bookmark of the week

My children took part in the library reading challenge this summer and for their efforts - reading six books - were a few goodies including this bookmark that has a bendy man face that sticks up out of the book when you bend it. A great idea that will hopefully encourage my sons to read thicker books that benefit from a bookmark.

Midnight's Children - post VIII

Having go to the end of what has been a real marathon I’m not sure how I feel. It is going to take a bit of time I think for the impact of this novel to sink in.

Some of that is because of the length and ambition of this story and the fact that some of the themes only become clear towards the very end with the spittoon and the chutney key links to both the past and the present.

The years of emergency rule are also ones that end the role of the midnight children as they are rounded up and stripped of their powers. But that comes after a war between Pakistan and India that sees Saleem retrieve his memory after bumping into one of the other midnight children.

The movement towards the climax is also a movement towards the death of the dream of an India that could really change after independence. That is the message I am going to take away from this, that the dreams and the waves of optimism led to war, semi-dictatorship with the emergency years and for those in the slums and the poor sides of the track nothing but roughly the same as there was before. A country of two worlds, rich and poor, continues to the end.

A review will follow soon…

book review - The Consolations of Philosophy

For some readers the idea of willingly delving into a book about philosophy and some of the big ideas would not be a pleasurable experience. So perhaps it is in response to that Alain de Botton chooses to use a vast number of illustrations not only to illustrate who and what he is referring to in the text but also to make it a much more appealing read.

There is also something about his confidence in describing some of the greatest names in his field with a familiarity that clearly comes from his knowledge but also helps provide more personality to what could otherwise be overpowering philosophical brands.

So for instance Schopenhauer is described as a goth type character always looking on the dark side or life, Nietzsche someone so determined to prove that suffering leads to greatness he was still arguing that case as his life fell apart. Plus of course the famous Greeks who literally died for their beliefs finding that sharing your views and then standing by them was not universally popular.

The way the book is structured it is almost like a self help guide to using the great thoughts of others to boost your own outlook on life. So for instance Socrates will teach you that being unpopular might not be such a bad thing, particularly if you are right; Epicurus will reveal that friendship and self-sufficiency is real wealth because it creates the freedom to think; and Schopenhauer is happy to point out why love rarely runs smoothly.

One of the big surprises though was the chapter on Nietzsche who was clearly saying a great deal more that religion was nonsense and a super race will control the earth. Although it takes a bit of time the diagram and pictures help get the message through that there is a philosophy around the idea of the benefits of suffering. Rather than give up an accept that life has played you a cruel hand it is possible to learn from the pain of failure and become a better person.

This is the real take-away from the book for me because it sums up a positive philosophy that could genuinely have some impact in your day to day life.

In terms of whether or not this book succeeds in its aims it works well enough. Some critics at the time of publication said philosophy was the new rock and roll but if you stand back objectively from it the need for numerous images hints at the inaccessibility that most people continue to surround this subject with.

Putting it down you have to summarise that you have certainly learnt something but that there is also a great deal left to work out in yourself. Facing the big questions is never a comfortable idea and this is made more comfortable than you might have expected but whether or not it really lingers on in the imagination is harder to predict.

The Unfree French - post III

As this book moves on to cover what it was like for those sent to work in Germany as 'volunteers' it shows how polarised things were around the question of prisoners.

Those that spent in some cases four years in captivity were initially made out to be heroes while those that stayed at home faced being dragged off to Germany to work for their work effort or being hounded out by locals and family that were ashamed of their attempts to stay at home.

But as with most things in life if you were well off and had connections then usually you avoided being dragged off to germany and were supported through the war.

With presumably the resistance as the last major area for this book to cover you already have a picture of a country divided not just between German occupied and Vichy rules zones but a country divided along class lines.

The final parts of the story are to come...

Midnight's Children - post VII

It might sound like an odd thing to say but there is a moment when you cannot help thinking of Anthony Powell and his Dance to the Music of Time. The echoes are the idea of bombs falling and with deadly accuracy wiping out some characters from the cast.

In this case the Indo-Pakistan war is the conflict and the bombs kill Saleem’s parents, aunt and via a silver spittoon that literally brains him changes his life.

Things need to be changed as he father has a stoke, mother starts to see things rather than cope with the reality of being pregnant again and after making a sexual advance to his sister Saleem is isolated even more.

Having been dragged to the doctor’s to have his sinuses unblocked he loses the telepathic ability he has cherished but instead gets a hyper sensitive sense of smell that in its own way has a power. The question is whether or not he intends spending long using that power as a human sniffer dog sniffing out insurgents on the border.

The story, now in book three, changes and goes through stages and with the action moving from India to Pakistan there is definitely an increased military feel to the atmosphere with generals and coups part of the political landscape. But there is also an unreality to it and Rushdie describes the confusion of war with the propaganda of both sides making it almost impossible to know what battles have been fought and won and lost.

More tomorrow…

The President's Last Love - post IV

After having completed the book I am still not sure what I feel about it. Love seems to be something that the main character President Bunin is constantly searching for and what un folds in the 40 years the story spans is that he has often loved no one or worst given everything to the state.

As the end draws near you expect some sort of dramatic climax and there are a few twists that you didn’t see coming but ultimately you are left with a sense of the air going out of a tyre rather than anything else.

Part of the reason for that is the lack of a conclusion. The sort of life where he is always at the brink of death or disappointment is set to continue as he signs up for a few more years as president.

This is a bitter look at life at the top of a former part of the Soviet Union and although the money and the aides are all well and good the sacrifices you make to stay there and the hollowness in your life that means you live without a heart are plain to see.

Mind you it feels great to actually finish a book for the first time in a couple of weeks. A review will follow soon…

Juggling more than a single book

Years ago at a 40th birthday party (not mine I might add) I drifted into conversation with a fellow unwilling invitee. We got talking about books and he said that he was currently reading 12 books. I asked him how and he did it and why and he said he wanted variety and as long as he picked them up pretty regularly he could remember what each book was about.

Well I have to confess that juggling three books has not been a pleasurable experience. Perhaps it is because Midnight’s Children and The President’s Last Love are long but you never get to actually finish anything.

So today I sat on the train and focused on finishing something. Sadly I am still thirty pages shy, which is why I am shortly decamping to bed with a strong light and the last chunk. But for a change and for the first time in the last couple of weeks I am hopefully going to be turning the light out with a bit if satisfaction.

I’ll post about it tomorrow…

Midnight's Children - post VI

If you think about the challenge of using a single person to act as a metaphor for a country keeping them in one place is going to lose some of the power that moving them around would have.

So the movement into exile in Pakistan comes when Sinai’s family breaks apart after it is revealed that he is in fact not their son but was swapped by the nurse Mary. She disappears into her own exile having destroyed her relationships with her employers and the relationship between everyone becomes strained.

The upshot is that amongst the mourning for Sinai’s failed director uncle, who commits suicide, there is a breakdown between relationships between Sinai’s mother and father with the former being dragged to Pakistan with her mother and the later staying behind surrounded by nothing but failure and the rubble of the bulldozed estate.

The crossing of the border is not only physical but also something more powerful and prevents Sinai from communicating with other Midnight Children and enjoying his gift of telepathy.

He still suspects his mother of infidelity and by encouraging a naval officer to confront his adulterous wife Sinai believes he has taught her a lesson. The only lesson he does seem, to pick up is that children need to be beware of dabbling in adult lives and chain reactions can lead to death, murder and family breakdown.

More tomorrow…

book review -The Laughing Policeman

A friend recently asked me if I read anything that could be described as relaxing and fun. I nodded vigorously and mentioned a couple of names he had never heard of before, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. The title of their fourth book, The Laughing Policeman, also elicited no response but you can guarantee it would have done from anyone who had read this book.

The reason for the success of what could easily sound dull as a police procedural thriller is the pace and the plot. The pace moves up and down the gears and as a result has the ability to catch you when you are not expecting it with marginal characters making breakthroughs in the case and then what looks like a strong lead hitting a brick wall.

But it is the ability of the husband and wife team to deliver a plot with a cast of characters that are actually made out to be human beings rather than just physical representations of certain job types that is clever. 20 pages in and you are given a twist that jolts you out of autopilot and reminds you that this is going to be something different.

Other thrillers start with a dead body and then keep piling them up until the detective manages to crack the case. Here it is different. You get the crime, in this case eight shot dead in a bus, but then you get very little else until the killer is caught.

Because the killer goes back into the shadows the reader has no idea who they are and has to sit on the shoulder of detective Martin Beck and his team to try and watch how he or she is caught.

Things are never straightforward because this is real life. It is also a book prepared to make statements about the politics of the time with some anti-Vietnam war material in her. It pains a mixed picture of Sweden making it feel much more real than a picture postcard ever could.

But ultimately what makes this fun is the gripping nature of the plot and the perfect timing of the development of the story until it reaches its conclusion. I took this on holiday expecting to spend a few days on it and stayed up late until I had finished it in one sitting. The reason was simply that although I could put it down I simply did not want to.

If you get a chance to pick up one of the thrillers in the ten book series this one after the first Roseanna would b e my recommendation. Beck’s marriage has fallen slightly more apart compared to Roseanna but he is still the cold ridden snow hating detective who never knows when to switch off and the crimes he tries to solve are gripping thanks to the imagination of Maj and Per.

The Unfree French - post II

Having painted a picture of confusion as the Germans advanced and invaded the country the situation gets worse. Those surrounding the Petain government in Vichy seem confused and divided not just about what they stand for but what they are actually able to do. Then for the vast majority of people there is a failure to understand the danger that the Nazi party poses.

part of the problem appears to be the incosistency that is linked to where you lived and who you came into contact with. But for those that were jews or deemed to be against the system the results were often imprisonment, deportation and death. The levels of jews that were deported to the gas chambers of the camps is sadly staggering.

meanwhile of course women starved olf male companionshop seemed only too happy to start relationships with officers and soldiers of the occupying army.

More soon...

The President's Last Love - Post III

Despite the various stories running at various stages of the President’s life the picture starts to become clearer that despite the mass of corruption around him Bunin is a relatively trustworthy sort.

He clearly has loved in the past and it is getting close to the moment when you discover if his second wife did give birth to twins. There is a nagging doubt that she doesn’t and that ends tragically. But he has also been a loyal friend to those he has met during his youth.

Meanwhile as president he is plagued by dreams that seem to have a meaning connected with the possibility of a coup. A Hammer Jeep features in some of his dreams along with his arch rival an oligarch responsible for power and energy.

The dreams are vivid and cause him concern but for now they are just indications of things to come.

More tomorrow….

Midnight's Children - post V

I've been listening to a Guardian podcast of Salman Rushdie talking about Midnight’s Children. Although it has helped a little bit put his motivation in context I’m starting to understand that perhaps when people say they don’t like his books they actually mean they don’t like him. Perhaps in the context of discussing your own work it is always going to make you sound slightly arrogant but there was a side to his personality that I didn’t find particularly endearing.

Still back in the world of his writing this book is starting to progress and at the half way stage there are plenty of indications that dramatic events are waiting to unfold. The first is the moment when Sinai loses a finger and the fact does not have the blood group of his mother and father is revealed leading his parents to argue over that conundrum.

The second development is the communion with the midnight children that Sinai conducts every night at the witching hour and the different talents that are revealed from those that were born in the magic first hour of independence.

Finally there is a suggestion that through his dream Sinai has the ability to kill those he dreams have died. The first to go is a classmate with a weak heart but he sets his sights on the studio boss who has used and then abused his aunt.

More tomorrow…

The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation - post I

One of the odd things about catching a P&O Ferry is the odd assortment of books that are offered in the shop. Among a smattering of the Richard & Judy summer reads there are various historical books that all seem to be ramming home the war theme.

I was always brought up to keep the subject of the war to myself when going over to the continent but it seems that those on the ferry can’t get enough of it. One thing has always puzzled me about the Second World War – the attitude of the French to occupation. Bearing in mind their attitude to Bermuda shorts in the campsite swimming pool and the insistence I had to wonder how they behaved when told what to do by Petain and his German backers.

Some of the answers are unfolding while reading this account. Establishing that following the collapse of the resistance against the German attack the confusion spread through both army and civilian population. The result was an exodus away from Paris and the North to the South.

But the confusion lasted longer than just the first few months and throughout the Vichy government there seemed to be confusion about not only what Petain was trying to do but what those around him actually stood for.

Of course the resistance movement is well documented in films and fiction but two chapters in and you wonder as much what Hitler thought about it all with the French squabbling between themselves in Vichy and drifting away from reality.

More to come…

The President's Last Love - post II

Not sure the constant jumping backwards and forwards over 40 years is a great style. There are several key datelines running with 1985, 2004 and 21015 all being jumped between.

The question of how a drifter with no real views on politics or any personal ambition became president is lurking somewhere in the story and there are also some failed love affairs and possibly a final successful one as well somewhere to be discovered?

It is enjoyable and there are some moments that make you smile but so far Bunin is not yet a character you totally root for because you can only partially see him. The pieces of the historical jigsaw are being pout down at a fairly quick rate but there is a fair way to go yet.

More tomorrow…

Midnight's Children - post IV

Suddenly the book changes from a colourful history and personal childhood biography to something more fanciful. Sinai informs his parents that he can hear voices, he seems to think are angles, and is rewarded with a box round the ears for his trouble.

But he really can hear voices and discovers the ability to get into the thoughts of peple ranging from farmers to prime ministers and sitting at the top of the clock tower he spends his time surfing the inner thoughts of thousands.

But it takes a bike crash caused by Sinai’s attempts to get the attraction of an American girl to get the pieces to click together and he realises he can communicate with the other midnight children born in the country in the hour of independence.

This is where the bravery of Rushdie comes in because presumably he had a choice to keep it a history of India told through the eyes of one boy/man or he could take a fantastic turn and as a result of course do something that only literature can help you achieve. It reminds you of a cartoon where the impossible becomes possible and surely that is what a great imagination should be able to do.

More tomorrow…