#77 The Quiet American, by Graham Greene (Vintage)

Well, here’s a turn-up for the books (challenge). I was really looking forward to reading another Graham Greene, and The Quiet American is acknowledged as one of his classics, but I really didn’t enjoy it very much at all.

My main problem was that I struggled to follow the story. It’s not that I didn’t understand it (or at least I don’t think so!), but rather it never became readable enough for me to want to fully comprehend the metaphors and the allegories.

At the heart of the tale, set in 1950s Indochina, is a love triangle between a native woman, who wants merely to ensure a future for herself, an ambiguous if jaded English reporter and an American officer who turns out to be more than he appears. It’s a hugely political book, with the trio each representing their nations and wider political beliefs, with the Vietnamese Phuong torn between her two suitors, with tension ever increasing on journalist Fowler, one of nature’s observers, to take sides.

As the evidence mounts of American Pyle’s duplicity and treacherous intentions, despite his honourable behaviour towards Phuong, Fowler realises he has to take action. And so the book, which begins with Pyle’s death, concludes as it was destined. But the route there was so slow and meandering that I only started to care when a particularly horrible explosion takes place late in the piece.

I can see how The Quiet American, with its relevance to the Vietnam war, can be admired, and perhaps even reviled by some due to its anti-American stance, but either way, it never captured my full attention.

So, rating time:

#77 The Quiet American, by Graham Greene (Vintage) - 5/10

Next up: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (Penguin Group)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating

#76 The Observations, by Jane Harris (Faber and Faber Limited)

It’s hardly Paul Auster, but making observations about The Observations seems a bit surreal. Thankfully, the latter is a book about a newly commissioned young maid and her life and it’s quite a ribald entertaining affair.

The maid, Bessy Buckley, is as forthright as they come despite her tender years, and even though many phrases she uses are corruptions, nicknames or simply made up, there is no mistaking what she means – hence a disliked reverend is called Reverend Bollix.

For a book containing such dark subjects, from child prostitution to instable mental health to alcoholism, it’s strange that it retains such a playful air, however, and laughter – both Bessy’s and the reader’s – is never far away.

That said, for quite a lengthy book, stretching to upwards of 500 pages, I don’t believe I was engrossed at any stage. Interested, but never desperate to find out what was going to happen next.

So, rating time:

#76 The Observations, by Jane Harris (Faber and Faber Limited) - 6/10

Next up: The Quiet American, by Graham Greene (Vintage)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating

#75 Leviathan, by Paul Auster (Faber and Faber Limited)

It cost me about £13 more than it should have done, but I suppose Paul Auster’s latest, Leviathan, was worth it!

My monetary issues came courtesy of a library fine. Unfortunately, I took out Leviathan around three months ago, but immediately ‘lost’ it. I renewed it online four times – the wonders of the modern library system, about which I promise I will write at some point this year – but then my computer broke, I was busy at work, I forgot about it and [feel free to add any of your own excuses here].

Thankfully, it turned up, not least because it meant I could pay my fines (my other books were overdue by this stage as well) - but not before I actually managed to read the book!

I was hooked from the start, Thankfully, Wikipedia provides the opening lines:

“Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin. There were no witnesses, but it appears that he was sitting on the grass next to his parked car when the bomb he was building accidentally went off. According to the forensic reports that have just been published, the man was killed instantly. His body burst into dozens of small pieces, and fragments of his corpse were found as far as 50 feet away from the site of the explosion.”

The subsequent tale, then, is of how events came to pass, pieced together by a struggling author who also relates how he is in a position to tell the story of his best friend. But while things start as a typical ‘thriller’, it’s not long before Auster is subverting the genre to introduce his typical existentialist ideas.

The usual themes are present; isolationism, the interconnectedness of things and the changing nature of identity, but this is combined with a story which compels you to keep turning the pages.

If I was being hyper critical, there were one or two coincidences, which Dickens-like become important plot devices which I could have done without, but there’s no denying that Auster consistently provides entertaining, yet intelligent and thoughtful, fare.

So, rating time:

#75 Leviathan, by Paul Auster (Faber and Faber Limited) - 8/10

Next up: The Observations, by Jane Harris (Faber and Faber Limited)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating

#74 Pied Piper, By Nevil Shute (Vintage)

Given Nevil Shute is my new favourite author as a result of this book challenge, I had high hopes of Pied Piper. That my perhaps unrealistic expectations were not quite realised was a shame, but that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it.

It’s another ‘love story’ set during the war, and as seems usual in Shute’s stories, the love is a little more complicated than you might expect; not so much between man and woman as between elderly man and the children he is trying to escort to safety, not to mention the love the women who accompanies him has for his late son.

In contrast to Requiem For a Wren and A Town Like Alice, I never felt fully engaged with the main character, whose idyllic fishing trip in France quickly turns into a battle for survival after the Germans invade and he tries to flee back to England, taking numerous children under his protection en route.

As usual, Shute’s main characters are imbued with hope and good intentions in the face of life-threatening circumstances, so the reader is really ‘living’ their experiences and wants them to survive, to achieve their goals. But it remains believable, so setbacks - even deaths - are common, and are made all the more effective and affecting.

The other thing I like about Shute is his ability to tell a simple tale simply. The occasional flashback aside, there are very few gimmicky tricks and cleverness, and the sparse language he uses concentrates your attention on the story.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find Pied Piper’s story quite as moving and powerful as his afore-mentioned novels - but they were truly excellent, so it’s really picking holes in another fine book.

So, rating time:

#74 Pied Piper, By Nevil Shute (Vintage) - 8/10

Next up: Leviathan, by Paul Auster (Faber and Faber Limited)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating

#73 The Highest Tide, by Jim Lynch (Bloomsbury Publishing)

[Puts on American film trailor voiceover deep voice] "In a world where the tide is rising, one boy has the power to alert his fellow man to the dangers to the planet..."

But this isn’t a film (although the adaptation cannot be too far away), and while The Highest Tide is a fairly charming tale of a small boy alive to the problems caused by the changing environmental nature of the world, with a particular focus on marine life, it doesn’t quite hit home.

There is a lot to like. The 13-year-old main character Miles is very believable, as knowledgeable about the sea as he is unworldly wise in all other matters, and such is the influence of the sea and its teeming life, it becomes a character in the book on its own merit.

The media circus which descends on his home after he makes a series of incredible discoveries, and how he deals with the reporters and the attention, is nicely observed, and his relationships with his friends, the aquarium owners to whom he sells his discoveries and his confused former babysitter, with whom he is infatuated, provide plenty of chuckles. But the novel takes a wrong step when a cult, and therefore religion, is introduced after he starts to make prophesies - aided by a ‘psychic’ friend – which start to come true.

It was a diversion that I could have done without, but that minor negative plus a downbeat ending meant I finished the book less enthusiastic about it than I was halfway through.

So, rating time:

#73 The Highest Tide, by Jim Lynch (Bloomsbury Publishing)- 7/10

Next up: Pied Piper, By Nevil Shute (Vintage)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating

#72 Money, by Martin Amis (Vintage)

He’s often called the finest English writer of his generation, and Money is supposed one of his best works, so I was looking forward to reading my first Martin Amis book.

That said, I wasn’t coming into it without any preconceptions. You can’t read a newspaper – particularly the literary sections – without your eyes alighting on yet more accusations that Amis is ‘misogynistic’, so I was interested to see whether his words lived up to the hype. Of course, I was also interested to know whether he was any good...

I came away largely disappointed, in both respects. There’s no denying Amis is a fine writer, but I can’t say I enjoyed Money, a tale of excess in all pursuits, from financial matters to fast food and sex. The narrator and anti-heroic main character is so unsympathetic that you really don’t care what happens to him, even as he tries to extricate himself from various messes which are not entirely of his doing.

Then there is Martin Amis himself, a character in his own book, and a writer at that. I’ve really got little patience with writers who indulge in this kind of post-modern self-awareness (the main character is even called John Self, by the way). At its best, it’s tacky and pointless. At its worst, it’s cleverness for cleverness’ sake.

While his prose frequently soars, and there is much to admire in the descriptive assault he makes on readers, there is also a lot of ‘look at me, isn’t my writing clever’ in Money. But while some have criticised the unimaginative plot, I have to say that was the only thing which kept me turning the pages. Loathsome as I found Self, who knows the worth of everything but the value of nothing, I wanted to know the resolution.

On to the accusations of misogyny. Of course, it’s Self who is misogynistic – women are treated abysmally throughout (it’s noticeable that the one ‘happy’ relationship he discovers is instantly screwed up through his weakness) – rather than Amis, but it’s to such an extent, far beyond normal boundaries, that you can see how such questions are asked. And that’s just after reading one book.

This is the second book in a row during my challenge, after The New Confessions, to feature the making of a film which is destined never to be made, or at least in the way its director intended. And I wonder whether it’s a metaphor for this challenge, because I’m falling dangerously behind...

So, rating time:

#72 Money, by Martin Amis (Vintage)- 7/10

Next up: The Highest Tide, by Jim Lynch (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating

#71 The New Confessions, by William Boyd (Penguin Group)

I’ve come to know many characters this year, but none as vivid or as comprehensive as John James Todd, the ‘star’ of William Boyd’s The New Confessions. I say comprehensive because Boyd leaves nothing out in his depiction of a man who finds and loses fame with the same regularity as his friendships.

The scope of the book is extraordinary, ranging from the end of the 19th century through Edinburgh, the First World War, Hollywood and McCarthyism, with Todd all the while making decisions in an effort to prolong his fame and ensure he still ‘matters’ which gradually alienate him from his friends, family, colleagues and ultimately the world.

Todd isn’t a character with which you sympathise, mainly because there is no attempt to shield the reader from the nastier sides of his character. Indeed, he reveals most of it himself. But because he is the heartbeat of the novel, the reader becomes as bound in his adventures as he is himself. You revile him as much as you admire his pursuit of what he deems to be important at whatever stage of his life he has reached, and Boyd’s eye for historical detail brings his world alive, especially the post-war film world of Berlin.
All in all, it’s a real tour de force. My only issue was with its length and its relentlessness. It’s far from an ‘easy read’ and as much as the attention to detail and the setting of events in a historical context magnifies the emotions of the tale, rather than let the reader follow what appears to be a natural course, Boyd ties you to Todd and the narrative to such an extent that you start to resent him, and a story which steadfastly refuses to end.

So, rating time:

#71 The New Confessions, by William Boyd (Penguin Group) - 8/10

Next up: Money, by Martin Amis (Vintage)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating

#70 Crossfire, by Dick Francis & Felix Francis (Penguin Group)

Readers may recall that in the dim and distant past – OK, February – I commented on the death of Dick Francis, whose horse-racing books I greatly enjoyed as I was growing up. Unfortunately, as he got older, and following the death of his wife, who reportedly contributed a great deal to his novels, the quality of his books diminished, so it was with some trepidation I approached his final work, Crossfire.

Thankfully, there was little reason to be fearful. It’s far from a Francis classic, but it’s certainly not all bad, and there is enough to keep most readers entertained, even if much of it is incredibly far-fetched.

As is customary in Francis’ books, we’ve got a character with a ‘special’ background, and, sadly, in this day and age, it’s unsurprising to find he is a soldier. And a seriously injured soldier at that. The book is dedicated to ‘grandson and son Williams Francis’, a Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, so it’s clear the authors didn’t have to travel far to do their research.

The soldier in question returns to his mother’s prestigious stables to discover that she’s being blackmailed, and pretty soon he’s up to eyes in various schemes, plots, tax fiddles and, of course, a beautiful women.

Fans of Francis will see a lot of private detective Sid Halley, one of Francis’ best characters, in Crossfire’s Tom Forsyth. For Halley’s amputated hand, Forsyth is missing a foot, and both endure plenty of pain, are threatened and imprisoned, and show no hesitation in resorting to violence en route to resolving their personal conflict.

Unfortunately, the plot is more nag than thoroughbred, but it retains enough interest to keep you turning the pages, and it’s by no means a bad way for the Francis legacy to bow out.

So, rating time:

#70 Crossfire, by Dick Francis & Felix Francis (Penguin Group) - 6/10

Next up: The New Confessions, by William Boyd (Penguin Group)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating

#69 Sex, Bowls & Rock & Roll, by Alex Marsh (The Friday Project)

Has it really been a month since I last blogged? No matter. While my writing may have stalled slightly, my reading has continued apace, so prepare yourselves for some regular updates this week as I play catch up – on this challenge, on my nemesis and perhaps even on life itself.

We’ll start with a piece of harmless flim-flam. Sex, Bowls & Rock & Roll: How I Swapped My Rock Dreams For Village Greens is, I realised after I had finished reading it, one of those books which has stemmed from a blog (privatesecretdiary.com, apparently).

Unfortunately, in my experience, this is rarely a good thing – although I’m willing to change my mind if I get the right offer. Publishers, you know where to find me!

The blurb on the reverse instructs readers: “You’ll piss yourself laughing, and if you don’t believe us, turn to page 16.” Unfortunately, I neglected to do this before taking the book out of the library. Had I done so, I might have saved myself a medium amount of bother.

To set the scene, there is this bloke who fancies himself as a musician, who moves to Norfolk, where he finds there are very few musicians with which to form a band. So he takes up bowls. With little success. And so Sex, Bowls & Rock & Roll is a knockabout tale about his bowls matches, his general countryside mishaps and everyday life in a small village.

Much as I couldn’t summon much enthusiasm for the book when I was reading it, so I can’t summon much energy to criticise it following its completion. There was the odd humorous line, but it was nowhere near as funny or poignant as it should have been and perhaps took itself to be.

Page 16, by the way, features the author at the dentist. With a knob gag. It’s hardly Voltaire.

So, rating time:

#69 Sex, Bowls & Rock & Roll, by Alex Marsh (The Friday Project) - 6/10

Next up: Crossfire, by Dick Francis & Felix Francis (Penguin Group)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating