The Book Tower

Then we Came to the End by Joshua Ferris gave me one of the strangest reading experiences of recent years. My reaction to the book slid from liking it to hating it in only three stages.

The novel begins as a well written and amusing study of office life in Chicago. The style reminded me very much of Joseph Heller, especially his novel Something Happened, which many fans prefer to the more celebrated Catch 22. A sort of White Album vs Sgt Pepper debate. Anyway, Then we Came to the End starts promisingly and I liked it a lot, although there was the nagging doubt at the back of my mind that the book was far too Hellerish. So a word of advice to anyone who’s not a fan of Joseph Heller: don’t read this book.

The first section is quite lengthy and begins to grate because the story doesn’t really go anywhere; there’s no real story at all – simply a series of dryly observed views of office life overshadowed by the depression of the workers facing the onset on redundancy. There’s funny passages – very funny in places – and some excellent dialogue that captures the pettiness and absurdity of office life. Ever stolen somebody’s chair after they’ve left the job because it’s a far better chair than your own? You’ll be hesitating before doing it again after reading this novel.

Ferris does something interesting by changing gear for what I’m calling the second section. This is an althogether more sombre series of chapters following a single character – the office manager as she faces breast cancer. I found it an outstanding piece of writing that surprised me in its sadness and insight. Unfortunately once this section is over Ferris returns for act three and he appears to have lost interest in proceedings. The last 150 pages or so of the novel was one of the biggest struggles I’ve had with a book for a long time. I didn’t want to trawl through any more of the Hellerish style and Ferris appeared to have lost focus. The novel became more of a drag than getting up for work on a winter Monday morning.

So a curate’s egg; funny and incisive but a little too close to the style of a classic author, and really just too long. Where are editors when you need them? At half its length this would have been much better, possibly an outstanding debut novel, but it’s ultimately boring and repetetive, undoing all the good done in the early chapters. And very overrated.

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There’s that buzz you get from discovering new authors that you love. The latest for me is Dan Rhodes, and I’ve just finished his rather wonderful Gold. This is his fifth novel, described by The Times as savagely funny, startlingly original. I can’t argue with that; I suspect that when people describe books as laugh out loud funny they don’t actually mean that but Gold is indeed laugh out loud funny. It’s let your eyes water in a giggling fit funny, put the book down while you pull yourself together funny. Gold had members of my family asking me what I was laughing at and if I was alright. Books don’t do that to me very often.

Gold is hilarious, well written, peculiar and strangely moving. I think I love Dan Rhodes because I suspect that all his novels are like this. I suspect he is a consistently good writer. Gold follows a young Japanese girl called Miyuki on her annual holiday to an eccentric Welsh village, full of idiosyncratic characers who congregate in the local pub, drinking beer and competing in pub quizzes. They go under unusual nicknames such as Tall Mr Hughes, Short Mr Hughes and Septic Barry, but all are beautifully crafted characters that could fill a novel of their own – although one of the skills of Rhodes is that he can effortlessly flesh out his characters by only hinting at their full biography. Miyuki appears to lurk in the shadows, leading a lonely existence; holidaying alone every year, filling herself with beer and junk food, reading endlessly (I know, there’s nothing wrong in that) and slowly filling us in on the backstory of her life. Rhodes makes Miyuki – fairly ordinary – a fascinating, real and touching character (another skill) and Gold sails far above the simple comic novel I was anticipating.

Put simply, if you want to add Dan Rhodes to the ever growing list of your favourite authors then read Gold. You can then attempt to answer the difficult questions of how to form a band but never perform or write any songs, whether it’s in your best interest to become a violently rude pub landlord, how to make your contact lenses dance on a hot stove and if Frazzles really make a perfect side dish. But best of all just enjoy the brilliantly subtle and moving ending. I read the last page twice. I’ll read the whole book again. Intrigued? Then read it.

There’s nothing like discovering new authors you love, and Dan Rhodes has given me the best buzz in a long time.

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Top twenty favourite books in no particular order. Don’t think about it for too long. Take twenty minutes only to compile your list. Bold the ones you’ve read, or reread, since you’ve started blogging. Include novels, non fiction and plays.

• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
• Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake
• Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
• The Caretaker by Harold Pinter
• The Orton Diaries by Joe Orton
• Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Remainder by Tom McCarthy
• Dracula by Bram Stoker

So make of it what you will, compiled in just under twenty minutes. There are less since I’ve been blogging books that I would have thought, and while The Road and Gormenghast will probably stay on my list for a long time, it will be interesting to see how long Neil Gaiman and Tom McCarthy stick around for. And, not having read Salinger for a long time, it’s only pleasant memories that put him on the list.

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