Blogging the Booker 6: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

A confession to begin: David Mitchell is one of my favourite living authors. I have loved each of his novels to date, and think he is one of the most talented & interesting authors writing in the English language so far this century. So I approached his latest, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, with a fair degree of anticipation, and am perhaps not the most objective reviewer of this book.

(But, that said, subjectivity is good when reviewing things.)

Mitchell's first three novels - Ghostwritten, Number 9 Dream & Cloud Atlas - were highly formal works, with complex uses of form. Cloud Atlas really reached the zenith of that style, in a way - told in six voices, with each section reflecting back on the one before it, so that the diary which formed the first part was read by a character narrating the second, and so on. And then halfway through, the book reversed upon itself, working backwards in time through the six sections again. Each of the sections stood up on its own, but the combination of them all was a thrillingly eye-opening experience.

Anyway, this review is not about Cloud Atlas. The book that followed it, and preceeded this one, Black Swan Green, was still episodic in nature but also signalled a more personal approach for Mitchell. And with Thousand Autumns..., formal experimentation takes a definite backseat to character.

Set in Japan at the end of the 18th and start of the 19th century, Thousand Autumns... explores the relatively unknown world of the first Europeans to have significant contact with the Japanese. At a time when Japan was incredibly isolated from the rest of the world, the limits of their outside contact was via a small island, Dejima, off the coast at Nagasaki. The Dutch traders are allowed only on the island, not onto the mainland itself, and much of Thousand Autumns... is about the somewhat-strained relations between the two cultures.

Our protagonist is Jacob de Zoet, a promising young clerk sent to Dejima to investigate allegations of corruption amongst the senior Dutch merchants. This, of course, does not make him popular with his countrymen, but he remains dedicated to the task while also forming links with Japanese translators and officials. In the novel's second section, the scope widens and Jacob receeds into the background as other characters' stories are told, but then the focus returns to Jacob in the final sections, while retaining other perspectives (& introducing new ones - Mitchell hasn't completely abandoned the multiple-narrator style that characterised Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas). The second and subsequent sections explore a mysterious convent in the country and its relationship with what goes on in the trading town. As seems to be a theme of this year's Booker longlist, narration is omniscient third-person, and different sections/chapters are told from the perspective of different characters.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet has an intricate plot, and I don't really want to say too much more about that. I will say, however, that even given my high expectations and hopes, I loved this novel. It may not have the breath-taking pyrotechnics of Cloud Atlas, but in it's own quieter way, it's just as impressive a novel.

Mitchell has now been long- or short-listed for each of his novels. I fully expect Thousand Autumns... to make the shortlist, and am hoping that this can be the one for which he finally wins.

Next: Tom McCarthy's C, which I started reading this morning.

Blogging the Booker 5: Skippy Dies

Skippy Dies is a difficult book to categorise. It's a boarding school novel, it's a comedy, it's a tragedy, it's a reflection on the ways in which all lives and all stories intersect and affect each other.

It's also very good.

Paul Murray's second novel revolves around the Seabrook College for Boys in Dublin. There's a large cast of characters, including Daniel 'Skippy' Juster, his friend & room-mate Ruprecht Van Doren, their History teacher Howard 'The Coward' Fallon, object of Skippy's affection Lori (from the girls' school next door) & school bully/drug-dealer Carl. There are more, of course, in this well-populated novel, but those are the ones whose perspective we see the most.

(Like The Slap, Skippy Dies is told by an omniscient third-person narrator, but rather than presenting the different POVs one after the other, short chapters jump from one to another throughout. The narrative voice, despite being third-person, does change noticeably depending on whose chapter it is, particularly in the cases of Lori and Carl.)

Anyway, a novel called Skippy Dies features a lead character called Skippy, so there's at least one thing you know going in. Murray takes care of that by having the death scene as a prologue to the rest of the book, and then steps back in time to how & why we got there. Skippy and Ruprechet are unusual students - the latter in particular, an enormously fat genius interested in string theory and the idea that our dimension is merely one of eleven. The pair of them, and their larger circle of friends, spend most of the first two-thirds of the book worrying about the sorts of things all teenage boys do: school, girls, parents, theoretical physics. Skippy is fascinated with Lori, who is in turn attracted to the dangerous (& probably psychopathic) Carl.

Meanwhile, Howard, a former student at Seabrook who has returned there as a teacher (somewhat against his will), is also struggling to get his life in order. Stuck in a relationship that bores him, and wondering what the point of his life is, he tries to make History interesting for the boys. In doing so, he discusses one of the major themes of Skippy Dies - that history as written in textbooks is only one version of any given set of events, and that observing the same events from a different perspective is bound to give an entirely different story. (The example he uses is the First World War, which Ireland has largely written out of its own history, but also pointing out that histories which reflect the war's geopolitical purposes ignore the stories of the young men actually doing the fighting.)

Murray makes this theme not just his character's philosophy, but also the structure of the book as a whole. By switching between the different characters every few pages, we gain a better understanding of each of them - a gradual reveal of not just plot & character, but also some larger points about history and people's lives.

Skippy Dies is an intriguing book. It's fairly long (660 pages in paperback), but moves quickly throughout. The changing character POV is an effective technique not just for the reason I've just discussed, but also in terms of pacing - by constantly cutting between characters, we're always tempted to read just a little bit more to see whose chapter comes up next. Murray has a fine ear for dialogue, particularly that of his teenage characters, and maintains a light touch even in the book's tragic sections (of which there are several).

The Booker Prize has not traditionally had much time for 'comic' novels, and I do wonder whether an ostensibly comic novel set in a school is a likely winner. I do hope (at this point in my reading, anyway!) that Skippy Dies makes it through to the shortlist at least, since I think it's worthy of a wide audience. Even if it goes no further, I'm glad I had it brought to my attention.

Next up: David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

Penguin's Great Ideas Series Five

One of my favourite things that Penguin does is their collections of little books in a set - Great Loves, Great Journeys etc. The best of them (& they clearly agree with me here) is the Great Ideas series, of which the fifth set of 20 is about to be published. The Great Ideas books are small (a little over 100 pages, in most cases), relatively cheap (<$10) books, offering a variety of essays from some of the great minds of all time. And, best of all, they are beautifully designed...

And one of my favourite things that the Book Depository does is offer half-price pre-orders on most books. So, over the last couple of months, I've pre-ordered the bulk of the new set in dribs and drabs. For about four bucks a pop! Thus, sometime after late August, I'll get a whole stack of gorgeous little books containing interesting little essays - some from writers I've never heard of before, some from authors I've always meant to get to, and a couple from some old favourites.

Here are some of my favourite designs from the forthcoming fifth series:
(Better quality photos are available on the Flickr page of series designer David Pearson, who's one of my favourite book designers. Go look! They really give a good idea of the tactile nature of these books, which are all debossed and lovely to touch.)

Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, George Eliot

On Conspiracies, Niccolo Machiavelli

Some Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Charles Mackay

We Will All Go Down Fighting to the End, Winston Churchill

Of Human Freedom, Epictetus

Nationalism, Rabindranath Tagore

The Perpetual Race of Achillies and the Tortoise, Jorge Luis Borges

The State as a Work of Art, Jacob Burckhardt

Night Walks, Charles Dickens

Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, George Orwell

Pretty great, in my opinion. And that's before you even open them!

What's your favourite? I think the Churchill and Orwell ones are mine - in fact, I already own a book that contains all of the pieces included in the Orwell, and am just buying that particular one for the cover.

(Yeah, I know it's sad. But it was about $4.20, so I can live with the shame.)

Blogging the Booker 4: Parrot and Olivier in America

Parrot and Olivier in America is Peter Carey's eleventh novel, and the eleventh of his I've read. So, yes, I'm a fan*. But it's a curious sort of fandom, in that I always buy his books when they're new, read them & usually enjoy them, but wouldn't instantly think of Carey as one of my favourite authors or anything. A couple of his novels I've not particularly cared for, and several others I've loved. Yet I'm always happy to see him release a new book every few years...

Anyway, Parrot & Olivier... came out ages ago in Australia (October or November last year, if memory serves). And while that might not sound that long ago in the grand scheme of things, it makes it slightly harder to review than The Slap, which I finished reading a couple of hours before I wrote that review.

To begin with the basics: the titular characters are, respectively, a middle-aged servant/general lackey and an aristocratic young Frenchmen. Set during the period of the French Revolution, Olivier is sent by his family to the US to avoid the grisly fate of aristocrats during revolutionary times. They send the family servant, Parrot (who is English, by the way) to accompany him.

Once in America, the pair encounter all that the New World has to offer. There's a love triangle, of sorts, and a whole cast of amusing characters. This is definitely Carey in picaresque mode, with a significant component of Alexis de Tocqueville thrown in for fun.

After the somewhat disappointing His Illegal Self, Parrot & Olivier... is a return to form for Carey. Like with several others of his best (in my opinion) latter-day books - Theft, True History of the Kelly Gang - Carey is at his best with larger-than-life characters and subversions of literary genres (although I thought his Frankenstein-meets-Ern-Malley book, My Life as a Fake, slightly underwhelming for its wonderful premise - but perhaps a re-reading is in order).

I realise I've started with the two books by Australian authors on this year's longlist, but that's mostly unintentional (& has a lot to do with availability). Parrot & Olivier... is of course not an 'Australian' book as such - certainly not in the way The Slap is -, and Carey is one of a small group to win the Booker Prize twice (for Oscar & Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang). That said, I'd be surprised if this book was the one that allowed him to become the first to win it three times. It's another solid outing from one of the most respected literary authors of our era, but probably isn't exciting enough to win him the Booker. (Not that recent winners have been all that exciting, but they've all been first-time winners. If you've already won a few times, I suspect you have to do more to win again than you would if your previous winners had been shortlisted but not winners.)

And it matters less with Carey anyway. I'm sure he'd be chuffed to win again, and I sure wouldn't be upset or anything, but this book is going to sell well enough either way, and his reputation is assured. In recent years, while I've not liked the winners of the Booker all that much, it's been good to get to know some new (to me) authors via long/short lists.

Speaking of which: next will be either David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet or Paul Murray's Skippy Dies, depending on when I finish the latter.


* Not that numbers always tell the whole story: I have, for instance, read 60% of Stephenie Meyer's published novels; considerably more than some authors whom I actually don't hate.

Blogging the Booker 3: The Slap

(Slight change of plans here: having just finished Christos Tsiolkas's The Slap, I thought I'd review it now, while it's still fresh in my mind. Parrot & Olivier in America will come later in the week.)

The Slap is the first Christos Tsolkias novel I have read, and going into it I didn't know much of what to expect. I knew the basic outline (a group of friends are having a bbq, one father slaps someone else's son, reverberations ensue), but that was about it. From the back-cover blurb, I further learned that the book is also concerned with many of the Big Issues facing modern Australia. And, indeed, that's a significant theme of The Slap, in that our cast of characters come from a diverse range of ethnicities, classes & religions (interestingly, politics as it is most often understood - parliamentary party politics - is barely a theme at all, which is perhaps an accurate reflection of average Australians). In that sense, The Slap can be seen as a novel in the style of the modernists of the 19th century, in which people did discuss society and its problems.
The Slap is told from the perspective of eight people, all of whom were present at the bbq in question. The first is Hector, host of the party, and throughout the book we also hear from the slapper (as it were), the slappee's mother, and various other members of the party (six adults, two teenagers, none of the children). Each section is narrated from the person's POV, in omniscient third-person, meaning that we get to enter their minds and contrast their thoughts with their speech. The chapters are presented chronologically, meaning that we don't see the same events narrated from different people's points of view, but that each section pushes the story further along. (That said, we do get some flashbacks/character reflections, filling in some of the gaps.)

One thing that becomes clear fairly quickly is that those who have problems with books in which the characters are unlikeable will probably not find much here to grasp on to. Not many of the characters are completely unsympathetic, but there's also a fair bit of ugliness here. Most of the characters in relationships are unfaithful at some point (in desires if not in actual deed), most of the men are aggressive and/or violent towards the women and regular drunkeness/drug use is pretty much a given for everyone. These are all outworkings of inner turmoil, so happy characters are pretty few & far between in The Slap's world.

Despite the big themes and unflattering version of modern Australia Tsiolkas presents, it is to his credit that he gets most of the dialogue pretty right - it never sounds forced or wooden, and despite The Slap's length (nearly 500 pages), it is actually a pretty quick read. It may not make you feel particularly happy, but there is something captivating about the world Tsiolkas presents. I do have some slight quibbles - first, that I never quite got over the thought that the cast of characters was just a bit too contrived. I realise that it was a fairly big bbq that Hector and Aisha were throwing, and that their different backgrounds (him Greek, her Indian) would naturally increase the diversity of their social circle. But, still, it did seem a little as if any ethnic/religious group that's present in any numbers in Melbourne had a representative at the party. And while most of the chapters worked well, there was one that I thought a little too tangential to the main story. Broadening of scope is fine, but for most of the chapter I wondered why we were all of a sudden reading about a minor character's interactions with an entirely separate set of characters.

Overall, I suspect The Slap is probably too much of a state-of-modern-Australia novel to win the Booker Prize. Tsiolkas's prose is clear & unfussy, but certainly not beautiful (as I already noted, he has a fine talent for dialogue - poorly-rendered speech would've sunk this book). I enjoyed it (for a given value of 'enjoyed'), but I'd be surprised if it made its way onto the shortlist, let alone became the winner.

Next: Peter Carey's Parrot & Olivier in America.

Blogging the Booker 2: Overview of the 2010 longlist

In this post, I'll quickly note what I know about each of the longlisted titles, and also outline my plan for the first few reviews...

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America

This came out in Australia ages ago, and I read it then. Will be the first book reviewed - stay tuned!

Emma Donoghue Room

I had never heard of either author or book previously, but have read some good reviews. Have it ordered from the good folk at The Book Depository, so hope to read & review it soon-ish.

Helen Dunmore The Betrayal

I believe this one is a sequel, or part of a series or something. That makes me less keen to read it, since I've (obviously) not read the book/s before it.

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room

Know nothing about it. Will track down some reviews.

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question

Another one I don't know much about, but apparently it's a comic novel. That could be promising.

Andrea Levy The Long Song

I read - & enjoyed - her previous book, Small Island, a few years ago. Will get to this at some point.

Tom McCarthy C

In the same order as Room, so another one I should be able to read/review soon. I enjoyed his first book, Remainder, although I didn't think it was the greatest thing ever, as some others did. Apparently this one is quite different - set in the early 20th century, I believe. (Sorry, Angie, but at least you're warned!)

David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

One of my favourite living authors, as mentioned in the previous post. I read this a couple of months ago, and loved it.

Lisa Moore February

Don't know anything about it.

Paul Murray Skippy Dies

This one sounds interesting - a comic boarding-school novel, that's so far been reviewed quite well. I just picked up a copy from the local library, so will get to it soon too. (It's pretty long, though.)

Rose Tremain Trespass

Know nothing about it.

Christos Tsiolkas The Slap

Quite the rage a little while ago here in Australia, but it passed me by. That said, have just got it from the library as well.

Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky

Another one that is a blank slate for me.



Okay, so. I've read two already, have two sitting near me courtesy of middle-class welfare, and another two on their way to me. That's a good start. The shortlist is announced on 7 September, and the winner on 12 October.

Expect a review of the Carey early next week, and the Mitchell later in the week. By that point, I hope to have also read one of the others from today's library visit.

Onwards & upwards! I look forward to doing this, but also hope that you, dear readers, chip in in the comments section...

Blogging the Booker 1: Some notes on recent Booker shortlists redux

I recently decided that I would try to read as many of the 13 books longlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize for Fiction, and review them here for my fanbase*. I totally stole this idea off The Guardian, who did this a few years ago but don't seem to anymore. And I thought it might be fun to step into that gap!

To kick this process off, I reproduce here a note I posted in September last year (when that year's shortlist was announced), quickly going over the previous few years' shortlists, noting which books I'd read, which I hadn't but had formed opinions about regardless, and some that I'd never even heard of. But to bring this up to date, I've added in a consideration of the (fairly underwhelming) 2009 shortlist.

For all its faults, the Booker is probably the most interesting - & is certainly the most-discussed - literature prize in the English-language world, so most years I make a bit of an effort to read some of the shortlist. (For each year, the eventual winner is listed first, because I copied these from Wikipedia, and that's how they're done there...)

2009
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Hmmm. Now that I look at this list, the winners & I haven't got along terribly well for the last few years - one I never even tried, one I gave up on, and a couple I thought were okay but hardly spectacular. Wolf Hall fits into the third of those categories. Historical fiction is always a dicey prospect, really - you've got to make it interesting & comprehensible for people who don't know much about the period, while not patronising those who do. And Mantel mostly achieves that, but at the cost of, well, not actually producing a very good novel. It's not awful, but all I really got out of Wolf Hall was a better (which is to say, any) knowledge of the period it's about (Thomas Cromwell & Henry VIII). Reasonably written, it just didn't do much for me.

AS Byatt, The Children's Book
Years ago, I read & hated Possession, and have not attempted an AS Byatt novel since, despite the number of people who tell me I was wrong. Perhaps I was, but either way, I don't really plan to check. Others thought this good, though, I know.

JM Coetzee, Summertime
Coetzee is an author I sorta half-wish I cared more about. I've read a few of his, liked some, tolerated the rest, but never get excited about reading any more of his. If I were stuck somewhere with this book, I'd read it & probably enjoy it well enough, but until that happens, I'm afraid it's passing me by.

Adam Foulds, The Quickening Maze
This was a book (& author) I knew nothing about, but some reviews I read made it sound pretty tedious. So I skipped it.

Simon Mawer, The Glass Room
Quite enjoyed this, even if it is (sigh) another damn WWII novel. But it was an interesting take on the topic, and very nicely written. Not the sort of thing I've been shoving into people's hands ever since I read it, but it was pretty good. The pick of a pretty poor shortlist, in my opinion.

Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger

I've never read a Sarah Waters novel, and to be honest they usually don't sound like my cup of tea. That said, I've read some very positive reviews of this one, so perhaps I should give it a go sometime.

2008
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
Not bad, though I don't think that it's really up to the standard of some previous winners. An interesting enough story, and well-written, but it did all feel a bit contrived at times.

Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture
Haven't read it, but I enjoyed his previous book (see 2006).

Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies
(Haven't read)

Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs
(ditto)

Philip Hensher, The Northern Clemency
(ditto, this one is very long, and got pretty mixed reviews)

Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole
Very good, occasionally excellent. Probably a little too long in the end, a product of typical First-Novel-Cram-Everything-In Syndrome, but nonetheless hilarious. Some wonderful turns of phrase, and an interesting story.

2007
Anne Enright, The Gathering
Could never bring myself to read this one - it sounds too much like Booker-By-Numbers from the reviews I've read.

Nicola Barker, Darkmans
Hilarious, one of my favourite novels of recent years. Long, dense, occasionally confusing, but off the back of this book I've been working my way through Barker's back-catalogue. Shoulda won.

Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
This one was actually really poorly reviewed overall, as I recall, but seemed to make it onto the list because of its topicality or something. Didn't read it.

Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip
Not bad. I didn't think it was as great as a lot of others did, but it was certainly worth a read. And probably better if you're a Dickens fan (it's quite focused on Great Expectations).

Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach
Didn't read it. Have difficult relationship with McEwan, read mixed reviews of this, and my usually-reliable friend Emma hated it.

Indra Sinha, Animal's People
I liked this one a lot. If 'Darkmans' couldn't have won, this would've been my choice from this list.

(Incidentally, one truly great book made 2007's long- but not short-list: What Was Lost, by Catherine O'Flynn. At least as good as most of the shortlist, and deserved to be there.)

2006
Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
Short, but I gave up halfway through anyway. Just DID NOT CARE about anything in it. (A few others I've spoken to felt the same, incidentally.) It felt like it wanted the heft of a 500-600 page sprawling novel, but in the space of only about half that. Which meant that, to the point where I gave up, none of it was very engaging.

Kate Grenville, The Secret River
Never read it, no opinion.

M. J. Hyland, Carry Me Down
Pretty good but not great, I think. Entertaining enough, but seemed a bit too much like a few other books, in my humble.

Hisham Matar, In the Country of Men
Never read.

Edward St Aubyn, Mother's Milk
(ditto)

Sarah Waters, The Night Watch
(ditto)


2005 (the year Angie & I read the whole shortlist)
John Banville, The Sea
I really liked this. Yes, it's privileged white man with mid-late life reflections etc, so I understand the criticisms, but it's beautifully written.

Julian Barnes, Arthur & George
Barnes is an author I've never really liked as much as other people do. But this one was very entertaining, and having just finished re-reading the entire Sherlock Holmes canon, I should give this one another go ('Arthur' of the title is Conan Doyle, the book is a fictionalised account of part of his life, where he was involved in a murder case).

Sebastian Barry, A Long Long Way
A war novel! But, actually, a good one. WWI, but from an Irish perspective, which gives it a little novelty at least. Nicely written.

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
I always thought this one was a little over-rated, but Ishiguro is a very talented writer. My problem here was that I thought he tried to create suspense about something that I figured out very early on. The ideas were interesting though.

Ali Smith, The Accidental
Very good, and one of the more difficult short-listed books of recent years. I've read a few of hers since this one, and enjoyed them all too.

Zadie Smith, On Beauty
I loved White Teeth, thought The Autograph Man was under-cooked, and wasn't sure how this one - Smith's third novel - would go. And, it's actually fantastic. This was a very strong year, I think, but if The Sea hadn't won, this would've been my choice.


2004
Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
Well-written, and probably a worthy winner. Certainly it gave me an insight into a world I don't know at all (upper-class young gay London of the 1980s).

Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit
No idea. Don't even remember this one until I just saw it listed. Haven't read it, obviously.

Sarah Hall, The Electric Michelangelo
No opinion, though I've since read her 2009 longlisted How to paint a dead man. Which was distinctly okay.

David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Another favourite of recent years. Brilliant intertwining of five or six completely different stories, each of which is written in a completely different style. I'd not heard of David Mitchell until this book, and he's now one of my favourite contemporary novelists.

Colm Tóibín, The Master
See 'Mister Pip', in a way. This is all about Henry James, about whom I know nothing. But it was still interesting, which is a credit to the author.

Gerard Woodward, I'll Go to Bed at Noon
Eh. No knowledge of this at all.


* That's a 'Flight of the Conchords' reference