Down but not out

Hermy

At the start of last year, I was dealing with depression and, unable for much of my usual routine, I got back into reading. This was great, not just because it got me through a difficult time, but also because it’s been so long since I’ve read with any real intent. So below is a list of the 24 books I managed to get through in the past year.

 

Voyeur - Francesca Reece: Not the greatest book I’ve ever read but a good story nonetheless and it was the one that got the ball rolling so a big thumbs-up for that.

 

Nora - Nuala O’Connor: I really liked this book – a wonderful imaging of the life of Nora Barnacle, wife and muse of James Joyce.

 

Atomised - Michel Houellebecq: I remember this book being controversial when it was published but I’m not sure what all the fuss was about – for me it was a real page turner.

 

The Valley of the Squinting Windows - Brindley MacNamara: A book I’ve been wanting to read for the longest time. Heavy going – the author didn’t hold back.

 

Franny and Zooey - J. D. Salinger: Picked this up in a charity shop out of curiosity given the authors more famous work. It didn’t do much for me to be honest.

 

Atonement - Ian McEwan: This is a wonderful book – McEwan is a very fine writer.

 

The Grass Arena - John Healy: Another one I picked up in a charity shop. A brutally honest account of life on the streets of London in the 60’s and 70’s.

 

Ulysses and Us - Declan Kiberd: Having listened to a number of Kiberd’s talks on YouTube I had hoped to get more from this book but a lot of it went over my head. I need to re-read it.

 

Ravelstein - Saul Bellow: Bellow’s final novel and viewed by many as his finest but it didn’t do it for me. I much preferred Mr Sammler’s Planet.

 

Strumpet City - James Plunkett: Another one of those books I’ve been meaning to read for years. A good story though it does tend towards the sentimental.

 

Mefisto - John Banville: One of Banville’s earlier novels, a strange, dark tale which I only realised I had previously read about half way through, having no recollection of the first part of the book. But no bad thing – I could reread Banville every day.

 

The Arms Crisis of 1970 - Michael Henry: This is a brilliant work and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in modern Irish history. The author’s ability to present so much detail without the reader ever feeling swamped by it all is masterful.

 

A Bit on the Side - William Trevor: This was my first encounter with one of Trevor’s short story collections and it’s as good as anything I’ve ever read. The opening story in particular, Sitting with the Dead, has stayed with me.

 

Wunderland - Caitriona Lally: A curious tale, a bit like the one about the dog in the night!

 

The Country Girls - Edna O’Brien: Sixty years on from its publication it seems tame now but I can see why this would have raised more than a few eyebrows in the past.

 

Last Stories - William Trevor: As with A Bit on the Side just beautiful, beautiful writing.

 

Beckett before Beckett - Brigitte Le Juez: Another one that mostly went over my head but it was on sale and I’m fascinated by the man so it was worth a go. The book deals with Beckett’s time as a lecturer in Trinity College using the recently discovered notes of one of his students as source material.

 

Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years - Sue Townsend: Having read the original diary many years ago this was a trip down memory lane, and a very funny one to boot.

 

Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea - Patrick Freyne: Strangely my recollection of this book is vague because I did like it.

 

How To Be Right - James O’Brien: For me James is one of the good guys, swimming against the tide of lies, fake news and bullshit that passes for public discourse these days. Good book.

 

The Heart’s Invisible Furies - John Boyne: Boyne is a good story teller but perhaps a bad novelist. Each of the innumerable episodes make for good yarns in themselves but when combined the story becomes utterly contrived and farcical. And don’t get me started on the plot holes – there are several and they are gaping!

 

We Don’t Know Ourselves - Fintan O’Toole: I like Fintan so I hoped to like this book and it didn’t disappoint. An insightful and very readable account of some of the highs and lows of the last sixty years in Ireland.

 

Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality - Helen Joyce: It not often that I make a point of reading a book I know I’m not going to like. The last one I can think of was The Alchemist which was tripe. In fairness this book was an interesting read but, as I posted in Black Sheep’s reading log, it was spoiled by its one-sidedness. Anyone looking to get an insight into the many and varied issues surrounding transgenderism might be better served by looking elsewhere.

 

Poguemahone - Pat McCabe: An extraordinary book by one of my favourite authors. Six hundred pages of free verse hailed by some as this century’s Ulysses. Definitely one to read aloud for the fully immersive experience.

Hermy

I got through two more in March...

Brexit and Ireland - Tony Connelly: The go-to man for concise and accurate reporting on all things Brexit-related. However, this book had a lot of technical detail and its sole focus was on how Ireland was affected rather the broader implications of Brexit. But that's just my preference and not a criticism of the book.

Salem's Lot - Stephen King: This was one my partner was reading for her book club so I decided to give it a go as I was a big fan in my teens. Classic King but honestly, it didn't do it for me. As with many of his books, he's inclined to drone on a bit more than is necessary and when they're finally revealed he's monsters don't always have the impact you might expect.

I currently have four books on the go. Paris: The Secret History - Andrew Hussey and Grand Hotel Abyss - Stuart Jeffries had gone on hold some time ago because of their small print but thanks to new reading glasses both have come back down from the shelf. Motor Spirit - Jarett Kobek and A Death in the Family - Karl Ove Knaussgaard are the other two and they're both going very well.

Hermy

A Death in the Family - Karl Ove Knaussgaard: Recently finished this book and, while I liked it and will continue reading the other five books in the series, it didn't live up to the high praise that has been heaped upon it. There were moments where the author really drew me into his world but there was a lot of monotonous prose in between that didn't serve the novel very well.

I've recently begun rereading Paul Auster's New York Trilogy which I first read many years ago under the mistaken assumption that it was some sort of gangster saga and consequently struggled to make sense of. Now having grasped something of his interest in Beckett it's making a lot more sense.

Hermy

The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster: So glad I reread this. The nods to Beckett are clearly evident and I love how at various times the plot collapses in on itself. A good book.

Hermy

The Ragman's Daughter - Alan Sillitoe: His second book of short stories, the first being The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which I think was a better book. These stories didn't really go anywhere whereas I vaguely recall the previous collection of stories having more of a point to them.

Hermy

Music on Clinton Street - Pat McCabe: Like Carn, Clinton Street lacks the air of surreal mischief (for want of a better phrase) that is used to full effect in the following book, The Butcher Boy, and has since become a staple of McCabe's novels. Consequently, the story of a rural Irish boarding school and former seminary, and two of it's disaffected residents - one a student, the other a priest - just feels all the more grim. Imagine Withnail and I without the humour! Even drink and drugs can't cut through the despair of people whose yearnings are being stifled by the overarching influence of Catholic Ireland. The writing is particularly good in the closing chapters, there are echoes of The Dead School throughout, and like Banville's Nightspawn, there's the inkling of all that then was yet to come. Just three of McCabe's left to read now.

Hermy

High-Rise - J.G. Ballard : An author I hadn't read before and because Will Self is forever citing him I was expecting difficult and impenetrable prose but not so. Instead it's lucid and accessible and the tension builds throughout in this tale of societal breakdown in an exclusive high rise apartment block. At times it rather prophetically mirrors the present lived experience where the likes of social media and (so-called) fake news [it isn't news - it's just lies] have eroded many of the conventions that previously kept us between the ditches.

Hermy

Call for the Dead - John le Carré: Prompted by HalloweenJack's recent post I was checking the local library for le Carré and was delighted to find a copy of this ,his first novel, on the shelf. I'm a big Tinker Tailor fan and have read the book and watched the brilliant TV and film adaptions many times so it was fascinating to delve into this first outing for George Smiley and his sidekicks Peter Guillam and Inspector Mendel. Perhaps more of a whodunit than an out-and-out spy novel it was nevertheless an excellent read and I look forward to delving further into the other books in the series.

Hermy

Yell, Sam, If You Still Can - Maylis Besserie: Given the subject matter this was a book I really hoped I would like and I'm glad to say it didn't disappoint. A fictionalised account of Beckett's final months spent in a retirement home in Paris told in the main through the use of internal monologue it echoes throughout with allusions to his writings - and occasionally Joyce's too. It's beautifully written, it's been brilliantly translated, and already it's a book I'm looking forward to reading again.

Hermy

Motor Spirit - Jarett Kobek: A book I've been reading on and off over the past while and a damn good read it is too. A must for anyone interested in the Zodiac Killer which not only gives a comprehensive account of all that's known and unknown about the killings but also sets them within the broader context of all that was going on in America at that time.

Hermy

Oracle Night - Paul Auster: Picked this up for a Euro in a local charity shop and it was a welcome change of scenery after pausing Dracula at the halfway mark. Not the finest writing ever, with a lot of superfluous detail, especially the footnotes (which I didn't read), but a good story and I got through it in a matter of days.

Hermy

Lessons - Ian McEwan: I think this might be the finest book I've ever read. I'm not sure if any book has ever elicited such an emotional response from me before, the sort of response I usually only get from music. And yesterday, as the number of pages left to read dwindled, I was really troubled by that fact. McEwan's ability to write page after page of beautiful prose is remarkable, all the more so because it's not at all contrived.

Hermy

Mistaken - Neil Jordan: After the brilliant Lessons I had a few false starts before I settled on my next book. I didn't know the film maker Neil Jordan was also a novelist until I heard Pat McCabe recommend this book in an interview and it didn't take long to grasp why he spoke so highly of it. And there's something of the confusion of Auster's Trilogy about it that had me wanting to go back to page one as soon as I had read the last line to reread the novel from the perspective of one who now knows whodunit so to speak, or rather who done what to whom.

Hermy

Where The Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens: A coming of age story set in the murky swamps of North Carolina, this was a good story and was well told, though it did occasionally lose it's way just a bit.

Hermy

Dracula - Bram Stoker: All I can say is I'm glad it's finally over!

Hermy

The Unnameable - Samuel Beckett: My reading had stalled a bit since Dracula but I somehow found myself having another read of The Unnameable, the last book in Beckett's trilogy (written shortly after the completion of Waiting for Godot), and this time I managed to stick with it to the end. I don't know what to say about this book. I really like Beckett but this is a hard read, nothing like Molloy or Malone Dies, the first and second books in the trilogy, which are so much more accessible. Despite the precise language the novel tends towards chaos, there is no discernible plot, the final paragraph is over one hundred pages long, and trying to stay with the thread of the narrative is nigh on impossible - ever more so as the book draws towards its famous conclusion - but difficult as it is to do you must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.

Hermy

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain: I was a big fan of the TV series, Huckleberry Finn and Friends, back in the 80's so I've no idea why it's taken me so long to get around to reading the novels it was based on. This is a wonderful book, a children's story that adults can enjoy - it's well written, there are some really nice flourishes of introspection, there's social commentary and humour, and it really is one of the great American novels.

Up next Huck Finn!

Hermy

The Philosophy of Samuel Beckett - John Calder: My few forays into literary criticism tend to be done more in hope than expectation, the hope being that I might learn something, anything, though I fully expect to quickly get bogged down in abstract concepts that are well beyond my comprehension. Not so with this concise book by the late John Calder, publisher and friend of Beckett's since the 1950's. The concepts being dealt with are certainly abstract and challenging, as one would expect when discussing Beckett, but Calder manages nonetheless to present them in such a way that even I could stay with the author for the most part and I definitely learned a thing or two along the way.

Hermy

The Theology of Samuel Beckett - John Calder: Published a decade after The Philosophy... this slightly shorter book lacked the focus of the earlier one and dealt less with Beckett's theology than on the authors views on the subject but was still similarly accessible and readable.

Hermy

How To Survive A Heatwave - Maggie O'Farrell: A detour from my regular reading, this one is for a book club I've joined. It's the story of an ordinary Irish family living in London in the heatwave of 1976 and how their fathers disappearance brings them together despite their strained relationships. Not the sort of book I'd normally go for, it was nonetheless a good read and I'm glad I stuck with it.

Hermy

Snowflake - Louise Nealon: Another one for the book club and again not my usual thing but I'm glad I read it. This one, set in the present and written in the first person, recounts the narrators first year in Trinity, as she negotiates this new landscape while also dealing with difficulties at home in rural Ireland.

Hermy

Things I Didn't Know - Robert Hughes: The late Australian art critic Robert Hughes was the writer and presenter of the seminal art history documentary series The Shock of the New which I first encountered on BBC 4 about ten years ago, and have re-watched several times since on YouTube. The same incisive prose delivered in that inimitable style of his that drew me into the TV series is present in this book too, his first, and sadly his only book of memoir. He spent a bit too long dwelling on his childhood for my liking, a childhood dominated by his family's religious and military leanings, and despite my sharing the authors withering view of both, by the third chapter it was beginning to drag. But once it moved beyond his adolescence and began charting the significant steps in his journey to art critic it became much more readable. Unfortunately it stopped about a decade short of The Shock of the New which is what I was most interested in gaining further insight into, but nevertheless it was a good read.

Hermy

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain: It took longer to read this book than I'd have liked, partly due to Christmas and catching a cold, but also because the latter half of the book descended into farce which I wasn't keen on. Still glad to have revisited this and Tom Sawyer - two classics of the American literary canon.

Hermy

The Adoption - Dave Hill: As an adoptee myself the title of this one caught my eye in a charity shop. However, given that the adoption in this story is a modern one - a much more open affair than the cloak and dagger goings-on of the past - it wasn't so relatable to my own experience. But for all that it was still a good book.

At this stage I've now read as many books as I did last year, my 'year' running roughly from April to April. Wolf Hall has gone the way of Paris: The Secret History and Grand Hotel Abyss. So too How To Find Zodiac, the follow up to Jarett Kobek's Motor Spirit, and They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper, a fascinating but very drawn-out read by the writer/ director of Withnail and I. But these are all books I want to finish and will endeavour to do so anon.

Not sure what to read next, maybe back to some familiar territory - Banville, Beckett, McCabe and McEwan - but Sophie's World also beckons.

Hermy

The Big Yaroo - Patrick McCabe: One of his most recent novels, this story catches up with the adult Francie Brady who's been locked up since his childhood exploits in The Butcher Boy and is now planning his great escape. This is McCabe doing what he does best, painting a picture of a man who lost his grip on reality years ago and doesn't know it. And despite his horrendous crimes you can't help but feel some sympathy for the tragic Francie Brady.

Hermy

Akin - Emma Donoghue: The latest for the book club and a much better choice than the first two. I hadn't previously read anything by Donoghue but The Room is on my shelf waiting to be read and I'm a lot keener to give it a go having read Akin. It's a great book, a great story, I like the writing and there are a number of interesting themes covered along the way. Definitely one I'd recommend.

Hermy

Ghosts - John Banville: This book is just pure Banville - the stunning prose, the deeply introspective first person narrative, the vague plot and vaguer conclusion. The second book in the Frames trilogy, it reacquaints us with some of the characters and events from The Book of Evidence. Although the styles couldn't be more different it only occurred to me after I had begun reading Ghosts the extent to which it mirrors The Big Yaroo. Yet despite the privileges of class and education the unnamed narrator is still just as deluded as Francie about his true self.

Hermy

Amsterdam - Ian McEwan: A short book which I got through in a couple of sittings. As one might expect of McEwan the writing was very good, but the story was unconvincing and the ending utterly implausible. A very odd choice for that years Booker!

Hermy

Samuel Beckett - The Complete Short Prose: Some very challenging reading here despite the brevity of many of the pieces though thankfully it wasn't all hard slog and there were also a good scattering of more accessible works. My Beckettian odyssey is almost complete with How It Is and Malone Dies being his only prose fiction I've left to read. And when that's done I hope to tackle Damned to Fame, James Knowlson's authorised biography of Beckett.

Hermy

Donal Ryan - Strange Flowers: Having changed book clubs recently this is first up for the new one and what a great choice. I loved this book, I loved the style and the way the author used it to depict the movement of people and places through time, and the serene resolve of the final paragraph was masterful. The story of the struggle to fit in in the conformist, judgemental and god-fearing (or should that be priest-fearing) Ireland of times past has been told many times and is often derided as being bleak and miserable but I don't get that at all. When it's done well, as in this book, the imagery and the characters ring so true in my minds eye I can place myself amongst the tea and the turf smoke and hear them talk. This story of old Ireland will continue to be retold, as it should be, replacing the rose-tinted notions of the past with a more honest appraisal, and every time it's done this well I'll continue to be captivated.

Hermy

The Only Story - Julian Barnes: I'm really getting to like this type of first person introspection at which Barnes, McEwan, and Banville excel. Though not as dense, or as deep perhaps, as Banville the sentences are still every bit as well constructed and beautifully balanced, and it's one of life's pleasures to read writing of this quality. It's also worth noting that all three have written about an older woman seducing a younger man, or young boy in the case of the latter two - what's all that about, one wonders!