Dusklands: A Review

J.M. Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.  I know this as a fact as every work published by him after this date is plastered with this fact.  Two things are wrong with this statement: 1) you don’t win a Nobel Prize, you are awarded one, and 2) having a Nobel Prize conferred on you doesn’t automatically make all of your work wondrous. 

I have always admired Coetzee – and admired is so the right word.  You don’t love Coetzee, in fact sometimes he repels you; sometimes he spits in your face and expects you to like him for it.  His prose is deliberately provocative, and it can be notoriously difficult.  I read Disgrace in hardback, in 1999, and about six years later I read Life & Times of Michael K.  Each successive new novel since Disgrace I’ve put on my ‘to read list’ and never gotten around to.  There always seems to be some other author I should buy first, read first, and be angered by first.  Then, the other day browsing a charity shop, I saw a collection of four early Coetzee novels and, on impulse, bought the lot.  You don’t see any Coetzee’s, other than Disgrace, in charity shops very often.  So last night, looking at these four Coetzee novels, I told myself I better start reading them, before they slip into my books cupboard along with all those other unread novels that gather there, waiting for me to read them.

I started with Dusklands.  It seemed appropriate, being his first novel.  I thought it might be interesting to see what protean Coetzeean elements were imbued in this novel.   Quite a few, as it happens.

Dusklands is essentially two short stories.  The Vintage edition I read clocked in at a meagre 125 pages.  The first tells the story of Eugene Dawn, a man hired by Coetzee to write a report into the Vietnam War and who is edging into madness.  The second tells of a different Coetzee, who is tasked with exploring South Africa in the 18^th century, and who becomes embroiled in conflict with the indigenous peoples.  Though they are separate stories, there are overlaps between the two in terms of theme and these thematic elements reverberate throughout the novel, building up depth and power. 

Of the two pieces, I found the second more interesting.  Both are very well written – you’d expect nothing less from a Nobel Prize ‘winner’ – but the story of Jacobus Coetzee has more visceral impact, and the historical questions raised seem pertinent even today (which is Coetzee’s point). 

Dusklands is not always an easy read, but it is an ultimately rewarding one (even if not all its elements work as well as they should).  I firmly believe that literature should challenge ones preconceived notions, as well as entertain, and Coetzee’s debut novel does both these things.  Of course we know he will go onto to do this sort of thing better, and with more style and power, but for the beginning of a career, Dusklands is pretty heady stuff.

The Apartment: A Review

So I was wandering the aisles of my local bookstore the other day.  I wasn’t particularly looking to buy anything, but killing time while it rained outside, and with nothing else to do.  It was one of those days.  You know the type.  That was when I picked Greg Baxter’s novel off the shelf, where it was sandwiched in between two other novels.  One of the rules is never judge a book by its cover – but I did just that.  Penguin have designed a lovely cover for The Apartment.  With cover quotes from Hisham Matar and Roddy Doyle (two very different writers, tonally, causing yet further intrigue).  The first few lines of the blurb on the back have sold me, and a reading of the opening page is enough to seal the deal.

The Apartment, then, is that kind of novel.  One to discover surreptitiously, to come to with little preconception.  Its power lies in its simplicity – that is, a simplicity that carries such overpowering depths.  I will tell you little of the plot but to say that it concerns a man who walks around an unnamed European capital city looking for an apartment.  With him is a female friend, Saskia, and as the first seeds of romance are sown, life in this unknown city is about to become more fulfilled than the narrator has any hope – or desire - for.  All he wants to walk the city, read his novels, and watch the world go by.  The world is doing everything it can to keep him engaged with it.  We can never truly excise ourselves – interaction with others will always bring connection, and connections sometimes blossom into friendship. 

Greg Baxter has previously published one work – A Preparation for Death – of which I am oblivious.  I will be tracking it down now.  An internet search shortly after finishing The Apartment threw up a few interviews with Baxter (The Apartment provides almost no biographical detail about its author) and reveal him to be a man interested in quality literature, in the responsibility of the novel to excavate the depths of human experience.  Certainly The Apartment is unafraid of facing up to the darkness.  Its narrator has done some bad things, and they involve Iraq (but they are not what you think), and he meets other people whose engagement with the world is not always stable.  There is a trip to some ruins outside the city with another ex-veteran that hints at great darkness in the soul, churning away. 

The quality of Baxter’s prose is always strong.  At times it becomes hyper-real (lengthy descriptions of very ordinary moments) and I know in some quarters this novel has come under attack for these moments; I feel, however, that they are entirely within character.  This man is clearly suffering some form of PTSD – he has sold the objects of his former life, negated his previous experience into oblivion, and wants nothing more than to be a ghost, drifting in a cold, dark place.  He would, at times, become calm, focussed on the insignificant, to quell the rising storm.  What Baxter has done is create a very human character on the page, flawed and damaged, whose problems are never explained but are to be intuited – which is how life is, when you think about it.

The Apartment, then, is a very strong debut novel.  Precise, controlled, and with a humbling beauty to its prose.  Greg Baxter is a name to watch, and The Apartment is a novel to read, perhaps more than once (for the first time in a while with a new novel, I wanted to read it again the moment I finished it).  I read it in one sitting, a gulp of fresh, winter air.  This is perhaps the best way to experience it.  Highly recommended.

Predictions for the Man Booker Prize 2012

The Man Booker judges announce their shortlist on Tuesday.  The 12 novels on the longlist will be cut to just 6.  

 

This year’s panel (Sir Peter Stothard chairing, with Dinah Birdh, Amanda Foreman, Dan Stevens and Bharat Tandon as judges) have a tough time ahead.  For my money they’ve compiled one of the most interesting longlists in recent memory.  It seems like an almost impossible task to cut the 12 to 6, but it must be done. 

Here, then, are the six novels I think will make the shortlist, in no particular order:

‘Umbrella’ by Will Self

‘Bring up the Bodies’ by Hilary Mantel

‘The Lighthouse’ by Alison Moore

‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ by Rachel Joyce

‘Philida’ by Andre Brink

‘The Yips’ by Nicola Barker

The first five on that list seemed easy.  But the final position oscillates between The Yips and Ned Beauman’s The Teleportation Accident.  I plumped for The Yips as I think The Teleportation Accident loses some of its power in the final 50 pages (but up until then it is absolutely superb). 

Why I chose these six:

I think ‘Umbrella’ deserves its place because Will Self’s novel is brilliantly constructed, engaging, funny, and proof that the modernist edge in fiction can still produce interesting and challenging works.

‘Bring up the Bodies’ deserves its place as Hilary Mantel has again bought the past to living, breathing life, and the control of her material is exemplary. 

‘The Lighthouse’ is a rich, textured novel, beautifully written, and with such depth despite its brevity, that it is a novel we shall return to again.

‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ has gone through to my shortlist simply because I think it is very funny, very touching, wonderfully written and has proven to be a winner with audiences.  I think it’s the only novel on the longlist that actually made me cry.

‘Philida’ is another historical novel where the author is in complete control.  Andre Brink has managed something unsettling and compelling in this novel, and it has, with Harold Fry, one of the more engaging and unique protagonists on the longlist.

And finally, ‘The Yips’ because, on the basis of this, Nicola Barker is an absolute talent that deserves to be rewarded.  The Yips isn’t without flaws (it’s too long, for starters, and there’s just too much going on) but each page has something brilliant on it (a gag, a line of dialogue, a description, a character) and for a novel about golf, it is surprisingly fun.

So there we have it, the six novels I think will make the shortlist.

Why I lost the others:

I lost Sam Thompson’s ‘Communion Town’ as I think it’s not a novel, but a collection of short stories, and this will be noted negatively by the judges (though they were right to reward it).

I lost ‘Narcopolis’ by Jeet Thayil because I think that, though there is some very great writing in this novel, it ultimately doesn’t quite hang together, and there are a few plot strands that could easily have been lost.

I lost ‘Skios’ by Michael Frayn quite simply because this is another novel that falls apart in its final pages, and though it is very funny, it is not Michael Frayn’s best work.

I lost ‘Swimming Home’ by Deborah Levy at great pains.  I think it is a very fine novel, with a great sense of place and tone, and she is certainly a talent to watch. 

I lost ‘The Garden of Evening Mists’ by Tan Twan Eng because its pace is a little uneven, and there is simply too much going on in it. 

I lost ‘The Teleportation Accident’ by Ned Beauman, as I have already said, with great pains as well.  I think it a mostly very fine novel, with a somewhat frustrating climax given what has preceded it. 

The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize 2012 will be announced on Tuesday 11 September.

The winner of the Man Booker Prize 2012 will be announced on Tuesday the 16^th of October.

Who do I think favourite to win at the moment?   Will Self’s ‘Umbrella’.

Bring up the Bodies: A Review

And in the final of my reviews of Man Booker longlisted novels, I turn to:

 

Hilary Mantel’s latest, Bring up the Bodies, needs little introduction.  It is the second part of her life of Thomas Cromwell, following on from the 2009 winner of the Man Booker, Wolf Hall.  To say that this novel was impatiently awaited by her many, many fans would be an understatement.  They even did an hour long TV special, with an extended interview with Mantel, and they rarely do that on TV these days.  Writers just aren’t interesting enough (apparently).  It is here that I must admit to being a late convert to Mantel’s fiction.  I read about a third of Wolf Hall in 2009 and found it unbearable.  I couldn’t warm to Cromwell, to the decision to present everything in the first person present.  In short, I found the novel a chore.

When it was announced last year that Wolf Hall would now have two sequels, and not just the one that Mantel had originally planned I thought, rather disingenuously, that she was simply cashing in on her success.  (And why not?  Novelists these days rarely enjoy great success, and offer suffer in penury.)  When Bring up the Bodies was longlisted I thought, again rather disingenuously, the Booker judges are just bowing to popular demand that the novel be included.  When, early on, she was announced by the bookies as the favourite to win, it did nothing to allay my doubts.  That I decided I had to read all twelve books on the longlist, I left Mantel to the end.  To read Bring up the Bodies would mean to read – and this time finish – a novel I didn’t enjoy in 2009.  So reluctantly I picked up Wolf Hall and started to read…

Never have I made such a volte-face.  Starting Wolf Hall again, it was like I was reading a different novel to the one I remembered.  Mantel’s study of Thomas Cromwell is majestic in is power and reach, psychological true, and it brings sixteenth century Britain to living, breathing life.

Bring Up the Bodies continues the life story of Cromwell with Anne Boleyn and the beginning of the kings relationship with Jane Seymour, whom he will meet at Wolf Hall in 1536.  The real strength of Mantel’s imagining is to make the familiar seem strange again, and to make us forget we know how this story is going to end.  We all know Anne Boleyn is to be beheaded, but what Mantel does is show us how this came to be, to understand it in the context of its day. 

No matter how majestic Bring up the Bodies is, I think full judgement on Mantel’s work cannot be truly made until she has finished the last volume in her series, which she plans to do with The Mirror and the Light.  As a work in progress it is superlative. 

Will it win the Booker?

If it does, I think it will be the first sequel to do so.  It is good enough to.  It is certainly deserving of a place on the shortlist.  Whether it takes the top spot is going to be a tough call.