Crossroads – Jonathan Franzen

Normally book reviews from the club have a “marmite” flavour reflecting the often contrasting views of individual members. Unusually though Crossroads was liked by every member and in some cases complimented very highly.

 

If there was one criticism raised it it was that (with 900 pages) it was too long but everybody was drawn into the book (as if watching a soap opera) and  stuck with it and in several cases are interested in reading the next two instalments.

 

Crossroads describes a dysfunctional family in 1970s midwestern USA who come together at Thanksgiving “at a pivotal moment of moral crisis”.

 

In an effort to keep our reviews as succinct as possible the group summarised their thoughts as follows:

 

Writing and dialogue

·      Was almost universally good.

·      Long and interestingly structured but easy to read because it had a strong narrative flow. The book was enjoyed because it read like an addictive soap opera.

·      Great descriptions of the decline and fall of the overly bright but pompous pothead son Perry and the mayhem such a life can cause.

·      It was rather compulsive reading-with a fluent, readable style with sufficiently strong storyline that you wanted to keep reading.

 

Characters

·      Intricate interesting characters with incredibly detailed portraits of their lives

·      Brilliant at getting himself into the minds of teenagers.

·      Captured the different stages of adolescence 15-17-19 very well and differentiated between them well.

·      Real and well developed characters.

·      The characters were so real there was so much detail and perceptive description of their thoughts and actions.

·      Great characters flawed yet likable a real sense of what is going on in their minds and bodies their perceptions and relationships the ups and downs of love affairs and of religious feelings. Build a very full,deep and interesting sense of the whole family and the people they interact with.

 

Relationships

Franzen is brilliant at relationships with each character’s webs all interlinking in a giant 3D silk sculpture… he describes all the parts of people that those close never get to know or at least fully understand and focuses on the minutiae of the small things of every day life which are fascinating despite all their intricacy, complexity and density.

 

Religion

·      The theme of religion runs through the whole book and the ideas and debates over the nature of religion Christianity and belief were enjoyed particularly by RV.

·      Most of all the book left Chris W with  questions about religion and particularly Christianity and its impact on its disciples and the complication it adds to people’s lives.

·      Many similarities with the strict closeted religious lifestyle described in education by Tara Westover.

 

Dilemmas

·      Full of real life dilemmas  anti-war yet personal morality not to dodge the draft, religious belief versus personal behaviour, love for children and an inability to give them what they want, sexual drive versus personal morality.

 

Family

·      Builds a very full, deep and interesting sense of the whole family and the people they interact with.

·      The underlying theme in the book is that nothing is more important than family.

 

Context

·      Many remarked how they were able to connect with many of the themes in the book which brought back vivid memories of their own experiences in the 1970s. 

·      MTs upbringing with his strict religious father-so much of my youth in this-my father’s church, youth club and its camps -lots of religion there and naughty things with girls such as snogging and kissing… listening to sermons at church, getting ready to follow a girl sitting in a far away pew afterwards-made it all worthwhile!

·      For SC it gave very vivid personal portraits, he enjoyed the descriptions of life in USA around the time when he was in his late teens.

·      MW memories of his church youth club in Bristol motivated obviously by all the attractive Christian girls that also attended!

·      For JH the author captured a time that had a huge impact on him when he visited and lived in the US-Franzen captured well both the big things such as the joys and tribulations of young love, pervasive presence of dope, the overriding influence of the Vietnam war as well as the little things in life such as the noise of a Maytag washing machine and of his Plymouth Fury car.

·      For CB it gave a good feel for the context of the early 1970s, the last stages of the Vietnamese war, smalltown America, poor conditions of native Americans, separated racial communities, the new vogue for openness (however manufactured).

 

Underlying Theme 

·      What is it to be good? Can goodness ever truly be its own reward or consciously or not does it always serve some personal instrumentality?

·      Very enjoyable musing on the nature of being good.

·      Can you be good by nailing your colours to a religious mast, or does it come more from inside? Arguably what Rick introduces to Crossroads has a more profound effect on most of the kids than any religious teaching-in other words, be good and interested in each other.

 

Drugs

·      Descriptions of drugs and Perry’s descent into serious drug misuse very well described and even the description of Becky when she is horribly stoned is well described.

·      The effects of drugs and paranoia is well described.

 

Negatives

·      Over- long and rather petered out at the end possibly in preparation for the next two volumes of the trilogy.

 

Scores

AA7.5

SC 7.5

CB 8.2

MW 7.0

CW 7.75

MT  8.5

JH 7.5

RV 8.5

 

 

Cloud Cuckoo Land - Anthony Doerr

Andrew had high expectations of this book as he’d enjoyed All the Light We Cannot See and the sense of place in About Grace. What he was hoping for was a work of great imagination and scope, with beautiful imagery that would take him on a journey - a magical mystery tour.

There are 6 main characters in 3 main storylines - Omeir & Anna in the 15^th century, Zeno & Seymour in the 20^th and 21st, and Konstance on a spaceship in the 22^nd – plus Aethon forever travelling in the ether of time. Perhaps Diogenes’ manuscript is also a character.

 

And there are myriad connections between people and books and libraries and owls and oxen and centuries and plants and trees. Plus links between names like Arkady/Arcadia, Konstance/Constantinople, and Trustyfriend. 

 

Doerr dedicated the book to librarians and said it was his attempt at a “literary-sci-fi-mystery-young-adult-historical-morality novel”.

 

Andrew thought it was a fabulous fable, full of wonder, a beautiful jigsaw of a book whose disparate pieces fitted brilliantly together. A beautifully woven tale about the need to look after the Earth and each other. 

 

Not everyone in BBBC agreed.

 

 

With Aethon, soaring high above the clouds

 

Andrew, Steve, Richard, MarkW really enjoyed this book. It does require the reader to accept the magical world of Doerr’s story, but they all felt pulled into his world and engaged by the characters, and looked forward to picking up the book. 

 

Andrew and MarkT found the stories of Anna and Omeir beautifully written particularly how Omeir’s grandfather cared for him. Andrew liked the surprises with the spaceship being on the ground, Seymour with his owl windows, wanting to reveal the world as it really is, back to his angry environmentalist beginnings railing against the dodgy tech giant, and how the tension built towards the end. And the brilliant ideas such as Library Day, writing to every Rex Browning in England, Ilium as the nasty tech giant, and Zeno’s realisation at the end that the gaps in the story didn’t matter because the children’s imagination would do the rest.

 

ChrisB loved the Greek stuff, enjoyed the story of the book, loved the different places and times and thought it hung together well. He couldn’t stop reading it, even at bedtime, and it will stay with him for a long time. It was clever as it only resolved at the end, the sci-fi part was convincing as was the terribleness of war. He enjoyed the personalisation of the stories of Anna and Omeir on opposing sides. 

 

Steve loved the book, the twists in the strands of yarn and the links between them. It reminded him of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, and he thought it was better than All the Light We Cannot See. Each storyline had its gripping individual qualities, particularly Zeno with his quietly tragic childhood, and his slow life shovelling snow until awakened by his recollections of the text that Rex introduced him to. He also enjoyed the rich and interesting supporting cast – a real achievement to keep this whole cast up in the air throughout the book. But for him it was Seymour’s story that most gripped and resonated - a tale of the 21st century: sensitive to the damage we are causing to our environment but not knowing how to channel it, and accentuated by his discovery of, relationship with and eventual tragic demise of Trustyfriend. So sad, so believable.  

Richard really liked the multiple story lines, the great sweep of the overall story and all the different characters held his interest. Some lovely turns of phrase and some lovely ideas. Doerr’s love of books and of libraries matches Richard’s (and MarkT’s) own and came through strongly, and the major descriptive passages (eg the transportation of the cannon to the walls of Istanbul) were superb. All the children had such rich fantasy lives. Doerr is very good on environmental damage, especially from the perspective of an autistic child, and very good on the logistics of sieges, and of moving huge armies.

 

Both Marks found the Constantinople part brilliantly written, with Omeir and Anna their favourite characters. For MarkW, the death of Anna probably the most moving episode of the book. Seymour’s early childhood and Zeno’s episode in Korea were particularly good, and he felt Doerr’s skilful writing made you care about the owls and oxen as characters too, as did Steve. MarkT was moved by Seymour and his owl and despite hating sci-fi grew to enjoy the Argos journey.  John also enjoyed and got deeply involved in the stories of Anna and Omeir, and the troubled life of Zeno Ninis, his fraught childhood and later life, but most particularly his love for Rex and all that flowed from that unrequited love. 

ChrisW did like many of the themes with Constance on the spaceship - they were thought-provoking and could have formed the basis of a book in its own right. The storyline about climate change, global warming, the decay of humanity was good and explained the need for Argos to boldly go to a new planet 659 years away. Seed banks, food printers, and the virtual reality Atlas library were interesting concepts as well as in a different storyline the use of Seymour whilst in rehab by the Ilium Corporation to edit out unpalatable activity captured by aerial photography.

 

 

All a bit cuckoo

 

However, for John, this book was a salutary warning that if you enjoyed an author’s earlier books it is no guarantee you will enjoy or even appreciate one of their later works. He saw it as an interesting collection of short stories ingeniously woven together, but in a way that was overly complicated and therefore not a satisfying read.  Not a book he would recommend.

John and ChrisW both felt it read as an authorial indulgence trying to weave a collection of stories together in a rather ingenious (or over-engineered) way.  Some ancient text being the possible common link between the stories or that many of the characters were facing imminent death at some point in their stories wasn’t enough. John pointed out Diogenes didn’t write the sort of stuff Doerr has him write in this book so why pick a real writer and give him a made-up book? He particularly disliked the spaceship part.

 

The book didn’t appeal to ChrisW at all - confusing, overlong, self-indulgent and followed a typical theme nowadays of taking a number of storylines and mixing them all up with a thread only being detectable at the end. He found the story of Seymour becoming an urban terrorist and being groomed online rather facile. He enjoyed the Constantinople parts, but felt that whole section of the book was simply about how the Diogenes scroll got to Urbino to then be referred to in the present day storyline. Some interesting themes but many unanswered questions.

Despite finding it a skilful, clever book, MarkW didn’t find it particularly memorable and thought it lacked substance with the gradual linking of the plots through the text ingenious but less successful. The main plot looked like science fiction but turned out not to be as they were still on the ground, and he was unsure of the purpose of the big scam but not sure if it mattered – was Ilium doing it for the government? It felt a bit Cloud Cuckoo Land, unrealistic. And it took him time to get used to the short chapters. 

 

MarkT loved All the Light We Cannot See so much that he bought the hardback of Cloud Cuckoo Land rather than the usual Kindle download but found the start bitty and confusing and hard to get going with all the different stories. It got better as he got to know the characters and he started to enjoy it, but found the short chapters and sense of time confusing and never quite got the one-page old bits.

 

Steve felt Doerr tried to cover too grand a scope of issues and there were too many unbelievable factors crowding in as the book reached its climax. What, for example, was the true reason for faking the Argos voyage? Something vague about a secret plot to conceal the true magnitude of the catastrophe about to engulf Earth?  And just how far can a man in his 80s sprint with a backpack in a few rings of a phone?

Richard felt the start was slowish and when he was half-way through, that the main characters all had the same voice, but they then started to separate out better. He also wondered why the book was written – the two Constantinople stories were excellent, but their main purpose seemed to be to enable the book to be discovered and then taken to Italy. And Zeno’s purpose was to translate it. And Konstance’s purpose was to continue that telling of the same story, so it goes through the generations.

This Land is our Land

 

Andrew thought Doerr gave us a glimpse in the spaceship of our forthcoming metaverse - with all the teenagers on their Perambulators in their quarters but brought together in the library through their Vizers - all moving around and talking to each other, exploring books and places and playing games. MarkT pointed out that AI is only as good as its programmers.

 

Andrew also thought that the ending when Aethon realises he appreciates his sheep and the simple things in life more than the utopia he has sought, may have been a hint that we should abandon our consumptive lifestyle and concentrate on caring for our planet in the here and now – perhaps keeping the manuscript safe is a metaphor for our need to do the same for the Earth (and each other). Perhaps the link between Diogenes’ book The Wonders Beyond Thule and Qaanaaq in Greenland (formerly known as Thule or New Thule) was also a hint that Greenland might soon be one of the few habitable places on earth? “The world as it is is enough.” might be the message of the book.

 

 

Printed food for thought

 

Why pick a real writer like Diogenes and give him a made-up book? - JH

Who were the 49 other inhabitants of the island? - CW
How was Constance pregnant? - CW
Was it a virus? - CW
Had humankind been totally destroyed? - CW

What was the point of the experiment with Argos? - MW

Did Seymour actually kill Zeno? - MW

Life on Argos – what was real? - MT

Was the virus on board a sham? - MT

Why was the Argos still on the ground? - RV 

Did Google used convicts to test the original? – SC

And just how far can a man in his 80s sprint with a backpack in a few rings of a phone? - SC 

 

Bath, England, a week before Christmas, 2021

 

And to end on a topical note, Steve commented that the day he read the passage where Konstance’s friend Omicron was introduced, the name of the currently rampant Covid variant seemed to enter the general media conversation. That was only three weeks ago. 

 

 

Scores

AA – 10

CW – 5

CB – 9

MW – 8

JH – 5.5

SC – 9

MT – 7

RV – 8.5

WM – get well soon

 

The Promise - Damon Galgut

Most of us liked this book and found it an easy read but were surprised that it won the Booker Prize. Despite this, we all had a lot to say about it! 

The Promise is a short book that tells the story of a white family across 40 years in a quartet of places, times and seasons in the last days of the apartheid regime in South Africa and the early years and present day of the new republic.  Spring of 1986, Winter of 1995 (world cup), Autumn of 2004 (Aids crisis), Summer of 2018 (resignation of Zuma) which is reflected in one of the characters, Anton’s unfinished novel.  

For most of us, the book grew on us. Some struggled with the style which was jarring switching between tenses, time and characters like a stream of consciousness commentary. It seemed very much written for a South African audience with a few in jokes and references to stuff that one either just took as read or one had to do a bit of research.

Often it is unclear who the unnamed narrator is. Is he part of the story? But some liked the fact that the narrator often makes quips to the person to whom they are addressing the story and even makes judgements on what they are thinking sometimes accepting that they are racially biased. Mark found it cleverly written, and funny in places, and easy and a pleasure to read. Steve was even more positive: it was beautifully written - unassuming and direct, yet full of vivid imagery and breathtaking situations that just leap out right in front of you, like Astrid’s final encounter. It was also very funny in places.

The thing that Steve took away most strongly is the way the style deceives the reader into thinking this is just a simple story about a family changing over the generations. But gradually you realise how big the issues are. How Amor devotes her life to caring for Aids victims as the disease takes hold in South Africa and continues to fight for Salome’s promised bequest all through the book. At the same time Anton is gradually losing it, morphing from lovable but reckless prodigal to sad waste of space, but intelligent enough to know it. And the farm becomes a metaphor for the decline of white South Africa. 

We liked the way it started with Amor, and ended with her as well, the surviving sibling, bracketed by her first period at her mother’s funeral and the “drying of her channels” at the end. Perhaps the promise of the book is that of the rainbow nation and how it has not been realised. Has Galgut intentionally linked the story of the new nation to the arc of one woman’s fertility, starting with huge potential and then petering out. 

All the family members except Amor are part of racist and white supremacist culture of the dominant Afrikaners. There is some excellent writing that expresses the emotions, thoughts and hang ups of each family member and the fractious relationships between them all. Each character is drawn with its own idiosyncrasies and madness. Andrew highlighted nice descriptions of people at night trying to sleep and people’s internal dialogues intertwined with dialogue. Richard highlighted Galgut’s very good treatment of the shock of bereavement.

Mark W noted that religion takes a bit of a battering as well. All religions are treated with the same degree of disdain, from Dutch Reformed to Roman Catholic. The theme (and hypocrisy) of religion crops up throughout the novel at each burial and shows the Pastor progressively developing his own private offshoot of the South African Anglican church to which the father becomes completely taken in. And Astrid justifies her adulterous lifestyle by turning to Catholicism which relieves her of the guilt of her sins.

We appreciated how the book portrayed recent history in South Africa. Mark T: The sense of South Africa was good, the ending of white rule and the birth of the new country and the decay, violence and fear were well described. The closed minds of the Manie and Astrid and others contrasted with the vision of Mandela and Tutu who realised that replacing one tyranny with another was not the way forward. 

Each of the family members are on the brink of madness, even Amor whom the others all think is the strange one. Just as their society is on the brink of massive change, their source of income is drying up and their right to live on the land is challenged. A story of disintegration only slightly redeemed by Amor’s very belated gift to Salome which also frees her from her history, the promise finally kept. As each of the main family members dies, each has reached a point of disintegration from cancer, from grief, from an ordered society, from hopelessness. Only Amor in her limited but compassionate life as a nurse, leaves the family, the farm and can see a future.

None of the characters are likable and none except, Amor have any redeeming features. This includes the minor characters showing for example a corrupt religion led by the domninee. Was this to emphasise the bankruptcy of the white society? Only the excellent descriptions of people, places, relationships and mental commentary prevents the book form becoming a depressing dirge. Perhaps, deliberately too we only get small snippets of what the black characters in the novel are thinking from Salome to Lukas to Lexington. Why make most of the black characters so negative too?

Richard: One of my problems was that this was such an odd family – although the initial description of the parents made them seem relatively ‘normal’ (although with all the stress of marrying across different cultures and religions), what emerges is that all the children are really odd, and the ways that everyone communicates (or not) are equally odd.

Richard: One of his recurrent themes was death – not only and obviously that each section revolved around a key death in the family, but his descriptions of death, and the process of bodily deterioration after death.

Richard: There was a lot of mystical material and/or magical thinking in the book, and I did not understand the place of it in this book. Richard: often I did not know where the book was going or what its point was. 

Andrew: In the end, I’m left with a slightly deeper understanding of South Africa, some forgettable characters, and disappointment that the style celebrated by the Booker judges detracted from the story. A bitty, scratchy book, but with layers and weaves of powerful imagery about the promise of the rainbow nation and with bursts of power and beautiful prose.

Chris W found it a very thought-provoking book and one which he would like to read again.

Steve: It’s an interesting book that, for all its darkness and death, ends on a positive note - the final sentence I found particularly effective, as Amor leaves the farm for the last time. That felt like moving on at last from the mess created and complicated by her family. But so tragic that while the promise is finally fulfilled, the reception she gets from Salome’s family is suspicious and bitter - lives wrecked and potential wasted.

Scores

Richard 4.5
Steve 7.5
Mark T 7.75
Andrew 7.5
Chris w 7.75
Mark 7
Chris B 7