3/5
Another view of a ruined London in a distant future. Like Will Self’s The Book of Dave, J.G. Ballard’s 1962 novel The Drowned World also considers a vastly changed city. With global temperatures soaring, London is drowned by advancing waters as giant alligators, snakes and other primeval nasties slither into view to reclaim the world. A band of scientists decide to stick around, charting the changes to a just about recognisable landscape of submerged department stores and tower blocks. Where Self uses modern landmarks to sketch out his future – the wheel on the South Bank features prominently – Ballard has his cast seeking refuge at the top of tall buildings, and the Planetarium – perhaps a more potent symbol in the early 1960s of Man’s imminent conquest of the stars – is reduced to a dark and menacing underwater cavern. The celebration of outer space becomes trapped in inner space, explored by divers in space age protective suits.
The Drowned World is a well written science fiction novel, but I was disappointed by its lost opportunity to exploit the landscape of London just that little bit more. The premise reminded me of one worthy of H.G. Wells, but – like the devastation in War of the Worlds – the Master would have relished in the chance to describe the city, district by district, as it was claimed by the sea. Ballard also doesn’t delve deeply into why this ecological disaster has occurred; it’s a natural one caused by solar flares (or something equally vague), rather than Mankind bringing it upon himself (he fails to predict the concerns of climate change that a modern novel would eagerly seize upon). Ballard’s interest lies in suggesting human degeneration, something that would have certainly interested Wells. Deep within us all lie fears of the primeval swamp, an innate terror of the reptiles and insects that lived on the Earth millions of years before us. As London is engulfed in water and rising temperatures, these fears also rise in Ballard’s cast – making interesting reading as they slowly succumb to nighmare and madness.
All these years on, The Drowned World survives as a worthy effort to produce a celebral and quality science fiction novel, a hard objective in the sci-fi weary world of the early 1960s. Maybe because of this Ballard treats his subject a little too seriously, there’s room for humour in even the most inhospitable of landscapes – at least on the page. There is also an uncomfortable shift into Heart of Darkness territory towards the end of the novel; an unwise move as it will always be impossible to emulate Conrad. But The Drowned World does have an effective ending, and it’s worth reading, especially as its author had boldly chosen to stick with a genre unfashionable at the time. Admirable.
4/5
At night Dave worked the mainline stations – Victoria and Paddington mostly. The west of London felt warmer in the winter, better lit, less susceptible to the chill of deep time. The fares were frowsty under the sodium lamps. In the back of the cab they slumped against their luggage, and Dave drove them home to Wembley, Twickenham and Muswell Hill. Or else they were tourists bound for the Bonnington, the Inn on the Park or the Lancaster – gaunt, people-barns, where maids flitted through the lobbies, cardboard coffins of dying blooms cradled in their arms. In the wee-wee hours he parked up at an all-night café in Bayswater and sat reading the next day’s news, while solider citizens lay abed waiting for it to happen. His fellow night people were exiguous – they wore the faces of forgotten comedians unfunny and unloved.
Will Self’s novel follows the mental decline of a London taxi driver called Dave Rudman. Seperated from his wife, estranged from his son, Dave slips further into a bleak and confusing world. Reality takes a very weird detour and, when broken, raving and wired on anti-depressants, Dave decides to write it all down. And he doesn’t come near to imagining the legacy he’s creating. Five centuries later, with London flooded and largely unrecognisable, its degenerate citizens worship a new Bible. A book found amongst the remains of the forgotten past – The Book of Dave.
The Book of Dave is a challenging yet compelling read. I was daunted at first by this lengthy novel and came close to abandoning it more than once. It wasn’t until I was at least a third of the way through that it began to grip; I was gripped by Self’s sheer inventiveness, his gift for language and his imagination. It’s one of the most difficult books I’ve read for a while, but Will Self is a highly original and bold voice. As the chapters alternate between Dave Rudman’s sorry life, his decline chronicled between the late 1980s and early 2000s, and the dreamlike future, the reader is given no easy task in making sense of this novel. But if the future chapters are at times unfathomable, they serve well as a nightmarish echo of the present day story. And for me, the contemporary setting worked the best. At first I found Self’s writing grimly reminiscent of Martin Amis’s approach to the city in London Fields; an over the top and detached view, but he soon surpasses any comparison with Amis and reveals what a distinct, mature and gripping talent he has become. And a great London writer – his view of the city is original, romantic and disturbing. And in my mind accurate – he knows his London.
Where in lesser hands The Book of Dave would result in a pretentious and unreadable mess, Self manages to pull it off. A great writer, an infuriating writer. At times I was genuinely moved by this book, and doffed my cap to his skill as an author. At other times I was screaming at him to cut the incomprehensible chapters and get back on track. But that’s Will Self. To get him, you’ve got to love him and you’ve got to hate him. But you can’t ignore him.
4/5
I was quite ill last week with a cruel stomach bug. When not in the bathroom, I took the advantage of spending my time curled up with the cats and reading. Luckily for me my companion was Essays in Love by Alain de Botton. This is a writer who first came to my attention a few years ago with the excellent The Art of Travel. But like countless others, de Botton was cast to the back of my mind with all the other writers I really must read again.
So I was very glad to get reacquainted . Essays in Love is de Botton’s very first book, written in 1993 when he was in his early 20s. Semi-autobiographical, it charts a relationship he has with a young lady called Chloe. The couple meet on a Paris to London flight and proceed to embark on a not particularly unusual love affair. What is remarkable however is de Botton’s writing, especially in how he can make the ordinary and common incredibly fascinating. The wonders of this chance encounter (he marvels over the incredible odds that they sat next to one another on that particular flight), are followed by all the joys and complications of love – that first breakfast together, the introductions to parents and friends, the unpicking of past histories, the rows, the doubts, the plucking up the courage to say I love you. Throughout the book de Botton examines the nature of one who claims to be in love, the characteristics of the passionate, the unwise and the irrational. Why does he have a terrible row with Chloe over her odd choice in shoes? Especially when his newsagent’s choice in shoes is even odder? If he loved his newsagent would he react in the same way? And why does he react with jealously to Chloe’s actions, even when he knows his suspicions are unfounded and absurd? And so on – pondering over every mad notion anyone in a relationship has ever entertained.
What let me down slightly that at times the situation did not always seem real. Alain and Chloe appeared a little too text book and showed all the too obvious stages in a relationship, from conception to bitter break up. At the end of the book, depressed and defeated the lonely de Botton slips into the self indulgent despair we’ve all slipped into. And that doesn’t make the final chapters easy reading. But perhaps this is his intention. Alain and Chloe are text book lovers because they are like us all, we notice the obvious hallmarks because we are all doomed to repeat the pattern.
Alain de Botton is a thoughtful writer with a neat line in self deprecation. He is also very funny, one of the few writers who can make me laugh out loud. Like his other work Essays in Love is peppered with references to philosophers and their writing but skilfully done as to not alienate the reader. What’s ultimately, and strangely, satisfying is that even though he writes very wisely about the subject he has probably learnt nothing. As he hints at the end, like all foolish lovers he will keep making all the same mistakes again.
5/5
My children were at the centre of my life, circled at a distance by my writing. I kept up a steady output of novels and short story collections, largely because I spent most of my time at home. A short story, or a chapter of a novel, would be written in the time between ironing a school tie, serving up the sausage and mash, and watching Blue Peter. I am certain that my fiction is all the better for that. My greatest ally was the pram in the hall.
Living with his family in Shepperton, J.G.Ballard published his first novel The Drowned World in 1962. Two years later, his wife tragically died after succumbing to pneumonia on holiday in Spain. The still young writer brought up his three children on his own, filling his days with science fiction between the school run. In his excellent autobiography, Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton, Ballard remembers raising his children with great pride and affection. This was never a time of struggle of stress, and in his old age looks back to mourn the loss of young children buzzing around him:
But childhood has gone, and in the silence one stares at the empty whisky bottles in the pantry and wonders if any number of drinks will fill the void.
But Ballard doesn’t spend too long mourning what’s gone, and although there are many dark moments in his life, this book is a joy to read. He was born in Shanghai in 1930 and spent the first sixteen years of his life there, several of them in a prison camp when his family were interned by the Japanese during the Second World War. His experiences formed the background for his most commercially successful novel, Empire of the Sun, although anyone familiar with this work should still read Ballard’s new autobiography. It’s a very straightforwardly written yet immensely moving memoir, following his life after the war through medical school, the RAF, family life and success as a writer. He doesn’t dwell on the horrors he witnessed first hand (such as the murder of a Chinese peasant by Japanese soldiers that he stumbles across at a railway station) and he doesn’t try to pry too deeply into the influences that have shaped his writing (surrealism, Freud, the grisly cavadars he encountered as an anatomy student). Miracles of Life reminded me what an unpretentious writer he actually is – and an obviously warm hearted man.
The bulk of Miracles of Life covers the years up to the 1960s; as Ballard grows older time passes very swiftly and the last 20 years are covered in as many pages, although he still manages to include interesting passages on working with Spielberg and his return visit to Shanghai in 1991. There’s also many interesting snippets of his life, such as his volatile friendship with Kingsley Amis and his current literary pals – one of his best friends is Will Self. His oddest associate is probably the young man called Cyril he knew as a fellow internee in Shanghai, who dreamt of changing his name to something more theatrical and becoming a famous actor. Cyril later became Peter Wyngarde, the camp and dashing 60s tv star Jason King.
It might be too early to talk about books of the year, but Miracles of Life is just that – very readable and enjoyable. The final pages, when Ballard reveals the urgency for writing the book, are also very moving. I couldn’t recommend this book enough.
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.
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