Bedlam - cheese and ham

Bedlam by Christopher Brookmyer (Orbit: 2013) A Stirlingshire computer geek gets transported into a world seemingly made up of every computer game he's ever known. The mystery deepens as timelines get confused, and he finds himself in the middle of a battle, unsure what he's actually fighting for.

(one, two…wait for it…three) SCI-FI!!!

I haven’t done a proper sci-fi book on GBR yet. Not a proper one anyway. So when this came up on my Amazon-recommends list, I thought I’d take the plunge. Some guy stuck in a computer game world, battling his way through moral dilemmas and laser canons? Go on then.

Of course, the “stuck in a computer game” thing should probably have been left alone after Tron. They nailed it there. But what the hey, this sounded like fun, so in I went.

And thus repeated something that has become a worryingly familiar pattern of late. A book that I started out enjoying. And then quickly grew a little tired of. And ended up actually disliking really rather a lot.

The problem here is (and I say this with full awareness of how ridiculous I’m being) the believability of it. I don’t mean the plot. I’m happy to leave logic and skepticism at the door when sci-fi is concerned. I mean believability in the writing – the dialogue, the thought processes of the characters, the relationships that the story turns on.

And it started so well. In the first few chapters, I  liked the wit on display. The geeky references (I especially liked a reference to Buffy season 6 episode 17). But it didn’t take too long before the wit started to curdle and take on a distinctly cheesy tone. The one liners, the out-there analogies, the quirky uses of language – it all ended up just coming off as hammed up. (Cheese AND ham? I really have been eating too many sandwiches recently. But you get my meaning).

It got to the point where I was reading this in a permanent state of cringe. There was just zero about the dialogue that was natural. Zilch. Every sentence dripped with premeditation, and was delivered without even an attempt at subtlety. Which may have been bearable if it was consistently funny. But it wasn’t.

I know, I know, it’s sci-fi, right? It should be allowed a bit of cheese. A bit of too-slick wit. A large helping of contrived come-backers that wouldn’t work in any other genre. I absolutely recognize that, but the problem is it doesn’t matter what the genre, if I’m left dreading what’s coming every time a piece of dialogue is opened, I’m just plain not going to enjoy the book. Brookmyre utterly failed to bed in the sci-fi hallmarks in a way that doesn’t have you begging for the book to end.

Wow, having typed that, it now seems a little harsh. The plot to this was decent. The concept was actually a bit brilliant. Some of the characters were decently well conceived (if not particularly convincingly presented). And…

No! No excuses. I have a pretty high tolerance for sci-fi cheese. I’ve been known to be partial to it in fairly large helpings in the past. Firefly does it well. Buffy does it well. Bedlam does not do it well.

3 GBR

I’ve not wanted to get to the end of a book so much in quite some time.

Next week, something a bit biblical. (Not the Bible).

C - making me feel upper-mid-brow

C by Tom McCarthy (Jonathan Cape: 2010) This book follows Serge Carrefax as he anchors his life to the key developments of early 20th century technology, with the radio at it’s core. He spends much of his life trying to understand his existence, the nature of loss, and his own inherent sadness. Pathos galore.

As I’m only half way through my current read, I looked at my bookshelf and decided to tell you about this book instead.

Partly because last week's book had a ridiculously long title, and this has the shortest of anything I've ever read, and I like that joke. But it also stands out because it makes me feel guilty, more than any other book on my shelf.

Why guilty? Because I just didn’t get it.

I really didn’t. And I know there’s something to get. People whose opinions I trust have told me how great this book is. It has given rise to praise which is embarrassing at times. It’s nearly two years since it was published, and it’s still drawing applause, which makes me think it stands a chance of living a long time in the public mind.

So, clearly, there’s big biscuits to be had here. I just couldn’t reach them.

It’s possibly because this has a high brow, post modern style that I struggle with. I’ve never studied “literature” in any sort of serious academic setting. I don’t have the tools to navigate a narrative which is deconstructive, and avoids any traditional hint of character and plot. I try, I really do. And I like to think I’m a fairly fast learner with my own fair share of common sense. But as I was reading C, it felt as if there was a huge point being made which remained hidden from me as a member of the low-brow (or at least mid-brow. Is there an upper-mid-brow? If so, that’s probably where I’d nestle).

All of which makes me feel guilty. Or dumb. Or both.

And then, earlier this year, I read another post-modern, terribly academic novel in Umbrella. And I found myself enjoying it much more. Yes, the long periods of confusion remained, but they were broken up by beautiful bits which grabbed me, and even the confusion seemed to have a purpose and a meaning by the last page.

I never got that with C.

So maybe it’s not the style that is all to blame. If I can enjoy Umbrella, maybe there’s something else about C which made it fall down for me.

For example, I never found myself connecting with the characters in the same way as I did with Umbrella. There are eccentricities baked into the plot and the people which kept me constantly off-balance, and not in a good way. There’s a metaphysical core to a lot of what happens that I never bought into the way I ought to have done.

It wasn’t entirely lost on me. I don’t want you to think I didn’t enjoy this simply because I missed the point completely (though clearly I did a bit). The big arcs, the emotion, the central themes - I spotted some of these and understood them to a point. But I never believed them. The subtleties that make you really connect with a book never came. The detail and the empathy they illicit remained annoyingly out of reach.

Maybe you’ll read this and you’ll get it better than I did. Maybe you’re better armed to unpick its worth.

3 GBR

I don’t mind putting in effort for a book. But I need something back. I found this tough, and never felt my effort was rewarded. The flashes of brilliance never struck me.

Only 3 and a bit weeks until Christmas, which means the GBRYIR is on its way. It also means the decorations are up in my and Mrs GBR’s flat. And we’ve had mince pies. And I’m wearing my Christmas hat. Try not to be too jealous.

Last Exit to Brooklyn - a bit of a Julia Roberts

Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr (Calder and Boyars: 1967). A book that was initially banned for its obscenity in 1967, it’s set in the gutters of New York City and follows a cast that embody all that is not well about America. It explores most of the bad sides of human nature and some of the good, and sparks sympathy for the unlikeliest of characters caught in bad situations.

Hi guys.

I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to finish a book that just doesn’t want to be finished. It’s not its fault, it’s entirely mine. It’s a pretty good book, but for one reason or another, I’ve ended up reading it in snatched five minutes here and there.

So instead of reviewing what I wanted to review this week, I’ve ended up staring at my bookshelf looking for an old read that is worthwhile telling you about. And I settled on Last Exit to Brooklyn.

And it’s for one very specific reason. This is one of the few books that, regardless of the setting in which I read it, sucked.

Julia Roberts - I don't like her, but you might (idiot)

I like to think I’m fairly generous of mind. Pretty open to new things. If I don’t like something, I try to at least recognise why someone else might. I hate Julia Roberts’ films for instance, but I get that some people might find her funny and pretty and deep and all that stuff. I don’t. I think she’s rubbish. But I can see why you might think she’s not.

Last Exit to Brooklyn, though, I just don’t get. I picked it up in the first place for a few reasons. First – I’m a big fan of America, and New York in particular. I think it’s probably one of the best cities on earth, and one of the biggest and best muse’s the world’s ever created. Second – this is supposed to be a major modern classic. In the words of one reviewer, it will “still be eagerly read in 100 years time.” That intrigued me. I like the idea of books that survive.

So I was looking forward to this.

But it just did not work for me. It’s written in an incredibly distinctive way. It’s been lauded for its poetic qualities. It has a pace and a feel that is intent on carrying you along with it. Selby didn’t just sit down and start describing the stuff he wanted to – he chose the structure of his sentences and his paragraphs and his chapters in such a way as to create a fierce rhythm.

I tried, honest I tried. I tried reading it in short bursts. I tried reading it in quiet places. I tried reading it in loud places. I tried reading it the right way up and upside down (OK, I didn’t do that). But I just did not get it.

OK, I understand it’s supposed to be pretty chaotic. I understand it’s supposed to be uncomfortable to read. But I’ve read psychedelic books, and I’ve read disturbing books, and I got through them fine. This, I struggled with. The stream of consciousness style meant I just never found anything to anchor my interest on.

The sad thing is that the characters and the setting are pretty amazing. The New York that’s being described is a version that really does compel me. The characters that Selby jumps between really are wonderful and complex. The point that Selby is trying to thrust home with every breath of the book is important, but for me, it’s simply lost in the utter confusion.

I know the style of the book is supposed to reflect the depravity and disorder of the world that Selby is presenting. But instead of making me truly feel the spirit of the book, it just ended up making me bored.

Words are a wonderful thing. Instead of using them for their meaning, Selby uses them for their rhythm. Which could work in poetry, but for a novel, it just ends up in a creation that you need your dad’s size 14 wellington boots to wade through.

3 GBR

I didn’t enjoy this. But I can’t give it a zero. I get that it’s an important book. And I still get excited by its premise. Maybe I need to pick it up again and see if it makes more sense with a second run. I probably won’t though. It’s rugby world cup month, so I have better things to do with my time than read a book again that I didn’t enjoy first time around

Next time, the book that I’ve been trying to finish for ages. I promise.

A Palace in the Old Village - from Morocco with indifference

A Palace in the Old Village by Tahar Ben Jelloun (First published in the UK by Arcadia Books in 2011) A short novel that centres on an immigrant worker in France as he approaches retirement. He’s become disenchanted with his adopted country and the values it’s instilling in his children. To overcome it, he plans to spend his retirement back in his Moroccan village, building a house for his whole family to live in.

One of the great things about books (and tv, film, paintings, photography, music...well, you get the picture) is that they can take you to places (and times) you’ve never been before. Art can be your own personal transporter, just like in Star Trek but without Scotty (or Geordi for you Next Generation fans). It can instantly transport you anywhere.

If it’s done well, of course.

If not, you end up just hanging around in the departure lounge.

I had high hopes for this book, from “Morocco’s greatest living author” no less. I love books that take me places I know nothing about. There’s been a lot from India in recent years, and Japanese novels seem to have got a lot of fans too. But I’d never read anything from North Africa. So I packed a bag and settled in for a trip.

It’s not that the book is particularly badly written. Tahar Ben Jelloun clearly has a lot of control of his art, or he wouldn’t have such a reputation or be so widely published. The purpose of the book was clear, the story lucid enough, the narrative coherent. He portrayed a very believable and sympathetic central character. All the right ingredients were there.

But there simply wasn’t enough bite to it. I’m not a reader that demands a twist in every page. If anything, I verge more on the pretentious side of the scale than the thrill seeker (much as I dislike myself for it). But even for me, this book was too much “issue” and not enough “story”. (Is overboard to admit to being a little pretentious and use quote marks in the same paragraph? Oh well, too late...)

The author has very obviously started out with a message, and then tried to construct a story that will help him to tell it.

I don’t like that.

I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, just that it shouldn’t be done so starkly. There’s nothing wrong with making a point through fiction. Orwell did it all the time, and I like reading him. In fact, I’d go as far as to say a book needs to have a wider moral point or two in there, but it needs to be in the background. In A Palace in the Old Village, it’s not so much in the foreground as permanently tattooed on your eyeballs. You simply can’t escape it for a second or two and just enjoy the story.

There is, however, one saving grace. The book constantly switches between first person and third person narrative. “That must be distracting”, I hear you scream. Well, no, it isn’t. In fact, the first few times the tense was switched, I didn’t even notice it. Hand on heart, it was done so subtly that I didn’t know it’d happened. I’ve never seen that attempted, never mind achieved. It really was very well done, and was a quirk that meant the book didn’t totally suck balls.

Until the very end of course, when the resolution of the story was so contrived that Paolo Coelho should be a little worried (that’s right, I just dissed Coelho. I guess I just don’t like anyone much in this blog post, huh?) The fairytale quality of the last few pages jarred so violently with the rest of the book that it left a bit of a scowl on my face when I turned the last page. Not a taste you want a book to leave in your mouth.

Maybe it was on purpose. Maybe the author was making a point about the differences between France and Morocco (again).

Either way, it didn’t work for me.

3 GBR

And that’s mainly because of the whole first person/third person quirk.

After that, I need the next thing I read to be good, I really do. Not time to give Coelho another try, then.

The Grapes of Wrath - an underperforming hero

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Viking Press: 1939). An epic novel from one of America’s greatest. Steinbeck lets us into the lives of the Joad family as they are forced out of their old world and into a journey West, in search of a promised land of bountiful farming and fields laden with grapes. Their hopes of salvation are gradually revealed as false as their ordeal does its best to break the family.

Right, so now we’re playing full contact.

A rather strange opening for something as sedate as a book review, perhaps. But I really do feel like I’m playing with bigger stakes with this one.

Because this one is a Steinbeck. The first of his that I read.

John Steinbeck is perhaps my favourite all time author. I ordinarily don’t like making such statements. “What’s your favourite film?” “What’s your favourite song?” Perfectly plausible conversation starters, but they get up my nose. How on earth, out of all the infinite hours of footage that have been filmed, of the immense variety of music that has been recorded, can you sit down and settle on one single piece of art and say “this one, this is the one I value above all others. This is the one that is better in every way when put against anything else.” It just can’t be done. You can’t have a definitive favourite in a world so vast.

I heard someone say once (I honestly can’t remember who, I think it was Will Self) that if someone held a gun to my head and said “pick your favourite author, or I’ll shoot you”, then I’d let them shoot. I’d agree with him.

Unless, of course, it’s Steinbeck.

I’m not saying he’s my favourite by a mile. Not even by a hundred yards. I’ve enjoyed the work of more writers than I can think to count (but then I can’t count very high to be honest).

But he is my favourite. And that’s why my first Steinbeck review is fairly massive for me. Especially when it’s the one Steinbeck I’ve read that I didn’t actually enjoy.

The Grapes of Wrath, to me, spent an incredibly long time painting a fairly simple picture. And then retracing over the lines again and again. That’s not to say the story isn’t important. It’s a book that makes a worthy social point. It’s one that sheds light on a part of history that deserves to be flooded with attention. It’s a story whose characters you can truly sympathise with, and Steinbeck represents them in a way that makes them incredibly real.

Maybe that’s why I didn’t enjoy it. It was all a bit too real. There were few shocks. The story dripped through as these ordinary people lived through a generation changing experience.

I didn’t find myself thrilled to turn the page. I didn’t feel myself enriched by the passing chapters. I didn’t feel as if my knowledge was growing as I worked my way through. It wasn’t an instant explosion of enjoyment. And it wasn’t a slow burner either. Once I’d grasped the basic premise of the book, the point he was trying to make, I still had 400 odd pages to plough through. And I didn’t feel as if I gained anything by many of them.

So why (I hear you ask) is Steinbeck my favourite author. If he wrote this book that I just plain got bored with, why do I like him so much?

Well, by the time I finished the book (and it took me a lot of finishing) I kind of got the taste. I’d lived with it, and I felt a little dusty with it after I’d put it down. It was a little like red wine. Hated it when I first tasted it, but after a while, I decided to give it another try.

And the second time I tried Steinbeck, I became hooked. That was with East of Eden.

Now, I don’t know if East of Eden is just simply a better book. Maybe I was just more ready to appreciate Steinbeck by the time I picked that one up. Or maybe reading The Grapes of Wrath taught me how to read Steinbeck – how to understand the way he paced a story and appreciate the world he wrote about.

Either way, it leaves me in a dilemma. Do I tell you not to read The Grapes of Wrath because I didn’t enjoy it? Or do I tell you to read it because it could open a world to you that I love?

Well, it’s not that much of a dilemma to be honest. I already know the answer.

If you’ve never read Steinbeck, then don’t read The Grapes of Wrath. At least, not straight away. Read Cannery Row. Read To a God Unknown. Read The Pearl. Read Of Mice and Men. Read East of Eden. You’ll enjoy them. One day I'll review them and I'll tell you why I enjoyed them. And if you don’t enjoy them, I’d like to know why (honestly, I’d actually like to know why, I’m on the hunt for different perspectives here).

So the real dilemma is – can I bring myself to give my personal hero a low GBR score.

3 GBR

Yes. Yes I can.

Sorry John.

You’ll have high scores in the future. I promise.

p.s. Also, sorry no picture this week of my copy. Am filing this one from home (Newcastle that is) and so I don’t have the right cord to link my camera up to my netbook. Not a problem I imagine Steinbeck every imagined anyone having when he wrote The Grapes of Wrath. Or anything else for that matter.