4/5
Picture London in 1967, although I’d like you to put the obvious images out of your mind. I want you to forget about The Beatles tucked away inside Abbey Road and recording Sgt. Pepper. Also forget about Carnaby Street and Emma Peel in The Avengers, and don’t think of Michael Caine and Terence Stamp eascaping their working class roots to live film star lives. Instead imagine the drab end of the period; a city where war is still a very vivid memory, where employment more commonly meant a job for life, where a television set was a luxury rather than a necessity, and where an individual could quite easily go through their life with a suit based upon a 1938 cut. Mr F, the central character of Neil Bartlett’s novel, lives very much in this monochrome, and perhaps more realistic, version of the 1960s. For him, the colourful remain elite; the privileged few who grace the magazine covers that flit before him on his daily commute on the underground. Travelling dutifully to work as a furrier in a warehouse specialising in animal furs in Skin Lane, Mr F is the central character of a very intriguing book.
Bartlett manages to successfully weave the different styles of credible journalism, fairy tale narrative and potential murder story into his fiction, although there’s really no need to dissect his style; this novel is just effectively creepy. Wonderfully creepy. One of the reasons for this is that he doesn’t hurry things and the story unfolds very carefully and deliberately; it’s very difficult to tell where this novel is going. The solitary Mr F inhabits our drab sixties world, plagued by his unconsummated homosexuality. When a young man falls under his wing as a new apprentice F begins to fantasise about him, his imagination soon brought into line when the youth blackmails him into paying for his girlfriend’s abortion. We soon realise that Bartlett chose this moment in British history for a reason – 1967 is also famous both for the coldly titled sexual offences act, which decriminalised homosexuality in the UK and for the Abortion Act. But although written from a 2007 viewpoint the narrative avoids being knowingly intrusive. Bartlett ponders over a small archive of faded photographs, papers and forgotten place names to set his scene but doesn’t go overboard in reimagining the past. There’s no sentimentality for the 1960s – and Bartlett is keen to remind us that many of the areas of London he recreates in the novel are now gone. Bulldozed or burnt down, Mr F’s world has since been paved over and rebuilt afresh.
Nicknamed Beauty by his co-workers, the young man represents the fairy tale aspect of Skin Lane, such tales which ravished the imagination of Mr F as a child. And an old and forgotten book of fairy tales makes a final and moving reappearance on the closing page – but Bartlett reminds us that reality is not so clean cut as the fairy tale. Skin Lane tantalises the reader with talk of knives and the precision required to use them with skill, and also the dangers they possess if used carelessly (one of the best parts of the novel is when the preoccupied Mr F slips and badly cuts his hand – you live and feel his discomfort). But don’t be fooled by the quote on the cover of this book – Skin Lane is far from the psycho shocker it’s being advertised as. Bartlett does brilliantly lead the reader into an enclosed space for a chilling final confrontation, although it doesn’t fall into the realm of slasher fiction, and he goes on to soberly add some final chapters to bring the lives of his characters to a natural and realistic conclusion. This is an assured and well structured novel, that isn’t afraid to cast the rose tinted image of the 1960s as the stuff of dreams.
3 Stars
Since closing the last page of Cold Mountain I’ve been considering quietly forgetting this book, leaving a small gap and then swiftly moving onto the next. Charles Frazier’s novel was highly recommended to me, both by fellow bloggers and by friends. The problem I had wasn’t obvious at first, but then it was clear, vivid and eventually spoilt my enjoyment of the book.
My problem was Cormac McCarthy. Just when I decide to leave the author alone for a while I pick up another writer who is so clearly influenced by him that it hurts. What stopped me from enjoying Cold Mountain was the realisation that – take McCarthy out of the equation – and you have no book. In fact never before have I found one writer to be so heavily influenced by another. Frazier copies McCarthy’s unique writing style to the letter, the landscape, the detailed descriptions of chance encounters, characters careful preparations of food (where every meal could be their last), despicable individuals you can’t help liking (Veasey) – and the senseless deaths. And the style of dialogue – the ironic humour – the characters asking themselves what they aim to do – is all McCarthy.
Sorry to be like this. There is a great novel in there somewhere, but reading Cold Mountain was like listening to an Oasis album. Okay, but it’s been done before – and better. Cold Mountain is the best novel Cormac McCarthy never wrote – and I can guarantee someone’s already said that before.
4 Stars
I do not know what you are expected to do with memories like these. It feels wrong to want to forget. Perhaps this is why we write these things down, so we can move on.
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones is about the effect that Great Expectations has on a particular individual. Appreciation of Dickens’ novel is preferred but not essential to read Mister Pip – it is about how a book can shape our lives in how we make sense of our own place in the world when we compare it to fiction, and about how others may choose to interpret a book for us and how we might come to find the faults in a story. Any story – told well or badly. It might not be Dickens for everyone, but I think we all have books that has made such a mark on us. Or even stories told to us by the forgotten.
On the South Pacific island of Bougainville in 1991, a vague yet threatening war casts a worrying shadow. Mr Watts, also known as Pop Eye, assumes the role of school teacher in an attempt to keep normality flowing. He has only only one text book to hand – Great Expectations. He invites the locals to provide improvised lessons to fill the gaps; the rest of the time he reads Dickens to his class. Mister Pip is in turn narrated by Matilda, who becomes fascinated by the world of Pip, Magwitch, Estella, Miss Havisham … and Mr Watts. As she grows older she turns from Dickens student to scholar, and along the way the narrative also turns – from well observed humour to darker meditation on human cruelty.
What I liked most about Mister Pip was the subtle charting of Matilda’s maturity. It’s not education that saves her – Mr Watts can’t provide education in the conventional sense – but the wisdom she gains as an observer. Fiction from a child’s point of view doesn’t always work, but Jones manages to pull it off. So much so that I didn’t question this voice of a young girl, ready to consume the world but instead facing terrible tragedy.
For a slim work, Mister Pip has great depth. The mystery of Pop Eye’s history is slowly unravelled for Matilda, and through his eccentricity and sadness she does, oddly, learn a lot. This made me think about my own teachers and how, quite frankly, useless they were in the great scheme of my life. Sometimes the oddest characters we encounter can teach us the most. Whether the classic, like Joe Gargary or Philip Pirrip in Great Expectations, or the forgotten, like Mr Watts.
A book to be treasured.
4 Stars
Written in 1954, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend was first filmed as The Omega Man in 1971. It starred Charlton Heston, a reasonable choice for the lead coming only a few years after his success in the post apocalyptic Planet of the Apes. In the early 1990s a new version was touted starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Again, not surprising when you looked at his CV, although this film was, perhaps thankfullly, never made. I Am Legend has eventually returned to the cinema starring Will Smith. Not my first choice (Nicolas Cage springs to mind for such a role, even Daniel Craig), although I’ll refrain from commenting further until I’ve seen the film.
In the great family tree of horror and sci-fi, it’s not difficult to trace countless books and films back to I Am Legend. Matheson’s future not only concerns an empty city after a deadly plague has killed off most of the population, but also features some of the (un)lucky survivors now doing their night to night business as vampires. Translate vampire into zombie and you have the blueprint for Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later and many others. But a blueprint doesn’t necessarily make a good novel, so is I Am Legend any good? Well I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was great literature but it is a very, very good book indeed…
Robert Neville lives alone in his customised home; he can generate his own electricity to keep his stock of frozen food fresh. He spends his hours making tools, especially wooden stakes. Time is something he has a lot of because, more or less, he’s the last man on Earth. Occasionally Robert Neville drinks. He drinks a lot, but we can forgive him for that as every night a troop of vampires call on him. He locks himself in his house, often fighting them off. During the day, when his enemies sleep, he seeks them out to destroy them and seeks further for a cure to the madness.
What lifts I Am Legend above the usual horror tale is the Robinson Crusoe slant Matheson manages to put on it. Neville slowly comes to terms with his isolation, becoming increasingly resourceful in his survival. His loneliness begins to tip him into an indifference towards his previous role in society and humanity, and as well as Crusoe this novel also acknowledges Gulliver’s Travels as a reference point. When Neville eventually does encounter another seemingly real human, his reaction is far from ecstatic.
Matheson is careful not to slip into too much explanatory prose. I really didn’t want to know what had caused the catastrophe leaving Neville as the last man on Earth, and I became uncomfortable when he begins to delve into some reasoning behind the vampires presence. But he doesn’t become too bogged down. The silly science is kept under leash, leaving some quite moving passages in the book to stand out. Especially good is the part when Neville attempts to coax a stray dog into his world, a sad episode that leads neatly into his encounter with a real – perhaps – human visitor.
I’m tempted to see the latest cinema treatment now – although it will have to be pretty good to surpass this clever and timeless novel.
2 Stars
Sebastian Faulks is probably best known for the celebrated Birdsong, and last year published possibly his best novel so far – Engleby. The Girl at the Lion d’Or dates from 1989, and focuses on a young maid in France during the mid 1930s. Although many novels set during this period concentrate on the looming Nazi threat and impending war, Faulks’s is more concerned with the spectre of The Great War, with its main characters wrestling with the uncomfortable memories it has left them.
Anne is the mysterious maid at the centre of the novel, who arrives to work at the Lion d’Or hotel under the auspices of the stern and formidable manageress. She meets and falls in love with a prominent Jewish man called Hartmann, although ultimately their affair begins to prove far from idyllic. Beneath the problems that stall their relationship (Hartmann is married) they are both haunted by the First World War, Hartmann as a veteran and Anne by the tragedy in her family caused when her father was shot as a mutineer. Faulks manages to recreate this period brilliantly, the Lion d’Or and its surrounding neighbourhood appear as very convinicing and real. The novel also includes many well drawn supporting characters spanning the social spectrum of the setting; the secretive Patron in charge of the hotel, the young waiter who spies on Anne as she bathes, Hartmann’s middle class and carefree country friends, even a government minister ruined by scandal.
The Girl at the Lion d’Or is very well written but it is a slight piece. Faulks attempts to write a conventional and straightforward novel, and its critics may be tempted to dismiss it as a weak slice of romance – its champions, however, have praised it for its subtlety and style. I was undecided. The Girl at the Lion d’Or is a stylish and intelligent work of fiction but it’s also inconsequential and at times slightly dull. Recreating a moment in history isn’t always enough, and subtle writing doesn’t always equate to masterful writing. And coming to it with Birdsong in my mind, I was quite disappointed.
Next up from Sebastian Faulks is Devil May Care, his contribution to the James Bond canon. I’ll be reading this novel when it comes out as I think, two decades on from The Girl at the Lion d’Or, he really does know how to write well – especially after Engleby, which really is masterful. And he may even be able to pick up spy fiction, dust it down and make it fresh again.
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