Books you've read recently and would unreservedly recommend
- Thread starter Rambler
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I don't know if any fellow posters are familiar with the work of WG Seabald, but I would unhesitatingly recommend his three great works The Emigrants; The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz. These are books which, generically, are impossible to classify: fiction, history, memoir, reflection... profound meditations on the horrors of twentieth century history, imperialism, genocide etc. as well as what he terms the 'natural history of destruction'.(Seabald was German, but spent much of his life in the UK. He was Professor of German at the University of East Anglia when he died after suffering a heart attack and crashing his car two years back). I keep the Rings of Saturn by my bedside and find myself drawn to it practically every night: it's, on one level, a record of the narrator's walking tour around the eerie, haunted landscape of the East Anglian and Suffolk coasts, in which he encounters the ghostly appariations of history in the traces evidenced in the landscape. But on another it connects a fiercely local environment to the greater forces of world history as well as to the narrator's (fictional?) biography. Really wonderful writing.
Any readers who relish Iain Sinclair's excursions through London's psycho-geograhical landscape would, I reckon, take to Seabald (if they haven't already done so).
Any readers who relish Iain Sinclair's excursions through London's psycho-geograhical landscape would, I reckon, take to Seabald (if they haven't already done so).
IdleRich
IdleRich
Never read it but it sounds fantastic. Every time I don't know what to read I plunder this list and there haven't been any duds yet.
I've just read Clerkenwell Tales by Peter Akroyd which is kind of related I suppose in the way it deals very much with an area and a time. On the other hand it is very easily classifiable I think as a kind of historical thriller. I quite enjoyed reading the book but I think that I found it somewhat too slight and this combined with the dryness of the writing made it difficult to get fully involved with, it was over before it began. I definitely preferred Hawksmoore and Chatterton but I've never read London the Biography. Anyone read that?
I've just read Clerkenwell Tales by Peter Akroyd which is kind of related I suppose in the way it deals very much with an area and a time. On the other hand it is very easily classifiable I think as a kind of historical thriller. I quite enjoyed reading the book but I think that I found it somewhat too slight and this combined with the dryness of the writing made it difficult to get fully involved with, it was over before it began. I definitely preferred Hawksmoore and Chatterton but I've never read London the Biography. Anyone read that?
Mitchell's new book has been flagged as very much a departure from his earlier work. I must confess I've never enjoyed or rated his writing: I read his first novel (the title now escapes me) and found it jarrihgly clunky and terribly derivative of the likes of Borges, Calvino, Marquez etc although nowhere near as good or as elegant as his influences. His work also bears more than a passing resemblance to that of Harukai Murakami's (which may help explain his popularity in Japan). His new one however sounds promising: much less forced and over-reaching than the fiction I find to be very over-rated.
As for Ackroyd, I haven't, alas, read his biography of London yet but I do intend to. I think Ackroyd's fiction has lost a lot of its force in the past decade or so: like you, IdleRich, I loved Hawksmoor but have been less impressed by his later work. I once saw Ackroyd and Sinclair give a joint reading at UEA in Norwich about 12 years back. The department there is very much informed by deconstruction, post-structuralism etc. but the two of them spent much of the evening swapping ghost stories about various parts of the East End of London that they knew. It was quite something, a real bravura performance. I've always had an affection for their work ever since.
As for Ackroyd, I haven't, alas, read his biography of London yet but I do intend to. I think Ackroyd's fiction has lost a lot of its force in the past decade or so: like you, IdleRich, I loved Hawksmoor but have been less impressed by his later work. I once saw Ackroyd and Sinclair give a joint reading at UEA in Norwich about 12 years back. The department there is very much informed by deconstruction, post-structuralism etc. but the two of them spent much of the evening swapping ghost stories about various parts of the East End of London that they knew. It was quite something, a real bravura performance. I've always had an affection for their work ever since.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I think that his first novel was Ghost Written. I can understand that someone might see it as tricksy and contrived and I would agree that he is definitely greatly influenced by Borges and Calvino but writes in a more populist style which can border on cartoony at times (esecially in Cloud Atlas).
On the other hand I would totally disagree that his writing is clunky, I loved each of the individual stories and thought that he had a great ability to conjure up different perspectives and different worlds and thread them all together. The ending tying it all together came completely out of the blue yet made perfect sense. Also, having said that it seems contrived I think that is only due to the way it fits together; you don't feel it is contrived as you read it, it's just that at the end when you see the whole picture you are somehow left with the feeling that it must have been contrived - how else could it have happened?
What I'm trying to say is that despite some drawbacks I absolutely loved Ghost Written and Cloud Atlas, they gave me more pleasure than any other recent releases I've read for a long time. His other novel, Number 9 Dream, wasn't nearly so good and I must admit that I am not as excited about his new one now that I've heard what it's about although I'm sure that I will still read it eventually.
OldRottenhat
Active member
IdleRich said:
Yes, but it's the only Ackroyd I've read so I don't know how it compares to his other work. Like a lot of encyclopaedic books it becomes a trudge after a while - the individual sections remain interesting but there wasn't enough of a coherent narrative or formal structure to keep me involved over the course of 800 pages. On the other hand, I don't think you'd lose much by reading it intermittently over the course of a few months.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Oh yeah, I forgot to answer this bit. I completely agree although the one that was most like Murakami was Number 9 Dream which I liked the least. Strangely enough I had just finished reading a Murakami book and at times I wasn't sure which author I was reading.
I wondered if it might be a bit like that. I think an ex-girlfriend had it and never finished it.
jenks
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jenks
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as for ackroyd - i've read all of his stuff but must say he is very hit and miss - recent fiction as veered between the gripping - lambs of london and the awful - milton in america.
i like his non-fiction but alos understand those who feel it falls between out there sinclair psychogeography and standard worthy reference work. I ended up treating London as a series of interesting essays rather than as a unified whole - the tv series was abysmal though
anyone a fan of moorcock's mother london or maureen duffy's Capital which share many of ackroyd's approaches to London?
i like his non-fiction but alos understand those who feel it falls between out there sinclair psychogeography and standard worthy reference work. I ended up treating London as a series of interesting essays rather than as a unified whole - the tv series was abysmal though
anyone a fan of moorcock's mother london or maureen duffy's Capital which share many of ackroyd's approaches to London?
Wow, thanks for pointing me to that thread Jenks - a fantastic debate (which makes me wish I'd discovered this forum earlier so I could have signed up sooner and taken part). I must confess I was almost entirely with Melmoth there rather than with your good self, although I was also impressed by the list of writers you detailed who you thought were worthwhile reading.
Wow! A forum with impassioned debate on the contemporary novel! Surely Dissensus is the forum I've been waiting to discover for the past 5 years!
Wow! A forum with impassioned debate on the contemporary novel! Surely Dissensus is the forum I've been waiting to discover for the past 5 years!
IdleRich
IdleRich
Dunno if I can quote out of the linked thread but thought I had to pick up on this from Jenks:
I thought that that was fantastic. Dreamlike throughout but also scary, humourous and moving even though most of the time you have no idea exactly what is supposed to be happening - what was wrong with it?
jenks
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IdleRich said:
being picked up on something i wrote a while ago...but here goes - there is no denying he writes fantastically well decribed scenes with nuances of subued violence but it was the sum total of it all - i kept waiting for an end - something which gave me some kinda sense but what i got instead was a very sophisticated version of '...and it was all a dream'
am lukewarm about ishiguru generally - it's that bradbury uea creative writing school styel favoured by him and mcewan that has led to diminishing returns with each new venture
jenks said:
I can't agree with you here Jenks in your perjorative judgement of the 'Bradbury'/UEA school and its pernicious influence. I'm uncertain, exactly, just what you mean by bracketing McEwan and Ishiguro together: they're very different writers. (And a pendantic point: although McEwan is eternally credited as been the first student of Bradbury's then revolutionary creative writing classes, he wasn't actually: he was studying for an academic MA and showed stories to Bradbury, who took him under his wing).
Can you define a little more precisely what you mean when you refer to a Bradbury/UEA style (and why it is such a Bad Thing)?
IdleRich
IdleRich
Sorry, I didn't mean that I was picking you up, I just wanted to know why you didn't like it.
Regarding Ishiguru in general, I loved The Remains of the Day, then I read When We Were Orphans which was so similar that it wasn't worth bothering with, it wasn't even a refinement either, it was much worse.
I guess that a lot of people don't like the idea of creative writing being taught but I've never thought that I would have noticed that in his style if I didn't already know about it - I think it's a distraction from the novels.
My take on the Unconsoled was that it was a dream (or nightmare) that gave some insight into the main character. I assume that in waking life he is a successful pianist who has neglected his child and has a difficult relationship with the child's mother and his own parents, his career and all kinds of other things. The book was an attempt to describe that in a non-literal manner and I think it was fairly successful in that you did feel a genuine sadness at times even though you weren't exactly sure of what you felt sad about, it was like seeing the protagonist's life as a shadow or through misty glass or something. Maybe it was too long and didn't come to any conclusion but that's what I thought it was trying to do. Then again that's only my take and I could be completely wrong.
Was it an Ishiguru thing that that film, The Saddest Music in The World was based on? I really enjoyed that as well so maybe I'm just a sucker for him.
Regarding Ishiguru in general, I loved The Remains of the Day, then I read When We Were Orphans which was so similar that it wasn't worth bothering with, it wasn't even a refinement either, it was much worse.
I guess that a lot of people don't like the idea of creative writing being taught but I've never thought that I would have noticed that in his style if I didn't already know about it - I think it's a distraction from the novels.
My take on the Unconsoled was that it was a dream (or nightmare) that gave some insight into the main character. I assume that in waking life he is a successful pianist who has neglected his child and has a difficult relationship with the child's mother and his own parents, his career and all kinds of other things. The book was an attempt to describe that in a non-literal manner and I think it was fairly successful in that you did feel a genuine sadness at times even though you weren't exactly sure of what you felt sad about, it was like seeing the protagonist's life as a shadow or through misty glass or something. Maybe it was too long and didn't come to any conclusion but that's what I thought it was trying to do. Then again that's only my take and I could be completely wrong.
Was it an Ishiguru thing that that film, The Saddest Music in The World was based on? I really enjoyed that as well so maybe I'm just a sucker for him.
jenks
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John Doe said:
I think what i mean is that McEwan and Ishiguro seem to represent a certain strand of British fiction that I find unappealing - it gestures towards the 'big' themes whilst sidling up to something cosy and middlebrow. Maybe I'm being unfair on Bradbury but I do think that when you look at that generation of writers they never came up with the great novel we were led to expect. Despite the slewing of Rushdie on Dissensus i still think Midnight's Children knocks anything either these two guys produced.