Satirical state-of-the-nation reading: "Number 11" by Jonathan Coe

Note to self: I must stop reading books in the wrong order. Number 11, the second of the audiobooks consumed on my recent trip to Nottingham, was for me a follow-up to the  delightful Expo 58, a spy-ridden, Cold War Belgian romance. I noted at the time that the ostensible 1950s lost innocence of Expo 58 was reportedly untypical of Jonathan Coe (so far, so right), but also that I would be back for more to try out some of his more reputedly politically trenchant and acerbic fiction. Hence, when the opportunity presented itself, Number 11 went onto the iBooks account. Except that, it seems, it should have been What a Carve Up! to which this novel is a (sort of) sequel. Oh well.

Mind you, there's no problem about reading Number 11 as a standalone novel. I just have the feeling I would have registered what Coe was up to sooner if I had read the earlier book. As it was, Number 11 was a slightly odd experience, as it was not immediately apparent what kind of book this was. Indeed, even at the end, I am not quite sure. The story starts with an account of a childhood visit by two friends, Rachel and Alison, to Rachel's grandparents in Beverley, Yorkshire. There are hints of weirdness, even of the supernatural, in the girls' adventures during their brief holiday, during which, in a kind of Famous Five style, they unravel the mystery of a strange local woman, her spooky house and a possibly undead character seen in the woods at night. But - or at least so it seems - this is no ghost story, but perhaps more a tale of growing up and friendship. Except that we are then abruptly transported into what seems a completely different story - a completely different style of story - from which Rachel and Alison are suddenly absent.

Proustian reading: "Mothering Sunday" by Graham Swift

Long journeys have recently meant an opportunity to pursue my black-and-white film project, but long solo car journeys do not allow that, so it was back to the audiobooks for last weekend's trip to Nottingham. Two books were thus "read", and this is the first of them.

In its original hardback edition, Swift's latest novel - a novella, perhaps - has 136 pages. That makes less than 4 hours in unabridged audiobook form. Is there a pattern here? Are grand British writers looking to the short novel as a vehicle for their writing? Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach (which has several similarities with Mothering Sunday), or Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending and The Noise of Time spring to mind. If this is a trend, it is a good one, at least if these superb, dense, poignant books are any indication. 

I may as well say it at the outset, Mothering Sunday is a truly beautiful book, extraordinarily evocative, wonderfully crafted, delicate and powerful at the same time. It was also, in its audiobook edition, excellently read, by Eve Webster.

Although numerous flash-forwards take us into the protagonist's later life, the primary action of Mothering Sunday takes place on a single day, a precociously summer-like March 30th, in 1924. We are located at the tail-end of a disappearing world in which upper middle-class families still employed domestic servants. Traditionally, on Mothering Sunday (now, more prosaically, "Mother's Day"), such families gave their servants a day off to visit their families, which is exactly what the Niven family do for their two domestic staff, their cook and Jane, the maid. Only that Jane is an orphan (her full name is Jane Fairchild, a typical foundling's name), has no mother to visit, and thus receives a day to do as she pleases, with a gifted half-crown in her pocket. Notwithstanding the offer of a borrowed bicycle for the day, her initial plan is simple, to spend the day in the garden reading a book borrowed from Mr Niven, an indulgent employer in this respect. A last-minute phone call changes that, though, and the bike is called into action.

Meanwhile, the family too has plans. The two remaining children (the other sons having fallen victim to the Great War) of two other local families  of similar status, the Sheringhams and the Hobdays, Paul and Emma, are to marry. The forthcoming wedding is to be celebrated by the two families, along with their friends, the Nivens, with a lunch at a Thames-side restaurant. Consequently the houses of all three families will be empty, both of family and staff. 

Except that, following that last-minute phone call, which Jane answers, the Sheringhams' house will at least briefly be occupied. Paul Sheringham, we discover, has for seven years been enjoying the attentions of the Nivens' maid. It has been a furtive, behind-the-bike-sheds, in-the-bushes kind of thing, and, yes, initially involved a financial consideration, but today, at what might be his last pre-nuptial opportunity, Paul wishes Jane to come to the front door of his home where he will be alone, having excused himself from the family lunch in order to meet, a little later and closer-by than the main event, his bride-to-be, Emma.  And so the contours of the day, a unseasonably sun-drenched day in the idyllic English countryside, are mapped out: the three families will meet for a jolly riverside lunch, the happy couple-to-be will have their own romantic lunch, the servants will visit their families, and Jane will go to her pre-lunch assignation with Paul Sheringham in an otherwise deserted house. 

The beauty of this book lies in its exquisite telling of, in particular, that assignation and of all the filaments of meaning and consequence that go with  it. For all its shades of class domination, indeed some already outdated droit de seigneur, this encounter is not what we might expect, some sort of presumed ritual humiliation of the working class girl by the entitled toff. In fact, it is a liberation, an empowerment - for both of them - from the confines of their socially assigned roles, albeit with very different outcomes for them. This is not some sort of polemic about class distinctions, they are the surface - it goes much deeper than that. This is, after all, as the subtitle has it, a "romance". Swift's extraordinary feat in this little book is to fill every detail of the prolonged scene - many are returned to, mulled over, re-examined several times - with nuance and meaning, pointing both backward to a world in passing and forward to personal and collective stories to come. Proustian just seems the right word.

Graham Swift

The couple's encounter in Paul's bedroom, quickly and most agreeably consummated, is in fact the key scene of the novel, from which everything somehow flows. There follow long, drawn out minutes, during which Paul accumulates an impossible lateness for his meeting with his fiancée, drawing out the process of preparing himself for the departure which will close a part of his life forever, and during which Jane lies motionless, naked, on the bed, maintaining a total stillness so as not to disturb this pregnant moment (metaphorically, literal pregnancy being precluded by certain technical measures, which, like much else in the scene, are described with some precision). During this time, the narrative clock slows to a crawl, as every detail, every thought, every movement, every shift in the light, is documented, retained, weighed for its significance. This continues after Paul's eventual departure, which sees Jane finally break her motionlessness and undertake, as bidden by Paul, a tour of the empty house, still naked, absorbing its signs, its history, its meaning. In her tour, of a normally forbidden intimate zone, both of a family and of an entire social construct, a whole history, personal and universal, is told. The scene is utterly engaging, suffused with both inner calm and outer tension. It points also to Jane's future vocation, which, as the flash forwards (flashes forward?) to erudite public broadcasting interviews tell us, is to write, to be famous as an observer of life and of others, though at the same time a dissembler, never to tell the story of this most formative moment. No need to tell everything, not even the root cause of everything else. 

There is a drama in this story, a crisis which follows the idyll of the encounter in the Sheringhams' house, but it is one which only adds to the depth of the narrative. In particular, for me, it served to deepen the (connected) understanding both of the historical moment and its protagonists, above all that of Mr Niven, Jane's employer, who reveals, in spite of himself and in a way he would deeply recoil from expressing, an indistinctly directed intuition, a sympathy and even (dare I say?) a love which redeems not only him, but possibly also an entire social class and even, potentially, a nation from an even greater dislocation than it was to suffer. 

If there can be any criticism of this sublime book, it is its flirtation with writerliness, the self-referentialism of the writer, an abstract cogitation on the power of words, which are perhaps implicit in Swift's typically introspective, intensely focused work. But, for crying out loud, you have to push it to be critical of a work, which, in my view, is as close as you get to literary nirvana: dense, honest, allusive, nuanced, gripping.  

Yes, I liked it. This is good as the contemporary English oeuvre gets, so lap it up, dear readers. Also, by the way, if you still need convincing as to the merits of the audiobook format as a way of reading, this is possibly the best example I can think of how well it can work. Going on a four hour solo (or suitably accompanied) drive somewhere soon? Treat yourself.

Republican reading: "Dictator" by Robert Harris

I am not alone in having waited inordinately long for the third part of Robert Harris' Cicero trilogy. The first two books, Imperium and Lustrum, were wonderful reads (though I read them in the wrong order) and left me eager to finish the story. In the event, I had to wait well over four years (see Imperium review), a period in which Harris published two other novels, both excellent, but seemed frustratingly disinclined to return to ancient Rome. (The intervening two were, The Fear Index and An Officer and a Spy, by the way.)

Dictator continues the story of the Roman Republic's last bulwark, Cicero, as related by his slave - and later freed friend - Tiro.  The book opens with Cicero in exile, having been ousted from his consulship by his bitter opponent, Clodius. However, as Cicero frequently remarks, nothing in politics lasts indefinitely, the wheel turns and Cicero is able to return to Rome and join in the daily political fight. One has a sense throughout - of course, we know how the story ends - that Cicero is engaged in an uphill struggle, his successes contingent and the forces against him ever stronger. While the daily machinations of Roman politics may offer alternations of triumph and disaster, the long-term trend is for the collapse of Cicero's beloved Republic. It is Julius Caesar, who Harris portrays beautifully as a high-functioning psychopath, who fatally wounds the Republic, and whose post-assassination aftermath turns decisively onto the road which will lead Rome to the dictatorship of emperors. 

The strength of Harris' work, which is extraordinarily well-researched, is to take us thoroughly inside the world of Roman politics, seen through the (acknowledgedly imperfect) eyes of one of its great practitioners. We live the vicissitudes of ancient Rome as Cicero lives them, albeit through the occasionally interpretative lens of Tiro, feeling the setbacks and flashes of hope as he feels them. Nor does Harris forget Cicero is a human being. Perhaps more in this novel than in its predecessors do we see the dimension of Cicero as a husband, father and brother, buffeted by storms personal as well as political. As a result, we care very much for both Cicero, and the man who is ultimately his best friend, Tiro.