book review: Les Belles Images by Simone de Beauvoir

"'I tell you what, we'll talk about it tomorrow. But if you know any unhappy people, we'll try to do something for them. You can treat sick people, give poor ones money - there are masses of things you can do.'
'Are there really? For everybody?'
'Dear me, I should cry all day long if there were people whose unhappiness couldn't be cured at all.'"

The idea of choosing this book as a holiday read was that by the time I got to Paris I was reading about Parisians. The problem was by the time I had got to the [point when I pitched up on a campsite in the Parisian suburbs the characters of this book had quite put me off heading for the Champs Elysees.

They are meant to of course as Simone de Beauvoir portrays the vacuous world of the rich in Paris. in a way that leaves you despairing of their lack of connection with the real world. They search for happiness and fulfilment among the top class restaurants and their weekends away in the country but don't know how to respond when someone brings real pain and horror into their lives.

So they protect the bubble by running away from the news, banning their children from reading newspapers and keeping the conversation to safe naval gazing subjects of conversation.

At the heart of the story is Laurence who we are told has had a nervous breakdown five years previously and then slowly heads towards another. What sparks her off is her daughter mentioning that she is unhappy and upset by the suffering in the world. Despite the best efforts to stop her from reading newspapers the influence of a more worldly friend is difficult to stop and so the seed of unhappiness is planted in the apartment leaving the ambitious architect father and the fragile mother to cope with the consequences.

At the same time a parallel story displaying the vanity and shallowness of the older generation is running with XXX's mother being dumped by a rich aged boyfriend because the 56 year-old fancies getting involved with a 19 year-old. The mother screams at her daughter that a woman without a man is nothing and highlights that even someone who is apparently successful believes that society cannot view her in those terms unless she has a rich man on her arm.

The world this book refers to is sadly still probably there and certainly the world of the vacuous rich is one that you can certainly imagine still being like this. What keeps you reading isn't any sympathy for the characters but a sense of fascination that something so natural and innocent, the idea that not everyone is happy, can cause such distress. It proves, if it needed underlining, that regardless of your wealth and success you cannot cocoon yourself from reality.

There are also some messages here about the position of women in society, with the mother showing a desperation to be with a man in order to be accepted by society and the attitude towards Laurence as one verging on the patronising and bullying by some of the men in her life.

Not the most enjoyable read but then it was never designed to be and although it's looking a bit old in some respects the world she took the scalpel to is still there and still deserves to get this sort of literary examination.

book review: King of Tuzla by Arnold Jansen op de Haar

"For two days his company had been under the command of Nordbat, the Norwegian-Danish-Swedish battalion that had been billeted around Tuzla, initially for a period of two weeks. Who could say whether it would stop at that? Links with the battalion in Srebrenica had been temporarily severed. Just as well: from now on he was more or less his own boss. He was king, King of Tuzla."

Reading this story of life on the inside of a UN mission to Bosnia reminded you of that news footage where the blue helmeted troops looked so helpless in the face of a conflict that tore the former Yugoslavia apart.

That sense of frustration is evident in this account of life on the sinde of a Dutch unit sent to police an airport in an area disputed by rebels fighting out differences which went back generations and were bogged down in the complex differences of race and religion.

At the heart of the story is a solider, Tijmen Kleide Gildekamp, who through his experiences serving under the UN banner becomes disillusioned with the army life and in the hours of boredom punctuated with brief hair raising moments of fear he gets the chance to reevaluate his life.

It is a life of service and duty but one that is pretty empty of friends and real satisfaction and even as he sits wearing his King of Tuzla t-shirt looking out across the pock marked shelled runways he struggles to find sense in the military manoeuvres although he does start to get a sense of what he needs to do with his life.

The book benefits from the autobiographical knowledge of the author and the confidence he has describing not just the experience of serving in Bosnia but the background to how you get from a student at military school into the position of leadership. The close knit world of the army is clearly one that people struggle to leave and as Tijmen walks past the barracks and recalls his past there is that sense of regretting lost time not just spent in the army but spent making the decision to leave.

The description of the tension and almost anarchy of the front lines and the tightrope that the UN soilders were treading is brilliantly done and even those with no sense of history of the recent conflict will understand the difficulty for troops that were seen as an irritant and unwanted by both sides.

It's such a well worn phrase but in many respects this is a coming of age story that charts the journey of a man who discovers himself as an individual rather than just a cog in a machine and discovers that real bravery isn't just facing up to mortar shells and bullets but making a break with a life and a past to go off and do something different.

If you want proof that literature has the power to change lives then this illustrates it on every level.

book review: How I Won the Yellow Jumper by Ned Boulting

"I have been told though, by a friend who was watching in embarrassed disbelief in a house in Chelmsford, that I uttered words like 'some sort of thing with his bike'. I followed this up, apparently with the killer line, 'kissing goodbye to his chance of winning the yellow jumper'.
Yes, the yellow jumper. That's what I said."

The Tour de France can feel like an alien world. Talk of different colour jerseys, general classification times and numerous riders and teams can put off all but the most determined from finding out about it. But as Ned Boulting's experiences show once you make the effort to understand the sport you are hooked.

There are ups and downs, with doping scandals continuing to feature in the sport, forcing Boulting to add an epilogue in response to the revelations that last year's winner Alberto Contador had tested positive, but there is still more to admire here than to scorn and the riders and the logistics of the Tour are both monumental and deserved to be praised.

What Boutling does is shows that it is possible to get into the sport as a complete novice and then build up a knowledge and a love of the sport fairly quickly. His introduction to commentating for ITV starts with a cock-up, hence the book name about jumpers and jerseys, and manages to stay in a light-hearted vein until the end. He is flanked by former professional riders and legendary broadcasters but he manages to find his own place in the world of cycling.

The behind the scenes book reveals not just what it takes to film the Tour and work on it but what the event means to the people of France and the way the world changes for those three magical weeks in July. It made me smile and it made me share a frown as Boulting reveals his disappointments over doping. But importantly it provided more details of the Tour and revealed just why this event is so special.

Books about sport are incredibly difficult to pull off because they either appeal to die-hard fans who dissect them for flaws and unknown nuggets or are so generalist they don't add any value to those who share an interest and want to know more.

Boulting pulls it off and his technique is not just around his use of humour but his use of biography. This is his story of how he fell ikn love with the Tour and although we can't all commentate and get taken round in a car with a film crew that essential journey from bike novice to fan is one that we are all welcome to head down.

book review: Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

"Quangel stood up. 'There,' he laughed. 'You know perfectly well that the man behind bars is the decent one, and you on the outside are a scoundrel, that the criminal is free, and the decent man is sentenced to death.'"

What hits you like a slap in the face is the date this book was written because it is something you never expected to discover that anti-Hitler feeling could have been voiced at the height of the madman's regime.

But here it is in a story that has a great deal to say not just about the value of resistance, even if it appears on many levels to be futile, but about why a society that brings the scum to the surface is such a horrible one to live in.

At the heart of the story are a husband and wife, the Quangel's, who find that their son has been killed in action. Otto, up to now a miserly and introverted factory foreman decides that he has to mark the loss in some way.

He begins a campaign writing postcards which he drops across Berlin criticising Hitler and his rule of Germany. The cards get noticed by the Gestapo and just that alone sends several people into a fury.

As the years go on and the postcards keep dropping the noose perhaps tightens around Otto's neck but so in a way does it for the regime.

A cast of some of the most disturbing and horrible low life characters litter the book and illustrate how the Nazi regime rewarded thugs and allowed them to terorise people in the name of the state.

But where Fallada is at his best is when he punctures the fragile world of the gestapo. Their arrogance is matched with stupidity and now and again the brain cells connect and they realise that their approach stinks and the law they talk of defending is a sham.

but for the most part you find yourself rooting for an odd quiet man who shows a great deal of bravery. he might not be the perfectly rounded character but when it comes to describing someone to stand up against Hitler's regime it is perhaps the ordinariness of Otto that really lingers in the memory.

Some people were brave enough to counter the propaganda and some writers were capable of writing about it and Fallada does that here admirably.

book review: Dearest Father by Franz Kafka

"Recently the belief that I was defeated by Father as a small boy and have since been prevented by pride from leaving the battleground, throughout all these years, despite enduring defeat over and over again."

As a father myself the idea of what my sons might be thinking about me kept coming to the forefront of my mind as I read this heart breakingly honest letter from Franz Kafka to his father.

their relationship was one clearly troubled and beset by the dominance of the father and the continual failure of Franz to feel he could live up to what was expected of him. He failed to take a role in the family business, failed to find favour for his writing and caused serious upset with his plans to marry.

But this letter, a love letter from a loving son to a father, is upsetting because there is a feeling that things would never change. No matter what Franz does or did it would make no difference to a man who is almost blinded by his obstinacy and pride.

That's a message for fathers now and a challenge not to provoke hate and servitude in our own children by pushing our own views down their throats.

As Kafka details the numerous occasions when his father and him clashed and the role of his mother as a not quite innocent bystander you feel for the man. You want him to be able to either breakthrough to his father or as an alternative to break free.

Sadly he is capable of neither and as we all know illness took him before there was a chance perhaps to reach one of those outcomes.

A beautifully produced OneWorld Classic contains a few extracts from Kafka's diaries that reinforce some of the points he makes in his letter.

he might not have wanted it printed but across the decades it has a message for fathers now and the clashes and battles he describes continue now in households all across his native Prague and well beyond.

book review: The Death of Napoleon by Simon Leys

"Other napoleons came and went around him; in the middle of the lawn, where a patch of white mist now hovered, one of them peered into the shadows through a cardboard telescope; another spread an old newspaper on the stone balustrade, as if it were a staff map. There were some who sat astride rusty garden chairs, lost in thought."

Fiction should play with truth and reality and this whole story does it wonderfully. Starting off with the premise that Napoleon has escaped from his prison island St Helena to be replaced by a double the story charts what might happen.

The Emperor heads back to France leaning on the planning of an organisation dedicated to restoring him to power. But delays and bad weather means he is diverted and there is a wonderful moment when Napoleon goes with some British tourists to see the battlefield of Waterloo.

he finally manages to get back to Paris but without money or friends has to take refuge with a widow of one of his old loyal infantrymen. he uses his strategic skill to restore the fortunes of her melon business revealing to some of those around him as a result he is who they had thought he was.

But with the death of the double all those miles away on the island Napoleon can no more reveal who he is. Who would believe him and the fear that came with knowing he was still alive is snuffed out like a flame.

As he wanders through the gardens of an asylum watching the other napoleon's take the air before returning to the hospital his predicament as a pretender fully dawns on him.

This story is fun in the sense it takes one of the great historical 'what if' and takes it to a conclusion but it is also a disturbing prod at the question of identity. What does it mean to have your identity taken away from you, particularly when it's permanent through death? What does it fell like to have no one believe you?

One of the themes that emerges is that even those that followed Napoleon blindly into musket fire and the face of canon balls had no idea what he actually looked like. But the legend was stronger than reality and the idea of an aging, balding and over weight Napoleon returning from the dead to over throw the French establishment is one that even his most loyal foot soldiers will not b able to support.

A few thoughts on discussion on The Good of the Novel

Last night I attended a discussion at the London Review Bookshop provoked by the book The Good of the Novel, which has been published by Faber.

The evening threw up lots of interesting thoughts and there are perhaps not surprisingly more questions than answers when it comes to discussing the position of the novel now as well as the future direction it might take.

The evening started off with a few comments from Ray Ryan, co-editor of The Good of the Novel before asking a panel for their opinions.

I sat there with my phone and made a few observations based on what each person said and hope they might make a poor but fleeting record of what was said and provide an idea of the thoughts that were expressed on the night.


Ray Ryan, co-editor The Good of the Novel
The novel is always in society therefore difficult to analyse it independently of history.

Each novel sets it's own agenda and makes it's own demands of the reader.

Novelistic truth is not documented.

James Wood, well known critic
We go to it for pleasure. It gave me great feeling of freedom against the backdrop of a strict religious upbringing "An experience of realising reading the novel an area of freedom anyone could be represented thinking anything."

Very few outright tragic novelists. Secularism. Seeing the ways in which Dostoevsky could argue against himself in the Brothers Kasmanov. Began a movement away of whatever religious leaning I had.
Quite important now last decade a revival on both sides of atheism and envangelisism trying to pin us down.

Mental lives are flickering intermittent the novel as a form it alone can do. Hadn't yet had great novel that deals with atheism and fundamentalism perhaps it's coming.

Lee Brackstone, editorial director at Faber
Lee gave a publishers perspective: Publishers position often thankless. Position in chain of command between writer ad reader. We are the first people to cast artform into literary mold.
Lucrative narrative form. I tell other publishers to just buy what you love but Faber needs these things so just how useful is this advice? What pressures of the market to qualify taste? If market and everyman readers didn't exist what would we be publishing? Do the structures bring us the novel we deserve and if not what might that novel be?
Navigate between the gospel of the novel and the demands of a brutal market?
Visceral. To make these decisions and have responsibility in maintaining this list at Faber is a privilege. Novelist ability to deconstruct and surprise and reconstruct. Worries me that element of surprise will disappear where character, plot and style over come place and different voices.
Do readers want entertainment or challenge to comfort? Not novelist responsibility to represent the world but to make it a more uncertain place.

Frances Wilson, author and critic
What I'm interested in is the anti-novelism of novels. Intimacy kureishi it's not a novel might as well call it a fish a book whose intimacy spoke only to her. Rarely like scandal Of fiction that operates one inch from life. Novels should be dangerous or a risk you should be prepared to leave a different person.
Genius in the way kureishi re-framed the real.
If novels are meant to be vecihles of interiority take you inside the heads of Novels being morally uncertain. Deal with the complexity of thought and emotion.

Amit Chaudhuri, author and academic
Disliked the novel as a form for a long time. Viewed the cult of the novel with suspicion. Geoff Dyer berates the form. Always meant to be a poet. Larkin wanted to be a novelist but I always wanted to be a poet. Drawn to was rereadability one of my first experinence belief that certain sentences were enough and whole novel around it were a Nuisance. Get rid of it but do what? Feel like starting anew with each sentence. Novel became a series of fresh beginnings. Heard it had to do with plot and story and the problematic character. Wasn't going to novels for character was going to them for something spatial. Background. Description. which can be a criticism. I was drawn to description and background. Think of the story in a different way not about things happening but about a space. Found myself inhabiting and producing novels.

Novel became more successful with globalisation. Brought in rhetoric of plenty. Leaked into the novel. People were reading more. So what? World of infinite communication and plenty into which the novel had fallen the debate is not so much about the novel can elaborate on various views of the world whole thing haunted by main a happening in literature is the transformation in the interruption. Not the novel but what is the literary?
From critical theory and philosophy. Masterpiece only used by pr agencies not used in literary departments.

Then there were some questions and I picked out a few memorable comments and thoughts in response to queries from readers about what makes novels good and what the role of it is in society.

Lee
The good of the sentence rather than the good of novel.

New technology will allow novelist to look at form in a new way. David Foster Wallace was challenging it but no longer.

Novel performs function of a benign mirror happy to see something like us as well as something less pleasant.

James wood
Confirmation of the world and invention of the world. Realism can be very frustrating.

book review: A Country Dance by Margiad Evans

"'I'm going home,' I say. 'You cannot undo what you have done, even with your Welsh tongue.''I will, though,' shouts the master.'Gabriel Ford will never take your word,' I answer back."

There is a certain lyrical quality to the few Welsh books I've read and it's here as the pastoral landscapes of the Welsh border clash with the battle between two men for the heart of a shepherd's daughter.

Penned by the Welsh-border writer Margaid Evans the story of Ann Goodman unfolds. She is torn by the mixed English and Welsh in her blood and finds herself the object of affection for a Welsh land owner and an English shepherd.

She moves between them as she crosses the border and although she is in effect engaged to the English shepherd Gabriel it is when working on the Welsh farm she becomes a woman the master sets his sights on.

Gabriel turns up to check up on his love and finds the master sweet talking her in Welsh. fights ensue and it is not until the very end Ann makes up her mind.

Apart from the three characters involved in the love triangle what stands out here is the description of a rural world that is bitterly hard. Village life is full of hardship, gossip and little joy.

Ann works hard and moves from one grueling task to another while facing the responsibility of looking after her ailing father and navigating her way through the troublesome waters of courtship from two potential husbands.

it provides an insight into the hills and valleys that leaves a lasting impression on the reader and the description of Wales is no doubt why it was chosen to be part of the Library of Wales series of books. It deserves to be read by a wide audience.

The month in review - April

April was a difficult month reading wise. A lot was happening in my life with the division of the company I work for being sold and as a result concentrating on reading or finding the time was a challenge.

Sadly that challenge is set to continue even more this month as I move offices and start a commute that denies me any reading time.

Still here is the look back over April with the following books read. Only managed to get six books read:

Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki
The Lost Honour of Katherina Blum by Heinrich Boll
Lineman Thiel and Other Tales by Gerhart Hauptmann
The Call of The Toad by Gunter Grass
Death in Venice, Tristan, Tonio Kroger by Thomas Mann
The Decision Book by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler

Competition: Win a copy of the Decision Book

The kind people at profile Books have given me a copy of the Decision Book to give away to a lucky reader of Insidebooks.

Just tell me how many models of strategic thinking does the book write about?

a.5
b.50
c.500

Please email me the right answer at simon.quicke@rbi.co.uk and I will pick a winner and be in touch about getting the book to you.

Clue: read the cover ;)

book review: The Decision Book by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler

The Decision Book is not the usual book I would dive into as it contains a series of management models that are designed to make you work, think and interact better.

But because it is presented in such an easily digestible way with illustrations making the short descriptions of the management models more understandable there are high chances this book will be absorbed and prove to be useful.

The cover blurb offers fifty models for strategic thinking and because of the sheer volume there are some things served up that mean very little to you but others do go in. I picked out seven over the course of my reading and some of those have sunk in the brain and should help me in the future.

Also worth mentioning is the interactive nature of the book and the encouragement given from the authors to the reader to make up their own models and to take some lessons from the book. Pages at the back left blank for your own scribbles and jottings are part of the process of kicking off that dialogue.

Making decisions, particularly big ones, is never something easy but this book points out that many other great minds have struggled with how to make the right choices in the past and it is possible to learn from their experiences.

Life is too random to be defined by models but coming to a problem with a strategic mind is bound to be better than spinning a bottle and hoping it provides you with the right answer.

A response to Tristan

I've never been a great fan of hospitals and when asked one of my answers is that I struggle with the concept of a largely artificial community.

What I mean by that is the way that you are forced by circumstance into a situation with other people that you might avoid if you had more freedom.

In these communities of circumstance sometimes people can become confused about reality and it is exactly that scenario that Mann is writing about in Tristan.

A rather eccentric writer is holed up in a sanatorium and he falls for a woman who has been pushed to the brink by a difficult child birth.

The woman, who is described in angelic terms, finds the author amusing and interesting and through him discovers that not everything the doctors have told her she cannot do are bad for her.

As she plays the piano and Tristan and Isolde rings out in the sanitorium she finds some solace and provides the writer with the strength to tell her husband some home truths. Sadly they come too late.

Apart from reflections on the story what you are left with here are thoughts about the connections that can be made quickly and deeply between patients and the calming abilities of nature.

At moments you can picture the sanitorium as clearly as if you were flicking through a brochure on the place.

More soon...

A response to Death in Venice

Death, as the title suggests, comes in Venice. That is a fact the reader knows from the outset but what sort of death is a more interesting question.

Death of a dream, a romantic ideal, as well as death in the literal sense is being described here.

But before I get into that just a quick comment on the description. This has not been an easy story to read because it doesn't flow. There are times when you wonder if something suffers from being too literary in style. That said you grasp what is going on here but it could have come across better.

What is said concerns Gustave von Aschenbach a writer who has headed off on holiday to get a break from his writing routine in Munich.

He becomes fixated and obsessed to a degree with another guest, a young Polish boy, who he can not reallu understand or makes any great connection with over his stay. But the dream of his beauty, the romantic ideal that the young man represents takes over Aschenbach.

Takes him over so much that despite his almost priviledged position of knowing about the plague in the city he fataly drops his guard and allows his obsession to derail him.

More to come from the other couple of stories in this collection, tristan and Tonio Kroger, over the next two days...

The Decision Book: post VII

The final dip into the Decision Book is a chance to note how thinking of the past has been gently challenged by the experiences of the present.

The old 80/20 model set out by Vilfredo Pareto at the start of the last century had not only become established thinking but a model that was so widely accepted that the idea the 80% might have some value to rival the 20% something that seemed highly unlikely.

But back in 2004 the editor of Wired Chris Anderson came up with the Long Tail model. Using the internet the point of the model was that the 80% of goods beyond the core 20% will eventually be sold and have more value than the core goods.

The long tail has now become something to drop into conversations as a justification for backing what might have seemed like risky bets in the past. The problem is that in that 80% there are surely degrees of quality and right at the end of the tail it must be a fairly lonely old time.

A review will follow later this week...

Happy Easter

Hope the bunny brings you some books as well as chocolate