Having not read much for the previous couple of years, I determined, in summer of 2018, to read as many short novels as I could. Somehow or other, in the first year, I managed 70 (don't even know how that happened). It settled down after that, and I've found it harder to read quickly since my eyesight started to deteriorate, amongst other time-stealing factors, but I am still managing to have a book on the go all the time, and am managing to get through 15+ a year, which I'm happy with. I am also glad that I don't give up on a book. Maybe sometimes it would be a good idea, but I've stuck with every single one I've picked up in this period.
So, I thought I'd write a paragraph or two about 10 of my favourites from these seven years of reading. I wouldn't say these will be reviews so much as attempts to remember how the books made me feel.
Firstly ...
Autumn - Ali Smith
Like other Ali Smith books, Autumn invites you into a world of words, ideas and arts - in this case, the central real-life figure is the (then) little-known pop artist Pauline Boty. [each of the books in the Seasons tetralogy revolves around a Shakespeare play and a female artist].This was the first Ali Smith book I'd read, and, though I am now more used to her style, this book rather swept me off my feet. As a writer she gives you a lot but doesn't demand all that much in return. The sentences flow, the quirky jokes keep coming, the type is big and easy (I like big type!). You learn a lot and you feel comforted. I can sometimes feel a bit uncertain about books that are this easy and enjoyable to read, and perhaps the three other season books fell victim to that in my mind. But I have rarely felt such a giddy thrill, from good humour, anger, learning, storytelling, as with this book.
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
I read it this year, having read The Sound and the Fury more than 10 years ago. TSATF has 4 sections - the first is so (deliberately) impenetrable that, truthfully, although I ended up getting to grips with the book, my memory of it is still a bit tainted by my initial uncomprehending... fury. I am just not sure anything should be so utterly impossible to grasp in the moment.
As I Lay Dying was written a year later, in 1930. I loved it. I found it a strangely blissful read. There are unreliable and confused narrators, certainly, and you don't really add everything up until the end, but you're always in the game! It's a beautiful, sad, tale, seems like it's years ahead of its time.
The Green Road - Anne Enright
I read this in the week before the first lockdown, at the start of March 2020, so obviously my head was full of BIG THOUGHTS at the time. This is one of my favourite novels ever, if not my favourite. It is an Irish family saga - there's an aged parent and four children who are then, in the middle section separately, and in the later section together, adults. Clearly I had some investment.
There is a section focussing on (or starting with) one of the grown-up sons living in New York during the AIDS crisis, which could stand alone from the rest of the novel, and is, I felt at the time, the work of a writer possessed, consumed by genius. Enright is always a stylish writer - the first book I read by her 'The Forgotten Waltz', I felt a bit like the intensity of the writing overwhelmed the paucity of the story, and. though I've ended up liking all the rest of her novels, there's nothing else that has hit me as hard as The Green Road, in particular that section of The Green Road - I somewhat think that might be the greatest thing I've ever read.
Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead
This was the novel Colson Whitehead wrote after winning the Pulitzer twice in succession, for 'The Underground Railroad', which I haven't read, then 'Nickel Boys', which I have. Those are (I presume of the first and know of the second) pretty heavy books.
Harlem Shuffle is, on the other hand, a hoot. One of the most enjoyable books I've read - a piece of crime fiction set in New York in the early 60s, with a hero you root for and villains who are only a bit villainous. I think my tendency seems to be to choose books that end up being a bit unsettling, but every now and then it's nice to read something that is both brilliantly written and not unsettling at all.
Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban
I read several contemporary Russell Hoban novels in my twenties. I enjoyed them. They were funny and light and rude. In fact, they had a lot in common with Ali Smith - there was usually a piece of art at the centre, and there was a delight in playing with language.
Knowing Hoban's son as I did/do, Wieland would sometimes roll his eyes when I mentioned I'd enjoyed his dad's latest book and say, you should read his earlier stuff, that's much more substantial. I'd tried Riddley Walker first, though, and not got past the first couple of pages. I finally committed to read it in 2019. It is, strangely, a masterpiece, one of the greatest books ever written, entirely the work of a writer possessed, with a depth of storytelling and prophesy and wit, skill in language, darkness and beauty, that I have come across in very few other places. It is also, funnily enough, set in a post-apocalyptic eastern Kent which is where I live right now! Boom-tish!
August is a Wicked Month - Edna O'Brien
I didn't think, at the time, that this was one of my favourites, but it has stayed with me. It is the first novel she wrote after The Country Girls trilogy which began her career with a bang. It also, like them, feels pretty semi-autobiographical - indeed, one of the funniest things is the lead character meeting a Hollywood actor on the French riviera who I could just tell was meant to be Robert Mitchum, and then you google Edna O'Brien Robert Mitchum...
Anyway, what strikes me about this book, very much like the last of the Country Girls books, Girls in Their Married Bliss, is how very sad they made me feel at the end. Rather like Y Tu Mama Tambien, this book just pulled the rug away and that feeling had not really left me.
The Heat of the Day - Elizabeth Bowen
I was given this dark, misanthropic wartime thriller set in a strangely recognisable London, where no one is treated all that kindly by the author. I was struck by how much confidence Bowen had in her sentence construction. I would get halfway through a vast half-page flowing sequence of words and worry that she'd forgotten the main verb, and then there it would be when you needed it most. I don't think I'm a man who, on average, is interested in the First or Second World War, but they sure do have a lot of great novels about them.
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
A lot of people write a lot of different things, and you can't necessarily tell much about an author by what they write, but, hey, let's make an exception, it's clear to tell from Blood Meridian that Cormac McCarthy was a depraved man ... well, at the time, apparently, this was his transitional novel as from this point on his novels had more morality and beauty, and that is certainly true of All the Pretty Horses and The Road, later books I'd already read. In this book, like in the Simon and Garfunkel song, they've all gone to look for America and what they find is not so nice.
Apparently, the unfilmable novel is finally being filmed.
Old God's Time - Sebastian Barry, Night Boat to Tangier - Kevin Barry
Two for the price of one - both by (unrelated) Irish Barrys. I read a disproportionate number of novels by Irish people - there are a disproportionate number of excellent Irish novelists, and, I guess, I just like the territory. Old God's Time is a beautiful novel, very much in the world that a lot of Irish novels are in - the church, child abuse, history, memory. S Barry's Days Without End (set in a similar America to Blood Meridian) is also a beautiful novel. K Barry's books are hilarious - Night Boat to Tangier is also about history and memory, but it's funny as hell and like a gangster's Waiting for Godot.
Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers - Ryan O'Neill
And, finally, this masterpiece. If I ever wrote a work of fiction, I would want it to be like this, and in a way, I think, I'd have my best shot of writing something in this vein - just having one silly idea and running with it all the way, creating this fabulously fact-based alternative reality, full of detail and history and names and faux-solemnity.
I would recommend this book above all others. It's the Inside Number 9 of 21st century novels.
