Best and worst of the Year - 2023

 

This will be quick, due to laziness and the fact that I've already posted five times in December, probably a record for this blog.

Best book of 2023: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt (2013)

Genius level modern realism.

Worst book of 2023: The Siren's Sing - Kristel Thornell (2022)

Narrative structure did not work, but had some redeeming features.

The year of non-fiction: a good year! Six read overall, the best being Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli (2020)

The year was notable due to the fact that the overall quality of books was high - there were no mediocre ratings given. Also the library based book clubs I facilitate went on hiatus in September due to me going on long service leave and the external renovation of the library, which will not be complete till perhaps April 2024. It's freed up more time to read my own books, but I do miss the book club members and reading for a specific purpose.

All that's left to say is: Happy New Year!

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt (2013)

 

Rating: Sublime

Donna Tartt is due to publish another novel, there's been ten years between each of them, her time well spent meticulously constructing each one. I hope she follows her modus operandi now I've finally read The Goldfinch, I'm all out of literary masterpieces to read and she owes us another. Is the novel really that good however? After some initial doubts, that dissipated after about one hundred pages in, I looked on the net for how it had been received initially to find that opinions were split between the novel being lauded and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 and demonised as a glorified YA novel, with one critic from The New Yorker regarding it as representing the "infantilisation of our literary culture." He goes on to reference the horror of adults reading Harry Potter novels, which is an interesting critical barb considering that the novel's main protagonist, Theo Decker, is referred to as 'Potter' by his friend Boris, a Ukrainian juvenile-delinquent who is bursting with dark energy. I find such criticism curious, did the critic forget about, for example, American canonical novels such as J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951), with its dysfunctional teenage protagonist, Holden Caulfield, and going back further in literary time, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Both novels used youthful viewpoints to critique the adult world. Often significant novels need some time to be truly recognised for what they are. Regardless of what some critics thought, The Goldfinch is brilliant modern realism, vivid and exquisitely detailed, Tartt's descriptive abilities are superb, her prose beautiful, her turn of phrase breathtaking.  The world she builds is one to get completely lost in. Although the novel is long (864 pages), it appears, like a Tardis, even larger on the inside, it's a total literary marvel. 

The Goldfinch - Carel Fabritius (1654)

The Goldfinch begins with a thirteen-year-old Decker losing his mother in a terrorist attack that targets the art gallery they have visited in New York. Decker leaves the resultant wreckage with his life and the Goldfinch painting in his backpack. It becomes both a treasure beyond its artistic value and a burden. The novel follows Decker's life in the aftermath of the attack. Such is the brilliance of Tartt's prose you are right there with him through it all. One of the novel's strengths is the utter believability of the characters lives, you get to know them as if they are people you have personally met. This is why, despite the novel's obsession with detail and sometimes slow pace, the narrative has such a powerful pull. At one point, long after Decker had been taken to suburban Vegas by his dysfunctional father, where he meets Boris, I wondered when this part was going to end. There's page after page spent in the sun-blasted days and insular nights of the Vegas suburban desert, getting wasted on booze and weed and whatever else Theo and Boris can get their hands on, that it borders on tedium (this is hard-core realism after all), but then much later in the novel Decker is thinking about that time and you feel a sense of nostalgia that's profound, as if you've lived it yourself. I even began to think about that part of the narrative during times when I wasn't reading the novel, as if I'd lived it. The Goldfinch is epic, contains genius level prose, and is utterly intense and believable. You care so much about what may happen to the characters the tension becomes almost unbearable. There is, however, a feeling that The Goldfinch is not for every reader. Some will perhaps become bored, or daunted by its epic length, glacial pace and psychological intensity, but it's worth attempting and persevering with, even if there's doubt there; its one on the greatest novels I've read and I can tell you absolutely that it is well worth the ride.

The Little Friend - Donna Tartt (2002)

 

Rating: Sublime

The Little Friend is an incredible novel, but before I get into just why I need to point out that this does not mean that everyone will enjoy it. The novel disappointed some of Tartt's many fans after the sublime The Secret History (1992), which is one of those special novels that are revered with a cultish intensity. A hard act to follow then, and it doesn't help that The Little Friend is a world away from the university setting of Tartt's debut. Also Tartt takes her time to set the scene, establish the characters and engage in some world building; for example, after the prologue, nothing much happens for fifty plus pages. We are introduced to the Dufersnes family, some twelve years after the nine year old Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found dead, hanging from a tree in the front yard. Among the ensemble of characters, including three aunts, parents, friends, housekeepers and pets, we meet Harriet Cleve Dufresnes and learn that the trauma of her brother's death has resulted in a sad and dysfunctional household. Initially it really seems that the novel just consists of endless dialogue and descriptions of domestic scenes, coupled with a slow pace. However, via the twelve year-old Harriet, who is intelligent, intense and wilful, you are drawn irresistibly into the decaying  small town gothic American south of the mid 1970's. Harriet becomes determined to find and punish whoever killed her brother, and thanks to information provided to her by the family's hard-done-by housekeeper, Ida, she fixates on local red-neck meth-head Danny Ratliff, whom, along with his brothers, are the toughest criminal element in town. Once Harriet and her only friend, Hely Hull, set out to track down Danny the novel really takes off, becoming totally absorbing and engaging. Of course, as with all great novels, you need the set-up for the pay-off to really work, so any requirement of patience and work on behalf of the reader is well worth it.

The Little Friend has been criticised for being something like a Nancy Drew mystery, but this is totally misguided criticism. The novel is very adult, incredibly compelling and the writing is absolutely brilliant. Tartt really is a superb writer of fiction and her descriptive powers are endlessly astounding. When Tartt sets a scene you are really there with the characters, who are all fully realised creations, including the many minor characters. I truly believe that Tartt is one of the most talented writers to ever put pen to paper (or fingers to the keyboard?). The tension that Tartt builds throughout the novel is almost unbearable, I had to keep putting the book down to take a break. On the other hand I have never laughed so spontaneously and so loud and long at a scene that involved a cobra, a skeletal old grandma called Gum and an open-top Trans Am, and the thing is, I'm not even sure if it was meant to funny! The novel is also very dark, filled with despair, malevolence, bathos and paranoia, playing out like a TV series made by David Lynch, but without the supernatural elements. There are also some of the most brilliant set pieces I've ever read, like when Hely eavesdrops on a tense scene in a seedy pool-hall and the intense scenes when Harriet and Hely break into a house containing boxes of poisonous snakes owned by a travelling snake-handling preacher. The Little Friend is filled with such moments, it was a novel I desperately wanted to get to the end of so I could find out what would happen, yet I also didn't want it to end because it was so enjoyable. It's an extremely clever novel in that it doesn't give up its secrets too easily, you need to wait till near the end to find out who the title refers to, and as for some of the other mysteries, I'm not saying anything lest I spoil things for new readers. Oh, and Donna Tartt, it's been nine years since your last novel was published, given your publishing record the new one must be due next year, I certainly hope so.

My Back Pages

Looking back on 2015 it was quite a varied year in terms of reading, although I would liked to have read much more, if only time would allow it. However there were plenty of highlights during the year. Late in 2014 I met one of my musical heroes in the form of Steve Kilbey from the Australian band The Church. In January I read his excellent autobiography, Something Quite Peculiar (2014) and then met him again with the rest of the band in July when they toured the west coast (they were brilliant by the way...). When literature and music meet I’m a very happy man indeed.

My book club reads this year yielded both pain and pleasure, with Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992) taking the crown for the best book I’ve read this year. The Secret History was compelling, absorbing, manipulative and most of all just brilliantly written. Other book club related highlights include Ian McEwan’s succinct and stylish The Children Act (2014), Richard Flannagan’s Man Booker Prize winning The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013) and Joan London’s The Golden Age (2014), which managed to both charm and move me in equal measure. Book club pain came in the form of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962), which was not mediocre by any means, just long winded and intensely and neurotically self-conscious. It was also a fascinating and challenging read, so in the end I’m grateful to have read it and I will certainly remember it for a long time to come.

If The Secret History was the best book of the year (in fact one of the best I’ve ever read...), then the biggest disappointment was Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia (1977). Perhaps Chatwin had great adventures in Patagonia, but he managed to make it totally boring on paper. Luckily there were plenty of other highlights from my own (non book club) reading to make up for the tedium of Chatwin. Miranda July weirded me out in a good way with her debut novel, The First Bad Man (2015) and Michel Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter (1976) was simply a great piece of experimental cult fiction. Other highlights were Axiomatic (1995) by Greg Egan and Seven Eves (2015) by Neal Stephenson, both of which left me wanting to read much more of their work.

As for next year I aim to finish the thousand plus pages of Peter Watson’s Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud (2006). I’m reading it a bit at a time, mostly late at night, so hopefully I’ll get through it! What I really have my eye on though is my first love - science fiction. After reading Egan, Stephenson and then recently Huxley, it’s time to catch up with contemporary science fiction and some of the classics that I’ve never got around to reading. Maybe I’ll even read Philip K. Dick’s crackpot The Exegesis of Philip K Dick (2011) this year - now there’s some holiday reading....

The Secret History - Donna Tartt (1992)

The Secret History is one of those novels that I’d been meaning to read for a long time, but had somehow never got around to it (I blame myself naturally). Curiously during the last twenty three years I’ve had a strange kind of shadow relationship with the novel; periodically I’d see a reference to it, or spot it in amongst a friend’s collection of books. Once I found a copy in the back yard of a house I was looking to rent, soggy from the rain that had passed overhead that day (it was unreadable of course). I’d overhear people talking about it in a cafe or I’d see a random picture of Tartt, a mysterious literary figure with her own striking sartorial style. In my mind an aura of mysterious allure surrounded both the book and the author and I knew that I would actually read it one day. Finally, having now read the novel, I’m happy to say that it did not disappoint.

In hindsight I realize that in being inexorably drawn to The Secret History I had something in common with narrator Richard Papen, who couldn’t resist the singular pull of the charismatic and exclusive coterie of Greek classics students taught by the enigmatic professor Julian Morrow. The alluring yet morally ambiguous world of the coldly intellectual Henry Winter, the debonair Francis Abernathy, the aloof twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay and the larger than life Bunny Corcoran was hard to resist. Tartt handles this ensemble of twenty-something students deftly and despite their arrogant elitism and murdering ways you really hope they literally get away with murder. This is undoubtedly authorial manipulation at its highest level.

As I was reading The Secret History I kept on marveling at just how a novel that reveals who is murdered and by whom right at the beginning can be so compelling. Of course there is the enticement of wanting to know why and how these characters were driven to murder, but ultimately it is novel’s tightly wound narrative tension and Tartt's coolly elegant prose that creates such a compelling novel. Tartt’s style is self consciously literary, yet she doesn’t overdo it, even though she regularly spreads baubles of linguistic beauty throughout the narrative. Tartt’s writing is so disciplined that she is able to make even the most mundane aspects of the narrative totally absorbing.

The characters are psychologically fascinating and the knowledge that there are mysteriously nefarious events going on in the background that will eventually be revealed creates exquisite tension. The novel is set in Vermont in the north east of America, providing an appropriately somber yet lush atmosphere of ornate campus buildings and autumnal forests for the plot’s tragic trajectory to play out in. Also impressive is Tartt’s ability to depict a realistic male narrator. Richard Papen’s psychological foibles are entirely convincing; his relationships with women, his insecurities and how he approaches life are all relatable to the reader, something that also applies to all of the characters, despite their individual eccentricities.

Reading The Secret History is like being seduced by someone who is extremely erudite, intelligent, mysterious and beautiful. It’s extremely addictive and wholly satisfying. I could barely put this book down, I read it on the train, late at night at home and on a camping trip; thinking about it obsessively as I climbed the peaks of the Stirling Ranges in the Australian autumn. It took ten years after the publication of The Secret History for Tartt’s next novel to emerge (The Little Friend - 2002) and then another eleven years for the Pulitzer prize winner The Goldfinch (2013). Fortunately I’m yet to read either of these novels. All that’s left to say at this point is that I’m grateful I’m not having to wait another ten years to read another Donna Tartt novel.