Summer Reading 2018

1. Incredible Bodies by Ian McGuire

A friend in academia recommended this to me, as it documents the travails of a visiting lecturer as he navigates the perils of university life. Now back in print, having been first published in 2006, it's an amusing and punchy comedy, in which every character is nastier than the last, and with some well-aimed swipes at obscurity and pretension.

2. Paradise Lost by John Milton

A long, careful re-read of this magnificent poem, savouring every line and allowing myself to become lost in the grandeur and beauty of the language, without critical thinking. The scale of the poem is awe-inspiring: from the depths of Chaos through Hell, across space itself, where many planets hang, ready to bring forth life; the sun itself, and the whole world, hanging on its golden chain; the crystalline walls of Heaven. I will be happily making my way through this once more over the next month or so, with a more analytical viewpoint, but for the moment, I was content simply to stand in amazement.

3. The Emigrants by W G Sebald

I am relatively new to Sebald, and I can't understand how I could have lived without him. The craft of his sentences is simply extraordinary: so effortless and seemingly insouciant, but so carefully and deeply considered. Here he looks at several lives of Jewish people displaced by war. Some, such as Cosmo Solomon, the gambler with the lucky streak and devoted manservant, are astonishing; yet even the more "ordinary" ones have a lambency to them that burns far long after the book has been finished. Images recur, deftly, such as butterfly hunters and French horns, perhaps suggesting patterns in chaos, or perhaps suggesting that whilst we look for patterns in chaos, the reality is that there are none.

4. The Judas Boy by Simon Raven

Having very much enjoyed the first volume of the Alms to Oblivion Sequence, I was warned off the second; but I persevered. The Judas Boy continues the saga of Fielding Gray, Raven's deformed anti-hero, who is sent to Greece on a mysterious mission, but is deflected by a beautiful boy who resembles the one he betrayed at school. The plot is thin, and the whole has a feel of having been dashed off in between lunch and supper; but it was still an enjoyable-ish way to spend an afternoon, partly because of Raven's gift for skewing personalities with a line or two, and partly because one can recognise the types he was writing about as being true to life. Raven is like Anthony Powell's slightly seedy, alcoholic younger brother.

5. Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel

Continuing my long-standing delve into Mantel's backlist, this is her second novel, a sequel of sorts to Every Day is Mother's Day, in which the demented Muriel Axon and her seance-giving mother cause trouble in the suburbs. This is an extraordinary novel, completely uninterested in pandering to the tastes of a reader, with Mantel's sentences stretching out like the tendrils of the ghosts she writes about, ready to snatch and tear. Muriel returns to wreak what she considers revenge on the people who have wronged her. It's gruesome and wicked, full of darkness and terror. The title, coincidentally, is found in Paradise Lost, where Michael is being told to go to Eden to bear his message of exile to Adam and Eve:

MICHAEL, this my behest have thou in charge,
Take to thee from among the Cherubim
Thy choice of flaming Warriours, least the Fiend
Or in behalf of Man, or to invade
Vacant possession som new trouble raise:
Hast thee, and from the Paradise of God
Without remorse drive out the sinful Pair,
From hallowd ground th' unholie, and denounce
To them and to thir Progenie from thence
Perpetual banishment.

Books of the Year for 2014

A Happy New Year to One and All! And herewith are my books of the year, for 2014.

Fiction

Hermione Eyre's first novel, Viper Wine, was a dazzling exploration of time travel and beauty, set in the Carolingian court; whilst Constantine Phipps' What You Want brought didactic epic poetry into the twenty-first century with all guns blazing. I also very much enjoyed Nick Harkaway's Tigerman, a techno-fantasy about a dying colony; and Mal Peet's The Murdstone Trilogy is a clever and hilarious exploration of the book world and the fantasy genre. Whilst I have been steadily catching up on Hilary Mantel's backlist, I found her short story collection, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, sinisterly gripping. And, though I haven't yet finished it, Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake, written in an approximation of Anglo-Saxon, is brutal, bold and satisfying.

Poetry

I haven't read much poetry this year, but Lavinia Greenlaw's A Double Sorrow, which is a retelling of Troilus and Cressida, was moving and intelligent; and Simon Armitage's play, The Last Days of Troy, has many witty touches whilst keeping the grandeur and terror of the original story.

Children's Books

There were two stand out books (for me) this year: Sonya Hartnett's The Children of the King, a wise, beautiful novel about ghosts and family; and David Almond's A Song for Ella Grey, in which the singer Orpheus returns to the world - this time, to the north of England. A special mention should go to Kate Saunders' Five Children on the Western Front, which poignantly follows on from E Nesbit's classic; and finally, Diana Wynne Jones' last book, The Islands of Chaldea, which displays her distinctive wisdom and emotive power. 

Classics

I finished Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, with The Last Post, a gentle yet dazzling coda; I also continued my Henry Green obsession, with Nothing and Doting, both of which have the uneasy pull of Green at his best. Aldous Huxley's After Many a Summer I revisited, and was once more shocked by its final image, of an ancient, practically immortal Earl who has reverted into monkey form. Pendennis by William Thackeray is a sharp, precise satire about a young man seeking his fortune in literary London, which still remains vivid and on the point today; and T H White's The Goshawk, a bleak and powerful book about the author's relationship with his bird of prey.

Future Classics for Spear's

Spear's asked me to recommend some books that might become classics in the future. Read my recs here.

Sally Gardner's Maggot Moon: A worthy contender for the Costa Awards

Sally Gardner: A worthy contender

So Hilary Mantel won the Costa Prize; for which I do not begrudge her - Bring up the Bodies is a fine novel. But there was one book on the list that I thought deserved a look in.

A tender friendship between two boys; a dyslexic hero; self-sacrifice; propaganda. These are the ingredients of Sally Gardner’s moving young adult novel, Maggot Moon.

Young adult fiction is a tricky area: many see it as a form of escapism, a clichéd place inhabited by sexy vampires who rip their tops off every other minute, and pale heroines whose only worry is whom they should marry (hello to you, Stephanie Meyer). A way, in other words, for teens to avoid serious adult fiction.

Maggot Moon is not at all like that. It engages with complex, fascinating ideas in an original manner, and the writing is full of beautiful images. The voice of its narrator, Standish Treadwell, is absorbing and striking. He is a teenage dyslexic whose family lives in Zone 7, in a city that is never named (but feels like London). The year is sometime in the 1950s, and a totalitarian Motherland is in control of everything. We are in an alternative dystopian England. The term “dystopia” is bandied around a lot in the young adult world, but here it is essential to the book: the country itself doesn’t function, suppressing and eliminating everything that goes against its ideology. Here someone like Standish – a “dyslexic” – is seen to be odd, even a threat.

Which, as it turns out, he is, to the Motherland at least – for this apparent outsider will uncover a conspiracy that is attempting to deceive the entire world. Standish, the apparent freak, will, in an act of simple but glorious rebellion, set in train events that will bring the country back into a functioning regime once more. The story has its roots in the ritual of folklore. It isn’t too much of a stretch to think of the narrative as a form of the kind of renewal found in the King Arthur cycles – someone must die to make the country live.

The book’s appeal is therefore manifold. Teenagers will find Standish’s askew relationship with the world attractive; adults will find it just as gripping, since it takes its nourishment from such deep wells of storytelling. It also deals with a male friendship that blossoms into love in a touching, believable manner, which is a brave and timely thing to do.

The final message of the book, though, is the one that resounds the most. The world that we inhabit seems to be operated by leviathans that exist out of our reach: whether they are uber-rich individuals, tax-avoiding corporations, or hapless governments, the ordinary person seems to have very little real power (although we are given the illusion of it through social media and consumerism.) Maggot Moon shows that it is possible to have a powerful impact as a single person.

It may not quite be a revolutionary call to arms – but it is a call to think, to question; and to the lonely soul, making its way on this hostile planet, it gives the best thing of all: hope.

A Brace of Booker Books: The Lighthouse by Alison Moore, and Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

Dan Stevens: Judge

Morning all: I've reviewed a couple of Man Booker longlisted novels for The Telegraph - The Lighthouse by Alison Moore, and Swimming Home by Deborah Levy. Both are brilliant, skewed, original and gripping. Click on the links to read the reviews. Dan Stevens (pictured, as Matthew Crawley in Downton Abbey) is one of the judges that chose an interesting longlist - much more so than last year, I think - and one that clearly favours experimentation. I'd say that Michael Frayn, Hilary Mantel, Will Self, Nicola Barker and André Brink were dead certs for the shortlist, but with a list like this it's hard to guess. Number six could be Ned Beauman or Deborah Levy; I don't think Alison Moore or Jeet Thayil will make it on. We wait with breath bated...


 

Literary Review, June issue: Children's Round up

What ho. I've done my summer round up for Literary Review - the June issue is out now, with a beautiful cover featuring Edmund Spenser. There's plenty of goodness in the magazine, including a review of Hilary Mantel's Bring up the Bodies. And a book about The Only Way is Essex. Or TOWIE, as I believe it's known. I've reviewed a feast of writers - Eva Ibbotson, Frances Hardinge, Conrad Mason, Derek Keilty, Philip Reeve, Prentice and Weil, Sally Nicholls, Celia Rees, and Gill Lewis. Check it out, chums. It's not online, so haul yourself to an actual real life newsagent. You won't regret it.

The Booker Prize: An Omission

I'd been meaning to write about the Booker (or the Man Booker as one is meant to call it), but other things have slipped in the way: miners, the onset of winter, bills, and a children's round-up that I am in the thick of, (and Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, which I am currently obsessing about.) This year's Booker choice, Howard Jacobson, was a solid decision from an otherwise slightly odd shortlist: Galgut's In A Strange Room, a marvellous piece of work, being rather too slight; I don't think, however, that Jacobson's book has the broader appeal or heft of something like Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. It seems that this year the judges have based their opinions entirely on enjoyment of a novel: which all seems a bit book club to me. And the one book which should have been on the short list, and a strong contender for the title, was Paul Murray's enchanting, weird, brilliant Skippy Dies. Its omission was a huge mistake.

I went to the Booker party for Andrea Levy for about five minutes: it was in the Century club, and there were mounds and mounds of toothsome canapes; after a long chat with an editor about a misery memoir I ought to write about psychic pandas who can see angels, we slipped off quite soon to the Cape party. There I spent many an hour deep in conversation with an up and coming novelist, Leo Benedictus, about the pros and cons of electronic books; Tom McCarthy made an appearance, as did the elegant Chloe Aridjis, and Adam Foulds, whose beautiful book The Quickening Maze was shortlisted last year. The canape quality was excellent, I might add.