Lunchtime read: The Man on the Balcony

By following his intuition and questioning a three year old boy Martin Beck discovers that the man who killed the children used a tube to get their and as a result his location can be narrowed down.

The problem is that there are few witnesses but the one that they are working with from the mugger sticks in Beck’s brain. He keeps replaying the description and realises that it tallies word for word with one he overheard being made by a colleague when he talked to a woman about a man on the balcony.

Although it is going to be like a needle in a haystack, and several colleagues think it is a waste of time, Beck starts to focus the search on the man on the balcony before he can kill again.

Last chunk tomorrow…

More fuel for the bloggers v. critics debate

Just before I left to head off to work this morning there was a discussion on Radio 4’s Today programme (it happened at 8.20 and you can listen to it online) about the differences between literary bloggers and traditional critics. This is a long running debate but the latest attempt to ignite the war of words failed mainly because the blogging representative from ReadySteadyBook.com was almost as qualified as the academic reviewer.

Of course there are people blogging with axes to grind and idiotic views to share. But unless you take everything you read completely on trust there is always the option to go elsewhere. The ability to share a gut reaction to a book is very powerful in some cases because it is raw analysis. Obviously being able to put it into a literary context is helpful but there is this is not an either or debate there is a place for both approaches.

As a blogger one of the things I have wrestled with is a feeling that more time needs to be spent producing long essay length posts about literature. The reason finally for deciding not to do those is not just because of time, and possibly a certain amount of talent lacking, but primarily because writing those type of posts never motivated me to start blogging in the first place.

Broadly there seem to be two types of blogs: those that are written for personal reasons – for instance just sharing the joy of books and reading – and those that are written with a firm eye on the commercial opportunities and traffic stats.

Maybe the problems occur in the first category but that’s where myself and lots of other fantastic bloggers are happy existing.

Book snobs of the world unite!

There was a great moment in a charity bookshop yesterday when a woman walked in and asked if she could donate some books.

"Would you like these books?" the woman asked of the assistant behind the counter.

Bearing in mind this is a charity shop and they should be grateful for everything they get the answer was fascinating.

As she thumbed through the books on offer the woman behind the counter said "Some of these are alright but you can take the others because they should be sold by a general charity shop."

Talk about a book snob. The reaction on the face of the woman donating the books was something that was worth popping in the shop to see...

The Acceptance World - post II

Although for most of the first two volumes you have wanted Jenkins to become more committed to a course of action that will either bring success in his career or love into his life when it finally comes as a reader all you sense is dread. Will a character that you have come to like change now he is involved with a woman?

So far there is little sign of it although he is only at the start of his relationship with jean and he makes it clear he has asked her to marry him and she seems to be delaying preferring to be stuck legally in a dead marriage.

One thing that strikes you as odd, which is even then covered in the story, is the lack of presence of children. At one point Jean says that her brother’s marriage might have worked if he had produced lots of children with his wife Mona. Jenkins seems to think that this is an odd thought and then goes further sharing his thoughts with the reader that it is odd that jean wants to spend time and fuss over her daughter Polly. It was clearly a time when children were seen and not heard and then at the earliest opportunity sent away to a boarding school.

Meanwhile Quiggin and Mark members are competiting to be the secreatry to a famous novelist and the first appearance of politics - in this case the Marxist variety - arrives with Sillery and Quiggin marching to protest.

More on Monday…

What's a notepad for?

I don’t want to moan too much but if there is one thing that bugs me it is reading a book that has been highliughted, underlined and annonated all over. Sometimes little words at the back of the book or inscriptions on the first page can add to the enjoyment of buying second hand books. But finding your eye constantly drawn to passages that someone else felt were important does undermine the enjoyment of the reading experience.

Lunchtime read: The Man on the Balcony

With the discovery of a dead child the pace of the thriller picks up and the key to getting a break in the case is to disover the identity of the mugger who was operating in the park at the same time as the killer.

The police are at each other’s throats suffering from sleep deprivation, colds and general grumpiness. At points all they can see in each other are faults and because there are the dual investigations of the mugger and the child killer – who strikes again in another park murdering another 10 year old girl – Beck is not in overall control.

Where it does feel like it is getting back onto Beck dominated ground is when the policeman follows his instinct and interviews a three-year-old boy who unwittingly met the killer and was fobbed off with an underground ticket.

Added to that the mugger is caught as a result of his girlfriend dropping him in it and he did indeed see the killer. Those two developments mean the net is tightening but there are plenty of pages left to have a twist or two.

The Acceptance World - post I

Straight into book three. After this I might take a break but for now it seems too early to leave the world of Nicholas Jenkins. The third book starts in the same vein as the other two with one of the first characters making an appearance being Uncle Giles.

This time the old man seems to be in a happier mood and he introduces Jenkins to a fellow guest at the Bayswater hotel he is staying at. Mrs Endleigh tells their fortunes and with her words things are set up for problems with two young men and an old one and for some romance.

The two young men must be Mark Members and Quiggin who are working for an elderly novelist. But before they start to play their role there is a chance for Jenkins to bump into Templer who is married now to someone who used to be an artist’s model and hang around Deacon’s studio.

It also provides a chance for Jenkins to meet Jean Templer again. She is estranged from her husband and living with her brother. On the way back to Peter Templer’s house, after an impromptu invitation, Jenkins finally finds love with Jean. It all seems spontaneous or is it planned?

“But, in a sense, nothing in life is planned – or everything is – because in the dance every step is ultimately the corollary of the step before; the consequence of being the kind of person one chances to be.”

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: The Man on the Balcony

The idea of a comfort break on the reading front has always included a well written thriller. Along with dipping into Tintin the next best thing to relax with is a literary puzzle. Some of the best are written by husband and wife team Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

They produced ten books charting the career of Martin Beck and having read the first couple the third was a birthday present from last year. Now seemed like a good point to drag it out.

The start does not start to fall into place until around the 7th chapter with the discovery of a murdered child in the park. Up to that point there has been a mysterious man watching children from his balcony and a mugger preying on middle aged and old people in the park. Martin Beck has disappeared to get away from it all after being recently promoted and there seems to be friction in the police station after the staff were moved around.

But the discovery of a body should crystallise the narrative and drag Beck back into the centre of the action.

More tomorrow…

A Buyer's Market - post IV

It is rare to read a book that manages to wrap you up in a feeling. It is hard to describe but reading through the last pages of this book you start to really understand not just the social landscape of the 1920s/30s but also get an idea of what it felt like to be part of Jenkins’s world.

Everyone is starting to make those decisions that set out the course of their lives and as marriage and death comes for the likes of Stringham and Deacon respectively Jenkins is left to ponder just where he is going.

The book starts with him experiencing an infatuation for Barbara and it ends with him being informed of her engagement. As he leaves a dinner at Widmerpool’s and wanders out into the night the narrative describes that moment when major things start to happen.

In a way it is a testament to the writing that two books into the series and only now do you start to feel that Jenkins is about to start making some decisions that will move him from the role of observer to someone who is playing a more crucial role.

A review will follow shortly…

book review: House of Meetings

The book Koba The Dread is the equivalent of a well-articulated argumentative friend getting both increasingly louder and persistent in arguing their views. If Koba was a polemic on the crimes of Stalin and Lenin then Martin Amis uses another approach with House of Meetings.

Using a narrator who is a living embodiment of the horror that the Russian state inflicted on its own people the central figure never learns how to love. He learns how to lust and rape serving in the Red Army in the Second World War and he learns how to be jealous wasting away his hours in the camps.

Who is to blame for his anger and aggression? The state and its head that rule with hatred and establish a system of punishment and servitude. There seem to be two choices an individual faces – either to go with the flow and become aggressive or to try and take a Ghandi type approach and show that there is such a thing as pacifism and resistance. There is no option to contest innocence because no one is listening or looking to defend something that constitutionally does not exist.

In the prison camp the narrator, who is telling his life story top his daughter through flashbacks, recalls the time his brother arrived and tried to resist the system with a one-man protest that ultimately won him few admirers. Things changed when the House of Meetings was built and his brother became the hardest worker in order to win the prize of spending one night with his wife.

The jealousy that the other brother felt never went away and even after his brother died and he had raped the woman who many years earlier had gone to the house of meetings it doesn’t satisfy his yearning.

He sails down the river on a gulag tour to rediscover the House of Meetings and his own past. He is armed with an unread letter from his brother that he plans to read on his deathbed and as he nears the end he reads through an almost prophetic tale depicting the dangers of anger and lust. His brother accepts that his approach also failed because he died inside but the alternative to kill and snarl your way through was worse.

As the end comes the lessons that are passed from father and daughter are the same from the concluding arguments in Koba the Dread. A society led by people who were prepared to use terror, slavery, famine and death as weapons against their own people create monsters. At each level in society – in this case the camps – there are victims that reflect back the society that created them.

The moral of this story seems to be that declining population rates twinned with the apparent victory of the West have been both internal and external pressures that have highlighted the failure of Stalin and company.

Version read – Jonathan Cape hardback

A Buyer's Market - post III

If there is a theme emerging in this second book it is around the pursuit not just of wealth but also love. As Jenkins strolls around wondering just why all of his contemporaries have real drive he is also starting to be left behind on the romance front.

Moving almost seamlessly from the ball and dance to a London in summer devoid of any major social happenings Jenkins’s is desperate for a bit of company. He even decides to go and look-up Deacon in his studios and although does not find him home comes across the tenant from the top floor Barnby who willingly helps him fill in the time with a spot of dinner.

The only event on the horizon is an invitation to go and stay with the Walpole-Wilson’s and this he does with some sense of regret rather than relish. But things go in a different direction and there is a chance to go and visit Sir Magnus Donners in his castle and that also means seeing one of his henchmen Stringham.

Stringham tells Jenkins he is going to be married and introduces him to his fiancé. The marriage theme returns when he sits down to dinner and is put next to Jean Templer who is married and makes it clear she can tell that Jenkins’s is not. He even admits to himself that he would like to meet someone and transfer the feelings he had felt in the past.

More tomorrow…

book review: A Question of Upbringing

When you start an epic journey like the 12 volumes Dance to the Music of Time there is a sense of trepidation. That is heightened by the pre-reading knowledge of the books you have with the author Anthony Powell being described as a British Proust. Getting through seven volumes of Proust was a challenge so 12 might be too far.

But all of those fears start to dissipate the minute you start reading the first chapter. There are similarities to Proust with the descriptive power and the core cast but there is a major difference – things happen quicker.

The idea of this first book is to introduce the world of the narrator Jenkins. Things start at school will one of the oddest characters of the books the proud but natural victim that is Widmerpool running through the mist to the school house. Inside Jenkins is enjoying sausages cooked over an open fire by his wealthy friend Stringham.

They are interrupted by Jenkins’s Uncle Giles who is trying to gather information about the family trust fund to gain a bit of cash. As Uncle Giles leaves the final character enters in the form of Peter Templer who has the job of explaining to the housemaster Le Bas that it was the Uncle and not Stringham or Jenkins who was smoking.

The rest of the novel moves from school to the time in-between University with Templer deciding not to bother with education and head straight off into the City. Stringham goes to visit his father in Kenya before joining Jenkins at Oxford. Widmerpool also turns up in France learning the language in the same place as Jenkins but he is clearly the lowest on the wealth scale, has a slight chip on his shoulder but is the most quietly determined to better himself.

Jenkins time at Oxford introduces him to another powerful figure, the don Sillery, who encourages Stringham to leave university and enter business. Stringham needs little encouragement after he Templer ruins an evening for them but shows them the delights of his motorcar and a couple of his City chums. As a result of Stringham’s departure to work for an industrialist Sillery has created a potentially powerful ally. That just leaves Jenkins who seems to meander through the rest of his studies.

Although most of the book is spent with people taking their leave of Jenkins there is never a sense of melancholy. The same people come and go through his life as they move upwards leaving him slightly behind. Jenkins does not seem to be so clear about what he wants to do. That is an attractive trait because it means that as he travels through situations the reader goes without too much idea of the destination.

Having read this book with a sense of possible trepidation it was a pleasure and Powell is a storyteller that sets out a scene with the emphasis very much on people. Each chapter is a detailed anecdote and although location plays a part it is the emphasis on the various different people that make this story tick and his cast of characters are a fairly enjoyable lot to read about. Ranging from lone runners like Widmerpool to the arguing Swedes and the wealthy Stringham and oily Sillery this first volume does enough to get you set for a journey you now are happy to take.

Version read – Flamingo paperback

bookmark of the week

This is another magnetic bookmark from the London Transport Museum that celebrates the Metropolitan line. I have no particular feelings about this line but did once work near to the Great Portland Street stop. It also had larger seats than the other lines with a distinctive herringbone fabric.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter from a cold and snowy London. Hope you have a good day.

Could a Rabbit upstage Amazon?

Saw an interesting story in the business section of the Daily Telegraph about a rival to Amazon launching called BookRabbit.com. The idea is that it will apparently include a social networking side to its operation as well as allowing people to buy books. I clicked onto the site and you have to be invited to try out the beta. Let's see if I get my invitation and what this wonderful world of buying books and sharing thoughts with "like-minded people" is like...