This Week I are mostly reading (contd)

Oscar and Lucinda, by Peter Carey

I've just read Sebastian Barry's 'Days without End'. I really enjoyed it.

Enjoyed Do No Harm by Henry Marsh, he's able to write as well as perform brain surgery. It's a very honest account of his doubts and operations that went wrong, he doesn't try to portray himself as a super hero.

Next up is Dreamland by Sam Quinones. Heard the author on the Marc Maron podcast a while ago, he sounded very interesting. His book is about "Americas opiate epidemic".... big pharma (oxycontin) and heroin from Mexico sweeping through smaller US cities and towns.

The Power of The Dog by Thomas Savage - Excellent psychological drama set during the 1920's, amidst the prairies of the American Mid West. George and Phil are two brothers - and studies in contrasts - who own a successful ranching business together. While neither are old men, their lives seem to have fallen into set patterns that speak about the deadening comfort of routine. George is plodding and placid. Phil is a genius, but also a domineering bully, who inwardly or outwardly scorns anything or anyone of pretense or lacking in what he perceives as virtue. When George unexpectedly takes a young widow as a wife, all established rules and roles of power are put under threat.

This is a taut and powerful novel. Savage possessed a rare skill for taking you into the minds of his characters and even if the novel is not an especially long read, it runs deep, containing densely packed broiling emotion and moments of fraught tension, complete with a shocking conclusion. You really get inside the heads and hearts of the characters and learn about the way they view the outside world. You become privy to their half spoken or thought feelings that they - can't or simply won't - always articulate with precision, most of all to themselves, because to tell the truth or to put words on it could bring their self images crashing down. The style of the novel made me think slightly of a mix between Henry James and John Steinbeck, by way of Cormac McCarthy. It's Jamesian in the sense that a great deal of the action of the plot is "heady", concerned with the happenings in the mind and filling every seemingly minute interaction between characters with layers of significance and weight. But, thankfully, unlike a lot of Henry James it can actually be enjoyed, not just admired. And that's why I think of Steinbeck and McCarthy - not just in setting - like them, Savage's prose is dry and clear, precise, but also filled with amazingly detailed and evocative descriptions of natural beauty or raw emotional honesty and some of the novel's themes of what makes a "true" man or an authentic life chimes in with their overarching concerns also.

Perhaps I'm making this sound a little dry. I'm really not trying to. It is a page turner of a novel, with a growing sense of tension been ratcheted up steadily throughout. Cliche that it is - I couldn't put it down. Supposedly when it was first published in the 60's it struggled to find an audience and I can slightly understand why - it is a strange beast. In one sense it's a tough, rugged read, with a straightforward momentum - manly stuff. On the other hand it's powerfully emotional and complex, with a conclusion that'll stay with you for quite some time. First rate stuff really.

Read quickly Jennifer Johnston's debut The Captains and the Kings, she was one of my favourites but I have to say this put me off her a bit! I think the central friendship was supposed to be touching but to be honest squicked me out! And quite a strong streak of misogyny.. Not a gram of sympathy was given to any female character; rather like in How Many Miles where the mother character was the Big Bad, even more so than the War.

Mind you she described the ravages of old age brilliantly; she was weak in portraying a believable young character though; I'd hold The Butcher Boy as the best mad Irish adolescent in that regard

Finished Hillbilly Elegy .... superbly depressing

Now it's on to Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

The Kill List by Frederick Forsyth

Joe_ Public wrote: »

I've heard good things about Hillbilly Elegy, on my list for the next couple of weeks.

Didn't really take to Beatlebone (not that that should put anybody off!). Think it would have helped if I was a Beatles or Lennon fanatic, but I've never really been much of a fan.

Would it appeal to someone who is a big Beatle fan?

heathledgerlove wrote: »

Would it appeal to someone who is a big Beatle fan?

I can speak from experience here and say that it's unlikely. It's a very poor book imo, Barry is a superb short story writer but hasn't yet written a decent novel.

Finished The Famine Plot by Tim Pat Coogan a very moving and evocative account of An Gorta Mor. Some very moving individual stories throughout the book give a very good picture as much as is possible of how terrible and cataclysmic an event An Gorta Mor was.