Reading List – 1st Aug

After a month or so without reading very much at all, I’m back into the swing of things, having recently read Mazza’s The Albanian, Hemingway’s Fiesta and McCaffrey’s In Ecstasy. I’ve got a couple of books here in front of me that I mean to read, and a couple more that I intend to acquire in the next few weeks.

A Farewell to Arms – Hemingway – After Fiesta I am neither encouraged nor discouraged to pursue the Hemingway canon. This book will probably decide which way I go.

The Travel Writer – Simone Lazaroo – I’ve been meaning to read this for a few weeks now…

Beijing Coma – Ma Jian – I am REALLY looking forward to this book by my favourite Chinese writer

Ubik: The Screenplay – Philip K. Dick – fans of the great man will be eager to get their hands on this.

The Last Sky – Alice Nelson – set for release on the 7th of August, this is the 2006 TAG Hungerford Award winner.

Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates – this has been recommended by my sister. The late Kurt Vonnegut has some very complimentary things to say about it.

Book Review – The Albanian by Donna Mazza

There’s something slightly intimidating about Donna Mazza’s The Albanian, which won the 2004 TAG Hungerford Award but wasn’t published until 2007. Perhaps it’s the dark and brooding cover, maybe the title, or even the slightly imposing page length (360+), but I wasn’t certain that I would like or be able to get through this. The first few pages seemed to fulfill my expectations, but it wasn’t long before I found myself hooked into the story. I had a discussion with my sister recently about reading books through to the end (I often read as much as a third or a half of a book before giving up, she usually perseveres to the bitter end) which was fresh in my mind as I began to read. It was with slight surprise that I looked down at the page number and realised I was on page 55 already.

The Albanian begins in the city of Dubrovnik in 1989 in the old Yugoslavia. This is of immediate interest as the Balkan Wars were soon to engulf the area. Rosa is a young woman from Bunbury on her way to Istanbul. Why she is going there isn’t immediately clear, perhaps not even to Rosa herself. And so we get pages and pages of descriptions, emotions and sensations of the city and of Rosa’s thoughts. This is important to note, as there is precious little action or plot in the first section of the book. This might turn some readers away, and to be quite honest it might have turned me away too had I not especially wanted to read this book, owing to the fact that it was a TAG Hungerford Award winner.

It isn’t long, however, before we are introduced to the Albanian of the title. Things don’t start too well for this relationship, which begins on the streets of Dubrovnik. Rosa isn’t too sure what to make of the prematurely haggard, cigarette smoking Albanian, but he obvious thinks a lot of her, because he rapes or at least coerces sex from her more or less against her will. Rosa seems slightly lethargic about this, in the sense that doesn’t seem overly concerned by this turn of events, even though they were against her will. As we discover, Rosa is a curiously passive young lady, who keeps coming back to the Albanian, despite his thieving of her passport (he gives it back) and a threat that he can find her anywhere in Dubrovnik. The biggest surprise for me, however, was the discovery that Rosa was only nineteen. Nineteen? What is a nineteen year old from Bunbury doing by herself in Yugoslavia on the brink of a war that was to span a decade?

Rosa leaves Dubrovnik promising to return to her Albanian (who remains unnamed), not knowing whether she intends to return or not. There is a significant language and cultural barrier between the two, and yet Rosa feels compelled to return to him. The second part of the narrative sees Rosa tagging along with an American woman, Anya. This is where the story seems most conventional and most touristy. Nothing seems to have much of an impact on Rosa; she is dreamy and vague. Her memories of the rape and her feelings about this seem to take a while to sink in, almost as if she had been existing in some half-asleep state. Despite this, her resolve to return to Dubrovnik only intensifies.

Without wanting to merely retell the plot of The Albanian, suffice to say that there is much to-ing and fro-ing. Rosa goes back to Dubrovnik, and then after a fairly miserable time (part of which is spent locked up in a dingy room) she makes it back to Bunbury. The Bunbury section initially seems aimless (which mirrors Rosa’s own feelings) but builds in momentum as Rosa makes plans to return to her (still unnamed) Albanian, who is now in Sweden seeking political asylum. She returns to find herself more isolated than ever. One wonders why on earth she would continue down such a line of action. The Albanian, by Rosa’s own admission, is ugly, sexist, racist (against Serbs) and has little time for her.

One of the most interesting things about this novel is the description of the culture shock Rosa endures, particularly when she arrives in Sweden. Very few people speak English, even fewer want to speak to her, and the Albanian expects her to cook for him and occupy herself while he slaves away at some awful job during the day. If anything, the situation is worse when he takes her to meet other Albanians. This culture shock is especially stark in terms of how women are treated in this culture. Women are expected to cook, wait on the men until very late in the evening (clearing ashtrays and so forth), and eat leftover scraps. In other words, women have a very low standing. While the Albanian recognises that Rosa is different from Albanian women, he still expects her to adhere to many of these principles, such as standing to shake a man’s hand. Rosa has second, third and fourth thoughts about where she is and what she is doing, and this reader does too.

The other major obstacle to understanding is the language barrier itself. What exactly Rosa sees in her Albanian isn’t immediately clear, but it seems to have something to do with the sense of mystery engendered by their communication difficulties. From the Bunbury section, we see that Rosa’s home life is very safe and very boring, and as such her European adventures are in opposition to this. But as the narrative progresses, Rosa begins to understand that the Albanian cares only for his family and country (Kosove), and while these are laudable concerns they are not directly relevant to Rosa. She becomes an unwilling passenger, long overstaying her three month visa as Yugoslavia spirals towards war.

The final straw is the attack on Dubrovnik, which Rosa sees via the news. This was the city where both she and the Albanian were happiest, and now it is destroyed. There is a sense of terrible loss, and the prospect of further misery. The Albanian himself notes that if the centuries-old city is not immune from destruction at the hands of the Serbs, then what hope does a mere mortal of twenty-four years have? The future is grim, but Rosa is leaving. And so The Albanian ends on a depressing note. The lines of communication have been broken. Henceforth, Rosa will travel as an outsider to Europe’s ills, not as a mute and helpless insider.

The Albanian is an impressive first novel. It has a substance and reality that makes the places and people depicted in it seem real. When I say real, I mean I am taking this to be a kind of autobiographical narrative. It is very tempting to read Rosa as Donna Mazza herself, not least because they are around the same age. There is a sense of authenticity here in the details of life in Sweden and in the ways the streets of Dubrovnik are shown. This is, of course, a good thing. On the other hand, I felt that the structure of the narrative seemed problematic at times. The various sections do not always hang together well, and there are points in the story where momentum is lost. Again, this appears to mirror reality. I can only assume that most or all of these events actually occurred, perhaps to Mazza herself. Perhaps I am mistaken. While not my favourite of the five Hungerford winners I have fully read (The World Waiting to be Made remains my favourite), The Albanian is a very impressive debut. The notes in the back of the book say that it took Mazza seven years to write this, and I can well believe it. Hopefully it will not take her seven years to write a second novel. I look forward to Mazza’s subsequent work with interest.

Book Review – In Ecstasy by Kate McCaffrey

In Ecstasy is Perth author Kate McCaffrey’s second novel for teenagers. It was released in April of this year by Fremantle Press, and should be widely available in W.A. and elsewhere. McCaffrey is a high school English teacher like myself (and a lot of other writers, apparently) and her novel seems directed toward students in the 14-17 age group.

In Ecstasy mainly concerns two Year 11 girls, Mia and Sophie. The novel is narrated from both points of view, and they aren’t always in ‘time sync’ with each other. This is done to heighten tension and to withhold certain information at particular times, and for the most part I thought it was done well. Without being a teenage girl myself, I felt that McCaffrey has done a good job of appealing to the particular target audience. The language and slang seem appropriate, and there was nothing that seemed out of place or jarring.

Sophie and Mia are going in different directions. At the beginning of the novel they are close friends, and have been for some time, but they drift apart over the course of the narrative. Sophie is initially confident and perhaps the more popular of the two, but this changes rapidly. Mia is initially shy and reserved, envying her friend’s looks and demeanour, but her confidence blossoms, in no small part due to the drug Ecstasy.

This book is a virtual travelogue of the pitfalls of teenage life, including but not limited to drug use (ecstasy, marijuana, alcohol, cocaine), underage sex, date rape, and teenage pregnancy. As the novel progresses, we begin to see the two girls drift apart as Sophie withdraws from the drug/party culture. (Interestingly, a similar thing happened to myself at a similar age.) Mia, however, becomes more and more embroiled in the world of drugs and parties, and her health eventually suffers as a result.

Mia’s sense of self seems to come from a couple of sources: firstly, the ecstasy itself; and secondly her relationship with the ultra popular and rich Lewis Scott. This propels her into the popularity stratosphere, but it doesn’t last long. Without wanting to spoil the novel for potential readers, everything goes pear shaped for Mia. Consequently, her story is the dominant one in this novel, and here I encountered a potential problem. Sophie ends up becoming the more sensible of the two girls, and her narrative withers away to virtually nothing. Some of her sections are less than a page in length. But Mia’s story is interesting enough to sustain this reader’s attention.

I’m not sure if McCaffrey intended to address the idea of patriarchy and sexual equality at all, but I thought the novel did so in an implicit way. Most of the girls and women in this novel are in some sense slaves to men, be it physically or emotionally (or both). There is a reverse example, in which young Dominic seems to fawn over Sophie. I have noticed myself that ‘equal rights’ has gone backwards a long way in the past twenty years or so in this country, and In Ecstasy seems to reflect that in the enormous pressure these young girls feel to conform to notions of beauty and fashion sense. It’s very sad to think that we live in a world where girls are put under these kinds of pressures, but there it is.

Ultimately, In Ecstasy is a successful novel. It manages to cleverly interweave a tale around a number of important issues teenagers may face. It avoids being too blatantly an ‘issues novel,’ while carefully mapping this terrain. Most importantly, McCaffrey does this as an insider, not an outsider to the worlds of teenage experience. Any parent with teenage children should read this, as should the teenagers themselves. Hell, my daughter isn’t yet three, and I’m already worried by some of the material in this book, such as the odious Glenn. Highly recommended.

Kate McCaffrey has a wordpress blog of her own at katemccaffrey.wordpress.com

Book Review – Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises) by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway is one of the most famous writers of the twentieth century and yet it seems to me that his books are no longer as widely available as they once were. He has fallen out of fashion in a way that Joyce apparently never will. And yet his presence in the history of literature is immense. Regarding Hemingway, people generally want to talk about his style of writing, and so shall I.

Fiesta, or The Sun Also Rises (a better but only obliquely relevant title), is my first Hemingway novel, and for the most part it reads well in spite of its vintage (1927). It is easy to say that the best writing never ages, but of course this is not so: all writing ages, but not at the same speed. For the most part I found Fiesta easy to read, fairly enjoyable but ultimately unsatisfying.

The first section, in which we are introduced to a small cast of characters who will stay with us throughout the novel, is set in Paris in the mid-twenties. I am reminded of F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby in the way that this opening section plays out, and a little of Henry Miller and William Burroughs in the way that Paris is used as the set for numerous drunken roamings and ramblings. This is Paris between the wars, and for the expatriate Americans and English, it is a fine life indeed. In fact, I found myself wanting to travel back in time to 1927, to experience these ‘Roaring Twenties’ for myself. Fine dining, heavy drinking and jaunting around Europe sounds ‘jolly good’ to me, and yet Hemingway would caution us as to the dangers of leading a life such as this.

Our narrator is called Jake Barnes, and he is a newspaperman and veteran of the First World War. Although it is never addressed directly, we come to realise by degrees that Jake is sexually impotent due to some form of war injury. This does not seem to bother Jake unduly, although we do begin to wonder whether he is lying to himself in this regard. Jake is stable, sane, and something of a doormat for another character who will be discussed shortly.

Robert Cohn is a Jewish writer and amateur boxer, and we are positioned to dislike him intensely. In fact, much of the novel consists of Cohn’s childish behaviour and the various rebukes he endures. Cohn has fallen for Lady Ashely, a.ka. Brett (a rather confusing name for a woman, I thought), and he spends the novel chasing her around and hanging around like a lost puppy dog. It’s all rather nauseating. One might say that Hemingway’s characterisation of Cohn shows signs of anti-Semitism, and while this is probably true, I found it to be far milder than in some of Hemingway’s contemporaries. My example here is Graham Greene, a writer I admire greatly. Greene’s early novels of the twenties offer far cruder Jewish stereotypes. But I digress.

Brett is the focus of the novel. She is an English aristocrat, loved by all and touched by some. She and Jake are in love, but it is a peculiar love owing to Jake’s impotence. As a result, Brett is all over the place, to-ing and fro-ing in various debauched ways (most notably with a nineteen year old Spanish matador). She is unhappy for the most part, happy at times, and usually drunk. This is a good time to mention that a vast quantity of liquor is consumed over the course of Fiesta, much of it very expensive. There’s even some Absinthe. It’s enough to give one a liver hemorrhage.

Mike is Brett’s soon-to-be-husband, and yet their relationship is a bizarre one. Mike, a Scot, doesn’t seem to mind that Brett is sleeping with all and sundry and conducting herself in an unseemly manner. As we discover, MIke is the biggest drunk of them all, and quite a bore too. There’s a rather poignant scene toward the end of the book in which Mike is so drunk and tired that he can’t talk properly. It’s clear that Mike uses alcohol to obliterate his problems. He’s also bankrupt.

Then there is a Bill, a rather affable fellow whom I can’t remember a great deal about, and a host of minor characters. It’s a reasonably good cast, but not as memorable as those in The Great Gatsby, I don’t think. But Fitzgerald’s novel is probably an appropriate frame of reference for this one. As I said, the first part is set in Paris, and it’s all rather aimless. We get to know the main characters on their drunken adventures, and soak in the scenery. It’s pleasant reading, but not especially memorable reading, at least not to my mind.

About style. Hemingway’s prose is very distinctive with its clipped sentence structure and declarative manner. Things are described in simple and straightforward fashion. This is a strength and a weakness, and to illustrate my point I will use a couple of examples. At its best, this is powerful writing with a kind of self-evident clarity: “Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.” (p 43) At its worst, this seems like prose written by someone who was dropped on their head as a baby: “The cab stopped in front of the hotel and we all got out and went in. It was a nice hotel, and the people at the desk were very cheerful, and we each had a good small room.” (p 103) And so Hemingway is Hemingway: in some ways searingly powerful and clear, and in other ways disappointingly bland and stripped of emotion.

The best part of the novel, for me, was the middle third, in which the main characters make the trip from France to Spain for the Fiesta season. Before the season begins, there is time for a fishing trip in a remote town. This is where I felt Hemingway’s talents were best deployed: in accurately describing visually detailed settings and complex events, such as precisely how to catch a fish. Here I saw Hemingway the master. Elsewhere, I felt that the novel fell a little flat.

After the fishing is finished (I am skipping over a hell of a lot of plot here) it is time for the Fiesta, which is when the bullfighting and general merrymaking occurs. Hemingway seems to be very interested in bull-fighting, but I found that his enthusiasm did not enliven the topic for me. A matter of taste perhaps. All the while we are getting bits and pieces of conversation and often argument centering around wayward Brett, pathetic Cohn and boorish Mike. There’s a great deal of inconsequential conversation in this book, but perhaps it can be said that it has a cumulative effect on the reader.

Increasingly, I found that I was interested to read about the way the toxic relationships would unfold, and disinterested by the descriptions of bullfighting. It all ends rather badly for all concerned. Nothing really decisive happens (well, Cohn the Jewish boxer does beat up all three of his rivals for Brett’s affection, not that it helps) and yet there is a sense of resolution. Something in these people is badly broken. This is decadence. I noticed that Jake alone seemed to have found some meaning in life in the form of his Catholicism, and yet it doesn’t seem to stop him from carrying on almost as badly as the other characters found here. This is a bleak novel in the final analysis, and one that doesn’t seem to offer much hope for the future.

I’m not totally sold on Hemingway, but at least I can say I’ve read one of his novels now. I have Farewell to Arms here to read too, but I think I’ll give Papa Hemingway a rest for a little while now. I would be interested to hear any comments on the above, especially as I don’t consider myself an expert on this author by any stretch of the imagination. Recommendations as to his best work would be appreciated also.

A new reading list – 11/7/08

Well, my reading has ground to a halt. It was bound to happen after reading so many books in the first half of the year, but now I’m spending my free time playing old computer games instead. Despite this, I got out a few books from UWA yesterday. They are:

The Albanian – Donna Mazza – this will be my seventh Hungerford winner, although it’s true that I only got through four of the previous six. Mazza won the award in 2004. Incidentally, Alice Nelson’s Hungerford winner, retitled The Last Sky, is due to be released next month. I am thinking about actually handing over some coin for that one.

In Ecstasy – Kate McCaffrey – this recently released novel by a Perth writer is about…you guessed it, ecstasy use. There seems to be quite a buzz about McCaffrey and her novels (her first is called Destroying Avalon) so I thought it’d be prudent to check this out. I would have thought that this would be something to use in school. The Woolridges rep seemed pretty enthusiastic about it.

Fiesta – Ernest Hemingway – J. J. DeCeglie seems to have a high opinion of Papa Hemingway, and it occurred to me that I’ve never even tried to read one of his novels. The One Man and the Sea has been sitting on my bookshelf for ten years now. So here goes. This is also known as The Sun Also Rises.

Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway – another classic novel that I’ve never read. I wasn’t entirely sure where to start with Hemingway, but I thought this and Fiesta might be an appropriate sampler.

And I’ve still got The White Earth, Underground and Lazaroo’s The Travel Writer to read. I’ve gotten bogged down with McGahan. I read about 50 pages of The White Earth, and while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, it seemed to me that McGahan has really lost the narrative drive that had me reading Praise and 1988 virtually straight through.