Europolitical reading: "The Making of a European President" by Nereo Peñalver García and Julian Priestley

It is with trepidation that I begin to write about this book, it being the second by someone I actually know (the first one was this). Not only that, half the writing team is familiar to me not only as a former colleague, boss and friend, but also as co-writer of a previous book. So you can see there are potential pitfalls here. 

 So it is just as well that I can honestly say I enjoyed this book. A mark of that fact is that I read it extremely quickly, partly in the office (the subject matter made that somehow acceptable). The assertion of "enjoyment" may seem strange - as it did to a friend I mentioned this to - when discussing a non-fiction book on the potentially rather arcane subject of the evolving manner of electing a president of the European Commission, but I can offer two explanations. First, I am something of a geek myself on such matters, not least having played my own small part in making the Spitzenkandidaten process a reality, through my role in a communication campaign on the 2014 European elections which insisted that "this time it's different" and exhorting voters to "choose who's in charge". Second, spare the blushes, dear authors, the book is well-written, easy to read and, well, interesting.

Three things stand out for me as I look back on the book. The first is its historical perspective. The history of the EU is of course relatively short, and that of the European Parliament, at least as a serious factor in the story (i.e. since the first direct election in 1979), is even shorter. Short enough indeed that one of the authors, Julian Priestley, has first-hand experience of pretty much the whole thing. However, being a practitioner inside the system does not necessarily imply the ability to step back and look cooly at the historical trends and tendencies that were playing out. In this case, however, that perspective is very much there. It is fascinating to see how the jump to (what appears to be) an entrenched new way of electing a Commission President is not some out-of-the-blue coup pulled off by a newly assertive Parliament, but a coup pulled off by a newly assertive Parliament as part of a long term process, whereby the choice of president has steadily been politicised and democratised over the years. Seen this way, the step taken with the 2014 elections and the election of Jean-Claude Juncker, in the face of the opposition of most EU governments, is the continuation of a long-ongoing trend, rather than a one-off - and therefore more inherently fragile - event. 

Dickensian reading: "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt

To attempt to write anything about Donna Tartt's lengthy (800+ pages, in my edition) novel is, it seems, to venture into a debate about What is Art?, What is Literature? and other Big Questions. The critics are divided, with the bulk of reviewers - as well as the general public, if stellar sales are anything to go by - firmly placing the novel in the category of literary greatness, but with a dissenting minority of highbrow commentators crying foul, depicting the book as faux-literary pulp for an infantilised readership that cannot tell the difference any more. In an age when such elitism is scorned on principle, it would be easy to dismiss the latter school as snobbish and out of touch, but, on a different principle, I see virtue in someone at least trying to stand up for some notion of absolute merit, however subjective and slippery such judgements will be. 

I don't honestly know - to take one measure used in this particular debate - whether Tartt's Goldfinch will display the cultural durability of the Fabritius painting from which it takes its title. Will the novel still be admired in 300 years in the way that the painting is today? (Not - confession time - that I had previously heard of this Dutch masterpiece before the book made me aware of it.) Perhaps the problem is that, as many have noted, The Goldfinch occupies a literary space very similar to that staked out a century and a half ago, by Charles Dickens.

Indeed, you can take the characters and plot of The Goldfinch and match them, as many have, to equivalents in Oliver Twist. The hero, Theo Decker, is the orphan protagonist, his best friend, the extraordinary Boris, is the Artful Dodger, Theo's gambler father, Larry, is a sort of Fagin and so on. More than this though, the equivalence lies in the kind of book this is and the way it tells its story. Many, mixing the literary reference points, describe this as a Bildungsroman, the story of Theo's life and formative vicissitudes following the catastrophic event which defines the rest of his life. His strengths and his weaknesses play out in interaction with a magnificent gallery of characters, in a world full of twists, turns and coincidences, in sharply contrasting environments: the different Manhattans which together make up his true home, the bleakly foreclosed McMansion territory of peripheral Las Vegas to which he is brutally transplanted for most of his adolescent years, as well as a cold, dark and claustrophobic Amsterdam where climatic events take place. 

The Goldfinch, a painting by
Carel Fabritius (1654)

Like Dickens, Tartt writes a plot-driven, page turning narrative, something which in itself perhaps troubles the highbrow critics of the book. Dickens of course wrote to entertain, his novels famously emerging in instalments, paid for practically by the word by newspaper proprietors. This didn't void them of literary merit. The Goldfinch, though not written in the same way - indeed, Tartt is a notoriously slow writer, with this novel some ten years in the making - shares many Dickensian attributes. This is for example, despite its length, not a difficult or challenging read in itself, the story rattling along satisfyingly throughout. Perhaps neither characters nor plot are fully plausible at all times, but they are memorable and superbly evoked. Best of all is Theo's great lifelong friend, Boris, whom he meets in the desolate Vegas years, a worldly-unwise, drugged-up, precociously dodgy, effectively parentless Russian (or is it Ukrainian?) boy who washes up in the desert and teaches Theo the merits of perilous amounts of alcohol and drugs, the Great Russian Novel, shoplifting and the value of true friendship. Boris illuminates the pages on which he features. Alongside him, in a gallery of great characters, we have a wealthy Upper East Side family who take young Theo in for a while, whose high society lifestyle disguises both genuine concern for him and a strain of manic mental instability; the gentle giant Hobie, a surrogate parent for Theo, who provides a degree of security and refuge for his lost soul in a hopelessly uneconomic antiques restoration shop in Greenwich Village; the damaged and unworldly Pippa, who alone in the world shares Theo's defining experience, but though deeply loved and loving, remains always just out of reach; Theo's deadbeat dad, Larry, living off gambling and mixing dangerously with the Vegas underworld, swinging incomprehensibly between self-pity, some sort of real love for his son, the sense of life as a performance and cynical exploitation of his nearest and dearest, including his drug-and-alcohol addicted girlfriend, the wonderfully renamed Xandra, who turns out to be a bit better than her druggy, burned-out sexpot exterior might suggest. 

Primate reading: "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves" by Karen Joy Fowler

This is a most unusual novel. Really. It was one of the (newly admitted) US novels to be shortlisted for the 2014 Booker Prize, and it is easy to see how something this left field would appeal to the jury. 

This was one of those occasional books picked up rather at random and/or on the strength of its cover and blurb. Yes, this occurred in time-honoured fashion in St. Pancras railway station in the new Hatchards. I had never heard of it, yet something about it appealed. Good, because I am deeply glad I read this book, even if, even now, I'm not quite sure I know what I make of it. I have a sneaking suspicion I didn't get the half of it, somehow skating superficially over the surface of a massively deep book. 

It is fundamentally a story of sibling love and loss, of what it means to be human, of what a family is and should be, of what it means to belong to a society, of the value of life itself - not just human life. There is a deep thread of guilt too running through this book - how to live with the sense of something which went drastically wrong, though quite how and why remains elusive. (Shades in more than one way of Behind the Scenes in the Museum here.)

So far, you might also think, so not-very-unusual for modern literary fiction. Until, in one of the biggest twists I have come across, you discover, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the way though the book that...

NOTE: it is impossible to talk meaningfully about this book without "spoiling" the huge twist referred to above. It doesn't really change much, I suspect, but if you want, as I was, to be gobsmacked by the revelation, stop here, do not read on.

Fanboy reading: "Juliet Naked" by Nick Hornby

The second audiobook of the return journey from our Italian holidays, was an unabridged version of the 2009 novel by Nick Hornby. That makes nine hours of listening. Whence one of our problems with this book: the car journey during which we would listen to it could not plausibly last more than six, even taking it easy and with one moderate traffic jam en route. Solution? A prolonged lie-in the next day to complete the story. Yes, and if that is not an upfront recommendation, I don't know what is.

A novelty of this audiobook (for me, anyway) is that it is the first I have heard featuring different readers. This makes sense, as the story is told alternately from the point of view of its three main characters. Had I realised, I might have had my doubts, but in fact the trick works well, notwithstanding some slightly odd English accents from the American narrator. But let's get down to the book.

This is a novel with many Hornby tropes. The superbly depicted forty-something English-obsessive music fan, the understanding of the emotional power of popular music, the subtlety of understanding of how people together tick, expressed with understatement and humour, the fond depiction of ordinariness, the refusal to slip into easy-romantic outcomes. Like Hornby? You'll like this.

Annie and Duncun are locked into a going-nowhere 15 year relationship, living in a dreary (but affectionately-depicted) Northern seaside town - the real-world model for which, by the way, I have the strong impression I know well. One reason for the stasis is that there are three people in the relationship, Duncan, Annie and a 1980s American singer-songwriter, Tucker Crowe, of whom Duncan is the biggest fan. Annie accepts this - "like a disability" - and, albeit with greater lucidity and objectivity, shares an admiration for Crowe's work, notably his seminal album, Juliet, in which the musician relates his affair and breakup with a famous Hollywood beauty and after which he abruptly ceased producing new music. Duncan is a leading "Crowologist", first among equals in an online community of (99% male) fans who obsessively analyse Crowe's work on a website Duncan has set up, and whose admiration for their hero is only magnified by the mysterious disappearance from view of their hero. The novel opens with a hilariously depicted US vacation, during which Annie and Duncan visit sites of significance in Crowe's career, not least (i) the Minnesota mens' toilet where Crowe seemingly underwent the epiphany which ended his career and (ii) a visit to Juliet's Beverley Hills residence. 

Forgetful reading: "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" by Kate Atkinson

I hesitate slightly over this one. This was consumed as another audiobook, on the car on the way back from holidays (there were two - see next review) and was an abridged version, three CDs clocking up a mere three hours. For a 330-page book, that does not seem a lot, and, having subsequently read some reviews (a thoughtful one here), it is clear that quite a lot ended up on the cutting room floor. In my defence, this was my (successful) bid to persuade my audiobook-rookie travelling (and life) companion of the merits of the medium, so I thought it wise to start with something short. 

The abridgement did not mean that I did not enjoy this novel, simply that I may have missed some important elements and my comments may suffer consequently. It also means that I will keep this brief.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum is Kate Atkinson's first full-length novel. I bought it, (i) following the advice of my literary guru-of-the-moment that "anything by Kate Atkinson" would do the business, (ii) because they actually had it in the rapidly vanishing "spoken word" section of Nottingham Waterstones and (iii) because I had, albeit rather vaguely, heard of it.

This is such an English book. It is English in its understatement, English in its evocation of rainy holidays-from-hell in unexotic locations, English in its wryly humorous response to disaster, English in its 1950s and 1960s provincial smallness and greyness, English in its attitudes and accents, English in its oblique allusiveness, where talk constantly skirts around the important things. It is also a supremely accomplished book, one which takes us with a counterintuitively light and jokey touch through a family saga of repeated, almost inevitable-seeming death and disaster, both historical and contemporary, as well as small-town infidelities and dysfunctional family dynamics, all the while sucking us down, on a trajectory rich with hints and half-hidden clues, in an accelerating spiral like water emptying out of some great pit, towards the central, hidden truth with reveals so much about why the characters we have come to know are as they are. This big reveal, the nature, though not the details, of which we have gradually discerned, is anything but funny, and breaks dramatically with the so-English well-never-mind tone that gives the novel so much of its humour and character.