It's been a great year for reading, with no books being rated by me as mediocre. The worst book of the year was The Last Hours by Minette Walters (2017), which merely read like a passable historical fiction novel, which is no great crime. There were some disappointing books, such as The Crying Lot of 49 by Thomas Pynchon (1966), which seemed dated and unfocused. David Marusek's sequel to the excellent Counting Heads (2005) - Mind Over Ship (2009), struggled for coherence and left me underwhelmed.
The best by far were Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively (1987) and Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake (1946), two totally different but equally sublime novels. I'll be definitely reading more by Lively and Peake in the near future, and so should you! A shout-out goes to Sailor Twain by Mark Siegal (2012) and The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis (1986) for being the most entertaining books of the year. The most important book, for unfortunate reasons, was Sapiens by Yuval Harari (2011); a must-read if you want to understand where humanity has come from and exactly why it was almost inevitable the we should find ourselves in our current climate change predicament. Appropriate reading for humanity's last golden age? I wish that I could be more optimistic on the last day of 2019, but frankly rather than bury my head in the sand, like Australia's ruling Triple C Liberal Party (Climate Change Criminals), I'm going to bury my head in more books next year (including a recent Christmas gift - Bowie's Books (2019), hence the gratuitous Bowie picture above...).
Rating: Excellent
The Old Devils is one of those rare novels that is quite brilliant and has also won the Booker Prize. That is a bit harsh, as there have been quite a few winners that have been exceptional, but also some that are very disappointing indeed. The novel is erudite, stylishly written and also is very very funny; full of wit, satire and outright laughs. This is also a rare feat, as I've found that humorous literary fiction is hard to find and therefore I conclude that it is difficult to write. I only have to think of that notoriously reprehensible Man Booker Prize winner The Finkler Question (2010) and its risible attempts at humour to confirm that suspicion. There is, of course, another rarity at play in that the son (Martin Amis) is just as good as the father and I can't think of another quality father son combination in literature.
The Old Devils follows a coterie of elderly Welsh couples whose chief shared interest is drinking and attempting to deal with their various ailments and life disappointments. Back into their lives after decades in London comes Welsh poet Alun Weaver and his wife Rhiannon, a great beauty who left a number of the old devils heartbroken in her wake. Alun is one of those larger than life characters whose charisma and outrageously bad behavior as both a malcontent and philanderer almost steals the novel (and I suspect gave Amis an opportunity to satirize himself as an added bonus...). However Amis created a host of well fleshed out characters both male and female that elicit both insight and poignancy. The novel does perhaps go on a bit and has a few flat spots, however the emotional and satisfying ending makes up for any minor shortcomings. The Old Devils is an extremely satisfying novel and I'm going to start collecting Amis' books whenever I see them and also try and rectify the fact that I haven't read his infamous debt novel Lucky Jim (1954).
