AI generated slop

 Here's my piece about AI generated slop in this week's Spectator. 

MISSING FAY by Adam Thorpe: review

Here's a link to my review of Adam Thorpe's latest novel, a mysterious, lucent piece of work, for THE SPECTATOR. Read it here.

Laurie Lee's Rosie

Morning, I've written a little piece for The Independent about the pitfalls of inspiring a literary work. Read it here.

Summer reading 2014

Samuel Pepys: salty

These are the books I'm lugging with me for my week away. I'll be delving, as usual, into Samuel Pepys, and savouring his salty, vivid prose, although it does sometimes feel rather Sisyphean. Henry Green's first novel, Blindness, was written whilst he was still at school; I hope to be left very jealous. I'm revisiting Aldous Huxley, having chanced upon After Many a Summer recently; I'm taking Eyeless in Gaza, his most sincere novel. A classic I've never looked at, and timely given the publication of the final volume, is Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts.

Concerning contempory fiction: Continuing my attempts to catch up on Hilary Mantel's backlist before her next book comes out, I've got Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, a study of isolation in Jeddah. I love those sinister, eerie earlier works. Having loved, as many did, Middlesex, I've left off reading Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot for ages, so that's coming too, and for similar reasons, Don DeLillo's Libra, another author whose works I'm hungrily devouring. Zadie Smith's NW friends assure me is brilliant so she's along for the ride.

I'm also very much looking forward to two works of non-fiction: Peter Stothard's Alexandria: The Last Nights of Cleopatra, and Helen Macdonald's already bestselling H is for Hawk. I've  read T H White's The Goshawk in preparation, and am tempted to get my own hawk. I wonder if they'll let it through customs?

Future Classics for Spear's

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

Rebecca Hunt: Everland review in Literary Review

I've reviewed Rebecca Hunt's Everland for the March issue of Literary Review. Not available online, only in a lovely, gleaming, real print copy.

Harry Potter and The Goldfinch: How they are related

Warning: Doesn't move

So I've finally finished Donna Tartt's mostly enjoyable The Goldfinch, which weightily discusses the purpose of moving art around. It has been widely reviewed, obviously, and its relationship to the Harry Potter series (which has got moving art in it) has already been noted. The more I think about it, the more I believe that Tartt is saying: you've had your Portkeys and your spells and your wands. True magic lies in the things that man makes.

Here, then, is how they are related.

The Goldfinch

Orphaned boy with glasses & scar

Parents killed, one in terrorist attack, one in accident

Sent to live with horrid relatives

Finds solace with wise older man

Falls for bright ginger girl

Has goofy, slightly irritating friend

Gets his kicks from magic drugs

Dates the wrong girl

Has an enemy called Lucius

Moves a painting around

Finally defeats "evil"

Nickname: Harry Potter

Published by Bloomsbury, then Little, Brown
 

Harry Potter

Orphaned boy with glasses & scar

Parents killed in wizarding terrorist attack


Sent to live with horrid relatives

Finds solace with wise older wizard

Falls for bright ginger girl

Has goofy, slightly irritating friend

Gets his kicks from magic

Dates the wrong girl

Has an enemy called Lucius

Has paintings that move around

Finally defeats evil

Nickname: Harry Potter

Published by Bloomsbury, then Little, Brown

Books of the Year for 2013

Parade's End: still enthralling

As 2013 gets put away into the cupboard, and 2014 sits quietly in its box waiting to be opened, it's time for my annual list of my books of the year. I haven't done as much reviewing this year as usual, what with judging the Costa Children's Book Award, amongst other things, but a few new books did strike me as being worth a look.

Otherwise, I've been continuing to read Peter Dickinson, discovering his Changes trilogy , in which Merlin returns to England, casting a spell over the whole island. Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End series has held me in thrall; I've the final book in the sequence to finish this coming year. I've also been catching up on Hilary Mantel, Don DeLillo, and the two Fitzgeralds, Penelope and F Scott. Those early Mantel novels are darkly, acidly wonderful; Don DeLillo's prose is a thing of chiselled, crazy beauty; Penelope Fitzgerald I could rave over for days; but I must admit to being a little disappointed with F Scott's first novel. It had moments of mercurial brilliance, though, and is still worth looking at.

I can heartily recommend reading Shakespeare on your iPhone - for some reason, the plays seem to fit the screen very nicely.



Fiction
 

My two favourite novels of the year were both clever and playful takes on fiction and writing. First Novel by Nicholas Royle saw an extremely unreliable narrator's past come to light in gripping fashion.

Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux was a highly enjoyable sci-fi-ish romp containing enough golems, Dr Johnson references and layers of narrative to keep anyone happy. 

I also enjoyed the return of Nigel Williams, with Unfaithfully Yours, a witty and dark epistolary novel; and John Harwood's The Asylum was a welcome addition from the Gothic master. Neil Gaiman's selection of fantastical stories, Unnatural Creatures, introduced me to many writers I hadn't come across before - in particular, Peter S Beagle, whose story about a bored aristocrat inviting Death to her ball was both moving and beautiful.

Anna Stothard's third novel, The Art of Leaving, is a well-textured, finely-organised thing: evocative of damp, dirty Soho, it tells the story of a girl who can't stay with men. Her fantasies and her growing suspicions are played out amongst a wonderfully-realised London. And, although it didn't come out this year, I was pleased to discover Benjamin Wood's The Bellwether Revivals - a mightily accomplished first novel, set in Cambridge, which manages to avoid all the usual Oxbridge novel clichés and is both well-constructed and involving.

Also recommended is a little experiment: Paul Griffiths' Let Me Tell You (2008), which takes the words of Ophelia in Hamlet and makes something original and strange out of them. (I came across a mention of it in a review by Adam Mars-Jones in the London Review of Books this August.)

Non fiction

The Real Jane Austen by Paula Byrne is a lively reappraisal of the novelist, putting her into the wider context of her time; C S Lewis: A Life by Alister McGrath was a little dry, but very good on explaining the importance of Christianity in Lewis' works. Horace and Me by Harry Eyres was a memoir-cum-homage to the poet with its own elegance and wit.

Poetry

The only (new) volume of poetry I've read this year is Robin Robertson's Hill of Doors; it is a thing of light and wonder.

Children's Books

I've done several children's book round ups this year, not to mention judging the Costa Children's Book award, so I will only mention one that I thought should get more attention: Ann Kelly's Runners, published by Luath Press: a carefully-wrought account of a post-apocalyptic Britain.

Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins: Blue men and blindness

I haven't read a Wilkie Collins since I was an adolescent; what with the new biography out this year, by Andrew Lycett, I found myself drawn to one of them which is rather more obscure than The Moonstone.

Poor Miss Finch is unlikely to be found on many university reading lists, still less library shelves, and yet I think, despite its faults, it deserves a little attention because of its sheer weirdness, and because of the refreshingly dashing nature of its female characters (bar one). It was published in 1872 (some time after The Moonstone), and contains portraits of two of the most daring and adventurous Victorian heroines I've ever come across.

Miss Finch, far from being poor (therein lies the irony) is a woman of private means who lives in her own quarters in her father's rectory; the inhabitants of her rather dismal village term her "poor" because of her blindness. She, however, is a delightful creature, who thrills with sensitivity at the touch and sound of the things she encounters. She is clever, forceful, and brave enough to take matters into her own hand, standing up to her boorish father and organising her own destiny. Crucially, though, she has a hatred of dark colours (which she claims she can sense.)

The novel is narrated by a Madame Pratolungo - a Frenchwoman who spent her fortune fighting in various countries for Republicanism (no, really) - who ends up as a companion to Miss Finch (named, of course, Lucilla - little light.)

There are some extremely striking, not to say lurid scenes: a little girl arrives in the rectory with a message scrawled on her pinafore in blood; the hero, apparently weedy Oscar Dubourg, arrives shrouded in mystery - he's been let off a murder charge because of the evidence of a clock. More strange still is the plot which - bear with me - continues like this. Oscar Dubourg has a charismatic layabout artist twin brother, Nugent, who comes to stay and sponge; Oscar falls in love with Lucilla, and they make tentative moves towards marriage.

The crisis of the novel comes when Oscar develops epilepsy. In order to be cured, he embarks on a course of silver nitrates, which has the unfortunate effect of turning him blue. Since Lucilla hates dark complexions, when she hears one of the children asking where "the blue man is," everyone pretends that it's Nugent who's gone blue, not Oscar. And so the stage is set for an impersonation which will see Lucilla's virtue tested and Oscar's courage blossom.

The sensationalism of the plot kept me going: I will admit that some aspects of the latter parts of the novel began to drag a little - there was perhaps too much discussion about various minor matters, and there is a character, a gourmand oculist called Grosse, whose German-English expressions become immensely wearying - but on the whole, those who wish to understand how a complex plot can be manipulated, and to see the beginnings of the "weird" in our literature, should definitely take a look. And I won't mind if you skip the last few chapters.

Review of Nigel Williams' Unfaithfully Yours

I've always been a fan of Nigel Williams, so I was very pleased to review his new novel, Unfaithfully Yours, for the Financial Times. Here it is.

Hunger: A poem

 I was running a creative writing workshop yesterday. I usually take part in the exercises, for kicks. Here's a poem that came out of it:

HUNGER
There he is again.
So tiny, to start with.
Flipping a coin, he smirks in the sun.

Under the cracks he creeps,
Tipping his hat, so ruefully,
Brushing the dust off his sleeve.
He squats in the fridge,
Nibbling the potatoes,
Sticking his thumb in the cream.

I let him dance on my table,
Too lazy to banish him.
He uses my fork as a cane.

He’s bigger now: as tall as a
Candle. He yammers, and
Blows out his cheeks.

I put on some toast.
He flickers his tongue.
To end him, you’d have to be dead.

Vainglory by Ronald Firbank: review

Ronald Firbank: orchidaceous

A champagne-tinged hello to you all: I've reviewed three novels by Ronald Firbank for The Observer. They are decidedly orchidaceous; somebody once described Fr Corvo's books as tyrianthine, which I think applies equally well to Firbank. He's an acquired taste, but once you've acquired it, there's much to enjoy. Read the review here.

Booker Prize Contenders

I've done a rundown of the Booker Prize Contenders for The Daily Telegraph - check out my thoughts on the matter here.