The Sweetness of Water, a novel by Nathan Harris
Another 2021 Booker long-lister, but not short-listed. This deals with the interesting question of what happened to enslaved people in the Southern states of the US when slavery was abolished at the end of the American Civil War. Clearly they could not suddently all have obtained paid employment and the picture of small towns filled with impoverished black people looking for work is very well portrayed. In this novel, we see two of them, teenage brothers Prentiss and Landry who were released from slavery entirely without resources but determined to travel and obtain a better life and to search for their mother, who was sold and deported when they were boys. They were fortunate to come across farmer George Walker and his wife, who took them in, found them work and treated them with respect. George Walker's son had been a Confederate soldier, initially believed to have been killed, who returns to his parents' farm hoping to continue a relationship with another soldier from the same area. The story develops around this relationship and its disastrous consequences for the brothers and ultimately for the family.
The young author successfully builds the story and retains interest in the characters throughout, with several (too many perhaps) sub-plots and some suspense. There is a slight weakness in that the book starts rather too obviously to wind up the tale some way before the end, explaining the outcome for some of the main characters yet strangely leaving the reader to reach one of a number of possible conclusions about what happened to the others. Otherwise a recommended read. ❤❤❤❤
Sun Also Shines, a novel by Ernest Hemingway
I remember reading A Farewell to Arms and For whom the Bell Tolls a substantial number of years ago. My selecting this one to read was prompted by the recent TV biography of Hemingway, much of which I was already aware of: his relationship with the Spanish Civil War, love of bull-fighting, his reputation with regard to women and his outspoken views on politics. But I was also interested in knowing what I would find in what was thought of as a new original way of writing as far back as 1925 and see if I could understand why he has been so influential as an author.
It is certainly obvious how the style of his writing at that time was breaking new ground, departing dramatically from the heroic style of 19th century prose to a style of writing that must have seemed clumsy and prosaic. Authors that were influenced by him refined the style, but here it is laid bare: conversations that go nowhere, descriptions of activities that are superfluous to the storyline, characters that are complicated and unsympathetic. And a plot that hardly exists.
The story, such as it is, takes place in Paris and Spain and revolves around the longstanding but unconsummated relationship between the narrator Jake and a close female American friend Brett. We follow them to Spain and observe the interactions between Jake, Brett, an unsuccessul suitor of Brett, Brett's partner and another friend who contributes to the tale. We might now call their lifestyle Bohemian; certainly it was unconventional, even scandalous, for the time when the book was written.
Somehow by putting on to paper the trivial details of their everyday activities and their conversations with one another, we need no further explanatory descriptions and get a real insight into their characters. There are no heroes or villains, just young people who fully enjoy life despite their tragedies, weaknesses and failed ambitions.
A great book. Having read it, I did understand his reputation as an author, particularly at this early stage in his career, however much one could lose that respect for of him in his later life. ❤❤❤❤❤
The Man Who Saw Everything, a novel by Deborah Levy
A recent book, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019 from this much acclaimed author. The principal character, an academic political historian, Saul Adler, is seen in two separate time frames, both related to an accident he had on a pedestrian crossing in Abbey Road, London (the one made famous on the Beatles album). In the first time frame he is in his twenties and only slightly injured; in the second he is in his late fifites and seriously injured in a way that affects his memory and recall of event. The author uses this literary device to argue that recall of life events can be flawed and subjective.
The story is latterly set in a London hospital but initially follows Saul to East Germany where he is undertaking a project on authoritarian regimes. He is met by his offical interpreter, Walter, who, of course, is also a spy working for the authorities. He has an affair with Walter and also with his sister, who sees a relationship with Saul as a means to escape to the West.
The setting should be more interesting than it turns out to be, with little detail that sheds light on life in East Germany. The fact that the fall of the Berlin Wall is written into the narrative seems a bit too obvious.
The reader sees these events initially in real time and then again as they are remembered by the bed-bound older version of the main character. Some of the people in his early life appear again in the later one, either in the their former role or as a hybrid between an actual character and one from the past. The recollections of the early years offer an insight into what has happened in the intervening years, but one is always aware that the story is being relayed by someone who has suffered brain damage; so, unlike the first part of the novel, one is tempted to disbelieve the character's account of events. How much happened, how much is in the character's imagination?
While the novel received excellent reviews, I didn't latch on well to the way it was structured. An understanding of the various characters seemed to get lost in this complex device. ❤❤❤
Light Perptual, a novel by Francis Spufford
I read this on the strength of his earlier book Golden Hill, which I certainly recommend. The subject matter here is very different. It follows the lives of 5 individuals who have in common only the fact that they were reported as having been killed as infants by a bomb during the London blitz in the 1940s. The book imagines how each one of their lives would have looked in the succeeding 60 years, dropping in on them at various points in their lives and, at the same time, highlighting the major changes that have taken place in British society during that period. Various literary themes: mental health, housing policy, criminality, sibling rivalry, are all there.
Other books have successfully used a similar format -- sort of linked short stories with characters that interact at some point with one another, e.g. Barney Norris's Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain, or David Szalay's Turbulence. The characters in Light Perpetual are interesting and well portrayed, but I had some (probably age-related) difficulty with the format as the reader visits each character only every 8 years or so throughout their life and, as their are five characters, it was difficult to remember what had happened the last time you met them. Re-reading would certainly help and, despite my preference for reading on a Kindle, it would certainly have been easier to flick back through a real book for a reminder of what happened previously. A serious contender but not, I would say, a likely winner of the Booker. But then I said that about Shuggie Bain. ❤❤❤❤
The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts
In the nineteenth century the middle classes in Russia developed a kind of piano mania. Pianos were imported from Europe on a huge scale and factories were set up in Russia to manufacture them there too. Contrary to popular impressions of Siberia, cities in the North East had strong middle class communities with an active cultural life that led to appreciation of the piano as a solo and accompanying instrument,
The author describes how the piano coped with the harsh weather of Siberia, not least how pianos manufactured elsewhere ever made their way there, by sledge over frozen lakes under conditions that clearly tested the stamina of both the instrument and the carrier. She travels to these places herself -- it has clearly become an obsession -- oftern two or three times to follow up rumours of pianos that still survive in the most remote communities. Some of them are in museums, but others she has tracked down to private homes. She always travels in winter, largely to avoid mosquitoes.
The book initially affords a fascinating insight into the history of Siberia, its cultural strangeness and the conditions in which the citizens lived and still live. The return visits she makes to various places do tend to make the text and story line repetitive in the later pages, but the individual sections can be read independently after the initial concept is introduced.❤❤❤