Book review: The Last Tycoon

Reading an unfinished novel might seem to be an activity that could serve only to frustrate and disappoint. Characters are not fully developed; plots are left hanging; themes supposed to unify the story, giving it shape & meaning, won't be fully worked-through; and the writing itself will likely be unpolished. Yet devotees of certain authors will regardless read these unfinished books anyway, hoping that the pleasures of what do exist will outweigh the frustrations inherent in setting out to read something you know doesn't properly end. There's an added level of sadness too when the author was relatively young and potentially could have had a much larger bibliography had they not died when they did. Reading Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura, for instance, is frustrating for the lost chance for another masterpiece, but countered by the fact that Nabokov died an old man with an extensive catalogue of novels & stories. Reading David Foster Wallace's The Pale King or F Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon is made all the more disappointing for the realisation that both men were relatively young, with comparatively small bodies of work, when they died.

Like Wallace's work, Fitzgerald's gives his readers a taste of what might have been, presenting as much of the story as he had completed (although obviously he would have rewritten & edited these chapters before publication) and supplementing this with some of his notes, letters & drafts indicating where the rest of the book might have gone.  And also like The Pale King, The Last Tycoon reveals itself to be up to the highest standards of its author's previous work. After what I felt to be the slight dip of Tender Is The Night, The Last Tycoon (or, at least, what we have of it) stands up to the best of Fitzgerald's work - the early short stories & The Great Gatsby. In his notes, Fitzgerald identifies that novel as the closest thing, structurally speaking, to what he was aiming for with The Last Tycoon. They share the narrative trick of having the narrator not being the main character, but using the comparatively detached eye of the narrator-character to examine the life of a compelling lead.

The Last Tycoon is a Hollywood novel, which is the only thing (other than its incomplete status) many people know of it - it was all I knew before starting it. Told (mainly) by the daughter, Cecelia, of a famous producer, and focusing on hotshot young producer Monroe Stahr, the novel centres around a group of movie-makers & their associated hangers-on in the late-1930s-early-1940s. Most of the story focus is on Monroe's relationship with Kathleen, but Fitzgerald also spends time with Monroe at his work. Under pressure to continue creating hits, Monroe's health is fading, with his relationship with Kathleen being a troubled highpoint in his life.

The 'completed' section of The Last Tycoon lasts only 150 pages, with another 30-ish of Fitzgerald's notes. The story itself never really comes together, as one would expect, but what is here is very good - there are some wonderful scenes at the studios, and the origins of Monroe & Kathleen's romance is as good as anything Fitzgerald ever wrote. It's hard to get a true picture from his notes of how the rest of the novel would have gone, but the general themes and ideas are all present to at least some extent.

Unfortunately its unfinished status will ensure The Last Tycoon will never have a terribly wide audience. For that reason, it's really only recommended to committed fans of Fitzgerald who are happy to read what he was able to write before his untimely death. But for those who do bother, The Last Tycoon does offer the prospect of some of his finest writing and the possiblity that, had he lived to finish it, The Great Gatsby's place as his masterpiece might not have been quite so clear-cut.

Book review: The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes is a novelist I've never quite been able to get into. I've read a fair few of his books, and enjoyed some of them (Talking It Over, Flaubert's Parrot, Arthur & George), but have never felt passionately strongly about any of them. There's also been a couple I've disliked or have forgotten soon after reading them.

Yet, for many, Barnes was the great hope of this year's Booker Prize shortlist. I won't go into the details here (there's plenty elsewhere on the internet if you care), but this year's Booker long- & shortlists disappointed many because of the dominance of unremarkable novels and a general sense that the chosen novels were far from being representative of the best fiction published by Commonwealth authors in the last year. I've not read enough of them to really weigh in on that question - although that's in part because a lot of the shortlist, let alone the longlist, had no appeal to me, which may add some credence to that school of thought - but it was certainly a common reaction. Against all this, one author & their book were received near-universally well, so the sorts of people who care about these sorts of things hoped that Barnes' The Sense of an Ending would take the prize this year. And, indeed, it did.

All that background aside, The Sense of an Ending in any year would make a worthy contender for the Booker Prize. I say that for two reasons: first, it is a very good novel; and second, it is the sort of thing Booker panels over the last few decades have tended to reward. That latter is, perhaps, a slightly backhanded compliment, since it can be argued - not unfairly - that the Booker Prize does favour, amongst a few other things, beautifully written accounts of middle-class people taking stock of their lives. Sometimes that sort of book drives me to tears of boredom, but sometimes - as with The Sense of an Ending - it can be done effectively and made into something more than the genre trappings would suggest.


Key to the success of The Sense of an Ending is the perfectly-pitched narrative voice. Tony Webster is not always perfect, but he is likeable. At one point, the older Tony realises what an awful, childish thing he did to a friend when they were at university, but Barnes conveys this convincingly - his embarrasment at realising how badly he'd reacted, his genuine surprise at learning this and his remorse for the consequences of his actions.  And that scene, and its aftermath, is a good microcosm of Tony thoughout the book - honest about his failings without being self-pitying, and generally accurate in his self-assessments. And, not incidentally, often quite funny.

The first section of The Sense of an Ending takes place at Tony's school, within his little group of friends, and specifically focuses on newcomer Adrian. Slightly distant from his new friends and classmates, the high school-aged Adrian demonstrates a remarkably mature & philosophical approach to life, which is often played against the adolescent pretensions of Tony and their other friends. The boys head off to (different) universities, but remain in contact for a while. However, Tony's spiteful reaction to news from Adrian ends their friendship and they fall out of touch. In the second, longer, section Tony reflects on his relationship with Adrian & also his first real girlfriend, Veronica, and in the process learns some things about each of them, including himself.

Reduced to such a description, The Sense of an Ending might sound both slight & boring*, yet I found it to be neither. It is indeed short (150 pages in the small hardcover format), but Barnes packs those pages with more events and character development than many much longer books. There is a mystery which Tony has to figure out, and things he must confront, but these are organic parts of the story - unlike in some novels, in which such plot points feel tacked on, here it is impossible to imagine anything like this book without Tony's low-key search to figure out exactly what happened between him & Adrian, and Veronica. (There are, in case it's not already obvious, fairly significant plot points from the first section of the novel which I'm choosing not to mention here. That may make this summary seem vague, but I personally hate reviews which spoil such surprises.)

In some ways it seems unfair that Barnes should have won the Booker in a year generally considered to have one of the weakest longlists in the prize's history. Yet, in years to come, people will forget that, and see The Sense of an Ending as another winner, and one which was deservedly chosen. And, for most people, who don't care about the Booker Prize one way or another, it will remain nothing more or less than a very good novel.

* Almost all novels, from literary fiction to airport potboilers, sound either boring or ludicrous (or both) when their plot is described in a paragraph or less.

Book review: The Sisters Brothers

For a host of reasons, including the sad fact that I have not yet learned how to bend time so I get more chances to read, I decided a while ago not to repeat last year's Blogging the Booker longlist effort.  However, since the library at my work has all six of the shortlisted titles, I thought I'd take a look at some of them, both before & after the winner is announced later this month.

The first to grab my attention was Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers.  Unusually for a Booker nominee, The Sisters Brothers is a very American novel.  (The Booker, for those who don't track these things, is for Commonwealth writers. deWitt was born in British Columbia, hence his eligibility.)  Indeed, it is that most American of genres, the Western.  Falling somewhere in between True Grit (novel & 2010 movie; I can't speak for the original film version) and Deadwood (with the violence, without the swearing), The Sisters Brothers is the story of Eli & Charlie Sisters, two famous (in the world of the novel) assassins in 1850s Oregon.  They work for a mysterious boss known as The Commodore, and the story begins with him sending them on a job to California, to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm, who has stolen something from him.  Charlie, the leader of the two, is enthusiastic and violent; Eli, who narrates, is more passive, seemingly falling into his line of work because his brother did.  Much of the book revolves around the doubts Eli increasingly has about making his living as a killer and the tensions between the two brothers.

Yet despite all that, The Sisters Brothers is often quite funny, and both brothers are engaging company as we follow them from town to town on their trip to California.  Like in the two comparison points I mentioned above, there is much enjoyment to be had in The Sisters Brothers by placing wildly different characters together and watching them interact.  The two brothers, contrasting in many ways, have a fundamentally solid relationship nonetheless - a troubled one in many ways, but still with a core of genuine affection to it.  And as with other revisionist Westerns, deWitt makes the most of highlighting small, everyday things as much as the actual story - including Eli's discovery, via a helpful dentist of the then-new practice of brushing one's teeth.  He becomes a devotee, promoting the idea to his brother and others he meets, trying new flavours of toothpaste and remembering to brush regularly, regardless of what else is going on in his life.

Once they get to California, of course, things take another turn, and the brothers begin to realise that there's more to the story between their employer and their prey than they had been told.  Warm is another colourful character, and the last section of the book, while maintaining the brothers at its centre, becomes quite a different story in some ways.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Sisters Brothers.  deWitt has a fine ear for dialogue, and his narration, via Eli, is evocative and compelling.  As a big fan of the revisionist-western genre, I found this novel an enjoyable and well-told addition to the field.  As I noted last year in my Booker series, I don't always agree with the judges' choices for shortlist and winner, but I usually find at least a couple of books that I would probably have otherwise missed but end up being very glad to have read.  The Sisters Brothers is an excellent example of that, and I hope its shortlisting brings many more readers to deWitt's wonderful novel.

(I should also note that I love the front cover illustration, by Dan Stiles.  It's effective, eye-catching and fits the book well.)

Book review: Tender Is The Night

Tender Is The Night was F. Scott Fitzgerald's final completed novel (only the unfinished The Last Tycoon remains), and in some ways that this is the work of an older author is apparent.  Compared to the earlier novels - and most of his stories - Tender Is The Night seems like a more mature novel: the characters are a little older, there's a more-obvious attempt to take them out of the autobiographical surrounds of his earliest work, and only The Beautiful And Damned is longer.

Tender Is The Night centres on the Divers, Dick & Nicole.  At the start of the novel they are a relatively recently married young couple holidaying in Europe (unlike any of his other novels, almost none of Tender Is The Night occurs in America). They are the centre of a social circle there, including our initial POV character, Rosemary, a young actress.  One of the differences between Tender Is The Night and most other Fitzgerald novels is that the perspective from which we get the story changes regularly - mostly it's from Dick's, but other views are also given to fill in both story and character details. After the initial section, following the Divers and their friends, lovers and other acquaintances, we jump back in time to the beginning of their relationship, before moving to later (around five years after the first section) as their marriage falls apart.

While The Great Gatsby obviously remains Fitzgerald's most famous novel, I know that some hold Tender Is The Night in higher esteem.  Yet for me it simply didn't hang together as well as his earlier novels.  Certainly more mature, and perhaps an insight into the sort of books Fitzgerald would have written had he lived & written for a longer time (although The Last Tycoon is clearly going to be a better indication of that), but Tender Is The Night also seems lifeless compared to anything up to & including Gatsby.  The shifting timeframes and perspectives help keep things interesting, and of course he remains a beautiful writer, but Tender Is The Night never grabbed me in the way that his other books have.  Perhaps this is as much my fault as his - and I will definitely revisit it in the future to see if my opinion shifts - but I found less to love in this polished, mature work than I did in his somewhat-flawed first books.  Part of the problem is Dick, for whom I never got much of a feel.  Perhaps less-obviously autobiographical than some of this other main characters, possibly Fitzgerald never quite figured him out either.  There are still some wonderful scenes, and the final section is quite effective, but Tender Is The Night was a bit of a disappointment for me considering Fitzgerald's tremendous talents.

Guest tea review: Glenbog Fine Teas' Stockholm

A special guest review by my sister Karla!  (This tea is a similar blend to the Glogg I reviewed recently.)

Tea flavour: Stockholm
Tea type: Leaf (infused)
Drunk: Black, no sugar
Blurb: "black tea with orange peel, safflower, calendula, vanilla pieces, apricot and rose petals".

The dried bouquet is delicate, gently fruity, with a lingering floral motif.

Once brewed, the orange and apricot become more dominant in the aroma, and I'm probably smelling those safflowers and calendula as well but just don't know it.

The vanilla becomes evident upon drinking, and the rose petals also make their presence felt. Smooth and gentle on the palate, with fruit and floral flavours perfectly united. Overall, a very pleasant tea-drinking experience: soft and delicate, with a mild citrus overtone. Lovely over strawberries and yoghurt on a lazy Sunday morning, but would also be well-paired with a light sponge cake at afternoon tea.

Book review: Woman's World

Norma and Roy are sister & brother in their twenties who live with their mother in London.  It appears to be the early 1960s, although this is never explicitly stated. Roy has just started a new job as a delivery driver for a local laundry company. Norma is obsessed with looking her best & being a glamorous modern woman. Their mother, Mary, doesn't seem to like Norma very much, but is always glad to see Roy.

For most of the first couple of hundred pages, Woman's World is dedicated to setting up its characters and the world they occupy. The plot doesn't really kick in until about halfway through the book, but the first part of the book is nonetheless ripe with mysteries: why does Mary distrust Norma? As the book begins, Roy has just returned from being away for a while - where had he been? What lies beneath Norma's superficial-seeming character? What is the significance of Norma's 'accident' in the past that gets mentioned a few times?

Woman's World has an intriguingly noir-ish setup. Rawls tempts the reader with these puzzles before bringing it all into sharper focus with the mid-book plot twists. I don't intend to say anything about those, in part because my reading of Woman's World was somewhat spoiled by having read an indiscreet review which gave away a major plot point without acknowledging that it was about to do so.

What is worth mentioning, however, is the unique and fascinating way in which Woman's World was written: Rawls wrote the basic story in rough draft form, and then pieced all his words together by cutting up old women's magazines. Every single word, punctuation mark, page or chapter number comes from an actual women's magazine - articles, stories, advertisements: according to the author's postscript it took five years to assemble. While this is an interesting gimmick, it's not only a gimmick: since Norma narrates the story (even the bits at which Roy but not she is present), we begin to understand her addiction to these magazines and devotion to presenting herself as the sort of woman 1960s magazines idealised.  For the reader, it is often a subtle commentary on these standards, as Norma's narration occasionally veers off into endorsements of cleaning products or clothing styles.  It also acts to underline the contrived nature of Norma's character as she tries to present it to the reader. As the book progresses, we get a better idea of why she might use such a method to tell her story.

As I said, I'm not going to reveal too much more of the plot or revelations throughout Woman's World. Yet I give it a strong endorsement, since it manages to succeed on two levels: on a mechanical level, it's an intriguing way of writing a book, and yet the story & characters are interesting enough that the form serves in conjunction with the content, rather than distracting from it or covering up a shortage of actual ideas. Woman's World is well worth your time and should attract an admiring audience.

Tea review: Glenbog Fine Teas' Glogg

Tea flavour: Glogg
Tea type: Leaf (infused)
Drunk: Black, no sugar
Blurb: "A warming Scandinavian blend of black tea with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, orange peel and almond pieces".

 My apologies for the long wait between tea reviews here on Joel's Blog #1.  On the positive side, a couple of weeks ago I discovered a new tea vendor, who conveniently enough sells his wares just down the road (albeit only on Sundays), so I've got a few new types to review... not to mention the prospect of more types to come...


Anyway, Glogg is a delicious smelling tea - a product of the variety of spices and flavours it contains. The picture to the right is not the exact same one I have (different brand), but the appearance is very similar - mixed in with the black tea leaves are big chunks of almond, orange peel and cloves. Smelling it in its dry form reveals a strong cinnamon aroma, with the cloves also noticeable.

Glogg is a very smooth tea - even an extended infusing period (I left mine for over five minutes) does not turn the cup bitter or sharp.  Not surprisingly, the smell of the brewed cup is significantly weaker than the dry tea, but brewing brings out the ginger aromas along with the cinnamon.

Cinnamon is probably the dominant flavour other than the tea leaves themselves. The cloves are not particularly evident, flavour-wise (probably just as well, most people would think), but the orange peel does add a touch of citrus, and of course works well with the subtle ginger flavours.

In fact, the combination of flavours works well as a whole. The list of spices might look like a mash of too many things, but the overall tea is actually quite low-key. Glogg is not weak, but it is a finely balanced flavoured tea - unlike some flavoured teas, its aroma and taste both are pleasant without hitting you over the head. I recommend Glogg to those who would like a black tea that's a little different but quite delicious.