough. Although, the thing is, my daughter has just reached the age where she’s discovering Harry Potter, so I’m just about to experience it all again.

If there’s anyone out there who’s bought the book and hasn’t read it yet take a tip from me: don’t indulge in the Potter speed reading and take your time over it – after all it is the last one. Go on, spoil yourself…

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I’ll be updating this regularly as the year marches on. When I see similar lists on other sites I’m humbled by the amount of books that other people have read this year, although I’m secure in the knowledge that I’ve read 41 more books in 2007 than Victoria Beckham.

Novels

1. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
2. Winterwood by Patrick McCabe
3. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
4. At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
5. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
6. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
7. A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
8. Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
9. Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake
10. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
11. The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
12. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
13. The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson (Revish review)
14. Restless by William Boyd (Revish review)
15. The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld
16. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
17. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
18. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
19. Everyman by Philip Roth
20. Unless by Carol Shields
21. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
22. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
23. Tunnel Visions by Christopher Ross
24. Falling Man by Don DeLillo
25. No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
26. A Curious Earth by Gerard Woodward
27. In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu
28. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
29. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
30. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
31. Life Class by Pat Barker
32. Gathering the Water by Robert Edric
33. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
34. The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene
35. Engleby by Sebastian Faulks
36. The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas
37. If You Liked School, You’ll Love Work by Irvine Welsh
38. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
39. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
40. Darkmans by Nicola Barker
41. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

Short Stories

1. Random Quest by John Wyndham
2. Running Wolf by Algernon Blackwood
3. The Haunted and the Haunters by Lord Lytton
4. His Brother’s Keeper by W.W.Jacobs
5. The Seventh Man by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
6. The Inexperienced Ghost by H.G.Wells
7. The Toll House by W.W.Jacobs
8. The Squaw by Bram Stoker

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‘I am pursued with blasphemies, cries of despair and appalling hatred. I hear those dreadful sounds called after me as I turn the corners of the streets; they come in the night-time, while I sit in my chamber alone; they haunt me everywhere, charging me with hideous crimes, and – great God! – threatening me with coming vengeance and eternal misery. Hush! do you hear that?’ he cried with a horrible smile of triumph; ‘there – there, will that convince you?’

Sheridan Le Fanu, The Familiar

I’ve been meaning to read In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu for some time. This is a famous collection of five supernatural stories, first published in 1872. I’m a fan of M.R.James, who described himself as a disciple of the Irish writer. I’m also partial to a gothic tale or two, and Le Fanu’s stories also stray into this territory.

Green Tea opens the collection and is easily Le Fanu’s best known ghost story. Quite simply, it’s a magnificently constructed and well written tale. It’s also very scary. It concerns the doomed Jennings, who begins to see a menacing small monkey wherever he goes. This is perhaps a hallucinatory symptom of the green tea he has been overindulging in, or perhaps it is something more sinister. The most chilling aspect of this story is, whether or not the monkey is real or in his disturbed imagination, that he is most troubled by the fact that the monkey appears to relish the fact that he can see him. And only he can see him. What can be worse than being a lonely demon that nobody can see? What can be better than being allowed to suddenly haunt somebody to death? You’d really pull the stops out, wouldn’t you?

In a Glass Darkly is framed by the case notes of one Dr Hesselius and Green Tea is a study of Jennings’ deterioration. Hesselius treats his patient as an interesting specimen rather than as a friend or as a doctor treating a troubled man, but this is also exactly what the reader does. If they are really honest about it. We know that Jennings is a hopeless case. We know the monkey is going to get him. Like the monkey, we relish that fact.

The next two stories, The Familiar and Mister Justice Harbottle, follow similar themes. Both deal with personal hauntings with inevitably gruesome endings. Both follow men with guilty secrets, men responsible for the death of others who will get their comeuppence. In The Familiar, Barton is haunted by a menace that only he can see and one, like in Green Tea, that will claim its victim in the end.

The longest story in the collection is A Room at the Dragon Volant. Here Le Fanu can take his time to establish atmosphere and subtle menace, a menace so slight it’s like a nagging itch. At times it is difficult to see where this story is going; the exciteable narrator relates more of a mystery tale than supernatural or horror and it’s nowhere near as disturbing as Green Tea or The Familiar. Still worth a read though, as is the final story Carmilla. This is notable for being an early vampire story, and the tale influenced Le Fanu’s fellow Dubliner Bram Stoker for Dracula. Carmilla is the story of a lesbian vampire, predating such Hammer classics as The Vampire Lovers and Twins of Evil by a century:

I stood at the door, peeping through the small crevice, my sword laid on the table beside me, as my directions prescribed, until, a little after one, I saw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to me, over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor girl’s throat, where it swelled, in a moment, into a great, palpitating mass.

If you’re a disciple of the ghost story or the gothic tale, even a Hammer Horror or two, it’s worth spending some time with Sheridan Le Fanu.

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