Reward System, a novel by Jem Calder

It’s irritating to find out that what looks from the cover blurb to be a novel is a book of short stories.  This is the opposite: advertised as short stories, the stories are so closely linked that they could easily be presented, with perhaps minimal editing, as a novel. The links between the stories are one or more of the characters, who appear in more than one. 

This is a book about today’s generation of young(ish) people living and working in a city — not fully identified, but read London.  The chronology is, however, clear, as the last ‘story’ has the characters responding to the relationship challenges of COVID-19.  Apart from sharing some of the characters, the stories have in common an exquisite attention to the detail of everyday life. In that respect, the writing reminded me of Karl Ove Knausgård, but without the risk of tedium that Knausgård’s books can induce.  The clear take-home message pervading all the stories is how people’s lives are permanently, irreversibly, dominated by the internet, mobile phones and other forms of technology.  

The various social interactions, whether live or digital, are related with perception and humour but also, throughout, with a sense of criticism and pathos about the society that young people find themselves in today. One is left with a sense of anxiety about their future. 

Brilliant first novel. 5*

Small Things Like These, a novel by Claire Keegan

Recommended to me on account of the author's award-winning short stories, this is a novel that is only just longer than a short story. The main character, Bill Furlong, is a coal merchant in a small Irish town whose past is revealed as being the illegitimate son of a girl who was rescued from the traditional fate of unmarried mothers in Catholic Ireland by the kindness of a Protestant middle class woman.  Further details of the identity of the father of the child are revealed (or partially revealed) later in the book. 

The characters and plot here are reminiscent of Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary, in revealing the hardships women had to face in Ireland when they stepped out of line with the thinking of the Catholic church. The best known examples of the Church’s cruelty in this respect are the Magdalen Laundries where unmarried pregnant girls were exploited and their children taken for adoption.  

Furlong comes across exactly that situation in the course of his work and the theme of the book is the conflict of conscience between accepting the Church’s doctrine and perceived infallibility and dealing with one’s own beliefs as a human being. 

Good writing and characterisation, but unsatisfactorily, for me, too short to be a proper novel and too long to be a short story. 4*

Riceyman Steps, a novel by Arnold Bennett

Inspired by Andrew Miller’s Pure, which was a contemporary novel in a classic setting, I was looking for a classic novel in its own contemporary setting.  Arnold Bennett wrote a lot of novels; the ones I had read previously were set in the Potteries, but he was a resident of Clerkenwell and I was interested in being able to visualise the setting of the novel, more or less on the doorstep. Unfortunately, rail strikes meant that I had got through much of the book before I could go and look at the location.  Strangely, Riceyman Steps appears on Google Maps even although it is an entirely fictional name for Gwynne Place, off Kings Cross Road. Apart from part of the location having been demolished and replace by a Travelodge, many of the buildings are as described in the book, with some literary licence. 

The contemporary setting of the novel is the early 1920s as the country recovers from the First World Was and the Spanish flu. At that time, there was a St. Peter’s church at the top of the steps in a square referred to as Riceyman Square — in fact Granville Square.  It is described as a miserable squalid location (not one house without a broken window) no longer fit for habitation.  Today’s Granville Square now looks like a very desirable place to live with average house prices, at a guess, about £5m. 

That aside, the novel is interesting in that it tells a very claustrophobic tale of a 50-ish year old couple, he until very recently an eccentric bachelor bookseller who lives a very miserly existence and, as a result but unknown to anyone else, has accumulated a fortune, which he keeps in a safe in his house.  His late in life marriage to a widow of the same age might be thought to change his lifestyle and that change to be the main theme of the novel, but, in a strange and dark way, things turn out very differently (no spoiler just in case).  Running throughout the book is the life of the third character, their maid Elsie, who is the one fully sane character in the story but whose life, as was the case at the time, is circumscribed by her upbringing and her poverty. 

The novel lacks pace at times but it is an interesting insight into the perceptions of London life and society at that time. 4*

Pure, a novel by Andrew Miller

A fairly random selection from the shelf in the library, this historical novel turned out to be a very good read.  The setting and some of the characterisation have a Dickensian flavour (Tale of Two Cities) being located in Paris in the immediate outbreak of the French Revolution. The main character is an ordinary young man, an architect/engineer from a rural location in Northern France who is commissioned (partly in error) to take charge of an enormously challenging project: to remove the main cemetery of Les Innocents in the centre of Paris that had become a health hazard on account of being filled to capacity over the previous century.  The task was beyond any training he had ever received but we see how he overcame his initial lack of confidence to eventually complete the task over a period of almost 12 months.  We come across other characters whom he befriends and see how his previously innocent temperament can be changed in such an extreme environment.  

There is an air of tension throughout the novel.  There are signs that the revolution is about to happen, clear to the reader but, of course, not to the characters.  The task of purification of the putrid graveyard and its associated decaying church is clearly symbolic of the revolutionary mission of removing a corrupt monarchy and creating a new, purified society. Miller’s writing manages to convey this well, within the format of a very human story. 5*

Symposium, a novel by Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark has been described (by another Scottish author) as the greatest Scottish novelist of the 20th century.  I knew only The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; so I thought it worth seeing if this prize-winning novel from 1990 would enthuse me. 

There is a kind of superior Agatha Christie feel to this book, although better written and more sharply observed, as the plot centres around a group of middle-class people who are attending a dinner party.  Some insight to the characters is provided by the dinner conversations and there is some effort required to remember the individual details. The reader then gets to observe the various characters in the period leading up to the party, and in some cases, at earlier stages in their lives.  There is some overlap in their histories, and gradually more and more focus is placed on one initially seemingly innocent character and her potential for criminal activity.  

I didn’t readily engage with the characterisation of some of the people and it could be argued that some of them were superfluous to the plot.  Spark’s character descriptions tend to concentrate on outward appearance —clothes and shoes, etc. — without giving a sense of their responses to events that might have been of more interest.  And the end of the book, considering that it had started to become obvious what was going to happen, was very weak; I thought there was a technical fault with my Kindle, as I couldn’t believe I had come to the end. 2*

Lessons, a novel by Ian McEwan

This could almost be viewed as an autobiography of the author but in reality it is a very subjectively told, more or less chronological biography of its main character, Roland Baines, from his earliest childhood in the 1940s through to his old age in the present day. 

His family relationships are complex: he was the product of a secret wartime liaison between his then married mother and his father, whom she ultimately married.  So he had half-siblings and, it later transpired, a full sibling. His parents’ relationship was not a happy one and he was sent to boarding school where he failed to thrive academically, even although (rather implausibly) he became an exceptionally talented pianist.  This musical ability led, at the age of 14, to his being sexually abused by his female piano teacher and a significant part of the novel is devoted to this relationship and its later consequences.  

We also see Roland married to a half-German novelist, who abandons him and their son and achieves very significant international fame.  This failed relationship is the other main theme of the novel and allows the author to comment extensively on the nature of novel writing and how it is influenced by the novelist’s background and, in particular, their family circumstances.  

I followed the story line with interest, as the chronology follows my own and there are multiple references to important political and historical events during his life.  But there are quite a lot of tedious episodes that deal with the interactions between Roland, his siblings, his son and other relatives’ friends.  Some of these characters are rather sketchily drawn, with the exception of his second partner, Daphne, whom he ultimately marries. This final relationship in his life results, after her death in an extraordinary incident that sums up, in the character’s mind, his own sense of failure about his life. 

It is not the best of McEwan’s novels that I have read, but it does give the impression of being the novel that he felt he had to write. 4*

The Accidental Tourist, a novel by Anne Tyler

Two or three rejected novels borrowed from the library later, I am concluding that library novels (apart perhaps for classics) that are on the shelves and not already being borrowed, are still there for a reason. So I went back to a classic contemporary novelist whose work I have liked previously. 

This novel is from 1985 and thought rightly to be one of her best.  Most impressive is how she 

is able to get into the male psyche — a very flawed psyche in this case — and express it with sympathy and humour. The ‘hero’, Macon Leary, is a travel writer for a very small publishing firm and looks set to continue in that role, without enthusiasm for it,  for the remainder of his working life.  He suffers from a compulsive, near autistic, obsession with detail.  His relationship with his wife breaks down, largely as a result of the murder of their teenage son, and he finds himself drawn, reluctantly at first, into a relationship with a much younger and less well educated woman and a consequent drastic change in lifestyle. 

We also become acquainted with Macon’s sister and two brothers, all either unmarried and divorced, who live together in a kind of comforting simulation of the childhood home that they never had. The multiple interactions between these characters drive the storyline, which has a surprise, but meaningful, ending.

This is a very enjoyable novel that combines humour with serious perception of human relationships.  5*  

In the Distance, a novel by Hernan Diaz

This is an impressive novel: a kind of cross between a Western and a Road movie.  It tells the story of a young Swedish teenager, Håkan Söderström, who is sent to the US, with his elder brother, to escape the poverty of rural Sweden in the 19th century. The two boys become separated before departure and are never re-united and Håkan, instead of landing in New York, ends up in San Francisco.  In a series of encounters with the strange residents of the city at that time (characters reminiscent of those in a Dickens novel), Håkan is subjected to abuse but manages to escape and to set out on foot to reach New York in the vain hope of finding his brother.

A lesser novel would relate Håkan’s journey as an exciting adventure, but here we see the realism of the struggle that such a young person would face, penniless, unable to communicate in the language of the country, exploited and always having to deal with the violence of the time as he engages with gold miners and other travelling immigrants. He has to be entirely self-sufficient in trapping and seeking out his food and water and spends years in isolation on his fruitless journey in extreme weather conditions.  Sometimes he spends months in the one location repeating the same activities.  This is brought home by the novelist repeating almost verbatim pages of the novel; only when you think you have already read the page and turn back to check do you realise that it is a literary technique (not entirely successful). 

We know from a prologue to the novel that Håkan survives and ends up, as an old man, in a very different environment.  As the book nears its completion and Håkan still continues on his lonely journey, we wonder how his life could ever change.  How this does happen in the end is somewhat accidental and contrived and leads to the ending being, to my mind, the least satisfactory aspect of the story. 

This was Diaz’s first novel (2018).  I’ll certainly look into reading his second, which has been published just recently. 4*

The Shortest History of Greece, by James Heneage

This is a complete history of Greece in only 250 pages. Inevitably much condensed, it still manages to keep one’s interest as the author, who is also a historical novelist, presents the story in terms of the individuals (mainly men, of course) who were deemed to have shaped Greece’s history. The issue of democracy is much discussed: how the concept was developed in ancient Greece, how fragile it turned out to be, how it was lost, regained, and lost again and how it is still under threat.

The rise and fall of the Byzantine Empire is dealt with in detail, in particular the multiple international influences on its culture. As that empire’s importance faded, we see Greece descend into civil wars and lose its significance in world affairs. As a country it suffered badly at the hands of Italy, Germany and, most recently, the strict policies of the European Union.

The history of Greece is infused with political controversy. How it has attempted to solve its problems, successfully or otherwise provides a lesson in politics that all regimes can learn from. 4*

O What a Lovely Century, an autobiography by Roderic Frederick Owen

This is a previously dormant autobiography by  Owen (1921-2011), a privileged upper-class society traveller, army officer, bisexual acquaintance of a phenomenal range of famous individuals. The book was designated Times Book of the Year when it was published in 2021 and sits on the ‘Top Reads’ shelves in the bookshops.

I don’t often give up on a book, as a matter of principle, but I had to abandon this one after about 150 pages of uncritical description of a life where upbringing, private education and contacts led to endless opportunity. He undoubtedly behaved with courage (or foolhardiness) in some potentially interesting situations and places, but I tired of how he was invariably rescued from penury by calling on his wealthy family and friends. Quite tedious. 1*

Symposium, a novel by Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark has been described (by another Scottish author) as the greatest Scottish novelist of the 20th century. I knew only The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; so I thought it worth seeing if this prize-winning novel from 1990 would enthuse me. There is a kind of superior Agatha Christie feel to this book, although better written and more sharply observed, as the plot centres around a group of middle-class people who are attending a dinner party. Some insight to the characters is provided by the dinner conversations and there is some effort required to remember the individual details. The reader then gets to observe the various characters in the period leading up to the party, and in some cases, at earlier stages in their lives. There is some overlap in their histories, and gradually more and more focus is placed on one initially seemingly innocent character and her potential for criminal activity.

I didn’t readily engage with the characterisation of some of the people and it could be argued that some of them were superfluous to the plot. Spark’s character descriptions tend to concentrate on outward appearance —clothes and shoes, etc. s— without giving a sense of their responses to events that might have been of more interest. And the end of the book, considering that it had started to become obvious what was going to happen, was very weak; I thought there was a technical fault with my Kindle, as I couldn’t believe I had come to the last page. 2*

Absolute Beginners, a novel by Colin MacInnes

I saw this at the Post-war Modern exhibition as an example of an influential book from the 1950s — equivalent in the UK to America’s Catcher in the Rye. As I hadn’t heard of it and, moreover, thought I should be able to relate to the period, I needed to find out more. The story is told in the first person by a 19 year-old streetwise un-named Londoner in 1958, the second book in a trilogy. We meet his low-life friends and hopeless mother and father and follow his obsession about being a ‘teenager’, at that time a novel species. He is developing his skills as a photographer, which requires his spending time trying to arrange introductions to influential people.

Running through the novel is the character’s hatred of racism and his observation that it is becoming ever more prevalent in London, particularly in the district he lives in (probably Notting Hill). The novel ends with him planning, but failing, to emigrate and instead welcoming more immigrants into the country.

I now am no closer to understanding why the book is not better recognised as an important piece of literature from that period. It is progressive in its language and subject matter and includes unsensationalised references to gay culture. Its only weakness is one that is often found in novels with a range of interesting characters, as this one is: that there has to be a reason other than continual coincidences for the characters to be brought overs such a short timescale of only a few months. Otherwise well worth reading. 4*

Nothing but the Truth by The Secret Barrister

The book is part autobiography of the author’s progress to becoming a criminal barrister and partly an enlightening compendium of legal cases that illustrate how criminal courts operate. Understandably, the author wishes to keep his/her identity private as the entire treatise serves as a damning criticism of the criminal legal system in England and Wales. By all accounts, things have become even worse since the book was written last year, with waiting lists for trials to take place now running at a up to four years. During that time, individuals charged with serious offences, some of whom will be innocent, are imprisoned without trial and witnesses, not to mention defendants and accused, will have forgotten the circumstances of the crime.

Legal aid has been so reduced that criminal barristers, with up to 9 years of training to even get a junior position, are working of subsistence wages and many are leaving the profession. As I write this, there is a threat of strike action; so I feel sure that the book does not exaggerate the problems. A further reason for these unsustainable delays is the chaotic physical conditions operating in courts throughout the country. There has been very little updating of court premises over the last ten to twenty years and much of the physical infrastructure is now outdated, causing delays and cancellations. Add to this the archaic practices of adversarial justice that exist in the England and Wales and we have a barely functional criminal legal system. The consequences of this for society are obvious.

Secret Barrister posts regularly on Twitter. Their tweets are worth following. They are not a supporter of the current government. 4*