The Ask – Sam Lipsyte

26^th May 2011

Rob’s description of this as a ‘marmite book’ was an appropriate one. This was one of those books that provoked strong but very different reactions from within the group. On the one side were the ‘ayes’ (Mark Th and Steve in particular, plus Neil and Mark T) who all reported that they enjoyed the read. In contrast, the ‘nays’ (Rob and Ras) felt that it was badly written drivel with few, if any virtues. Chris seemed to sit between these two views.

There was clear consensus among the ayes on a couple of points. Firstly, the blurb on the back of the book is (typically) misleading as this is not a comic novel and certainly not a ‘side-splitter’. The book was seen as a satire on modern corporate America (Steve was very eloquent on this point) that wove in many aspects of modern life. At the same time, it was agreed that Milo’s journey is a sad one. He is a man with many privileges and zero skills, who falls from a very low height, losing his wife and job and being outdone by almost everyone he knows. There was also agreement that while it had been a very entertaining read, the low emphasis on plot meant that, once finished, it quickly began to fade from memory.

On the nay side there was early disagreement about what daily newspaper (not) to read but much closer agreement on what made the book so trying. It was very badly written to the point of being incomprehensible. Lipsyte is a bad writer with a poor command of the English language. The book has no plot at all and both the characters and their situations are impossible to believe in. The book does not resonate at all in England and is unfunny and frustrating. Ras observed at one point that only the Halidon was a worse read while Rob went so far as to compare Lipsyte’s writing to Jilly Cooper and find him wanting.

This marmite polarisation was perhaps the reason for a lively but slightly shorter than usual discussion with book matters concluded by 10.15 and more general conversation following on afterwards. The book discussion tended to remind the ayes of the things they had enjoyed about the book but had already started to forget (trendy Salamander childrearing, workplace politics, loft/cage living, hip 60s parents, business and marketing speak, surfing TV and the internet, cookery shows, student life etc) – and someone (Mark T, I think) commented on how many of the group were smiling at the recollection of these. It looked very much like this recollection also reminded the nays exactly why they disliked this stupid book in the first place.

5.58

Parrol and Olivier – Peter Carey

Can't find any notes of group deliberations. Neil supplied these thoughts:

Well, I have to say this was a very pleasant surprise. I have only read one Pater Carey book before, the Kelly Gang story that won the Booker Prize, and I can't say I was that taken with that particular novel. I found the story rather one-dimensional and the laboured interpretation of how Kelly might have told his own story rather monotonous. So I didn't come to this book with high expectations and my first impressions weren't helped much by the opening sections from either of the narrators. Both seemed very dark and foreboding and didn't hint to me at all of the rather comic tale that would unfold quite amusingly afterwards.

It is perhaps a bit of a stretch to liken this to a 19th century Jeeves and Wooster novel, but the underlying humour seems to be there in the re-telling of the master servant relationship, especially as this relationship is so unconventional. I liked the way we alternated between narrators to get their different takes on the situations and the relationship and I found their characters to be well drawn.

I also found the backdrop to the book interesting. It made me realise how little I know about the French Revolution and more particularly the July Revolution and it has made me go on to read up some more about both to try and better understand the background to Olivier's position. It also threw up some interesting questions for me, amongst which was the question of whether there had been any famous female painters pre the 20th century, something which again I have looked in to and find remarkable that there were so few female painters of any note around this time.

Another aspect I enjoyed was the way Carey used hindsight to draw parallels between modern America and this older version, with sideways nods to the potential for ignorant men to become President for example and their early obsession with wealth and property which Carey seemed very clearly to me to be comparing to the open avarice that poisons the country today.

But most of all I enjoyed Carey's poetic writing style and I loved the way he effortlessly constructed sentences which would take most of us hours if not days to come up with if we could ever at all. Take this sentence for example where Olivier describes a wine he is drinking: "In a year it would be a dowager with a faded corsage, but as it entered my mouth it was vigorous and manly, completely composed, its orchestra all present and correct" - take that Jilly Goolden!

The Snowman – Jo Nesbo

24th Feb 2011.

We had clear difference of opinion about Jo Nesbo and Snowman - or to be more precise a difference between those absent and who sent their comments in advance and liked it (particularly Ras and Richard) vs those at the meeting. To be fair, Mark T did start off the discussion with a strong endorsement of the book, but then - as others pulled the author's style and abilities to pieces - gradually lowered his opinion of it. (Such is the power of group pressure!).

In the interests of balance, I'd probably better start with a reminder of what the missing parties liked about The Snowman. Their notes said it "ticked all the police/detective/thriller genre boxes' (Richard), was a "fast moving, ripping yarn with believable characters" (Ras) and (whilst less enthusiastic overall) left Steve "gripped by the imagery and parts of the plot". So - that's the positive comments over!

From those present (which was the rest of us bar Will), there was agreement that it kept us largely interested and the story was (sort of) entertaining, but collectively we were far from impressed either by Mr Nesbo's writing abilities or the credibility of the book as a story that held together - with Neil being particularly critical.

To take the writing abilities first. From Neil's ' it was an undemanding, easy read' to Chris's 'this wasn't the sort of book I thought I'd be reading when I took up the offer to join a book club', there was a strong view that Jo Nesbo was not a great writer. As we explored the Steig comparison, our view was that Nesbo's characters were standard and predictable - as opposed to (for example) the highly original female lead in Steig's books. Though on the more positive side, we has a discussion about how Nesbo had characters that were 'earthy' and flawed and how he took a critical view of society as opposed to Larson's idealistic, left wing/radical heros which was perhaps more realistic. As we bow to Steve's superior knowledge to translation standards, we had to accept that the language quality and creativity is largely Nesbo's - and thus he is responsible for poor writing standards - varying from awful choice of words when trying to write sex scenes (words like 'dick' and 'porking' are not components of erotic literature) through to the more fundamental problem of him having a limited range of 'techniques' to engage the reader.

We almost all agreed that the first seventy or so pages were a really quite gripping read - he created tension and indeed fear on occasions as the first couple of murders were described. But then it became totally predictable - a case of 'oh no, here's another woman with kids, there'll be a death and a snowman any second'. Similarly, the regularity with which people became suspects and were then cleared ended up being beyond a joke. There were several comments about how he failed to explain key points in the story. For example - why did observing his mother being 'porked' by someone (to use Nesbo-lingo) turn the eventual culprit into a mass-murderer (there should have been some exploration of that), or why did Katrine not have bullets in her gun (a key moment but it remained unexplained). Some of the storyline was considered totally predictable - for example we all knew that the handcuffs were going to play a part almost from the first time he brought them into the text. There were differing views on whether it was possible to spot the eventual murderer. Some were genuinely misled, whereas others (including me who can usually never spot the murderer in a whodunit) were convinced from the outset that the sexually gorgeous cop (Katrine) would become a suspect and then be exonerated, the lover and Hole would end up together and thus the extremely nice new partner of his lover was clearly going to be the guilty party, Toooooooo predictable, and incidentally - why did Katrine just totally disappear from the novel for the last quarter of it?

Which leads us to the implausibility of numerous bits of the story - a problem noted by Richard amongst his enthusiasm. To give just a few examples of those spotted by those of us downing the beer in the Devonshire:

The way the police unquestioningly accepted the first dead person as being the murdered with almost no evidence or rationale

The body in the freezer (obviously a major investigation into a missing policeman would not have looked in a freezer in the basement of his holiday home - far to complex a concept for the average Norwegian cop)

Hole just accepting the mould-man into his house, giving him the key (particularly when he was going on about the Snowman being close to him) and then still not questioning it when the Residents Association people said they knew nothing of a mould problem

Hole disarming Katrine with a fishing rod

The six storey dive into the canal

Etc etc

Finally, to end of a positive note, we all thought the mould man bit was a very clever red herring - I think everyone thought that ti would have something to do with the denouement - and the re-appearance at the very end was a nice touch. A question someone (can;t remember who - sorry) asked was whether it was just a red herring or whether it was a metaphor for decay in society, the police force and so on).

6.53

Sister – Rosamund Lupton

27^th January 2011

Once again we found we had a book that was capable of splitting opinion. The split was basically down the lines of Chris, Mark and Neil quite liking the book while Ras and Steve were a lot less keen. Amongst those of us that enjoyed the book there was a feeling that the book was a page turner with a relatively unusual premise in that it was a sibling investigating the disappearance rather than a detective, that it drew you back in wanting to read more and that a number of the characters were well drawn, most notably the two sisters and their mother. Mark particularly enjoyed the family relationships and found them interesting to read, meanwhile I admitted to welling up whilst reading the passages dealing with the funeral (an admission I am sure to regret having made) and one or two others agreed that it was moving in parts.

On the down side everyone seemed to have elements of the book which they felt detracted from it to some extent or other. For a number of us it was the ending and the fact that we were supposed to believe that Bea has just made up all the meetings with Mr Wright, and much else, whilst lying on the floor of a public toilet, half drugged. Many of us clearly felt this didn’t work. In fact I quoted a line from the author’s Q&A at the end where Rosamund Lupton says that she believes it is important that writers are prepared to “take on the chin what has to be re-written, however drastically” and expounded my theory that she was forced into the change of ending by a persuasive editor, wrongly in the opinion of most of us.

In the meantime I was also not persuaded that Bea could be so perceptive of people’s characters when she was so emotionally stunted; Chris thought the plotline of big drug company doing whatever it took was one that sounded a little too familiar, Ras didn’t like the jumps in chronology, the fact that we were left unsure of whether Bea was saved or not and the unrealistic relationship with the fiancée, while with Steve it was easier to list what he did like than what he didn’t (although high on his list were grammatical errors, such as spelling wretch as retch, not using a capital P for Pantone, and the fact that he felt rather excluded from the intimate “conversation” between Bea and her sister). Steve admitted to having got off on the wrong foot with the book and not having read it all because he really wasn’t engaged by it. He also raised the interesting question as to whether it was fair comment that not only were all men less convincing (see Richards notes), but also in general all men in the book were bad and potential suspects while all women were good and potential victims.

So, in summary, everyone, including Richard whose notes we reviewed, felt the book had drawbacks, but whereas for some of us they didn’t bother us much and generally we were happy to be taken along for the ride, for others these were often major stumbling blocks that they found it difficult to get past.

From Mark Th: I think I sit with Ras and Chris on this one. The first third was really enjoyable and the narrative device of combining Mr Wright with her letter to her sister created an engaging and very funusual take on a usually very male genre - allowing her to write with a feminine sensibility about her feelings for sister, mother Todd, Mr Wright as well as advance the plot. The development of the female characters and their relationships was also absorbing. From about halfway it drifted away from credibility (as Richard has pointed out in some detail) well before the final scooby doo banalities of the denouement. This may reflect my problems with this type of genre, as the writing was at times both poetic and insightful while the plot was a bit silly.

Lights out in Wonderland – DBC Pierre

30^th Dec 2010

The discussion on 'Lights Out in Wonderland' was somewhat brief. There wasn't a vast degree of dissent from the previously-submitted comments from Richard, Ras, Will and Mark Th - though perhaps not quite as vitriolic and certainly those present didn't concur with Mark Th's view of a zero score with thus no redeeming features at all. Neil did actually quite like the book and Chris thought it interesting in parts. Essentially what they saw in it was a greater degree of what Ras & Richard noted (and Rob concurred with) that contained within a deluge of pretentious bollocks were actually some really quite interesting observations on life, politics, economics and the world in general. Neil even went to the extent of suggesting that he could spot a plot and a storyline that went through the book - but totally failed to persuade the rest of us of that fact. The consensus (such as there was) was that whilst there was a simple plot (person pissed of with life decides to kill himself after last binge with mate - gets into a mess so tries to save mate first, discovers capitalist excess, finds it distasteful and redeems himself) the author's inability to turn it into a cogent novel destroyed any potential for this to be a good book. There was a brief discussion about the difference between books that were about real life and those that were clearly 'fantasy' - and how part of the problem with Lights Out was that it was clearly the latter but that Pierre had failed to write it in a way that made the non-realism seem acceptable. Put another way, in a book like Kafka, the fact that Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame appeared in the story was not a matter that made the reader think it was ludicrous and impossible - because it flowed and was an acceptable part of the unrealistic happenings in the book that added up to a cogent whole. In Lights Out, the whole (for example) dinner at the end just left people musing on the ludicrous impossibility of it all - ergo the author failed in his task of writing a 'fantasy' book that worked. It was, essentially and to use Richard's words 'self-indulgent, narcissistic, verbose crap'.

Steve, who chose it, but couldn't be there to defend it, was a bit surprised at the extremity of the responses. He added: I found Wonderland tough to get into, not least because of the outrageous price charged for a paperback - publishers seem to think that if they stick an extra bit of cardboard on the cover they can add 60% to the cover price. Gabriel didn't endear himself to me (nor was he supposed to), and all that cobblers about nimbuses (nimbii?) wasn't helping.

I did find though that as I persevered, it became more rewarding. I thought the Japanese interlude was interesting and quite amusingly written, though I really didn't care if Smuts was clapped in jail and never seen again. It really came to life in Berlin though - I thought his descriptions of these huge monolithic remnants of Hitler's surge for domination were very powerful, and reading the episode set in the former Gestapo HQ co-incided with seeing a programme on TV about other massive military installations that are still dotted around Berlin. Cue one lost hour on Google Maps... As already pointed out in the notes of the meeting (so sorry I couldn't be there!), there was some possibly quite heavy-handed allegorical stuff going on with capitalist bankers and remnants of totalitarian regimes thrown into stark contrast. But it was vivid, different, quite funny, and becasue of all that, more interesting than some. I wouldn't call it a good book by the standards of, say, Engleby (where the trick of developing a story around an unsympathetic main character was more deftly handled, I think), but I found myself enjoying the journey.

3.17

Glasshopper – Isobel Ashdown

25th November 2010

We had a lengthy and lively discussion about this book, so at least it sparked some discussion. Richard went last to add weight to his lifelong experience in the field of alcoholism and its impact on drinkers and their families. He felt that Ashdown captured the truth of the child's experience in an alcoholic house remarkably well - the click,clack of the gin cupboard, and the resignation on having his pocket money stolen for drink might be examples. It is fair to say everyone enjoyed the book with the possible exception of Mark Th.

We all agreed it was easy to read, and that we became immersed in excellent characterizations. It is an evocative read, capturing life in the 60s/70s/80s really well, with a great sense of place - IOW, Portsmouth and France. Some of us liked the drawing of the old shop-keeper and Jakes growing relationship with him. She also caught Billy's sad, bitter old mother well. In general this is a story under the skin of very ordinary lives, with the usual array of personal triumphs and tragedies.

There was debate over whether Mary died as a result of an accident or suicide, ultimately unresolved. The split chapters between young Mary and Jake split the group a bit - some thought it worked well, others thought it detracted. But it did not serve to confuse anyone - so maybe we could all live with it? - and the convergence of stories was quite liked. Most thought Jake was better drawn than Mary. We rather regretted that the author admits to attending a creative writing course: a bit like hard porn, it detracts from the 'mysterious magic'. Or maybe us Brits just like things to appear effortless and amateur?!

The biggest black mark from the discussion was the ending. It was felt that the suicide/accident was not really required and the response of Billy to it seemed more of like a fantasy than reality. The introduction of the idea that Mary was actually a manic depressive seemed out of place. Ashdown appeared to be swayed by her writing course to go for a dramatic finish.

We talked over what triggered Mary's alcoholism and why she continued drinking, and the coping mechanisms those around her developed.

The most damning indictments came from Mark Th who ultimately found the book 'really boring' and possibly Rob who saw it as 'an OK read'.

6.68

The Siege of Krishnapur – JG Farrell

27^th October 2010

Seven of us at the Fox and Badger (missing Will and Richard) for a discussion about the Siege of Krishnapur. After a good half hour of collective drowning of sorrows with regards to the impact of the economic position/government cuts etc on our work and lives, we had a rough consensus about Krishnapur. Put simply, Steve and Neil both thought it was really good, Ras and Chris thought it was good as did both Marks (though neither had quite finished it) whilst I thought it was reasonably good. One of the impacts of this (along with Mark Th's early departure to rescue stranded offspring) was there was perhaps less discussion about the book than on some other occasions. Overall:

General view that the writing style was easy and clear and he managed to write in the style of the period whilst also not making the book feel dated

Also a general view that the book was struggling at around a third of the way through i.e. the amount of description up to the start of the siege was a bit too long but once the siege description started it became more engrossing

Interesting how the author, for almost everyone, managed to create a strong image of the heat and climate, but somehow failed to enable people to generate a clear picture in their minds of the physical environment and other elements of the setting within which the story was developing. Some of this was perhaps because he didn't give important information - for example, no-one had any idea about how many people there were in the compound either at the start or as time went by.

A discussion about the pace of change in society and how things like social and behavioural norms (e.g. place of women and the British belief that they ruled the world) have changed in the comparatively short period of time since the book was set. This led into a conversation about how the pace of change in the last forty years or so has been quite astounding and whether it continues to crank up at that rate. Differing views on whether there are 'spurts' of societal change because of key innovations (industrial revolution circa 1800, the car early C20th, television in 50s/60s linked to pop music culture and then computers/internet in the last fifteen years - and thus a question about whether we might slow down for a while until the next major development (though in hindsight it's interesting to note that the gaps between the inventions that really influenced change appear to have been becoming shorter).

So, the scores were quite high (with three scores still to come), which was interesting because whilst people liked it, with the possible exception of Steve it wasn't getting the rave review comments that other high scoring books got. Its high position is really because of consensus, with no-one giving it a low score to pull the average down. Rob's current displacement activity is to re-produce the scoring table taking out the highest and lowest scores for every book (a method generally viewed as being more statistically reliable). This resulted in some significant shifts and the current top three of Queens Gambit, Engleby and Krishnapur (in that order), being replaced by Engleby, Equal Music and Kite Runner with Engleby and Equal Music quite some way ahead of anything else. Other big movers (spirit of Fluff lives on) are Fascination, Line of Beauty and Closed Circle in an upwards direction, whilst the big droppers were Case Histories, Jesus Christ and Shadow of the Wind. Krishnapur dropped to ninth. Halidon stayed firmly rooted to the bottom but with Never Never dropping below 10 Bonks (10 Days in the Hills to you) to next to last. However, we'll continue to use the full scores for the rankings.

7.51