2666 - Roberto Bolano (2004) Parts 1-3

Rating: Excellent

The late Roberto Bolano was a unique writer, who produced compelling narratives that were often experimental, particularly in terms of form and featured complex thematic threads with meanings that hovered like literary mirages over wrecked narrative landscapes. Bolano's themes usually concerned the nature of art, writing, poetry, writers, politics, morality, fascism and nitty gritty of life and death, often set in an immoral or amoral landscape of human folly. 2666, his last work, completed as a first draft before his death in 2003 from liver failure, was meant to be published as five separate novels, mainly because Bolano believed that it would benefit his family financially, but after his death the managers of his estate decided that the novel would be published as a whole, with the proposed novels presented as parts. My edition complicates the matter, being a special edition presented in a slipcase and divided into three volumes. Due to the sheer size of the work, well over a thousand pages, I decided to read and review the first volume (which contains the first three parts/novels) and then read the other two volumes later. Also 2666 is challenging conceptually, with dark undercurrents of violence, mental illness, existential bleakness and death, written in a style that blends beautiful poetic turns of phase with realism that borders on straight ahead reportage. Stylistically, Bolano was one of those writers of which you can say his prose was very much an extension of himself and when you read him you become fully immersed in his world; indeed, my experience reading 2666 was one of total immersion.

The special slipcase edition

The Part About the Critics

The first part of 2666 is the longest featured in the first volume and perhaps the most fully realised. Here the mysterious German writer, Benno von Archimboldi is introduced, a cult writer who has managed to build an ever increasing readership, including four Europeans who become critical and academic experts of his oeuvre, Jean-Claude Pelletier, Manuel Espinoza, Liz Norton and Pierio Morini. This part is precise, yet sedately paced as we are immersed in the lives of the four critics, their friendship, their work, petty jealousies and love-life. All four characters are well fleshed out and there's some beautiful writing here, in particular some evocative passages of description and mood setting. The four critics meet Archimboldi's publisher and then a Mexican who tells them that he knows someone who encountered the writer in Mexico. They decide to pilgrimage to the border-city, Santa Teresa, in the hope of meeting the elusive writer. Important elements (in terms of being keys to understanding the overall meaning of 2666, from my perspective in any case; having read about the novel and Bolano in general, no one, it seems, really knows for sure...) in The Part About the Critics are the cult artist, Edwin Johns, a disturbed individual admired by the critics; a violent incident involving the critics and an Arab taxi driver and then their experiences in Mexico, which are ultimately futile and imbued with disturbing background elements. In the first part, as with the others, what is not said and not shown is perhaps more important than what is; also the mundane and the extraordinary is, essentially, treated in the same way.

A youthful Bolano

The Part About Amalfitano

The critics meet fellow academic Oscar Amalfitano in the first part and he his seen through their eyes, so all we know about him is from when they interact with him, or he appears within their circle; one of the critics thinks that he is having some kind of a breakdown. In the second part Amalfitano becomes the main protagonist and we learn about his life in Spain, prior to taking up his teaching position in Santa Teresa. He's an intriguing character with a tragic background - his wife, Lola, having left him and their daughter, Rosa, to search for an insane homosexual poet whom Lola and another woman admire to the point of blind worship (one of the main thematic thrusts of the novel is, I believe, the notion that art and artists of all sorts should not be set apart from humanity as exemplars of virtue, reason and morality, nor do they have the answers to life's great mysteries; Bolano himself was very cynical about the latin American literary scene and could be a harsh critic of literary pretence). Amalfitano appears damaged by his life experience, he finds life in Mexico difficult and worries that his now teenage daughter may become another victim of the hundreds of femicides occurring thought the city. The key aspects of The Part About Amalfitano are the mysterious book Amalfitano finds in his belongings, Rafael Dieste's Testamento Geometrica (1975), which he decides to hang from his clothes line (therefore recontextualising it in a manner reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp, perhaps as a fulcrum for the geography of the horror, male dysfunction and murders occurring in the city), the moral depravity and insanity of the poet and the emerging awareness of the femicides, which Bolano based on Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city in which five hundred women were murdered during the 1990s and 2000s. 

An older Bolano, contemplating 2666

The Part About Fate

This part follows black American journalist, Oscar Fate, and his assignment in Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match after the violent death of the newspaper's sports journalist and the tragic death of Fate's mother. Death stalks this part much more obviously than in the first two parts. At this stage the novel reads like a descent into the dark, violent environs of both the human psyche and Santa Teresa itself (one and the same?). Fate comes across as a mostly passive observer, trying to navigate a world that is, at the very least, against him just for being black. Fate is an outsider in his own society, coming into a foreign city of horrors, which emphasises his outsider nature even more. Fate makes some Mexican acquaintances, such as fellow journalist, Chucho Flores and Guadalupe, a female journalist who is terrified of the prospect of being sent on assignment to a prison to interview a chief suspect of the femicides. As this part progresses it becomes darker and darker, with Flores becoming mercurial, menacing and with an array of suspicious characters being added into the mix. The Part About the Critics and The Part About Amalfitano intersect when Flores introduces Fate to Rosa, Amalfitano's daughter, whom is sexually involved with him. By this stage it occurred to me that the characters and the plot was heavily influenced by David Lynch; something that was confirmed later when Fate finds himself in the strange house of eccentric film buff, Charly Cruz, watching bizarre cult movies while discussing the oeuvre of David Lynch. The end of this part takes on an intense forward momentum, a creeping dread prevails, filled with tension; of particular note is the reappearance of Amalfitano and a visit to prison for an impactful scene involving the femicides main suspect, who, if you are paying attention, seems very familiar indeed (or typically, not at all). 2666 and Bolano's writing certainly makes for a challenging and disturbing ride, but for readers who enjoy a conceptual and philosophical challenge, 2666 is a brilliant literary achievement, particularly considering that Bolano was severely ill during its writing and it is a first draft. Amazing. 

The Children's Bach - Helen Garner (1984)

 

Rating: Excellent

This is my second read of Helen Garner’s novella, The Children’s Bach, the first time was as part of the Modern Australian Literature unit I completed at university in the mid-nineties. I enjoyed it greatly at the time and on my second read I’ve enjoyed it even more. When I first read it, I was actually, in hindsight, a novice reader when it came to Australian literary fiction, and literary fiction in general. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of a certain kind of literary storytelling, serious, yet playful, told simply, but with mysterious literary mechanisms lurking underneath it all. I was intrigued and impressed by the tale of the Fox family, the married couple Athena and Dexter and their sons, Arthur and Billy, who are living out their lives in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. The novella stayed with me for decades, often coming to mind when I visited Melbourne. The Fox family’s lives are altered by the appearance of Elizabeth, an old university friend of Dexter’s and her much younger sister, Vicki. Both end up being drawn to the Fox’s house, an old run-down weatherboard (my internal image of the house anyway), with cramped rooms and a large, dishevelled back yard. This then brings the cock-sure rock musician, Philip, who is loosely involved with Elizabeth, into their lives, who provides just the louche distraction Athena needs to break free of the restrictions of domestic life.

Helen Garner, in the inner suburbs

Set in the early eighties, The Children’s Bach is culturally fascinating, both in terms of Garner’s portrayal of inner-city Australia and her singular writing style. Garner presents as an Australian writer developing her own literary landscape, particularly when taking into consideration her breakout debut Monkey Grip (1977), which mined a similar, but darker urban milieu. Garner’s style is impressionistic, with characters appearing abruptly and scenes flowing into each other. The novel will perhaps not make sense to readers expecting a linear notion of time and setting (something this critic had a great deal of trouble with, so much so it made me think that he has a limited understanding of narrative), however it’s not that radical, rather it comes across as a more modest and pared back emulation of Patrick White’s high modernistic stylings. The novel is thematically rich, exploring family values vs. the nonconformity of counterculture lifestyles, sexuality and the yearning disaffection of middle-age, mostly played out through Athena’s lust for what lays outside of her established life with the loving, yet overbearing Dexter and their disabled son Billy (who presents as autistic). Of course, music runs all through the novella, with Athena’s attempts at learning to play Bach on a rickety piano a metaphor for attempting to master living one’s life in the face of a complex world. The Children’s Bach is a beautiful, rewarding reading experience and underlines that Helen Garner is rightly celebrated as a talented and important Australian writer who appears as both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time, somewhat like the characters she created for The Children’s Bach.

This is Where the Serpent Lives - Daniyal Mueenuddin (2026)

 

Rating: Excellent

Daniyal Mueenuddin is a US born Pakistani author who has managed to produce a brilliant and seriously literary debut novel in This is Where the Serpent Lives. In part based on his own experiences, having moved back to Pakistan from the US to take over the family farm and as an individual who straddles both east and west; This is Where the Serpent Lives encompasses sixty years of Pakistani history (1955-2013) from the point of view of both the wealthy land-owning classes and the servant classes. Told via four interlinking sections, the novel begins in 1955 with ‘The Golden Child’ when the owner of a tea stall, Karim Khan, takes in orphan, Bayazid (mostly known as Yazid). Yazid goes on to be the significant and sympathetic character who provides a link throughout the novel's different sections. Yazid, humble and observant, goes from being a tea stall holder to chief driver for the Atar family, principally Hisham Atar and Shahnaz Atar, important characters who feature in the third and fourth sections. Although only some 343 pages long This is Where the Serpent Lives reads like a Russian epic, both stylistically and thematically. Critics have compared Mueenuddin to Chekhov, particularly due to the author’s vivid realism, unclear narrative resolutions and the complex relations between landowners and servants in feudal rural Pakistan. Simply put, This is Where the Serpent Lives is an extraordinary novel, full of complex characters and fascinating historical and cultural detail; one could say that it’s lapidary in its attention to detail. 

Spanning decades of Pakistani history during the post-war period when modernisation and Westernisation was making inroads into societies that had long entrenched social hierarchies, Mueenuddin creates a complex dramatisation of societal tensions, ambition, decadence and thwarted social mobility. Once we've been introduced to Yazid and his world, the second section, ‘Muscle’, acts as a scene-setting exploration of class, hierarchy, and engrained corruption via the young sophisticate, Rustom, a character who is thrown into the deep end when he returns from America to take over the family farm (the author has acknowledged the autobiographical nature of this section). This section introduces the Atars, who, along with their young servant, Saqib, then dominates the third and fourth sections, ‘The Clean Release and ‘This is Where the Serpent Lives’, which, as one would imagine, has well developed, but not cliched black and white biblical themes. When the attentive reader takes in the complex interrelationship between the wealthy and amoral Atars and the humble, but underhand Saqib, it is not clear just who is the serpent in question, although this is part of the point. Having never read any works by Pakistani authors, nor read any novels set in Pakistan, This is Where the Serpent Lives was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, especially Mueenuddin’s beautiful and precise prose, which at times was just exquisite in its jewel like clarity. As the novel comes symbolically full circle in its dénouement, one can only admire the novel’s brilliance and hope that Mueenuddin, already in his early sixties, can produce more novels of such a high standard. The book club attendees loved This is Where the Serpent Lives, awarding it high scores; I very nearly gave it a sublime rating, but it’s somewhere between excellent and sublime and would get four and a half if I used a numerical system.

 

The Predicament - William Boyd (2025)

 

Rating: Admirable

William Boyd is another writer with a connection to David Bowie, having co-engineered an infamous art hoax when they were both on the board of Modern Painters journal. Boyd wrote and Bowie published a book, Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960 (1998) about a lost American artist called Nat Tate. Launched on April Fools day, both Bowie and Gore Vidal read excerpts and fooled the world, for a while at least. Boyd's current literary excursion is the second part of a trilogy (the first being Gabriel's Moon, published in 2024), featuring travel writer and reluctant spy, Gabriel Dax. Set in 1963 Dax is again called into action by his MI6 handler, the seductive Faith Green, whom Gabriel is romantically drawn to, despite his best, but ultimately pathetic efforts. Dax is a quintessential charming Englishman, who's general befuddlement regarding his circumstances remains despite being drawn ever further into the world of cold war espionage. He's posing as a double agent to reel in (attractive) KGB female agents and then he's sent to Guatemala to gain intel on a popular left-wing leader. Of course it all goes pear-shaped, but at least he makes some progress on his travel book about famous rivers. Later, in West Berlin, he's liaising with another (attractive) agent, and, of course, Faith Green, to head off a potential assassination attempt on John F Kennedy during his famous visit to West Berlin. This part of the book is convincingly rendered, with period flourishes bringing some authenticity to proceedings. 

Bowie and Boyd, April Fools tricksters

Boyd is a self professed fan of Graham Greene and despite mentioning in an interview that he believes that he is not channelling the author, I couldn't help but think of Greene when reading The Predicament. Greene split his works into more serious literary fiction and what he called his 'entertainments', light and humorous excursions aimed at the everyday reader. The Predicament definitely has a light tone and although Boyd's writing is sophisticated and erudite, it is an easy read, with the narrative moving along with an engaging pace, and yes, it is entertaining. Dax is a relatable character, convincingly out of his depth, yet plucky in his resolve to rise to the various challenges in his path. He has a tendency for self reflection and therefore does moan a bit, but fortunately he does see a therapist, an (attractive) Dr Haas, which provides some insight into his character and also some humour. The main problem, for me anyway, was that there was little tension generated throughout, even when Dax's life was in danger. There's some spy thriller action tropes that play out that are very well written, but the overall light tone means that there doesn't seem to be that much at stake. Still, the plot is good enough and there are some great satirical scenes that are also homages to the spy genre; Dax is schooled in tailing suspects by an amiable agent, who takes Dax on a merry chase, whilst also pausing to eat at every available opportunity. Dax is also given a lesson in self defence by an old hand, which comes across as a playful James Bond moment, without any gadgets, just good old fashioned practical advice. This was a book club read and about half of the members were impressed and rated The Predicament highly, whilst some others were less impressed, citing Dax's tendency for having a good old moan and the lack of palpable tension. Still, a fine novel that serves a particular purpose - to engage and entertain, and there's nothing wrong with that. 

The Black Album - Hanif Kureishi (1995)

Rating: Excellent

I've long been aware of Hanif Kureishi due to his association with David Bowie and the music he made as the soundtrack to the BBC adaptation of Kureishi's Buddha of Suburbia (1990). I've long had that novel sitting on my shelves, but I spied The Black Album at the fantastic second hand bookstore, Bella's Books, the kind of second hand book store that is crammed with books and goes on forever. I decided to read The Black Album now rather than sit on it for ages, and I'm pleased that I did. Published during the thick of an upsurge in youth culture in the mid nineties, Kureishi captures the beginnings of that era (1989) and expands on it by exploring ethnic identity in multicultural Britain, and religious tensions, in particular the fatwa on Salman Rushdie due to the publication of The Satanic Verses (1988). College student, Shahid Hasan, meets Riaz Al-Hussain on the first page, thus begins Shahid's entanglement with the forces of radicalisation that causes the somewhat youthfully naive Shahid to confront the cultural and religious forces swirling around him. Shahid is a convincing and compelling character, who is also a budding writer, which allows Kureishi to explore the literary struggles and pretensions of his craft, perhaps inspired by his own experiences studying at Bromley College of Technology in the 1970s. Shahid falls into a romantic relationship with one of his teachers, the inspirational Deedee Osgood, an older woman going through her own transitions. Their adventures together include taking ecstasy at raves and sex fuelled nights together whilst avoiding her politically principled semi-estranged husband. 

Bowie and Kureishi circa early 1990's

Shahid's life trajectory collides with his involvement with Riaz and his band of followers, including the intense former drug addict, Chad, who pull him into situations that are diametrically opposite to those with Osgood. In-between them stands Shahid's brother, Chilli, who is buckling under the pressures of being caught between the pleasures on offer in London and the demands of family life, of which he's trying to escape; he's a deeply flawed, yet sympathetic character. Kureishi cleverly uses Chilli's and Shahid's double lives to explore the tensions between the temptations of secular life in the heart of the decadent West and the supposedly pious life of religious extremism. The two worlds end up clashing towards the end of the novel in spectacular fashion. The novel is rich in both action and discourse, with multiple themes intertwining. The Black Album is sophisticated literary fiction that engages both the brain and the emotions. On the evidence of this novel Kureishi is a superb writer, different to Rushdie, whom is name-checked throughout the novel, yet definitely up in the same literary category as the author who famously suffered under the threat of the fatwa. Kureishi unfortunately has his own torments, having become a tetraplegic from a fall in Rome in 2022.  Fortunately he is still producing work, via the memoir, Shattered (2024), and recently he appeared in the latest Bowie documentary The Final Act (2025). I'll be definitely reading more of his work, and god speed Hanif Kureishi, I wish you well.

Chess - Stefan Zweig (1942) AKA Chess Story, AKA The Royal Game

Rating: Excellent

I found my copy of Chess in my local street library, a well-loved source of great finds in the neighbourhood. The book’s eye-catching cover stood out, despite its slender 104 page-count. Stefan Zweig was a name I vaguely recognised, but I didn’t realise that the Austrian writer was one of the most popular writers in the world during the 1920’s, through the 1930s. Zweig’s story is unfortunately typical of Jewish born artists and intellectuals in central Europe during the time of the rise of Nazism in Germany. Zweig emigrated to England in the mid-1930s to escape Nazism, eventually settling in Brazil, where he was initially happy. Unfortunately he and his wife became so depressed by the state of war-torn Europe and humanity that they committed suicide by barbiturate overdose in 1942. Chess was the last work Zweig submitted for publication, emerging just before his death. An anonymous narrator recalls his experience aboard a passenger liner travelling from the USA to Buenos Aires, where he recognises world chess champion Mirko Czentovic. The narrator first establishes Czentovic’s background, his emergence from obscurity to being a world-renowned chess genius – an idiot savant basically. The narrator very much wishes to play Czentovic and engineers a situation, the playing of a chess game in the bar on the liner, in which to attract his attention. This ploy works, but it also attracts the attention of one Dr B., who, before long, takes up the challenge of playing the champion, with alarming results.

Stefan Zweig, contemplating the future

It is the background story of Dr B., who recounts his past experiences to the narrator during the middle section of the narrative, that is the crux of this short but affecting novella. Dr B., when living and working in Austria, is arrested by the Gestapo in order to find the whereabouts of Church assets he had helped to hide. Dr B is imprisoned in isolation for many months, with his only respite coming from the stolen contents of an instructional book on chess, which also outlines a number of famous games. Dr B., in attempting to survive captivity, plays games of chess in his mind, becoming highly skilled in the process. Such a premise allows Zweig to explore the insidious reach of Nazism, which caused untold physical damage to the world, but also emotional and psychological damage as well. The suicide of Zweig and his wife, Lotte Altmann, indicates that they very much felt the terrible psychological effects of having been driven from their home country, only to helplessly watch as Nazi Germany threatened the world with their tyranny. Dr B., who is physically safe from the Gestapo, still suffers from psychological trauma, something that emerges during his games with Czentovic. It’s a clever device; one made all the more affecting by Zweig’s precise style and the exacting brevity of the novella. Easily read in one sitting, Chess remains in your mind long after, making it a powerful artistic statement from a dark era in modern history.

A Landing on the Sun - Michael Frayn (1991)

 

Rating: Excellent

This rather intriguing looking novel was gifted to me by my brother Barry, about twenty or more years ago for Christmas, and, of course, I have only just got around to reading it, which is all too typical of me. So, who is Michael Frayn? Frayn is an English novelist and playwright, as well as a reporter and columnist and A Landing on the Sun was the winner of the Sunday Express book of the year, which was quite a significant award at the time. The novel is certainly a fine piece of work. Frayn’s style is spare and restrained, nicely mirroring the civil service approach of main protagonist Brian Jessel, as he undertakes an investigation into the mysterious death of fellow civil servant Stephen Summerchild, who fell to his death from the Admiralty building. Set in the early seventies, the novel exudes old school public service sensibilities, something I appreciate, being a public servant myself. Jessel is a fantastic creation, a public servant through and through, following proper procedure, grimacing through his beard at the improprieties of both Summerchild and his colleague, academic (a philosopher) Elizabeth Serafin, as they undertake an investigation into ‘quality of life’, reporting directly to the Prime Minister. Summerchild and Serafin are a ‘strategy unit’, holed up in an obscure turret within the Admiralty building. Their very existence, let alone their subsequent philosophical investigations into the nature of happiness, represents an all too ironically funny and satirical skewering of bureaucracy.

Michael Frayn, contemplating civil service beards.

Jessel’s investigations into the events some fifteen years ago reads like a police procedural. Jessel reads their clumsy attempts at reports and listens to recordings of their discussions, slowly putting together the events leading to Summerchild’s eventual death. Jessel essentially relives their lives, following in their footsteps, sitting with pictures of them in the turret and in doing so reveals some aspects of his own life that set up intriguing insights into his own character, history and past connections with Summerchild. Without wasting a word Frayn develops a narrative that is various shades of melancholy, suffering, hope, regret, humour, with glimpses of happiness and optimism. A Landing on the Sun is unlike any other novel I’ve read previously, I’m not even sure who I could compare Frayn to, perhaps he exists in his own literary realm. It’s a beautiful book and very English, with a great London atmosphere of old buildings and laneways of dappled early evening light. Some readers may find the novel boring, but it is anything but, rather it rewards your attention and draws you into a very singular world. It’s difficult to say much more about it without giving away too much, except that, from the evidence of A Landing on the Sun, Frayn is a special and classy writer who, in his nineties, is still publishing work, the most recent being a memoir (Among Others: Friendships and Encounters (2023)). The novel was adapted by the author for a TV movie in 1994 that has a IMDB rating of 8.2 – worth a viewing then, if only to see the rarified world of the British civil service on the screen, with a frowning Jessel stoking his beard, which presents almost as a character in its own right in the novel. In fact his beard should have had its own spin-off novel, or at least a TV series of its own, now I'd like to see that.

Twist - Colum McCann (2025)

 

Rating: Excellent

Twist can be added to the list of narratives that use Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness (1899) as a template, which also includes Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) and Robert Silverberg’s novel, Downward to the Earth (1970). McCann actually directly references both Coppola and Conrad in the narrative, but it is the story of John Conway, a brooding and mysterious character who leads the crew of the Georges Lecointe, a ship dedicated to repairing the fibre-optic deep-sea cables that carry over 90% of the world’s internet traffic, that acts as the main reference point to Conrad’s novella. Anthony Fennell, a writer and journalist, who has his own array of damages and dysfunctions (alcoholism, familial estrangement), is tasked with buddying up to Conway and joining the repair crew as they embark on the difficult mission to fix broken cables off the coast of West Africa. Fennell is a compelling narrator, as he ponders his own broken life, the psychologically dark depths of Conway’s salty persona and the improbable world of cable repair, which takes heroic levels of skill and determination to achieve. That aspect of the novel, the technical details of the cables, their purpose and fragility, is fascinating and strangely compelling. McCann fully utilises the thematic and metaphorical links between the cables and the manner in which humans communicate. Conway is directly involved in keeping the cables functioning, the very cables which, ironically, carry all the dark and toxic gossip about his partner, Zenele, an actress who is starring in a controversial adaptation of Beckett’s classic absurdist play, Waiting for Godot (1953); yet Conway himself is a closed book, much to the frustration of Fennell, who aims to pry open all of his secrets and motivations.

McCann reveals himself as a great stylist, his prose is cinematic and, at times, profound and beautiful. Some readers may find his stylistic flourishes pretentious, but couched within the novel’s wider themes, McCann gets away with his sometimes unrelentingly vivid descriptive prose. As Twist progresses the tension is ratcheted up, Conway goes without sleep in order to find and repair the offending cables. Fennell roams the ship, observing and fretting about his life and his semi-estranged son. However, curiously, once the situation with Conway becomes that of a man gone AWOL, the novel loses some of that tension, to its slight detriment. As Fennell begins to find out more of Conway’s activities and whereabouts the writing becomes more like reportage. There’s a section in second person, which works quite well in allowing both Fennell and the reader to see the world through Conway’s eyes. Still, Conway’s ultimate motivations are opaque, leaving the reader guessing at his end game, although given the general thematic thrust of the novel, it’s surely not much a leap to understand the root causes of his disillusionment. At this stage Fennell becomes the more interesting character, even though Conway still dominates. Still, Twist is, overall, a satisfying and unique novel. It does encourage reflection regarding the current state the world finds itself in, in regard to the environment, the ills of the web and pressures brought to bear on individuals and cultures due to the web’s overwhelming sway over humanity. A great novel for book clubs, as it encourages discussion regarding both its themes and its prose. Most of my book clubbers' found Twist to be an intriguing and well written novel, and they can be harsh in their judgements, McCann, it seems, passed the book club test.

I Want Everything - Dominic Amerena (2025)

 

Rating: Excellent

I Want Everything is Dominic Amerena's debut novel, a five year effort, emerging after years of successfully publishing shorter works in various publications around the world. The novel concerns an unnamed protagonist, a would-be writer, struggling to actually get down to the business of writing and producing, in his dramatically uttered words, the ‘great Australian novel’. We first meet him as he’s leaving a Melbourne hospital, a place we find out later he is well acquainted with for reasons that are kept from the reader for quite a while, which ends up adding nicely to the narrative spice. He decides to venture down to the local swimming pool on the way home and spots an elderly woman whom he recognises as the great lost Australian cult author, Brenda Shales, who wrote two books in the 1970's, The Anchoress and The Widowers, before running into legal problems and then disappearing. Our unnamed protagonist weasels his way into Brenda’s life in order to extract her story in an effort to make his mark on the literary scene. Brenda Sales is a fabulous creation, apparently mostly based on Australian writers, Helen Garner and Elizabeth Jolley, she crackles with wily self-awareness and cynical cunning. Believing the protagonist to be her grandchild, Shales acquiesces to recounting both her life-story and the circumstance's that led to her cult literary notoriety. The sections that feature the stories of her past, mostly set in the 1960s and the 1970’s Whitlam era, are perhaps the best in the novel; fascinating and visceral, her life becomes vivid in the mind’s eye of the reader. She's cantankerous, difficult, but ultimately charms both the protagonist and the reader. 

I Want Everything is also a satire about writers, their struggles for inspiration, their hubris, and more seriously, the ethics surrounding writing. The main theme at play is literary fraud, principally the fraud the protagonist is attempting to perpetuate by passing himself off as someone else in order to insert himself into Brenda Shales’ story. But Amerena also explores the moral issues around how writers obtain inspiration for the material they need to feed on, like literary vampires, in order to produce their work. The protagonist’s partner, Ruth, a dedicated writer, is ruthless (no pun intended) when it comes to fuelling her drive to write, including withdrawing emotionally from the protagonist as the novel progresses. In one of the novel’s great scenes Ruth and the protagonist are at a dinner party with fellow writers, one of which reacts with jealous horror regarding Ruth’s recent essay publication and success, breaking glasses and even crying pathetically at the dinner-table at one stage. In terms of poking fun at writers’ egos, it is darkly humorous stuff, particularly when we find out that what Ruth has written is considered to be ‘mother-boarding’, which, in the context of the novel, is a term used to describe demonising your mother in writing. Amerena’s writing pops with confident verve, sometimes bordering on pretension, but he manages to get away with it by being fleet-footed in terms of pacing and sheer chutzpah. It also helps that the novel features a satisfying twist that makes you revise everything you’ve read and adds layers to the narrative you didn’t know were there. A book club read, one in which not everyone was enamoured with, however I thoroughly enjoyed this excellent debut and hope that there’s more to come in the future.

There Are Rivers in the Sky - Elif Shafak (2024)

 

Rating: Excellent

Elif Shafak is a significant author, activist, academic and speaker on the world stage. Shafak is of Turkish descent and lives in exile from Turkey due to persecution over alleged charges of 'insulting Turkishness' and spurious accusations of plagiarism. There Are Rivers in the Sky is an epic and complex novel that ties together three seperate narrative strands; Arthur Smyth, a brilliant savant (based on real Victorian Assyriologist, George Smyth) who emerges from poverty during the Victoria era to unlock the mysteries of the Assyrian clay tablets, notably The Epic of Gilgamesh (2100-1200 BCE), a Yazidi girl called Narin and her family in 2014 and Zaleekhah Clarke, who lives in London circa 2018. It all begins, however, with one drop of water falling into the hair of Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, which then goes on to cycle through the skies and water-ways of the world to later interact with all three main protagonists. It's heady stuff at times, with deep themes of symbolic connection weaving throughout the novel. Zaleekhah is a hydrologist at the crossroads of life and via her story we learn more about the ways of rivers and river systems, which often provide handy metaphors for human psychology. As with most novels that interweave multiple narrative strands, there's some that pale next to others that are more immediate, or much more interesting. Narin's story is initially slight, especially in comparison to Arthur's story, which is fascinating, vivid and compelling. Zaleekhah's story sits somewhere in-between, with her marital crisis dominating initially. Yet as the novel progresses Narin's story comes more to the fore and plays out under the menacing cloud of the emergence of ISIS and the multitude of crimes they committed in the name of righteous belief. It makes for powerful and tragic reading and becomes the focal point that ties together the other two strands.

 

Lamassu statues at Nineveh

Shafak's writing is sophisticated, erudite and complex, but it is also totally readable. Although thematically and symbolically dense the novel is generous with its ability to allow the reader to connect the narrative dots. Shafak has also created fully developed characters who connect with the reader; I found myself becoming anxious regarding Arthur's fate, such is the precariousness of his early life. As Arthur progresses, from the life of a street urchin, to work as an apprentice at publisher's Bradley and Even's, who end up publishing Charles Dickens (who turns up a couple of times, much to Arthur's amazement) and then to The British Museum, which houses the huge Lamassu statues from ancient Nineveh, to work at translating the masses of clay tablets from Assyria, to expeditions to the middle east, you are fully invested as a reader. As the novel progresses both Zaleekhah and Narin's stories become more realised, before entwining in both tragedy and hope. Along the way Shafak manages to explore inequality, colonisation, identity, religion, ethnicity and cultural memory that sits within those who are exiled from their homeland. There Are Rivers in the Sky has its flaws, notably it is perhaps overly long (a common flaw for modern literature, or is it?) and displays some bagginess within its pages, which are overflowing with maximalist thematic and informational overload. Still, such concerns are minor compared to the novel's shear scope, its audacity and the emotional impact of its denouement as the three narrative strands come together powerfully. There Are Rivers in the Sky is a perfect novel for book clubs, inviting analysis, discussion and appreciation. My three book clubs revelled in the novel's multifaceted themes and genuinely connected with many of the characters. Apparently, as revealed in an interview, Shafak is a metalhead and listens as she writes, which sounds like an intense way to create such a work of complexity and insight. She points out that metal is full of raw emotion, energy and even harmony, which could easily describe this remarkable novel. Totally recommended if you are after something thematically challenging to read.

A Lamassu at The British Museum

Einstein's Monsters - Martin Amis (1987)

 

Rating: Admirable

Martin Amis is not known for his short stories, with only two collections published in his lifetime, Einstein's Monsters and Heavy Water and Other Stories (1998), among some later omnibus publications of collected stories which included the two volumes and some other strays. Einstein’s Monsters was apparently put together when Amis realised that the short stories he had been writing were centred around the theme of nuclear weapons. Einstein's Monsters begins with an essay called Thinkability, in which Amis outlines the true horror of the threat of nuclear weapons and the annihilation they could potentially unleash. It makes for harrowing reading and despite being written and published during the height of the Cold War, the essay is still chillingly relevant. Amis bemoans the terrible irony of the need for nuclear weapons because of the existence of those very same nuclear weapons. After this short essay the first story, Bujak and the Strong force, Or God’s Dice, provides a very decent beginning, with a Polish protagonist whose strength is such that it metaphorically mirrors the strong nuclear force. It brings him a great deal of trouble, of course, and things don’t go well for his loved ones because of it. It’s a fine, if flawed tale. Insight at Flame Lake uses contrasting diary entries to tell the story of the impact of a schizophrenic boy on his host family. The boy’s father had worked with nuclear weapons before committing suicide. Ultimately it’s a rather heavy-handed allegory for the travails of having nuclear weapons around.

Martin Amis, contemplating Einstein's Monsters

The Time Disease is entertaining but doesn’t quite suit being shoehorned into a collection of nuclear themed stories. It’s futuristic in nature, featuring people who are terrified of time and its deleterious effects on aging, in this case they are aging in reverse. As with all of these stories it features enough of that trademark Amis erudite flair and biting wit to make it worth reading. The actual writing is quite brilliant, but the overall effect is diminished by the shape of the plot. The Little Puppy That Could continues in this fashion. Set in a post nuclear apocalyptic future, things are so bad that a huge, deformed malevolent dog is menacing the ill and deformed residents of a dilapidated village. Their ploy is to offer up weekly sacrifices. Meanwhile a little puppy (who doesn’t appear to be normal himself) with great persistence worms his way into the heart of a little girl. Most of the villagers are scared of the poor little puppy, due to the giant deformed canine that menaces them on a weekly basis. It’s a bit long and grotesque, but does create a nice amount of tension, particularly in the last third of the story. The story has classical mythological allusions within its twisted narrative, but it doesn’t provoke enough motivation to do the research to understand them, at least in my case. The final story, The Immortals, is one of the finer to be found within this slender collection. It recounts the life of an immortal as he traverses the gulfs of time that encompass the history of the planet. There are some great lines, included references to decades long recreational habits and how various epochs compared in terms of boredom and danger. Turns out that ultimately the future involves the imposition of nuclear warfare and the last of humanity in New Zealand who dream that they are indeed immortal. It’s clever all right, but other than its often-brilliant prose it doesn't work quite as well as you want it to. Based on Einstein’s Monster’s, Amis wasn’t really a natural short story writer and it is probably not a coincidence that he didn’t produce many throughout his otherwise brilliant career. This collection is vaguely disappointing, but even acknowledged geniuses have lapses and in the scheme of things these stories are still worth reading just to bask in the glory of Amis’s brilliant prose style.

Show Don't Tell - Curtis Sittenfeld (2025)

 

Rating: Admirable

Curtis Sittenfeld has a great reputation for her dark wit, sardonic humour and putting a contemporary spin on old problems, such as the war of the sexes, power imbalances and complex moral situations. My prior experience with Sittenfeld was via Rodham (2020), a clever and entertaining alternate history of the life of Hilary Rodham, if she had not married Bill Clinton. Show Don’t Tell is a collection of short stories and typically for such collections some stories are better than others. Beginning with the better material, the eponymous story starts off the collection, following a young student, Ruthy, who is awaiting news about the annual grants awarded to creative writing students, referred to as the 'Peaslee’s'. It features a middle-aged student, a smoker, who is a general annoyance to Ruthy, a visiting Bukowski type of writer who dispenses writerly wisdom, a White Noise (Don DeLillo, 1985) namecheck and other various descriptions of college life (this is set in America). It’s a fine story about not being too precious and checking your privilege, which is a common theme throughout the collection. The Marriage Clock involves a buttoned-up Christian author of a best-selling marriage guide and a studio rep who can’t help but desire him, but in doing so reveals that his marriage is far from ideal; ultimately it’s quite clever and well written. A For Alone deals with a married conceptual artist who undertakes a project that involves testing the infamous 'Mike Pence rule', that posits that married men should not be alone with single woman. Of course it goes pair-shaped in the most entertaining manner possible. The Hug is my favourite and perhaps the best story here; a couple, Daphne and Rob, argue about whether Daphne can hug a former partner who is travelling through town and wants to meet up. Not only is it in the midst of the pandemic, but it’s also her ex, and Rob doesn’t like it. The ending is deftly handled - poignant, telling and relatable.

The stories in Show Don’t Tell that don’t quite work as well continue the major unifying theme of age-old problems set within modern moral conundrums, such as cancel-culture, the ‘Karen’ phenomenon, our love/hate relationships with corporations, generational change and being called out for privileged behaviour, but without quite the same amount of finesse featured in the ones mentioned above. As with many of the stories, most of the principal protagonists are middle-aged women, or younger women facing the challenges of being young in a complex world. White Women LOL doesn’t quite gel due to its convoluted nature. Creative Differences is better, with a photographer taking a moral stand regarding being featured in an advertisement masquerading as an art project. The Tomorrow Box explores the nature of success, how it can’t always make up for other shortcomings, like acceptance and success with the opposite sex. The Richest Babysitter in the World explores similar ground but is a bit predictable in its denouement. The Patron Saint of Middle Age and Giraffe and Flamingo are both flawed but ultimately admirable stories, exploring white privilege (the former) and bullying (the latter), with varying degree of success. The final story, Lost But Not Forgotten, features a character from Sittenfeld’s first novel – Prep (2005), Lee Fiora, who is now older and attending a school reunion at the school from the novel. Fiora thinks back to a past secret experience whilst forging a new relationship with a former student. It’s interesting and entertaining enough, but, once again, doesn’t quite hit the mark like the superior stories in this collection do. No doubt it would come across better if you’ve read the novel. Sittenfeld is a class writer however, and this collection is a fine example of her snappy and insightful style. It was another book club read and as always with short story collections, it received mixed reviews. However it is worth a read for its insights into our complex moral world and array of middle-aged characters in confused free-fall. 

Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene (1958)

 

Rating: Excellent

Graham Greene was a prolific writer, with many significant novels to his name, such as Brighton Rock (1938), The Quiet American (1955) and the screenplay to The Third Man (1949), a brilliant film that has aged extremely well. Greene also gets a pivotal reference in one of my favourite films, Donny Darko (2001), when a Greene novel that is censored by the high school gives Donny gnostic guidance. Due to his significant cultural presence and the fact that Greene is considered one of the finest novelists of the twentieth century, I've long known about him, but I had never managed to get around to reading his work. Apparently (according to Wikipedia) Greene divided his works into two genres, thrillers, which he referred to as 'entertainments' and the others as 'literary works'. I'm uncertain as how Our Man in Havana should be regarded, being a black comedy of sorts with a light humorous tone; ostensibly it's not a thriller, but I have a feeling that Greene perhaps regarded it as one of his 'entertainments'. The novel is genuinely funny, following the adventures of vacuum cleaner salesman, James Wormold, a world weary man who's wife left him to be the sole parent of his teenage daughter, Milly, who has a extravagant lifestyle to maintain. When Wormold is approached by the mysterious MI6 plant, Hawthorne, to spy for MI6 he reluctantly takes up the offer in order to help cover the cost of his daughter's many worldly desires. There begins a series of tricky situations, faked reports and run-ins with shady characters who threaten his life. Greene himself actually was recruited into the MI6 in 1941, where he encountered information about a character call Garbo, who was based in Portugal and filed fictitious reports in order to gain bonuses and keep his espionage career going. 

Greene, contemplating his 'entertainments'

Published four years before the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took the world to the brink of nuclear war, the novel is eerily prescient. Wormold uses the fittings from one of the vacuum cleaners he sells as inspiration for faked drawings of military structures in the mountainous areas of Cuba, and of course MI6 are very concerned. Wormold nominates a range of informants, some of whom he knows of, but does not know in person. Reality and falsehood collide when weird things start to happen to his informants, leading to some very tricky situations indeed. There's some romance too, when love interest Beatrice Severn is sent from MI6 to assist Wormold. There's also the comedic, yet pathetic character of Dr. Hasselbacher, an elderly German expat who is Wormold's only real friend in Havana. He also has to deal with the sinister threat of Captain Segura, a military thug and the owner of a wallet supposedly made from human skin, who has romantic designs on Milly. Such characters, on paper, could seem like caricatures, however Greene really brings them alive and imbues them with complex motives and human foibles. Greene's prose is concise and snappy, providing a propulsive edge to the narrative. It's a clever and classy novel and one gets the sense that, well, they just don't write them like this any more. If Our Man in Havana is typical of Greene's oeuvre then I'm keen to explore further novels. Greene was certainly prolific, with some 26 novels, numerous short stories, plays and screenplays published. Our Man in Havana was also adapted for a movie in 1959, starring Alec Guinness and Noel Coward and was critically acclaimed at the time, although hasn't had the same afterlife as The Third Man, but if it is any where near as fine as the novel it would be worth watching.

Our Evenings - Alan Hollinghurst (2024)

 

Rating: Excellent

Another book club read, the second by Alan Hollinghurst, with the first being The Stranger's Child (2011), which was the follow-up to the Man Booker Prize winner, The Line of Beauty (2004). I enjoyed Our Evenings a great deal more than The Stranger's Child, which, looking back at my review, I ultimately found 'turgid'. Our Evenings is character driven, told via the first person point of view of David Win, beginning when he is a fourteen-year old student at one of England's well to do private schools; he is also the beneficiary of financial support from Mark Hadlow, the philanthropist plutocrat patriarch, who's son, Giles Hadlow, is Win's frenemy and a future political force in the UK. Win is an outsider, is of mixed race (part Burmese), from a single parent family (his mother, Arvil, has her own significant role in the novel) and is gay. Despite Win's outsider status he thrives at school, at university (Oxford) and despite some setbacks, goes on to become a successful actor. Our Evenings is the story of his life and the story of the changing attitude to homosexual relationships over the decades, as well as the rise of a new era of intolerance as personified by Giles Hadlow, who goes on to be a right-wing Tory politician who campaigns to remove the UK from the European Union (Brexit). There's some serious themes at play, both personal and universal, but the novel proceeds at a languid pace as we follow the episodic narrative of David Win's life, rather than ratcheting up the tension. At first the novel appears too passively reflective, however as Win grows up and faces the challenges of adulthood the narrative becomes absorbing and fascinating. It draws you into Win's world of theatre, love and friendship, all narrated via his wry observational voice.

One of the strengths of Our Evenings is Hollinghurst's elegant style, there are plentiful beautiful passages throughout. The novel rewards close reading, revealing a narrative dense with sophisticated descriptive power. I rarely quote from books, but I just have to share my favourite passage in which Win is enduring a speech from Giles Hadlow: "I blanked out what he said, tipped my head back and gazed up at the great glass dome. Beyond it, in slow transition of dusk, silver planes could be seen escaping, bright in the last sun above the darkening city." It's so evocative and beautiful, but also it shows a character in opposition to the mainstream attitudes as personified by Hadlow, of conservative righteousness and philistinism. This opposition between Win and Hadlow's lives, and what it represents, is not laboured by Hollinghurst, but it is palpably felt throughout the novel, even during lengthy periods in which Hadlow is absent, but not forgotten. Our Evenings is both a very personal exploration of what it meant to be gay and an artist in the era since the middle of last century and an exploration of where we've ended up politically and culturally. It's subtle, clever and close to brilliant. In the great novelistic tradition of showing, but not telling, Hollinghurst sums up the era of the likes of Trump and Boris Johnson (whom Hadlow mostly resembles) with a great scene in which Hadlow, now the Minister for the Arts, leaves early during a performance involving Win in a helicopter, which completely drowns out the performance in a show of ugly egotistical distain. Although some readers may find the novel's slow pace and character driven narrative too much of a slog, Our Evenings really is worth the time and stands as a beautiful, topical and touching literary work.

The Granddaughter - Bernhard Schlink (2024)

 

Rating: Admirable

Bernhard Schlink’s renown outside of Germany is based mostly on The Reader (1995), which is considered to be one of the greatest Holocaust narratives, exploring the struggle for the German people to confront the sins of Nazi Germany. The Granddaughter is a reunification novel, exploring the wider impact of German reunification (1989-90) within the microcosm of two family units, one, a couple living in West Germany and the other who live in a Neo-Nazi community in East Germany. The novel begins in contemporary times with the death of Birgit, an elderly East German who fled the communist East Berlin enclave to be with Kaspar, who had got to know her when visiting East Berlin in the mid 1960’s. Kaspar must not only contend with his wife’s tragic death, but also the private life she kept hidden from him for decades; something that is revealed once he gains access to her unfinished novel and journals. Kaspar is shocked to discover that she had abandoned a baby before she joined Kasper in the West. Kaspar’s subsequent search for his step-granddaughter leads him into the heartland of Neo-Nazi society and allows Schlink a narrative vehicle to explore the divide that lies at the heart of German society, stemming from WWII, the Cold War era and reunification.

Told via simple, yet powerful prose, Schlink focusses mainly on the impact that reunification had on his characters. Kaspar, a native West German, finds his rather naïve and idealistic notions about reunification are challenged by his late wife’s secret struggles and his interactions with his step-granddaughter, Sigrun, who has been indoctrinated with Nazi ideology, which includes an outrageous rewriting of German history. It’s mostly fascinating stuff and makes for perfect book club fodder, with weighty themes that are both historical and contemporary. Obviously Schlink’s aim is to raise awareness of the origins of the rise of the right in Germany. He takes a measured approach, the neo-Nazi characters are not painted as one dimensional right-wing nutjobs, rather their point of view is explored with a degree of humanity, although ultimately their world view is rightly rendered incompatible with objective reality. At times there is a problem with pacing, after a slow first third, in which Kaspar reads a long section of his wife’s writing, therefore revealing their back-story, the rest of the novel is dotted with abrupt decisions and some improbable plot devices (huge loans taken out by a 70-year-old bookseller and a minor’s sudden access to an official means of escape). I don’t normally worry too much about realism in novels, but within a novel of serious themes such oversights stood out, although it is still a minor quibble. Ultimately The Granddaughter is an important novel for our times; and, as previously mentioned, a perfect novel for book club discussion, recommended for all those book clubs out there embarking on their endless search for a decent read.