Category: Reviews

England, England by Julian Barnes

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

England, England is a book about an island created to capture the essence of England, ostensibly to attract tourists and make its founders a lot of money. This “fake” England, we are assured, is more “real” that the country it’s based on, as it distills Englishness down to its recognizable parts and puts them all in the same, convenient place. England, we are told, is its history, artifacts, and iconography. This is pop-culture for those who thought Any Warhol wasn’t being in the least ironic.

A book like this, then, is itself about England, via its characters: a self made man and an almost-but-not-quite-bitterly cynical woman. The former is the visionary who builds England, England, the latter his assistant who keeps his vision grounded in reality. Sir Jack Pitman, not content with having it all, decides he wants to be in charge of it all as well, and thanks to Miss Cochrane, he only earns that right after having been defeated by his own hubris.

So then there’s the fake England, and the stereotypical English, and that’s all well and good. But a thing becomes calcified as soon as it gets a label, and that’s what happened to England itself, thanks to the non-English. Anyone and everyone who’s ever had this Englishness foisted on them has an idea of what England is, and they’re all most certainly wrong. England isn’t English anymore than China is merely Chinese. According to Barnes, Derrida was wrong.

And while, I, personally, got bored reading this after a while, thanks to long passages of introspection about love and the meaning of life, I did like how the book’s coda sums up what it means for a place to have a fabric and texture—once the real England has its history, artifacts, and iconography drained from it, it ceases to be part of the world-context that defines it, and ironically, once again becomes utterly English.

My apologies for prattling on like a sophomore struggling to write a book report. I desperately want to enjoy Julian Barnes’ books. I thought A Sense of an Ending was excellent, and I found Flaubert’s Parrot quite challenging—so my head is looking for ways to justify my having read England, England. It got me thinking, I suppose, so kudos for that. I just wish it was shorter—blame my American shallow attention span.

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Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Read this having recently reread Less Than Zero, the prequel. (And what a prequel it was!) Ellis launches the sequel by invoking the prequel and the movie based on it, explaining that the writer has changed but the narrator has not. A tidy little link, there. A good way to stitch together tomes otherwise severed by 25 years.

In my review of Less Than Zero I mentioned that when I had originally read it I was impressed, and when I read it again recently I was not so impressed. What I didn’t mention was that after reading Less than Zero the first time I read American Psycho and was impressed, but promised myself I would never read it again. After my second reading of Less Than Zero I was beginning to think maybe my promise was silly and I should reread American Psycho after all and see if my attitude towards it would change as well. But now that I’ve read Imperial Bedrooms, I don’t need to re-read American Psycho, since Ellis has done so for me.

Yeah. I’m calling Imperial Bedrooms “Less Than Zero plus American Psycho.” Also, Glamorama. Also a bit of Lunar Park, but only a bit. Also, some Mulholland Drive, but without any of David Lynch’s style (which should not be taken as praise or insult). Also, Fight Club, but not really.

Ostensibly, the cast of Less Than Zero are middle-aged now… but if alienation is a theme, there’s no way for those of us who are middle aged will in the least identify with anything going on in this book. Not at all. Aside from a few comments a few people make, there’s little or no use to which this middle-agedness is used. So why bring it up? I guess because the ennui of the 80s elite is the same as the ennui of the over-the-hill elite. Young people have energy now, but old people, well, they’ve always been and always will be self-indulgent pricks.

Imperial Bedrooms ends up being about sadism, and nothing more. And we learn that sadism is not merely cruelty. A sadist does not merely enjoy causing pain, but enjoys the pain caused to someone who asks for it. But the person asking for it cannot enjoy it—or it’s not pain. The sadist thrives on the contradiction of a person’s wanting something he or she doesn’t want. Yeah, I’m going to call Ellis a sadist. I’m going to say he wants us to want the bruises this book causes, bruises we don’t enjoy.

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Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I first read this about 20 years ago, or so, and I remember, at the time, I was rather impressed. This time, however, not so much. Then again I’m older now, more jaded and cynical, and not even the kind of jaded and cynical I thought I was when I was a fresh-faced post-teen. I’ve read a few thousand novels since then, and in as much as we can recognize these things when we’re in the midst of them, “contemporary literature” has changed.

(But I still like it more than Franzen).

(FWIW, I only re-read this one because a friend of mine was comparing his Girl Scout cookie addiction to the movie version of the book, and I decided to write a short story about it . You can read A Hazy Shade of Thin Mint if you want).

When a 19 year-old kid writes a roman a clef that winds up being a tour de force, one can’t help but read other things by him and make comparisons. So I read Rules of Attraction and American Psycho and found them to be pretty good; Years later, Glamorama and Lunar Park, not so good. The clef had gone flat, to abuse the phrase. The tour had lost its force.

Now, on re-reading, I’m thinking it’s just me that’s changed. Ellis himself, in an interview with Amazon, says that he, after 20 years, finally sees why the book is so awesome. So it’s definitely just me.

And now I’ve discovered that Ellis finally wrote a sequel, Imperial Bedrooms with all the main characters grown up and facing middle-age. So maybe there’s a chance for me to go, if not full circle, at least back in step with Ellis. I guess I’ll read this sequel. If it’s mediocre, perhaps that’s a sign of brilliance, that Ellis addresses his audience the way they address their reading. Youth is too enthusiastic, middle-agers are too mediocre, and mixing them for together, mediocrity always wins.

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Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So here’s another book about books. Not a bad thing, not at all, as I love books about books. Lately, thanks to the internet and all those Amazonian algorithms, I’ve been reading more and more books about books—each one leads me to another. I’m sure there’s some deep seated spirituality that can be gleaned from this kind of thing. So even if, in the end, Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore isn’t, actually, about books, that it’s considered to be about books will nevertheless leads me to other books that are.

Do you follow me? No? No matter. This was a fun read anyway. I read it one day, more or less, a feat that requires free time (I was on vacation) a decent writing style (Robin Sloan’s sentence crafting is fine) and a compelling plot (it’s a book about a puzzle). I’ve seen other reviews compare Penumbra’s to The Da Vinci Code, The Shadow of the Wind, and The Name of the Rose. (Let me add Ready Player One to that list). I’ll agree to those comparisons with a grain of salt, like I said above, in as much as it means people will be led to this book and others of the same ilk if we allow the comparison.

Because in the end, there’s not much of a puzzle at Mr. Penumbra’s, more of a mystery, which is fine. I do like how Sloan uses the internet as a thing and the internet as a theme to sort of modernize a philosophy of what it means to be creative. I liked the allusion to Erasmus, and even though it was a bit one-dimensional, I liked the earnestness of the characters.

There were a few things along the way that were not handled well—pretty much everything the book mentioned about Google was just silly, especially the big brute-force puzzle-solving fiasco near the end. (Spoiler alert—they fail to break the code, but I can tell you from even my limited knowledge of puzzlecraft that, actually, a brute-force approach would have worked, given the actual final solution). Major flaw? Sure, if this was just a book about a puzzle. But if you let the book be more about other themes, about the human condition, how people are the real resource of interconnectedness, I suppose such flaws can be overlooked.

I overlooked them for The Da Vinci Code and Ready Player One, and Penumbra’s better written than those, in my opinion.

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Hit and Run by Lawrence Block

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you’ve read the other Keller books, this one stands out. At first. There’s a plot this time, not just a theme, and it covers, more or less, the entire length of the work. Instead of a collection of hits, Keller’s dealing with one hit in particular (sort of—I don’ t want to give it away). But I mentioned theme, and the quiet, almost subdued, tone of the stories is very predominant here in this “novel” version, and so, this is just a longer story, with a few extra complications thrown in to make it worth the increased length. The bottom line is: if you liked the first three Keller collections, you’ll like this one, and if you got tired of the sameness of them, Hit and Run will be especially tedious.

I’m couching all of this in the assumption that you won’t be reading Hit and Run on its own. I’m not sure if I can say it would stand up on its own—just like the second, and third collection, Block makes several references to occurrences in previous stories. Then again, as subdued and understated as the tone is, a matter-of-fact flash back is, indeed, just as good as having read the original. So maybe one could read Hit and Run without having read Hit Man, Hit List, and Hit Parade.

Then again, in this novel treatment of Keller’s version of angst, he’s got more space to be contemplative, and that’s not the same thing as subdued and understated, is it. I think Block invites his readers to be contemplative right along with Keller, and so, in as much as there are flashbacks, they can work as flashbacks to the reader’s own experience as well. In this way, of course, this novel cannot stand alone. Unfortunately, if what one contemplated was tedium and frustration, then Hit and Run doesn’t stand a chance.

But if you’re like me, and liked the meditative quality of the first three books, this novel will be easy to get through, and will be as enjoyable. But, I have to admit, not any more enjoyable. Just the same.

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Hit Parade by Lawrence Block

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hit Parade picks up where Hit Man leaves off, which is not saying much, really, as the impression you get at the beginning is simply that Keller’s still around, so his exploits might as well be chronicled. Not that they’re all that amazing. Keller’ just this guy who kills people, a contract killer, not a serial killer. What the difference? One’s a job, the other’s a hobby.

Keller does have a hobby, though: his stamp collection, which has given him enough reason to keep his day job as to make up for the fact that he murders for money. He doesn’t relish it, very much. He likes the satisfaction of solving a problem, and that’s, more or less, what Lawrence Block is offering his readers. You don’t take satisfaction from the deaths themselves, but you do enjoy that Keller perseveres. If reading is your hobby, Keller’s killings are required to keep you in stories.

If Hit List, the second book, saw Keller consider, for just a moment, the Jungian “big-picture” impact of what he does, then in Hit Parade he’s considering, just for second, the long-term emotional effects of his work. But he doesn’t do so via some crisis of consciousness. He’s not struggling with his soul, here. He’s just looking for motivation, and deciding to be motivated by a desire to get out of the business– which he can only do by immersing himself in the business to earn enough to retire on. And what do you think will be conclusion to that?

There’s two more Keller books to be read, so, the conclusion is pretty obvious.

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Hit List by Lawrence Block

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There isn’t much new here in Hit List, as compared to Hit Man. You can decide for yourself if that’s a good thing or not. For me, if I like something, I’ll probably like more of the same, so I don’t need Hit List to be more than, for all intents and purposes, just the second half of Hit Man. My understanding is that, like the first book, this second is a collection of shorter works that were published independently, and so this is not a “novel” in the strictest sense of the word. There’s some character development, but of the “reveal” variety, not the “evolve” variety. Keller is still killing people, or not, for reasons that are, if not strictly morally, at least not merely sociopathic. Keller does what he does. He’s as bland as toast.

If you’re not satisfied with merely more of the same, well, at least in this book there’s Keller’s stamp collection. There’s his ninety-nine mile distance from what was his previous one-hundred-mile existentialism. There’s his toying with some new-age sensibilities, which are as perfunctory and inconsequential as any other thought he might have. Keller is dull, life is dull, death is extremely dull.

And somehow, the book is not. Not really sure how else to say it. This is what happens when a comfortable, well-experienced master of words like Lawrence Block sits down to just do what he does. Not every book has to be pyrotechnics and deeply emotional. Most of existence isn’t. If you need your novels to be written by men who eventually kill themselves, don’t bother. But if you just want to read something for a while, where some folks get killed, go right ahead, read Hit List.

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Hit Man by Lawrence Block

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I stumbled across Lawrence Block when I was a young man, one of the Burglar novels. I read all of the ones I could find, and anything else I could find by him, mostly in libraries and used bookstores. (I eschewed the Matthew Scudder novels, however, as I couldn’t find the first one and didn’t want read them out of order). As a result, Block ended up having a fairly significant influence on me as a reader. Books had to be clever without being too self-indulgent, serious without being maudlin and amusing without being silly.

As a reader, I’ve grown since then, more than willing now to read self-indulgent, maudlin, silly nonsense. But when I saw that Block is to have a new Hit Man book out this month, I decided to go back and re-read the other Keller books. Just breezed through Hit Man #1 in less than 24 hours, and it was a good read.

Block’s gifted at matching his prose style to the personality of his character. Keller is simple, straightforward, almost plain, with a few idiosyncrasies to keep you interested. Same is true for the book itself— what amounts to a connected collection of short stories about a paid killer. There’s not much in the way of character development, or plot for that matter. It’s just an easy read, fun while it lasts, and done when it’s done.

Except, of course, it’s not done—I recall I did read at least one other Keller back then, before moving on and getting a degree in English and having reading ruined for me for a good ten years. I’m diving into Hit List next, and then all the rest. I’m not expecting fireworks, but then I’m not staying up past my bed time, either.

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Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s folly to compare one writer to another, usually, but then, usually, I’m something of a fool. Hilary Mantel’s writing is just so absorbing, so engaging, she reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in that respect. Stylistically they’re nothing alike. And yet, if you told me that, in my retirement, I’d just sit around in lounge chairs sipping tea and reading Mantel and Marquez, I’d wonder what I done right in life to earn that.

I’d already read Bring Up the Bodies, the sequel to Wolf Hall, before reading Wolf Hall itself . I’d read the one because it was on the Booker Prize longlist for 2012 (then it made the shortlist and then it won). Wolf Hall also won, in 2009, and I’d enjoyed Bring so much, catching up with Wolf Hall was a no-brainer; nor did it disappoint.

And it’s interesting to read a book and to know, ahead of time, how it will end. Doubly true here, as these are historical novels, and knowing history is as easy as looking things up on Wikipedia. Which I did, often, as, with my reading of Bring, I was nearly overwhelmed with the multitude of characters.

Knowing the ending, of course, isn’t the same as knowing the plot, so there’s still plenty of intrigue to be had in Wolf Hall. And now that I’ve finished it, I can make good on my intention to re-read Bring Up The Bodies. And then, when Mantel writes the promised third in the series, I’ll be that much more prepared. And I am very certain that as excellent a read as these books are, being less of a fool myself will make them that much better.

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