Odd Women by George Gissing

At the Sydney Writers Festival this month there was one book whose name came up time and time again, a novel published in the mid 1800s, and revered by writers such as Vivian Gornick, Hanya Yanagihara and Drusilla Mjodeska: Odd Women. So I downloaded it - free of charge for heavens sake! - on iBooks and plunged in. I could not put this book down. What a joy to read something where the conversation was all absorbing. Indeed I'm not sure I can think of another book where I have responded in such a way; it's nearly always the plot, or the character development or sometimes simply the language that carries me through a novel. But here, it was the argument. I can't compete with a genius-woman like vivian Gornick, so here's her take on the book which absolutely sums up everything I have been thinking. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/odd-women

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

I love Jonathan Franzen, I really do. It’s his way with words, a sort of cutting to the bone in his prose that is somehow elegant in style, if not in content. His language is real. However, the premise for this book is really nothing short of ridiculous. It’s about a girl searching for her identity and through an elaborate plot, which reads like some sort of conspiracy theory, she finds her way. It is utterly unbelievable. I’ve had this sort of problem with his wacky stories before, specifically the guy who runs off to South America in the last novel of his I read. Mostly Franzen’s humour and language redeem him, but this time the book was so very long – about 800 pages or something – and with so much silliness in it that I really can’t forgive him!

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

I loved this book. It’s blessedly short because, as is always the case with this magnificent writer, every single word counts. It’s the type of book you need to savour, because it’s not about story, it’s about a psychological state. The book is about Shostakovich and his life in the Soviet Union. It is well researched and uses the facts of his life as a basis for a psychological exploration of how this famous composer dealt with strictures of living in Russia at that time. From that point of view it is fiction, almost like historical fiction I suppose, but better. I was completely fascinated with the relationship between the musicians that were living there at the time and the blind, clumsy-minded power of the officials running the union. Barnes has captured the fear that ran through everyday life like a mineral lode through rock. There was no rhyme or reason to officialdom’s decisions and there was no predicting their behaviour. What astonishes me is that any of these composers like Shostakovich or Prokofiev managed to produce what they did. This was a fascinating insight into living and working under a totalitarian regime.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

This is an incredible book. Yanagihara writes like an old, experienced woman; I find it hard to understand how someone so young can be so in touch with the inner workings of people’s minds. The story is simple: it traces the lives of four men who share rooms in college and go on to be friends for the rest of their lives in New York. They are very real. I particularly liked her rendition of JB, a character both attractive and lovable and very flawed, a completely authentic character. There were some parts that didn’t ring true, their amazing career successes for one. It’s also almost impossible to write a story chronicling four people’s lives in a book of any readable length, without skimming over bits and lapsing into that sort of shallow story telling that drives me nuts. There’s a little bit of this; there has to be I guess, because even though the book is 800 pages long the scope of the story is four lifetimes. There’s also a little bit of sentimentality, because it’s impossible to do other than sketch a secondary character and as a result their actions become almost superficial, like Harold’s relationship with Jude (though even there she manages to give us clues about why Harold is so attached to this man.) But the real focus of the book is the story of Jude and Willem, the childhoods that formed them and the men they become. Although I’ve not experienced anything like it myself, it seems to me that her exploration of Jude, a victim of horrific abuse as a child, is masterful. And her exploration of grief is so on the money that it had me in tears. That I have experienced and I’ve watched close friends experience too, and I was right there with the characters, recognising and identifying with their suffering. Her research has been astonishing. There’s a great long list of people who worked with in the areas of mathematics, law, medicine and so forth, an incredible achievement. I couldn’t put this book down.

You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz

I found this book in the apartment we were renting in Rome. It’s a typical holiday read, a thriller of a rather unusual kind but a book you would leave behind rather that take back home with you to weigh down your luggage. The story is about a New York Jewish therapist married to a paediatric oncologist. She’s written a book about women taking responsibility for the choices they make when they choose a man in their lives. And then of course, surprise surprise, her own marriage ends up in chaos. The chaos is pretty horrific. The husband is not all he’s cracked up to be and after the collapse of everything she goes on a sort of hunt to uncover all sorts of surprises. The ending is very schmaltzy. But pretty much what you’d expect from a holiday read. It’s compelling enough to keep you powering through it, but all the time you know this book is the literary equivalent of a Maccas.

Trespass by Rose Tremain

The plot of this book was the blackest most depressing story. It was about a particularly unlikeable older English antique dealer who had issues with both his mother and his sexuality, his sister who is living in a lesbian relationship in France and her partner, a French brother and sister who have a desperately ugly relationship and a very unhappy child who has been transplanted from Paris to the country. The English brother moves to France and decides to buy a property there from the French brother, who has to get rid of his sister from her portion of the land for the sale to go through. It goes on from there. There are no resolutions really to anybody’s issues, and nobody ends up happy or fulfilled, just more miserable than before. It’s a most depressing read and not what I expected from Rose Tremain.

The Complete Clayhanger Family novels: the first two, Clayhanger and Hilda Lessways, by Arnold Bennett

Bennett’s style of writing takes a while to settle into but his stories and above all his characters are wonderful representations of provincial English life. These stories are about the son of a self-made man, a printer, whose childhood in a workhouse has formed him into a hard businessman determined to succeed. And of course he has. The son is altogether different, educated and arty, but prepared to give up his dream of being an architect and toe the line as he joins the family business. I’ve only read the first two. The first details his childhood, education and entry into the printing world; the second, his success as a businessman, his first flights of love and his tentative standing up to the dominant father. I’ll be back for the others shortly.