The Lighthouse - you only get what you give

The Lighthouse by Alison Moore (Salt Publishing: 2012) Futh, recently seperated from his wife, decides to take a walking holiday through Germany. Along the way, he briefly meets Esther, a bored wife who runs a hotel with her husband. The Lighthouse explores the lives of both through a series of flashbacks to their formative experiences.

See the GBR interview with Alison Moore here.

There are a few words that pop up in a lot in reviews for The Lighthouse. “Atmospheric”. "Melancholy”.

They're all well earned descriptions. This is a sparse book. There are absolutely no explosions, no glorious resolution. Just the slow exploration of two characters whose only links seem to be their deep rooted sadness and their affection for a lighthouse shaped perfume bottle.

Not the stuff to make you jump out of your seat.

But these 192 pages made their way to the Man Booker Prize Shortlist. And I can see why. There’s a great deal of simple power about the way Moore writes. That's something which constantly fascinates me about good writing. When someone is able to create such a specific and complete mood using only the black and white of words on a page. Moore writes incredibly economically. The language is simple, the sentences clipped. But they're so carefully chosen and put together that there's a consistent and effective feel from beginning to end.

Moore is also continually playing a game of tag with the reader's imagination, leaving truck sized gaps between the lines for you to fill in. There aren't page long descriptions of exactly how someone is thinking. No long running sentences on the minutiae of scenery. The odd plot point is left unsaid, trusting you'll infer it properly.

Which sounds like a jerk thing to say. "It's not about what she writes, it's about what she doesn't." I know that sounds like an up-yourself, painfully art-house observation, and I can honestly say I've never fully grasped the importance of the concept before. But Moore plays the card so expertly that I think I get it here. She weaves a tale which, on the surface, is fairly pedestrian, but because of the mood she creates and the questions she poses, I found myself nontheless gripped.

The issues in play and the emotions attached to them grow under the influence of Moore's writing.

There's a danger here, of course. Let this pathos, this between-the-lines beauty pass you by, and you're left with a pretty bland narrative. Read this on a crowded train for ten mins every day, without giving it your full attention, and you could easily miss the value of it. I'm not saying it's too obscure, that Moore has hidden the nuggets too deeply; just that you need to engage your own brain a little when reading this. This isn't a book where you can just sit back and expect to be entertained. It isn't a thriller or a crime novel. You need to put a little of yourself in it as well. Only a little, not a lot, but some, all the same. 

It's totally worth it though. Let yourself get hooked at the beginning, and you'll be treated to some highly individual characters. Some fascinating and well developed psychology. A building, barely under-the-radar tension that remains taught thoughout.

Fail to get hooked at the beginning though, and you'll get bored. No doubt about it. But it's a pretty short book. So totally worth taking the punt.

8 GBR

I need to read something bad soon. There's been a glut of good scores in the last month or so. Maybe we all deserved it after the Wilbur Smith debacle. But if I'm not careful, you'll start thinking I don't mean it when I give a high score. I do. 8 GBR is a mark of a book that I hugely enjoyed. One that I'll pick up again at some distant date and re-read. One that will stick in my mind. A book I think you should pick up too (which is, after all, the point of all this).

I just seem to be reading a lot of them at the moment.

Next week, another interview+review double header. Bet you can't guess who.

Umbrella - wonderful confusion

Umbrella by Will Self (Bloomsbury: 2012) A novel spanning the century, following an outbreak of encephalitis lethargica in 1918, and the lifelong impact it has to a group of patients in which it has been misdiagnosed. Self uses the disease and its aftermath to explore the destructive capacity of technology and machinery on the human condition.

I have almost zero idea where to start. I really don’t. This is Booker Prize shortlist stuff. I'm getting book review stage fright, and I don't know where to begin. But it seems I have, so I’ll try to go on.

I’ve never read anything like Umbrella before. Which I mean in an entirely positive way. That must be the foremost and loudest piece of praise for this book - it’s original.

Underneath that, it’s a bunch of other things as well, positive and negative. In the pro column we should scribble words like ambitious, beautiful, energetic, intelligent, brave. Our con column should include words like confusing, disjointed, hard-work.

No doubt Self would have a few things to say about these judgements. He probably would balk at Umbrella being labelled brave or hard-work. But it is. It takes an idea he believes in strongly, and sets it out in a form that he is no less committed to. By staying true to both idea and form, he runs the risk of the whole project being drowned in confusing modernist prose. To the normal writer, it’s a huge risk. Letting your great idea into the world in such a fragile form. It’s likely to wither.

But not Self. If I learned anything from hearing him speak in Edinburgh, it’s that he’d simply shrug his shoulders at such risks. He wouldn’t even see it as a choice. The reader experience is not his problem. As far as he’s concerned, this is the true way to represent human experience, so why on earth would he do it any other way.

The result is a book that’s both vital and difficult to untangle. It jumps from character to character, time to time, setting to setting - all without warning or sign posts. He doesn’t even start a new paragraph when he shifts his voice, will go from 1918 to 1971 in the same sentence, leaving it up to the reader to figure out what’s going on.

Not "Umbrella" - it's "For Gavin"

To begin with (and for most of the book in fact) it's utterly confusing. You never master it (at least I didn’t), but I did gradually become comfortable with the it. Persevere, and it has a strange effect. It begins to achieve a feeling of the “continuous presence” that Self harps on about. You slowly begin to see all parts of the story at all times - not as a list of events, but as a whole tangled up confused ball of experience. A bit like the Tralfamadorians, for those Vonnegut fans amongst you (of which I’m sure there are tons).

So that’s the style. But what about the content? I’m totally certain that I missed a lot of the content. I’m sure there are major parts of the story that flew right past me as I was sweating with furrowed brow trying to un-pick the style. But some bits came through. I got the gist of what was happening, and there were some vignettes of experience that shone out.

It may be because I was just so pleased to be understanding a bit of the plot. Will Self has that effect on you. He makes you rejoice in any brief seconds when you feel you're starting to understand him. He makes you feel you're spending a moment or two on equal terms with an elite brain. But whatever the reason, when a section struck home, it did so brightly and beautifully and terribly.

And the ideas that Self explores are worth the struggle too. They become clearer as you get towards the end. Self allows himself to explain them more overtly, and when you put the book down, your mind is racing with thoughts of machines and people and life and death and family and meaning.

I feel I’ve just explained all the pro column. I haven’t really gone into the cons. I don’t want you to think this is a rewarding book which just needs a little effort. That’s not true. It needs a lot of effort. It needs the same commitment that Self has to the style. Yes, the rewards are there. But are they worth it? Do you have the time to earn them? When push comes to shove, would you rather just curl up with a bit of Grisham instead?

Gah! I’m torn. I think you should go read this. I think it’s important and it’ll introduce you to new ideas and styles. But I also think that all of that comes at a price, one that most of you probably don’t have the time or energy to pay.

How do I put all of that into a score between one and ten?

6 GBR

That’s how. Sit right on the fence. Just north of the fence really. But that feels about right.

Next week, something less dense. I promise.