Shakespeare's Local - crossing over

Covers photograph badly in Kindle. Fact.

Shakespeare's Local by Pete Brown (Macmillan: 2012) - A history of the George Inn in Southwark, telling it's remarkable tale over many hundreds of years as it played host to some of histories greats and survived where many of its more famous contemporaries failed.

Crossover books are books of a specific (and usually niche) genre which win over a  general audience. 50 Shades of Grey is probably one of the best recent examples, taking erotica to the masses. Harry Potter did a similar thing for Young Adult fiction. Lord of the Rings for fantasy.

In that sort of company, Shakespeare’s Local won’t set the world on fire. But it deserves a serious nod of appreciation. How do you make local history more appealing to a wide audience? Focus it on a pub, throw in (often drunken) anecdotes of some of history’s luminaries, and hey presto, you’ve got a crossover hit on your hands.

Well, that’s the thinking anyway. But does the UK’s most famous beer historian and commentator pull it off? I think so. Mostly anyway.

For starts, he doesn’t write like the historians you read in school. This is not a text book, with a “and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened” approach. Pete Brown is way more conversational and entertaining than that. He warns you from the outset, giving you fair notice that he’s going to jump around a bit, include a few assumptions, litter the text with amusing footnotes. 

In reality, he doesn’t jump around the timeline as much as he perhaps thinks he does, but he keeps it lively nonetheless. As soon as you think you might be hitting a sticky patch, where he might be forced just to recount a few dry historical happenings in order to make sure the book has some proper context, he whizzes off into another anecdote or another rant or another character portrait. 

Maybe that's easier in a local history book anchored on pubs than it would be in a local history book about agricultural processes, but kudos nonetheless.

It’s all relative, of course. This is no thriller. Brown does what he can to inject drama, and an amusing analogy or quip is never too far away. But this won’t having you on the edge of your seat or rolling on the floor laughing. It’s a lively, colourful, entertainingly disjointed local history book, but it’s still a local history book.

So, if I’m 100% honest (and why wouldn’t I be), I reckon you still need to have at least a pilot light’s worth of interest in the subject matter before you pick this up. 

Me, I enjoy a bit of history. I enjoy it more when a crossover historian like Brown is at the helm, and I enjoy it more when it’s about something fun (like pubs), but I enjoy the dry stuff sometimes too.

I’m not saying you need to be a popular history fanatic, glued to Simon Schama every time he’s on telly. Just that you need at least a little spark of interest, even if it’s been largely suppressed. If there’s ever been a tiny voice at the back of your head which sounds like a history geek but has struggled to make itself heard, this could be the book to let the little guy out on.

8 GBR

I originally gave this a 7, then remembered my Kindle-era rule of only buying the hard copy of stuff I give 8 or above to. At which point I realised I really wanted to own the hard copy of this, so it MUST be worth an 8. (Impeccable logic, which I defy you to pick apart).

Interesting aside on this – Brown had his laptop with ALL his work on the book stolen when he was 3 months away from deadline, so had to start from scratch. Still churned out an 8 GBR though. I’m pretty darn impressed with that.

Next week (if I finish it in time) a new release from the Tinder Press, which they were kind enough to send me an advance copy of (which makes me feel smug).

Fun running

Where's GBR?

Brace yourself. You’re about to read the saddest request for sponsorship ever. 

Me (and Mrs GBR and PaberBlogPrincess) are doing a fun run. 

A 5km fun run. And in the words of Mrs GBR, 5k isn’t exactly climbing Kilimanjaro. She’s right, of course. Kilimanjaro is definitely more difficult. But I’m pretty sure no-one’s ever climbed it dressed as Where’s Wally!

Which is what we’re doing. A Where’s Wally Fun Run. All in the cause of the National Literacy Trust. A worthy (and satisfyingly relevant) charity. When we signed up, we thought we just had to pay an entrance fee, which would go to the charity. But in a last minute game of table-turning, it turns out we each have to raise a minimum £100.

So here’s the team sponsorship page. Go nuts. And if you don’t, you’re not allowed to look at the humorous pictures which I’ll post in a couple of weeks of the three of us dressed as Wally, in amongst a hundred more Wallys, all wishing we’d stayed in bed.


 

Train Dreams - not compatible with Come Dine With Me

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (Granta Books: 2012). The story of a labourer in the American mid-west at the turn of the twentieth century. He leads a simple, happy life until tragedy strikes, and he recoils into an even simpler way of life on the edges of a rapidly developing country. 

I felt bad for a few days after last week’s post. I mean, giving such a low score when at least a chunk of the blame for not enjoying the book was mine. I’m not saying I felt terrible; I’m sure Toibin will lose no sleep over it. But there was guilt there, no doubt.

So I made an effort with this next one. It’s another novella. Something that shouldn’t really take more than two or three sittings to read. So I made some time, and instead of five minute chunks here and there, I read this over a few hours. And hot dog, did it pay off.

This always had pedigree. It’s right there on the cover. “Shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize.” That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when a good writer is slap bang at the top of their game. It happens when an unholy amount of thought and craft has gone into a piece of work. It happens when something seemingly simple is given an indefinable, magic quality. It happens here.

Train Dreams reminded me in a pretty loud way of Steinbeck. And I’m a Steinbeck fan. I’ll tell you more about that one day (it still irks me that the one Steinbeck book on GBR is perhaps the only one of his I didn’t enjoy). But for the time being, suffice to say this book had a lot of the same qualities as Steinbeck’s best writing; a gritty American nostalgia, simple but huge characters, emotion packed between the lines like gun powder. All of that.

Not a lot really happens in this book. Well, maybe that’s not true. There are life changing events. But they’re presented in a stripped down, simple way. There’s very little quickening of pace, no dramatic crescendos. And the central protagonist is a hermit who spends most of his life living alone in the woods. I have no idea how, with such a style and with this sort of plotting, books like this don’t just end up being boring. Bad ones do I guess, but the good ones (such as this) sink you into their pages with such irresistible skill that you hoover them up, content simply to be part of this slow moving world. They have an authentic quality that entertains without needing to fall back on cliff hangers or plot twists or car chases.

And if I accept some blame for not enjoying The Testament of Mary, I’m also going to grab some credit for allowing Train Dreams to flourish. I sat and I spent time with this book. Quality reading time. And I’m fairly certain all that stuff – the magic atmosphere, the subtle emotion, the character depth – none of it would have come through in such a powerful way if I read a few pages at a time whilst Come Dine With Me is playing in the background.

8 GBR

Go get this, clear your Sunday afternoon, and enjoy. If your Sunday’s are booked up for a while though, don’t bother.

Next week, I turn back to some non-fiction (if I finish it in time). It’s pretty boozy non-fiction though, so that livens it up a little. (You’re intrigued now, right?)

The Testament of Mary - my fault, or his?

The Testament ofMary, by Colm Toibin (Viking: 2012) Colm Toibin writes the story of Mary, using the first person voice. She is nearing the end of her life, and reminisces of the events and heartbreaks that have defined it, giving a mother’s perspective rather than a disciple’s.

Some books fly by. Each page feels like it’s slipping through your fingers as you rush towards the end. It doesn’t feel so much like reading the book as experiencing the story.

This was not one of those books. But, in all fairness, I need to shoulder some of the blame. More than any other book in recent memory, I read this in snatched five minutes here and there. I read this when tired, and I read it whilst a little sniffly (which is my entirely modest way of saying I had chronic man flu and nearly died). Any book, when read like that, would suffer. 

And suffer it did. I never fully engaged with this, and it drifted away from memory pretty soon after I finished it.

It puts me in a bit of a difficult position in evaluating it. I can recognize some great aspects of this book. The premise is just plain great, and the writing is done with a very distinct, very consistent, and very strong voice. You get a clear impression of Mary as a mother and as an old woman, neither of which chimes with the more traditional image of her. She comes across as incredibly human, stubborn, and at times helpless. There’s mystery in the plotting (which is difficult as pretty much everyone knows this story), and Toibin paces it very well. He made the good decision to make this a novella rather than anything longer, which fits the book perfectly.

So, all of this I recognized. All of this I spotted, despite reading it in hurried bursts. And yet, despite seeing all of this, I still never really connected with the book. I never felt surrounded by it. I never thought it was a book I needed to go and yell about. And yes, some of that was my fault, but it’s Toibin’s too. He’s got all these tools at his disposal, but he uses them in an incredibly mechanical way. I struggled to see the art here. It felt like an exercise. One well executed, but without any real flair.

I’ll read this again one day. And I’m sure I’ll get it then. But first time through, whether through my fault or Toibin’s, this did not work.

4 GBR

Couple of rough ones in a row there. Pressure on next week now. I’m sure you’re all riveted to find out if we get back on track…

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).

The Innocents - an odd sandwich

The Innocents by Francesca Segal (Vintage: 2013) Following the lives being lived in a Jewish enclave of North London, centred around Adam and Rachel, a young couple hurtling towards marriage until Ellie (Rachel’s prodigal cousin) comes on the scene and threatens to turn everything upside down.

Hmmmm, ok. I went on a bit of a turnaround with this book. I was pretty sold on it for a long time. I was humming along quite nicely, entertained by the story and the people and the world they lived in. And I’d pretty much decided this was a book I was going to enjoy; another high score for 2013, and a deserving winner of the Costa First Novel Award.

But then something pretty unprecedented happened. About three quarters through., I completely changed my mind. That’s pretty rare, no matter what you’re talking about – books, food, tv, whatever.

It’s like I had this great sandwich. A real piece of work that I was loving. I’d finished half of it and I picked the second half up with dripping mouth and wide eyes. I even continued to enjoy it, right up until I had about a quarter left.

Then it got all rubbish, and I spat the rest out. And I wondered what on earth I could have seen in the first half of the sandwich that got me going so much.

I know. That doesn’t happen, right? That’s complete make-believe. Good sandwiches are good – all the way through. But with this book, it happened.

I enjoyed it. A bunch. Then I didn’t.

I look back on the bits I enjoyed, and I see the flaws now. The plotting seems contrived. The protagonist is a twerp. Most of the supporting cast are cartoons.

But let’s give credit where it’s due. All of this was hidden from me for a while. Why? I think it’s because the writing is so good. Segal is talented, no doubt. Like mad talented. The writing is so tight and easy to read. I’ve heard time and again that the best writers make you forget they’re there, and that’s what Segal achieves here. She writes so well that you just experience the story, and don’t get distracted by anything else.

Also, the stage is pretty good. It’s a window on a whole community that I know very little about, and seeing how it works and the characters that drive it got me hooked for a while.

But then it all fell apart. The plot is driven by the ongoing moral dilemma of the protagonist who, (and I’m giving nothing away here that you won’t get from the dust jacket), is faced with a choice between a safe, lovely life and rocking the boat by running off with his wife’s cousin. It’s an interesting dilemma, but not one that I want to hear too much about. I found myself bored of it and of him. I wanted to tell him to get something done already. All the hmming and harrring – I really stopped caring. And once I stopped caring about that, all the other cracks started to appear as well.

Where does that leave us? Well, I’m not going to tell you this is a bad book. It isn’t. It’s well written. It has a good premise. And if you have a bit more patience than I do for the emotional dilemmas of others, then you could probably convince yourself it’s got a good plot as well. But I tripped towards the end of it, and all I was thinking during the last few pages was what I was going to read next.

In my mind, I was book-cheating on it already.

6 GBR

Above average, but only just.

Next week, well I’m not sure. What am I, a fortune teller? Get away from me.

Birdsong - a non-rambling opinion (mostly)

My good looking copy, from
the Folio Society. I think I love
 those guys (and Mrs GBR of course, who
bought it for me)

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson: 1993). Faulks gets stuck into WW1, following the life of Stephen Wraysford as he falls in a tragic kind of love before getting whisked away by the violent events of the early twentieth century. 

So I didn’t post last Sunday. Sorry about that. I felt a bit worse for wear, then got distracted by Andy Murray, then by lunch, then by napping. Before I knew it, it was Monday again.

It’s probably a good thing, because this book needed time to settle. There’s a bunch I want to say about it, but I know you guys don’t have the longest attention spans, so I’ll reign in the more rambling of my thoughts. Well, I’ll try.

The big thing to say (and it’s something I didn’t realise until a few days after I finished the book) is that Birdsong gets under your skin. I couldn’t stop thinking about it after I put it down. I finished the last page and, days later, still felt myself daydreaming about some aspect of it or other. 

I’ve talked before about how some books make that happen simply by being long, the logic being if you spend a month reading something, it’ll end up lodging in your brain by dint of its weight if not by its quality.

And, no doubt, Birdsong probably benefits from its length in the same way. But I think it’s more than that. Ordinarily, I’m a language junkie. The sure fire way to get me panting at a book is to make the language so rich it makes you short of breath (just ask Pierre). But Faulks doesn’t do that. There are no passages of explosive language. Instead, he gets you high on the detail. 

He creates a scene, picks out some of its most subtle but beautiful components, then puts them under a microscope in a way that makes the people and places slap you in the face. It’s this careful choosing and expert exploiting of detail – not any bombastic wording – that got me hooked. It made this book stay with me long after I put it down.

Sorry, that was a bit of a rambling thought, but it felt an important one. And here’s two more (put more succinctly, just for you).

The characters in Birdsong are distinct, detailed, unusual and compelling. Almost ethereal, but without losing reality.

The pacing of the book is masterful. He softens you up with love story, and just when you’re starting to get bored of it, he plunges you into the WW1 trenches. And just when you’re getting bored of that, he takes you to the 1970s. And just when you’re getting bored of that, he wraps things up with high emotion and meaning.

Ok, so maybe not that succinct.

There were (there always are) downsides. Any book of this length is going to have treacly sections you just have to wade through. Any book with the well trodden ground of WW1 at its core will feel a little clichéd in parts.

But I can’t think badly of a book that drew me in as much as this. I can’t criticize a story that stayed with me and made me daydream for days afterwards.

9 GBR

Hot dog! It’s been a high scoring start to the year. I’m enjoying my reading a lot at the moment. Possibly too much, there seems little time for anything else.

Next week, a book which comes with the "Jewish Book of the Year" accolade to live up to. Let’s hope it does.