there was a war on: you could tell that too from the untidy gaps between the Bloomsbury houses – a flat fireplace half-way up a wall, like the painted fireplace in a cheap dolls’ house, and lots of mirrors and green wall-papers, and from round a corner of the sunny afternoon the sound of glass being swept up, like the lazy noise of the sea on a shingle beach.
This extract from the opening of Graham Greene’s The Ministry of Fear sets the mood for the novel perfectly; the imagery of the dolls’ house prepares for the surreal atmosphere of the book, as does the use of mirrors and eerily familiar interiors for the nightmare world of Arthur Rowe. The numbed familiarity of the London Blitz is also brought to the fore; writing in 1943, Greene brilliantly sketches the backdrop of a capital at war – strong enough for a modern reader to taste the sound, smell and fear of the bombings.
The Ministry of Fear is one of Greene’s oddest books, and reads at times like his usual prose has been soaked in Kafka and Conrad. The brilliant opening chapter finds Rowe at a sorry wartime fête, where he correctly guesses the weight of a cake on the advice of a fortune teller. Here’s starts Greene’s own nightmarish take on the wrong man story, with Rowe pursued by dark forces across a London under threat of the air raid. It’s a brilliant tale, illuminated by the panic and uncertainly of 40s London. As usual, Greene can say a lot in few words; whilst the novel is brief it is also dense and layered, proving again that he is not always the easy author we take him to be.
Unfortunately this novel doesn’t live up to its early promise. Perhaps I was more interested in the background of the Blitz rather than the plot, which attempts to unravel the weird set pieces, which include a murder at a séance, an encounter with a seedy bookseller and a spell in a sinister hospital, to explain itself more logically. This somehow takes the fun out of things, but The Ministry of Fear is worth a read for an example of good literature that just doesn’t age.
But sometimes, in the street, without thinking, with a natural gesture, she took my arm, and then, yes, I surprised myself by missing the other life that could have been, if something hadn’t been broken so early. It wasn’t just the question of my sister; it was vaster than that, it was the entire course of events, the wretchedness of the body and of desire, the decisions you make and on which you can’t go back, the very meaning you choose to give this thing that’s called, perhaps wrongly, your life.
Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones is extraordinary; a detailed and sweeping account of the Second World War that is extremely well researched, intelligent and well written. It may be a classic, and it demands serious attention, but I am still to decide how much I liked this novel. At 975 pages this is a very difficult and demanding read; it is at times turgid, infuriating and meandering, whilst at others there is a genius in Littell’s writing that does shine through, albeit fleetingly.
Please note that as I attempt to make sense of this book, the following will contain spoilers.
The novel is narrated by Max Lau, an SS officer who, although open about his role in the massacres of the Holocaust, does often take the role of an observer of the atrocities of the Third Reich. Lau reveals that he escaped to France after the war by assuming a new identity and surviving to old age. The Kindly Ones is his memoir, which although ostensibly a part fictional part historical account of the Second World War, also features the dark undercurrents of incest and matricide.
The novel is divided into seven chapters; Toccata, Allemande I and II, Courante, Sarabande, Menuet en Rondeaux, Air and Gigue. Apparently this refers to the sequence of a Bach suite, although I had to look up the reference. Furthermore, each chapter is supposedly based on the style of each dance although, again, I did miss this allusion. Jonathan Littell has the tendency to be pretentious, although can overcome this with his talent as a writer.
The Kindly Ones is harrowing from the start, with Lau recounting his involvement in the horrendous massacre of Jews and Bolsheviks in the Ukraine. Although, as I’ve said, he’s more of an observer than a participant, Lau does appear to show a cold detachment to what is going on around him. His role on the sidelines make the terrible events all the more difficult to take. How could he stand by and let so much go on? Which is, of course, the rub. Nevertheless, the harrowing events do begin to play on his physical and mental faculties. Lau’s narrative also reveals his attraction to homosexuality and also to incest. We learn that Lau’s father mysteriously disappeared, his estranged mother remarried and that Max has a twin sister; one he is obsessed with.
Events move on to the battle of Stalingrad, which Lau manages to escape before the German defeat after being seriously wounded. Although shot in the head, he makes a miraculous recovery. His friend, Thomas, also suffers serious injuries but pulls through. After recovering in Berlin, Lau is awarded the Iron Cross by Heinrich Himmler. He decides to reacquaint himself with his mother and stepfather and in one of the novel’s strangest sequences, his mother and her husband are brutally and mysteriously murdered. On discovering the murder scene, Lau flees.
Lau is promoted to an advisory role in the management of concentration camps, here attempting to do some – although ultimately flawed – good, in trying to improve the hopeless conditions for the inmates. He is also dogged by two detectives who suspect him of the murder of his mother and stepfather. Although the case is eventually dropped (now in a senior role, Lau has many useful contacts), they continue to periodically surface to harass him. We also learn that his mother was in charge of two mysterious twins, whose parentage is unknown but who have fallen into the care of his sister. Around this time Lau considers a relationship with a young woman and tries to court convention, although he later decides to forget her.
The Kindly Ones reaches it darkest section with Lau visiting the empty home of his sister and indulging in lurid sexual fantasies. His one man orgy becomes a sequence of dreams merged with reality. Although deeply disturbing, Littell really reveals his brilliance here. The term nazi porn has been directed at the book, most probably with reference to this chapter. Although there is an element of dark pornography here, I still herald Littell’s writing. I can’t explain or defend this contradiction, but I will always be honest about what I think is talented writing.
Thomas eventually arrives to rescue Lau from his self indulgent breakdown, and they travel to Berlin as the war draws to its end; on route they meet a group of murderous children. We reach Berlin and Adolf Hitler makes a small but memorable appearance in the story. In an almost surreal scene, Lau attacks the Führer and assaults him, but whilst under arrest manages to escape in the chaos of Berlin falling. He is confronted by one of the detectives obsessed with the murder case (who, we presume, has been obsessively following him), although Thomas intervenes and kills the aggressor. The novel ends with Lau then coldly killing Thomas, thus stealing his identity (Thomas – perhaps foolishly – earlier revealing that he had a cunningly invented French persona as a line of escape) which enables Lau to flee to France to start a new life.
Littell throws many riddles at the reader that are left unsolved. Although the circumstances of his mother’s murder are never explored, I drew the conclusion that Lau killed her, especially as the original French title Les Bienveillantes relates to The Oresteia written by Aeschylus, which featured the vengeful Furies who tracked down those who murdered a parent. In Lau’s case, however, he makes a clean break. I’m also guessing that the enigmatic twins who feature in the story are the offspring of Lau and his sister; the twins of twins – an echo of duality running through the book, the duality of good and evil that Lau wrestles with before always succumbing to the latter.
The Kindly Ones has been descibed as having a “terrible twist”. This is misleading, suggesting something unexpected and surprising. That Lau kills Thomas is, sadly, not a surprise. He saves his own skin, giving in to his ultimate act of evil. Thomas gives him the germ of an idea. With it, he thrives. If you want to be really crude, it’s the survival of the fittest. But it is true that this is truly terrible.
The precisely written prose of The Kindly Ones is both a blessing and a hindrance. Littell’s narrative is so detailed that it provides an absorbing account of Lau’s world, which at times becomes so fascinating and real that you begin to doubt that he can really be a work of fiction. At the same time, the book grinds almost to a halt when it becomes preoccupied with nazi ideology, sometimes recounting detailed conversations that run over dozens of pages. And when the novel gets odd it really gets odd, at times uncomfortably so, but some of the sections – especially the account of the fall of Berlin at the end of the book – are beautifully written.
The Kindly Ones was rewarded with the attention that it ruthlessly demanded from me. But it wasn’t easy. It’s an absorbing book, but also an infuriating one. At times depressing, and rarely uplifiting, but one revealing talent in the author, and one stretching the reader. In my case, almost to the limit – the most demanding book I’ve ever read. But I’ve never said that good literature shouldn’t be difficult. If you are a real reader – and I think you are – there’s no option but to try this.
Last year I was very impressed with Tom Rob Smith’s Soviet thriller Child 44. The novel reached the Booker longlist, much to the horror of many critics who thought a commercial crime thriller far too lowbrow. I found this view somewhat sniffy; Child 44 is generally a well written and intriguing crime novel. My only criticism was in how Smith all too eagerly set things up at the end for a sequel. Now the sequel has come.
And oh dear oh dear. Whilst I defended Child 44 against those who accused Smith of being a Dan Brown in the waiting, I have no defence whatsoever for The Secret Speech. This is a book clumsily written and so preposterous that you’ll want to throw it across the room (or in my case out of the hotel room window). Where Child 44 ended with the whispers of a follow up, Smith must have sat around doing very little until his publishers started banging in his door and demanding it. It stinks of a book written in great haste, and one that is little more that a hastily sketched out screenplay in the guise of a hardback.
I don’t normally write bad reviews, but Smith has annoyed me greatly because I’m convinced that he does have talent, and there are parts of The Secret Speech that show what a better book it might have been (albeit only one character convincingly portrayed: the captain of the prison ship that features was very well written for example, which made me question what went wrong with the rest of the book). Otherwise there are too many big scenes that cry out for the attention of the cinema; the detonation of a church, a storm and a revolt at sea, a chase through the sewers.
The Secret Speech catches up with Leo Demidov from Child 44, now heading a unique homicide division (unique because Stalinist Russia had previously denied the existence of anything like murder in their regime where murder was the privilege of the state). Leo and his wife are also coping with adoption (the two girls they took care of after their parents were murdered in the first book). A series of murders surround both publication of Khrushchev’s “secret speech” denouncing Stalin and the incarceration of a former priest arrested years before by a younger Leo. One of Leo’s daughters is subsequently kidnapped and the ransom involves Leo posing as a prisoner in the Gulags in order to help the priest escape.
I can’t really go on as the plot becomes sillier and sillier. In prison Leo meets a crazy governor who reminds of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. There’s a tough female villain who heads up a Russian gang of cardboard criminals and a twist that looks like it’s going to save the novel but then fails; it all ends stupidly. So unfortunately, and it pains me to say this, The Secret Speech really does to prove that Tom Rob Smith is a Dan Brown in the waiting. And that might even be an insult to Dan Brown; The Da Vinci Code is a much better book.
David Peace’s Red Riding quartet of novels are very much trapped in the time and place of 70s and 80s Yorkshire. Grey days, both for victims of violent crime and the innocent people drawn into police corruption, lies and brutality. The image of 70s and 80s British policing has recently been a popular subject for television, both with the entertaining yet completely unnaturalistic Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, and with the adaptations of three of the Red Riding novels which wallowed in smoky rooms and grim period fashion.
Although native to Yorkshire, Peace has lived in Japan for a number of years and wrote his early quartet of crime novels there. Far removed in a setting from the world of Edddie Dunford, Jack Whitehead et al it is perhaps surprising that he makes the novels so believable, haunting and effective. Therefore it is even more surprising that many of the themes of 1974, 1977, 1980 and 1983 surface in the first of Peace’s Tokyo Trilogy, Tokyo: Year Zero.
Tokyo: Year Zero has one of the most brilliant opening sequences I have read for some time, where a murder victim is discovered on the day of the Japanese surrender of 1945. Although a suspect is found in the locality and executed, there is a doubt that he actually guilty of the crime, here beginning the familiar Peace pattern of justice serving as injustice and the police helpless in the hands of those with power. The following chapters jump a year forward to 1946, with Detective Minami showing the characteristics of the typical Peace narrator. Typically repetitive dialogue driving into you, where dreams and reality merge. One of the most arresting sequences surrounds an autopsy, where in a nightmarish sequence Minami perceives the murder victim as still conscious.
In terms of plot, Tokyo Year Zero is most similar to Peace’s earlier 1980, where a detective investigating a series of murders slowly begins to lose his grip on authority and his perception of the world surrounding him. Where 1980 followed the crimes of the Yorkshire Ripper, this novel is based on another real life murderer Yoshio Kodaira, who was executed in 1949. Like Peter Hunter and the Ripper, Minami attempts to piece together a trail of murders that may or not lead to his suspect. One of the murders, one that Kodaira does not confess to, remains unsolved, and Peace enjoys one of his favourite themes of policing and detection masking other crimes that remain a mystery.
That Tokyo Year Zero is so reminiscent of Peace’s earlier novels shows good and bad in Peace’s writing. Some of the episodes appear too familiar, and perhaps it is not a good thing where the voice of a Tokyo detective in the 1940s at times sounds eerily similar to the voice of Brian Clough in The Damned Utd.. There are also other Peace motifs; the mental asylum, the seedy journalist, the prostitutes, the all powerful kingpin sitting outside of the law. Most obviously recognisable is the weak man as an officer of the law, being led, step by step, into an inevitible doom. Criticisms about familiarity are only minor however; this novel also creates an excellent sense of a very different culture at a crucial time in history.
Tokyo: Occupied City, the second part of the trilogy, is out later this year. It will be interesting to see where Peace takes his writing; if it’s more of the familiar or something more surprising. It will still be atop my summer reading list. This is a writer difficult to leave alone.
I’m about a third of the way through Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, a novel of nearly 1000 pages in length that is an at times painfully disturbing account of the Second World War from the point of view of an SS officer. The book is strange reading; often almost grimly fascinating, at others turgid, laborious and almost unreadable. I’m going to waver my review until when (and if) I finish it. There’s genius in there somewhere, and the novel has already received many glowing notices. I understand where Littell is coming from and where he is going, I’m just finding it hard to stick with him.
The Kindly Ones continues my run of difficult fiction this year, which started with Roberto Bolano’s 2666. Another extremely long novel, the late Spanish author’s swansong has been described by many as a masterpiece. This is possibly the most inpenetrable novel I’ve ever picked up, the kind of novel where you’re still working out what it is actually about when you’re turning the 800th page. Compared to 2666, The Kindly Ones is a breeze, but I’m glad I’ve read 2666. If the reader is an explorer then this is the Everest of books. Or maybe the Moon.
If this wasn’t enough, I’ve also worked my way through David Peace’s extraordinary Red Riding quartet, which although a definite masterpiece is still the most unsettling series of books I have ever read. I followed with The Damned United, Peace’s account of Brian Clough’s short term as manager of Leeds United in 1974. The writing style is as distinctive as his earlier fiction, although where Red Riding blended multilayered voices with brutal landscapes and dreams with brutal characters, I found The Damned United less effective. Expecting an account of Clough’s struggle with Leeds, the reader is treated to more staccato dialogue, confusing jumps between different narratives and Peace’s poetic style, although it’s often the poetry of the nightmare. I found the Clough story, in Peace’s hands, almost too difficult to bear.
David Peace is like a friend I don’t really like very much but can’t resist. I hang around with him more than I should. I listen to his voice and it gets under my skin; I admire his style but I want rid of it after too long. Then I go back for more.
Next week I’m on holiday but it won’t end there. I’m taking another Peace novel with me, Tokyo Year Zero, the first of his Tokyo trilogy. Also packed is The Secret Speech, Tom Rob Smith’s sequel to the acclaimed Child 44. This is a new crime series of novels set in 50s Soviet Russia. Some may call it dark fiction, but it’s really quite light compared to what I’ve been reading lately.
Previous Page |
Next Page
