book review - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet - David Mitchell

"At the Crossroads, Jacob stops: ahead, Long Street continues to curve.
'That's Bony Alley,' Grote poinmts to their right, 'goin' to Sea Wall Lane: an' thataways,' Grote points left, 'is Short Street; and the Land-Gate...'
...and beyond the Land-Gate, thinks Jacob, is the Cloistered Empire."

It was almost impossible to come to this book without the weight of expectations set down by the numerous mentions of the words "David Mitchell" and "the genius of Cloud Atlas". The result is that when you open the pages and start to scan the pages you are looking for early and concrete signs that Mitchell is going to deliver.

The early signs are encouraging because it starts with Mitchell describing a world that is well researched but completely alien to a modern reader, describing Japan in 1799. This is a world that is cut off from the rest of the world, willingly and suspiciously keeping foreign influences at bay. But via a landbridge over to a small trading post Japan has made a trading relationship with the Dutch.

But before you get into that you have to go through a graphical opening passage describing a difficult birth of a child who manages against the odds to be saved by a skilled midwife. The passage is accompanied by an old fashioned etching type image that occasionally crop up elsewhere in the book.

Once that graphic and vivid introduction to Japanese culture, with men not allowed to see women naked, the midwife having her influence curbed because of her status you get the chance to move on and start the first book which is an introduction to the Dutch trading post through the eyes of Jacob de Zoet. The young clerk, the God fearing son of a clergyman, has been sent to clear up corruption that is rife in the trading post and he sets about his task with great gusto. But he is naive and the world he enters is not only a strange one but one that is tainted by politics, intrigue and violence that he initially appears to be far to wet behind the ears to deal with.

But there is a strength to de Zoet that comes from his conviction of what is right and his unbowed spirit is understood by others looking for someone to trust and as a result Jacob hovers in the background as the story moves on. The books that make up Thousand Autumns pick up the story of the Japanese midwife Orito that Jacob falls in love with as she is sent to a nunnery that carries out bizarre practices.

The story moves deeper into Japan and Mitchell opens up a world that is built on fear and power with the concept of what happens outside the halls of power and its borders almost irrelevant for its leaders.

But when the outside world does arrive with the British in the harbour firing cannon balls into the Dutch trading post the pressure is on to think differently and at that point Jacob returns to centre stage and the various strands of the stories come together.

Thematically this book is not just about the ideas of what is forbidden but the key concept is around the sense of things being lost in translation. It is not just words that are not understood but also actions and modes of behaviour. The breakthrough comes when Jacob makes the effort to teach himself Japanese. With interpreters not telling the truth it is one of the most powerful scenes in the book when he reveals he can understand them and talk their language.

"'I am told,' says the Magistrate, 'that you now understand some Japanese.'
To acknowledge the remark would advertise his clandestine studies, and may forfeit a tactical advantage. But to pretend not to understand, Jacob thinks, would be deceitful. 'Somehow I understand a little of the Magistrate's mother tongue, yes.'
The horseshoe of advisers murmurs in surprise hearing a foreigner speak."

But the other theme that will be carried long after the books has been read is the idea of traveling to different worlds and the concept that most of us don't understand in this connected world - the idea of distance.

As Jacob falls in love with Orito he is pining for the woman he left behind and the gap between boats bringing letters and messages from home stretches and finally those links with the past are completely severed.

Mitchell has delivered a book that shifts focus from one character to another, from one perspective to another but done so in a way that works. My solitary criticism would be the occasional moments when periphery characters are given free reign to spend several pages on their life stories, which don't add any particular value, but I sense even there it might be nit picking for the sake of it.

book review - The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa

"Everything in me is a tendency to be about something else; an impatience of the soul with itself, as if with an importunate child; a disquiet that is always growing, always the same."

At the start of this book it felt as if someone was describing how I felt about my job and sharing my dreams of escape. It felt as if the thoughts of Bernardo Soares echoed my own. But as the book went on it perhaps suffers from being a compiled after the author's death because it keeps going with no definable end simply halting when the material does.

That though is the solitary criticism of a book that manages to tap into human frustrations and emotions that feels as fresh as when they were first written 80 odd years ago. The thoughts that Soares shares are about dreams, work, love and God can make you laugh, think and ponder on the universality of life.

Set in Lisbon with most entries in the diary dated around the early 1930s the character Bernado Soares dreams of leaving his job as a clerk and turn his back on his boss Vasques, the office boy and his other colleagues. But he knows that even if he left them tomorrow what he moved into would end up being the same. As a result he moves from thinking about specific escape from his job to thinking about how it would be possible to escape from the conformity of life. Break free of that and wherever he goes would be different.

But of course that is an incredibly difficult task and even he accepts that as he starts to ponder why people believe in God, choose marriage and relationships and continue to work in the way they do whether or not there ever could be an alternative.

Because of the style of the book, which is in the form of entries from a diary dated and then where possible grouped thematically, this is perhaps not something you read in one sitting. It is a book that is perhaps more powerful being dipped into. So many thoughts are packed into one space that it is difficult to absorb it all.

For anyone who has ever thought that were alone in despairing about their job and the way life is then this is an ideal read. It shows not only that you are not alone but it's been that way for a long time. There is a great deal of comfort to be taken from that.

book review - The Elephant - Slawomir Mrozek

"In the morning the elephant was moved to a special run in a central position, next to the monkey cage. Placed in front of a large real rock it looked fierce and magnificent. A big notice proclaimed: "particularly sluggish. Hardly moves."

It is a rare thing to be able to make you laugh out loud about something that is far from laughable - the iron grip of a society that crushes the spirit - but it is with a wide smile on your face you race through The Elephant.

Mrozek knows how to deliver satire by the bucketful hitting the right mark everytime. A policeman who is stunned that anyone would want to lay a wreath at the statue commemorating trade unionists without having to be ordered to do so; the zoo that saves money by using an inflatable elephant; the man who's honest weather station reports end up being deemed to be politically incorrect.

Underneath the laughter there is of course the tragedy of living in totalitarian Poland in the years when the grip of the USSR was a firm one indeed. But what Mrozek shows on page after page is that it is possible to ridicule the state by taking some of the excessive behaviour to the extreme.

This collection of 47 stories, some less than a page, was written when the USSR was still a powerful force in the late 1950s but in many ways the emotions and frustrations he writes about here are timeless and just as applicable to the modern reader.

The best way of illustrating that is by focusing on the title story. The zoo owner might well think that he has struck on a brilliant idea of saving money by canceling the order for a real elephant and using an inflatable one but he is providing a false representation to the school children who come to look at it.

Such a short story is able to say so much about the pathetic way the USSR tried to imitate the West as well as how it's citizens were lied to on a regular basis. What thew children see is an elephant they are told will not move because it is temperamental. It even exposes the failings of a system that encourages box ticking rather than passion with the keepers filling the elephant with gas when they find blowing it up too difficult. But when it comes free of its moorings it moves in a way that no one could expect. Again there is a false experience for the viewers of the spectacle.

By lifting the veil and laughing at things that provoke fear and frustration this collection of short stories is a revelation that even in the darkest times there are writers prepared to use their skill to puncture the fear and nonsense of a totalitarian regime.

bookmark of the week

this bookmark came with some books sent to me by my kind bookish friend Janette known as BookRambler on twitter. It is a great bookmark of the leaning tower of Pisa. I visited there years ago and never saw a bookmark as good as this one and wasn't allowed anywhere near the tower either because of repair work. This is a wonderful reminder not just of Pisa but the paper craft shops that populate that part of Tuscany. Thanks to BookRambler for adding a bit of class to the bookmark collection

Ink

years ago there was a glossy monthly magazine Ink that interviewed authors, produced pages of reviews and even had a section at the back encouraging people to try creative writing. it was published by a company in Bath and lasted for a few issues before biting the dust.

I recently managed to dig up my first issue of the magazine and was flicking through. it aimed for the mainstream with articles on Lord of the Rings etc but it was also able to offer a few nuggets. I still get the LRB and TLS and Literary Review but do think it is a shame that Ink folded.

lot's of catching up to do

Feel miles behind this month. problem with trying to read as much as you can is that blogging can sadly come second place occassionally.

As a result there are several reviews outstanding:

White Castle by Orhan Pamuk, which I think might even be from last month
The Elephant by Slawomir Mrozek
The Carpenter's Pencil by Manuel Rivas
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

Also have a lot of bookmarks to put up for bookmark of the week.

Please bear with me while i try to catch up this weekend hopefully will be a productive one and things will get back to how they should be.

Thoughts at the halfway point of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

In some ways the way that Mitchell writes a story reminds me of one of those microscopes where you roll the lens to get a different view.

He starts from one angle and then shifts to another almost pushing the first character into the background completely. Although I put Cloud Atlas to one side to crack on with this you could see the same being done there.

In this case you enter the world of Japan in 1799 where the country is locked to foreigners and keeps its own archaic laws and rituals. But because of trade via a bridge to a small island the country does operate with the Dutch.

Jacob De Zoet has been sent to stamp out corruption but finds himself fooled by those he believes are trying to clear up the trading post. His mistake is not just to stick to his principles in a world where no one else does but to fall in love with the Japanese medical student Orito. She is from another world and as the book moves focus to settle on her you realise that De Zoet was not just late to the scene but is blissfully unaware of the battles that young woman has fought and is fighting.

A review will follow on completion...

bookmark of the week

There used to be a book magazine called Ink and it gave away themed bookmarks in some of its issues and this was the music one. Sadly the magazine didn't last and this bookmark is one of the only reminders for me of its existence.

bookshops you find yourself visiting - amazon.co.uk

This is a difficult one because everytime I buy a book from Amazon I feel as if I'm taking food out of the mouth of an independent bookseller and that is not a good feeling.

The problem is that when it comes to buying new releases in hard back it is very difficult ignoring Amazon because it does offer prices that are 50% or even more. So it was with a couple of clicks that this afternoon I found myself ordering The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, the new book from David Mitchell. At £8 something it is half the price of the £18.99 cover price.

It might well have saved me money but that feeling of guilt remains and sadly I'm not sure what to do about it. If I could afford to turn my nose up at the Amazon offer I would but I can't. The positive I guess is that I only buy one or two hard backs a year sticking to the paperback format nearly all the time because of the weight of books commuting.

A magical time in the Faber Archive

Having been one of the lucky six people given a chance to go and visit the Faber archive as part of a competition run by Culture 24 I wanted to provide a report on what happened on what was a magical evening.

After turning up and being greeted by the incredibly friendly Gemma Lovett and making our way up to the archive, time seemed to pause, as we sat back and soaked up information and the atmosphere.

The evening was split into three parts with the first bit spent with the archivist Robert Brown using photographs to tell the history of Faber & Faber and the influence of TS Eliot on the company.

A series of black and white photographs and a couple of videos took you on a virtual tour of the old Faber building in 24 Russell Square, which is now where SOAS is housed, and introduced you to the idea of the book committee and the way the company chose to accept or reject manuscripts.

Having seen the book committee at work in a 1951 video we were then shown some of the ledgers which marked down some of the decisions including the one made in 1944 to reject Orwell's Animal Farm.

The second part of the evening then moved on from the ledgers, kept in their beautiful copper script, to more of the physical objects that live in the archive. These included a postcard from Philip Larkin and some doodles made by TS Eliott as well as the rejection comments made on the decision to turn down William Golding's Stranger from Within, which became Lord of the Flies. It was dismissed in no uncertain terms as being far-fetched and 'dull'.

In the end the story of how Lord of the Flies did manage to be published was just as interesting as the rejection letter. Saved from the slush pile by another editor it was edited down by two thirds and became the book we all know today.

Just sitting round the very table that the book committee meets round and where Eliott would have sat was something very special and I have to admit to touching it with some reverence.

The archive keeps the correspondence of the authors and poets that are on the Faber roster and we were allowed to see some of the letters that were deemed to be suitable because of course with some writers the people mentioned and the decisions described are still living and live.

Finally to show how the archive was a living and developing body two of Faber's poets, Joe Dunthorne and Heather Phillipson read from their own work and other Faber poets, including Charles Simic, John Berryman, Simon Armitage and Don Paterson. The readings were intimate and powerfully showed just why everything Faber does matters.

The Faber archive is a wonderful insight not just into how one particular publishing house operated but into a world where the written word matters. Of course it is a business and money has to be made but the passion for books swamps the very air in the Faber offices and it was wonderful to be allowed to breathe some of that in for an hour.

My thanks to all those that organised it and I hope, for the sake of the many friends that told me they would have loved to have gone, that after this first run Faber will open the archives again and allow more book lovers into look at these fantastic objects of history.

In the meantime keep an eye on the web because Gemma and colleagues are scanning documents whenever they get the time and the archive is going to be digitized so the world can see some of the marvels in the archive.

Thoughts at the halfway point of the Book of Dis-Quiet

Just a few pages into this book I felt such an empathy with the voice of the narrator that it felt almost like a self-help book, but one without any advice just observations on how miserable working life can be.

A man who hates his job, dislikes most of his colleagues dreams of escape but he knows in his heart of hearts that wherever he goes it will be the same and he starts to see his colleagues in a more tolerant light.

The book is written in the format of a journal over several years but the jumping around between the years is because of the attempts to group together certain observations thematically.

if you ever wondered if anyone felt like you when you walked through the doors of the office and took your seat then wonder no more they do and they have been well before you were ever born.

A review will follow soon...

Flying through a book

If there is one good thing to be said for having to give up some of your own weekend, evening and even your own comforting bed for a hotel room in Europe it is the chance to read en route.

The flight from London to Barcelona made on Sunday afternoon and returning on Monday night took just shy of two hours and in that time it was possible to have a small snooze and knock off a 160 page novel. Really enjoyed that side of the experience and realise that it underlines very firmly just how much reading you can achieve when you have the time, the lack of distractions and a chance to dictate your own reading rhtym.

Sadly that trip is far too rare so it will be back to snatched minutes on the daily commute.

bookmark of the week

One of the most well loved children's books of all time has to be Eric Carle's the Hungry Caterpillar and this magnetic bookmark is done with great imagination. it clips onto the top of the book pages giving the impression that even after all those apples and pieces of cake the book might be next to be munched.

bookshops you find yourself visiting - airport bookshop

If you find yourself at the airport before going away without your chosen reading material already packed then you might struggle. Although there are plenty of WH Smith branches offering a selection of sorts there is nowhere near the depth you need to make a decent choice. Plus the deals on offer tend to push the reader towards a supermarket type selection of best sellers that only make economic sense if you buy more than one or two.

But before this post slips into pure moaning let it be said that one advantage are the special airport paperback versions of hardbacks yet to appear in that format. These exclusive editions remind me a bit of the paperback readers club which used to specialise something similar. But if there is something you are after and were worried it might weigh a lot in hardback format then the airport bookshop might just turn up trumps.

book review - Natasha and other stories - David Bezmozgis

"-Roman Abramovich, remember, you always have a friend in Moscow. Visit anytime.
laughing at his joke, the agent turned, and we proceeded to the elevator and rode up to Sergei's floor. In the elevator my father leaned against the wall and finally loosened his grip on my neck.
-Don't ever forget. This is why we left. So you never have to know people like him."

The interlinked short stories from David Bezmozgis give a fascinating insight into the lives of a Russian Jewish family that has emigrated to Canada in the 1970s. The Soviet rule of fear and the KGB is still in full swing under Brezhnev but for the Berman family made up of Roman, Bella and their son Mark they have escaped that world.

Although as the tale starts with the family living hand to mouth learning English and relying on the immigrant community to help them escaping is far from an easy option.

Through a series of stories Mark grows up and the world around him becomes one that starts to get easier as the hard work put in by his father and mother starts to pay off.

Stories that stand out include Tapka about a friend's dog who is involved in a car accident after a young Mark and his cousin neglect to look after the animal. The sense of that moment when a childish mistake causes very real adult consequences is brilliantly conveyed.

Then the tale of the Second Strongest Man also provides an insight into the hard world of the KGB, drugs and sport and how quickly a sportsman's star can fall. The way in which someone can have their life decided for them is palpable as the former world champion weight lifter Sergei has to confront the moment when the authorities decide he is no longer number one.

The final couple of stories concentrate on the fate of some of the older Jewish members of the community and how they have been forgotten and often abandoned by younger generations that see them as some sort of embarrassing link to a past and a world they would rather forget.

After you put the book down a couple of thoughts spring to mind. The first is that essentially we are all the same regardless of where we grow up, all making the same mistakes in life and love. But it also holds out hope that there is such a thing as community and it will come to the rescue when things look bleak. Sadly it is that as much as the former USSR that Bezmozgis's characters have escaped that you suspect has faded into history.