The Holocaust in Literature

Following my previous, mostly negative, review of "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" I thought it might be a good time to mention some works which (in my opinion anyway) manage to really capture some of the emotionally devastating consequences of the Holocaust from a variety of viewpoints. I did consider doing a top 5 list but in all honesty the books I've chosen are so different in style and approach that trying to put them into a meaningful order would be a pretty futile effort. And I do mean different. The difficulty of the subject matter has led to some interesting experimental techniques used to express the events of the Holocaust rather than the stark realism you might expect. So, without further ado, here are 5 books I think did it better than John Boyne's lacklustre attempt.

The Diary of a Young Girl- Anne Frank:

An obvious choice perhaps but there is a reason for that. This is an intense read which provides a direct window into the experiences of a Jewish girl trying to survive in Nazi occupied Amsterdam. Its strength lies in its immediacy and the knowledge that this is somebody who truly experienced it all. I could say more but since most, if not all, of you will be aware of this one all I'll add is that this is essential reading.

Maus- Art Spiegelman

A comic book (or Graphic Novel if you're a person who can't take the idea of a comic seriously) which used animals instead of people to depict the insanity of racial hatred. As you can imagine there are a lot of people with a problem with the choice of style since they claim cartoon animals are inherently amusing and therefore trivialise the subject but then that's kind of the point. It is a clever way of rendering the familiar unfamiliar, a staple in satire since its beginnings on a caveman's wall. The pointless insanity of racial hatred is deliberately held up as ridiculous but this doesn't mean the sombre and respectful tone applied in Maus is in any way diminished. An important work both for the medium and for the subject.

Sophie's Choice- William Styron

Survivor's guilt is the subject of this novel as a Polish woman struggles to live her life in America after having survived the concentration camps. She is trapped by an abusive relationship and her own alcoholism, neither of which manage to stave off the memories of the awful decision she was forced to make in her past. The story itself is actually told from the perspective of a young novelist, Stingo, who befriends Sophie and her unstable boyfriend Nathan and gradually learns more and more about Sophie's past through both her own stories and the scars she still carries. It is a very effective technique in showing how difficult it is to understand the realities of the Holocaust by staring directly at it, an opinion which is shared by the final two novels on this list.

Time's Arrow- Martin Amis

Yet another novel which was torn apart by certain critics claiming that it used gimmicky narrative techniques which undermined the serious nature of its subject matter. Here Amis has strayed a little from his usual stomping grounds of picking over the refuse and uncomfortable truths of modern society to attempt something even more ambitious. His obsession with the scabbed and pus-seeping under belly of human nature is intact but the narrative is told literally backwards with all the events occurring as though you are watching an old video recording played in reverse, eventually leading back into the central character's past experiences in the Holocaust. Again the intent is to make the familiar topic unfamiliar again so that we have to reconstruct the realities in our heads whilst reading, forcing a re-examination of certain facts which might be taken for granted since we've heard about them so many times. It's a difficult read and not for everybody but if you can get into it there is some seriously thought provoking stuff involved.

The White Hotel- D. M. Thomas

More experimentalism but this time taking a more psychoanalytical approach as one of Freud's patients provides multiple narratives, each in a different style and with much overlapping as erotic fantasy and brutal reality are woven into a single tragic story. It is a novel about the impossibility of dealing with reality and the need to flee into fantasy and indeed psychosis in order to maintain some semblance of the self. Very deep, very convoluted but very rewarding.   

Review: John Boyne's "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas"

Here's the set up. The tragic story of the atrocities committed in Auschwitz told through the eyes of a child who was there. Sound interesting? Well maybe but there have been countless attempts to capture the events of the Holocaust in literature and film. As a historic event it is probably one of the most difficult topics to express the world has ever seen and is understandably why so many artists feel the need to attempt it. The problem is with so many of the world's best writers tackling it how can anybody say something new about the Holocaust? Well perhaps by viewing it from a different perspective. The child in question is not a little Jewish boy imprisoned in the camps. Bruno is the son of the man running Auschwitz.

Boyne's choice of narrative focus lends itself to some potentially interesting conflicts between the inherently questioning nature of a child and the adults around him who are blinkered by Nazi ideology. It uses Bruno's friendship with a young Jewish prisoner as a way of demonstrating how racial hatred is something which must be instilled rather than being instinctive and "natural". A worthwhile message which still remains relevant in today's post 9/11 age.... which is why I feel somewhat guilty to have to tear into this novel in the way I'm about to.

Despite it's good intentions and interesting set up "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" feels very much a novel by numbers. Strict and often absent father figure: Check. Vindictive young Nazi officer being unnecessarily brutal in his treatment of people/animals: Check. Ditzy sister obsessed with being pretty and attracting young men in uniforms: Check.

Everything from the characters to the set pieces could be predicted before you got through the first page and in a work which is attempting to encompass the needless cruelties of the Holocaust this is a severe failing. It becomes impossible to really empathise with the situation when everything feels like it was all assembled with instructions taken from a flat-pack wardrobe. There are no real defining moments. Think of every book you've ever loved. Think of all the small details which create the richness of your favourite characters. That is what's missing. It isn't technically "bad" in anyway but the overwhelming blandness leaves you with the sensation of chewing soggy cardboard, the lack of flavour forcing you to focus on the unpleasant texture. 

This is not to say that it is entirely devoid of merit. The ending is well constructed and would be rather poignant if the characters were better fleshed out and there is a moment where Bruno discovers one of his servants used to be a doctor which is cleverly worked. Sadly though they just serve to highlight how good a novel "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" could have been.

Rating: 5/10

Getting Into: Iain M. Banks

As promised, part two of my Getting Into Iain Banks has arrived with a big shiny new M. in the title (cue gasps of oooh and aaaahhh). The man himself admits that the additional initial was little more than a marketing tactic devised by his publishers to create a distinction between his science fiction and his "mainstream" work because who wants to buy a nice mainstream book and find its full of yucky spaceships and robots and stuff right? In all seriousness though it turned out to be a very useful way of separating the two different styles (with the exception of "Transition" which is considered Sci-fi in America but mainstream over here in the UK). 

And they are different. Not interested in the near future, speculative fiction of novels like "1984" and "Oryx and Crake" Banks goes way out there with super advanced AI, faster than light travel, alien races and body enhancement technology since the majority of his science fiction is set in a universe dominated by The Culture, a techno-utopia. What's interesting about this setting is that it practically prevents any of the universe threatening scenarios that are more common in this kind of science fiction (see Star Wars) because The Culture is pretty much untouchable and instead focuses on smaller, more personal conflicts, where the stakes aren't so high but ultimately reflect on the moral and philosophical ideologies of the cultures involved.

If science fiction isn't usually your kind of thing I can tell you now that this probably won't change your mind. Banks loves his technology and takes great delight in describing it in detail which is probably going to be a turn off for some people but as I said in my review of "Foucault's Pendulum" a writer who loves their subject is often a writer at their best. That in mind, let's get started.

Dipping Your Toe: The Player of Games

I recently asked the users of bookclubforum.co.uk what they thought a good start point would be (thanks to Athena, Raven and Karsa Orlong for suggestions) and it was unanimous that "The Player of Games" offers the best start point for people new to Banks's work. It's set in The Culture universe but unlike Consider Phlebas it is from the perspective of one of its citizens and as such provides a great deal of insight into the way the society works. Good news for the beginner. It also tells the story of a giant super complicated game tournament with a lot of racial pride on the line and some potentially very serious consequences for those involved. Not only one of Banks's most accessible but one of his best.

Plunging in at the Deep End: Feersum Endjinn

Those looking for a challenge but who would rather not miss out on some of the information on The Culture from previous books should look towards this stand alone novel set in an entirely different and rather dystopian vision of the future. Both conceptually and stylistically it is one of Banks's more ambitious novels as it includes four different first person narratives with varying voices including the use of bizarre spelling which resembles a proto-textspeak for one of the characters. It also features one of my favourite of Banks's ideas, The Crypt: a simulated reality where the memories of the dead are collected and their experiences absorbed and where people can explore in search of answers but at the risk of their sanity.

Drifting a Little Deeper: Use of Weapons

This is my favourite Iain M. Banks novel. A tale of a man trying to run from his past is nothing new to the literary world but the way this novel flits back and forth between time-frames to its inevitable reveal and the way the central character (Zakalwe) is constructed is intensely realised. It also features some clever, if gruesome, set-pieces which show of Banks's impressive imagination but which I'd rather not spoil for you here. All I'll say is go read it. Now!

Into the Depths: Surface Detail (Pun not intended)

Another ambitious novel which manages to create a secular battle between Heaven and Hell through the use of virtual reality. A war is raging in the virtual world over whether deliberately made Hells should exist as a potential punishment for sinners when they die. Couple that with several diverging plot threads and some very interesting visual representations of the nature of inherited debt and you've got the recipe for a classic of the genre. That said there are a several references to previous works, including one right at the end which would be a shame to miss because you haven't read the rest. Best wait till you have a good grasp of The Culture and its previous adventures before tackling this one.

Ones to Avoid:

Against a Dark Background is the only real dud in the science fiction category of Banks's work for me. This is possibly due to the really obvious twist which tries a fake out towards the end but ultimately fails leaving a faintly unpleasant taste on the tongue. Some of the visual imagery is pretty cool though so it's not a total loss. Excession and Consider Phlebas both tend to split readers so I won't try and persuade either way on those two but Excession certainly is a bad introduction to the world of The Culture because it assumes a lot of knowledge about the AI Minds.

Review: John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces"

A confederacy of dunces is the term Jonathan Swift once used to describe the idiots who congregate around genius in order to tear it down, a conspiracy of stupidity which must inevitably swarm around all those of supreme talent and intellect because the unenlightened cannot possibly hope to understand true greatness and thus seek to destroy it instead. If that all sounds slightly pompous and arrogant to you then you'd be thinking exactly like John Kennedy Toole was when he titled his novel about a more than slightly pompous and arrogant man named Ignatius J. Reilly.

As you probably already suspect (or indeed know) "A Confederacy of Dunces" is a humorous novel that details the inevitable misadventures of its gloriously deluded central character as he attempts to overcome what he sees as the mental and moral ineptitudes of the world around him. Due to sudden financial hardship the thirty year old, overweight, college-grad unemployed layabout has to get a job except that involves working for the very people his despises at the bottom rungs of the corporate ladders because he has done nothing but sponge off his poor at-the-end-of-her-tether mother since he finished his masters.

This is all a perfect set-up for a series of preposterous events involving, amongst other things, a party with its own sex dungeon, a stripper being undressed on stage by a parrot and a policeman hiding in a toilet dressed as a cowboy. Ignatius acts as a catalyst, bumbling through the French Quarter of New Orleans and triggering one insane scene after another.

The problem with writing comedy though is that it can be really difficult to get right on the page. On screen or on stage something can be imbued with humour by the actor's sense of timing and voice but in the written form all this has to be successfully conveyed through the readers imagination. It's a really hard trick to pull off and in order to manage it a writer has to create an exceptional narrative voice you can hear in your head as you read (see Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett) if there is any hope you genuinely laughing aloud whilst reading.

Fortunately it is a trick which Toole has nailed, thanks in most part to the convincing ridiculousness of his protagonist. The novel regularly gives us insight into Ignatius's own interior monologue as well as access to some of his letters and personal writings which adds to the multi-layered farcical flavour whilst providing the opportunity to take clever pot shots at American life in the sixties. A wonderfully entertaining book for all fans of self-indulgent American comedy. 

Rating: 9/10

Review: Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer"

When looking for a book to read I like to find one which caused a bit of a stir when it was released. If it offended some people, got banned in a few countries and generally split the critics right down the middle, half saying it was genius the other half claiming it was depraved I want to read it. This is partly due to the normal "I want to see why everybody's getting so angry" reaction but also because I find books that really divide people are the ones which you end up loving the most or hating the most. "American Psycho", "The Wasp Factory" and "The Satanic Verses" are among my favourite books of all time and they all caused an uproar at the time they were released. So, naturally, when I saw that similar allegations of perversion and moral degradation were being made of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" I was intrigued but with it being written in 1935 I was dubious as to how bad it could be.

Truth is, by today's standards, it has become somewhat tame. Not in an "aww look at the pretty kitty" kind of way but it's not exactly a lion liable to tear your throat out at any given moment either. Think more along the lines of a stray cat who might enjoy some fuss and attention one minute and then claw the hell out of your arm the next. Those with thick skin will find the novel's sexual talons and its four letter fangs barely scratch the surface but anybody who is a little squeamish when it comes to sex and graphic descriptions of body parts probably won't enjoy this one.

If you haven't been put off yet though I suggest you give Miller a chance because he is a literary craftsman, a stylist who embodies some of the best traits of the Modernist tradition, fusing "artistic" and "vulgar" language in a virulent manner that infects the reader and leaves you stumbling through his scenes like you're in a fever dream. 

The plot (well as much of a plot as there is) follows Miller himself in a semi-autobiographical romp through the highs and lows of Paris. Each chapter details a different episode in his adventures, slipping in and out of stream of consciousness style, which are in turns amusing, sordid and depressing as he struggles to make a living whilst clinging to the vain dream of being a novelist. The supporting cast range from prostitutes to fellow would-be, self indulgent artists to the rich and well connected and they all flow in and out of the protagonist's life like driftwood rushing through a turbulent river.

If a coherent story about a likeable character who struggles against adversity is your cup of tea then "Tropic of Cancer" isn't for you. Miller comes across as a manipulative scrounger who doesn't really give a damn about any of the people in his life and most of the other characters are just as despicable. It is a "warts and all" depiction of what life would have been like at the time and can get very unpleasant at times but ultimately it is the richness of the prose that continues to give this novel its classic status and it is on this basis that I highly recommend any fans of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett or Virginia Woolf  who are not easily offended to give it a try.

Rating: 9/10

Review: Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War"

It's science fiction time folks and for my first review in the genre I picked one of the classics, a name included in the SF Masterworks series and a book I've had recommended to me several times. "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman.

Haldeman wrote this in the mid-seventies, just after the big science fiction boom which saw Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke rise to fame. The euphoria of the space race had begun to lose its momentum and the Vietnam war was coming to a halt as American troops steadily pulled out. As such the optimism which was often embodied by the science fiction genre previously (particularly in Asimov) is absent and instead we are treated to a cold and brutal imagining of what warfare might be like in the future for those expected to take part.

The plot centres on a physics student turned soldier named William Mandella, conscripted into the armed forces because of his exceptionally high IQ. It follows his experiences through dangerous training exercises and war against an unknown alien race but it's real hard hitting moments are the quiet periods in between campaigns where he is forced to live in a society he no longer recognises.

The key premise of the novel is that due to relativity time passes differently for those travelling in hyper-space  than it does back home and as such whilst only a year may go by for Mandella back home decades have gone by. The longer the campaign goes on the more and more removed he and his fellow soldiers become from the world they are trying to protect. It is a brilliant metaphor for the dislocation felt by veterans at the time (Haldeman himself being one) and the novel gives plenty of space over to exploring the various different possibilities and effects it might create.

There is a problem, however. Whilst the ideas and the scenarios which Haldeman creates are brilliantly realised with all the detail you could want the characters themselves are a little flat in places. It is not a very long book and there simply isn't room within its pages for everything such a complex story demands. Unfortunately the character development suffers for it. That isn't to say the characters are terrible. In places they can very good in fact but it happens too rarely for such a psychologically invested premise. The ending is also a little rushed feeling and doesn't seem to quite suit the overall feel of the novel.

All that said though this is still a novel that deserves your time, especially if you like your science fiction to be socially conscious and with a slight satirical bite to it.

Rating: 7.5/10

Top 10: Books for less than a Quid

Arthur Conan Doyle, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Ian McEwan. What do these names have in common? Well other than being a few great writers they are also the authors of novels I've managed to find for a less than a quid. I get through books pretty quickly and it's sadly become expensive to get something new to read, between £5-15 per book depending on how lucky you get with sales. Charity shops and second hand book stores are my main source of literary narcotics for this very reason. You never find yourself paying more than £3 for a new world to immerse yourself in and that can be an important lifeline when you don't have a whole lot of disposable income. With that in mind I thought I'd share a few diamonds I've managed to dig up over the last few years and hopefully inspire a few of you to go prospecting for yourself.

10: Death Note Volume 3 by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

This one felt like a real discovery for me because manga is a rare find in a charity shop and Death Note is one I've been meaning to read since I watched the a few years back. It was also in mint condition which is important when you consider it's a visual art form. So why so low on the list? Well because it's volume 3 and I don't own the first two yet. Still, I'm unlikely to see it so cheap again so it would've been crazy to pass it up till I had the first two.

9: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Catch 22 would earn a spot on my favourite books of all time list and at such a cheap price it is probably one of the best buys I've ever made. What stops it from being right up the top though is that it's a battered looking copy and somebody has attempted to cover the outer sleeve in plastic but done a really bad job. It's the words that count though and they are all present and accounted for.

8: Beowulf by ??

One of the oldest pieces of European literature we still have and a brilliant story. It may feel a bit dated now but it still has a lot of magic if you're willing to look past the archaic language. A bargain at 50p!

7: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I got this brand new at one of those bargain book warehouses you sometimes get on the highstreet. They always have a crap selection stuffed with celebrity autobiographies but if you are looking for the classics there always seems to be one or two on special offer. A shame that I already knew how the case is solved (spoilers are hard to avoid when a work is over a hundred years old) but still a good read.

6: White Teeth by Zadie Smith

For some reason this seems to be in almost every charity shop I go into. Eventually I decided to give it a chance and now I can't figure out why so many people gave it away! Funny, complex and diverse it deserves a place on every person's bookshelf.

5: The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

Another classic I managed to rescue from the shelves of the local Oxfam store. I've never read anybody quite like Kafka who mixes the bizarre with the banal in such a fashion that you find yourself totally accepting the weirdest of scenarios as if they were perfectly normal.

4: The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis

For 50p I got to see whether this scabrous, angry, disgusted, stylistic genius of a man was always the fatalistic misanthropist he seems to be in his later works. The answer was yes. Just as witty and just as hate-fueled as anything I've read by him it captures the worst side of people magnificently as always.

3: Dear Future by Fred D'Aguiar

Fred D'Aguiar is hardly a household name, in part due to the fact that nobody seems to know how its pronounced, but I still managed to grab a hardback copy of one of his lesser known novels in the Edinburgh charity shops. A lucky find I'm not likely to repeat for a long, long time.

2: The Fall of the House of Usher and Others by Edgar Allan Poe

Not only was I able to get this collection by the man who ushered in (yes, I know, I'm sorry but I couldn't resist the pun) the era of the modern short story for less than a pound but it is a pristine condition hardback complete with classy-looking gold leaf spine. 

1: Atonement by Ian McEwan

Ok so the copy of this I found might not be quite a attractive as my Poe or as unusual as my D'Aguiar but the reason this gets the top spot is that it is quite simply one of the best books I've ever read. McEwan is a favourite of mine as it is but Atonement is probably his best. A book so good that when you finish it you close it and sit quietly for a few moments just to let it all sink in. 

Getting into: Iain Banks

So folks it has reached that time where I must discuss a burning obsession of mine. He is a writer who for some reason I find endlessly entertaining, who creates characters I care about and genuinely makes me laugh out loud in places despite some of his work being amongst the darkest in terms of subject matter I've ever read. The problem with this is that attempting to do an objective review of any of his works would probably be a pointless exercise for me. I wouldn't want to rate anything he's ever done low because there is something about the themes he chooses and the style he employs which just click with me and I couldn't promise anybody that they would necessarily feel the same way. So instead I'm writing a "Getting into" article, designed to give people looking to check out his work a route to take in order to get straight to the best stuff. 

Note: I am only covering his works as Iain Banks this time. I will almost certainly be doing his Sci-fi under Iain M. Banks in another post.

Dipping Your Toe: The Crow Road

This is probably one of the most accessible of Banks's novels in that it follows a more "normal" and realistic story about Prentice McHoan, a man returning to his ancestral home for a funeral. It includes a colourful array of characters, some hilarious scenes and a good amount of mystery as Prentice digs around into the family's past and uncovers a few uncomfortable truths. The style, the plot and the way it is all told are all fairly typical of Banks without exposing you to anything too weird or violent. Also it features this as an opening line: "It was the day my grandmother exploded." If that doesn't convince you to try it then nothing will.

Plunging in at the Deep End: The Wasp Factory

This one is fairly notorious for producing extreme reactions in people but if you want to really see Banks at his best then this is probably the place to start. Telling the tale of a young boy with some serious psychological issues this book is rammed with violence, sadism, dark comedy and a couple of very uncomfortable scenes but it is never done without a purpose. This is not the literary equivalent of a splatter movie where the gore is the central focus. Instead it is a precision strike aimed directly at certain contemporary values and has something very serious to say. The premise is genius, the first person narration convincing and the ending incredibly satisfying. Not for the squeamish!

Drifting a Little Deeper: Complicity

This is novel is a little tougher than most of Banks's work. The critical reaction wasn't quite as extreme as it was to The Wasp Factory but by then violence was expected of Banks. In many ways this is an even more uncomfortable read as it explores the complicity of its characters, and of society in general, by using second person narrative to describe a serious of particularly brutal murders. It's a clever trick which works very well but would still mean nothing if the rest of the novel wasn't so well constructed. A murder mystery with something more to it than simply working out who the bad guy is.

Into the Depths: The Bridge

This is probably Banks's most complex novel. It is about a man in a coma existing in a kind of strange mechanised fantasy world known only as The Bridge but this is not all. There are further levels to this fantasy world, dreams within a dream where he experiences life as a barbarian swordsman as well as experiencing vague memories of his pre-coma life. The book is multi-layered and saturated in symbolism, stylistic experimentation, oblique references and generic blending making for a potentially confusing read if you aren't paying attention but if you're willing to put in the time the depth involved makes it a very rewarding experience. I've read it twice already and will be returning to it again and again in the future I'm sure.

Ones to avoid:

I'm hesitant to class any of Banks's novels as bad but there are a few which don't serve as a very good introduction to his work. Walking on Glass is an experimental novel which Banks himself feels he didn't quite pull off so it's really more for established fans. Canal Dreams and The Business are also weaker efforts which don't quite live up to the rest of Banks's bibliography.

Review: Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum"

I want to get something out the way early on with this one. "Foucault's Pendulum" was published in 1988, twenty five years ahead of Dan Brown's ridiculously popular mystery thriller "The Da Vinci Code" so that when I say "this novel is about conspiracy theories involving the Templars, the Illuminati, the Rosicrucians and the Holy Grail" your first thought isn't "didn't somebody already do that?" That isn't all though. Not only did Umberto Eco write a vastly superior novel a quarter of a century ahead of Brown but it's a spoof, a cleverly constructed jab at the world's century-spanning obsession with conspiracies involved the Knights Templar.

You've probably already twigged that Dan Brown isn't my favourite author. I'm not going to go into that though because a) it's boring because everything that can be said about it has already been said and b) I'd like to think nobody cares anymore. It does, however, have relevance to this review because I have to admit a lot of my enjoyment of the novel was due to the way it mercilessly skewers the credulous nature of people who want to believe these stories and as somebody who was sick of hearing about how "it really could be like that" at the time I really found myself wishing I'd read this eight or nine years earlier.

The novel follows the story of three editors in a cynical "vanity publishing" house getting involved in creating their own conspiracy theory as a way of mocking the lunatics and obsessives they have to work with. Things don't end up quite so simple though (as you'd expect) and Eco leads us on an incredibly detailed and beautifully penned examination of the seductive power of conspiracy theories.

Detailed is a key word here. It probably would have been easy for Eco to gloss over the more complicated bits of history in a rush to make his point but his obvious passion for the subject leaves him unwilling to do so. A large amount of novel's 640 pages is given over to detailed historical descriptions, as well as drawing in science and occultism. This is both a strength and a weakness. In one sense it is refreshing to see an author who is so confidant in the interesting nature of his subject matter really let his passion shine through. He also avoids the trap of leaving too little room left over to explore his characters but it can be a turn off for those who find history a dry subject. There are a lot of names and concepts woven throughout the narrative with an assumption that you will be familiar with them and sometimes that is not the case, leaving the reader confused.

The novel's biggest strength though is the quality of the prose. A vast vocabulary (even more impressive when you consider this is a translation) wielded by an expert to create moments of distilled character insight is always a joy to read and Eco manages to pack in plenty. The character of Belbo in particular is sublime, eliciting sympathy and  frustration in equal measure as he struggles to come to terms with their theory and what it might potentially mean to him personally.

Overall this is an impressive piece of fiction by a man who clearly understands what it means to write great prose but it does assume a rather hefty amount of knowledge from its readers and can, (rather appropriately) at times, become too bogged down in its own obsessions. Give it a try if you fancy a challenge but have wikipedia on stand-by just in case.

Rating: 8/10

Review: Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle"

Murakami is a name I've seen and heard floating around for a while. Until recently though all I knew was that he was a Japanese writer who wrote books which everybody loved, be it critics or a bloke I met down the pub and there was one novel of his which kept being mentioned. "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle."

Hype is often a cruel force. You hear so much about how good a book is, how the style is so well polished, how interesting the concept is, the comparisons with other writers you love only to have it turn into a hideous disappointment. It's tough for any novel to live up to that kind of expectation.

Happily I get to say that this time the Hype-Machine got to trundle on its merry way, completely oblivious to the hundreds of hidden pitfalls it could have plunged into. "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is a brilliant novel which sketches in stark language the crushing isolation which lurks beneath the surface of contemporary Japanese culture. It really does deserve the praise it's been getting since it was first published in 1994.

So, what is it about then? As with a lot of novels it is fairly difficult to explain and the blurb just confuses the matter but I'll do my best. It is a magical realist novel in a similar sort of vein as "One Hundred Years of Solitude" where the magical aspects remain below the surface for the majority of its six hundred odd pages but contribute to a sense of dislocation from reality which seems to be the story's soul.

The central character, Toru Okada, is a man who has just quit an unfulfilling job in order to take stock of his life and give it new direction and purpose but he finds that his wife is growing distant and that family issues which he believed to be dealt with have started to re-emerge. What follows is an exploration of the worlds and people forced to the margins of Japanese society as Okada acts as a conduit for a host of other stories told by a bizarre mix of characters, all with their own dark and sometimes eccentric pasts. These characters range from a psychic investigator who refuses to be paid for her work to a teenage girl who has an obsession with the morbid and their stories encompass subjects as diverse as spirituality, war guilt and the world of fashion. This has the potential to turn them into "quirky" characters, a phrase loved by publicists but often meaning shallow empty people who have one weird characteristic which makes an otherwise uninteresting person supposedly fascinating, but nothing feels forced and all the oddities are tied cleverly into the Murakami's main themes.

As you would expect from its wide scope this is a novel which jumps around a fair bit between stories but the narrative has a natural flow which carries you along. Murakami is not a stylist so his prose is often stark and bleak (but not Cormac MacCarthy stark and bleak). He does a wonderful job of creating a world which you feel entirely immersed in through an accumulation of quiet, reflective moments.

There is one thing which as a potential reader you should be aware of though. Though surrounded by strong personalities Okada himself is a very passive character for the most part and as such you are unlikely to engage him as you would a more forceful protagonist. This is, I think, deliberate on Murakami's part as this passivity is directly linked to the isolation which pervades the novel but it inevitably means that as a reader you are less emotionally invested in his struggle than you might otherwise be. 

That small potential issue aside though "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is well worth your time, particularly for fans of writers like Salman Rushdie or Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Rating: 9/10

Getting Your Literature Fix: A Mission Statement

For some people good literature is like a drug. No, really. Some of you will know exactly what I mean by that (and in that case you're probably already a hopeless addict) but if that sounds too much like an exaggeration let me explain.

For many reading is just a way to pass the time. It provides something to do whilst sunbathing on holiday. Sometimes they will go out of their way to pick up a book because it's suddenly everywhere and they want to know what all the fuss about (50 Shades of Grey, The Hunger Games etc.) but for the most part it doesn't really matter to them whether they have a book on the go or not. Not so the addict.

You'll know the addict by the way they always know who the best dealer is for a particular kind of fix. You need a hallucinogenic like Fantasy or Sci-fi? No problem. Go see Robert Jordan, Neil Gaiman or Iain M. Banks. Tell them I sent you so they know to give you the good stuff. Want some downers? Sylvia Plath will set you up. If she ain't in go have a chat with Khaled Hosseini. Something stronger? Joyce is your man. Whatever your needs, the addict will know who to turn to.

But it's not all about discerning tastes. The addict needs a book like a junkie needs a fix and anything will do. When things get rough the addict can be spotted by the way they skulk around charity shops and second-hand book stores because they can't afford the prices in Waterstones or Blackwell's but they have to have something new to read anyway. If they can't find any of their usual dealers in these places they'll take any old hit. Trashy romance novels, celebrity biographies or thrillers written by paranoid right-wing gun nuts, it doesn't matter to the addict as long as they get just enough of a buzz to get them through to the next one. An addict is an addict because the HAVE to have that fix, rather than just wanting it.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, addicts, recreational users and first time experimenters, is the purpose of this blog. To point you in the right direction when it comes to finding your own drug of choice by learning from the experiences of somebody who's snorted, injected and smoked some of the best (and the worst) books to be found out there on the streets. So keep an eye on this space and we'll see if we can get you your very own Literature Fix.

Photo taken by tanjila, found on Flickr.com and used according to Creative Commons rules.