while you're ahead…

Reunion by Fred Uhlman

What a gem of a book.  More of a novella than a full length novel this was a delightful surprise.  I’m struggling to chose books from the 70s… I was too young to have any recollection and the ones that do resonate I’ve already read.

Anyway, in my search for something short I stumbled upon this one and it’s left a real mark.

Hans Schwarz, son of a Jewish doctor, recalls how at age sixteen he had sought the friendship of Konradin Graf von Hohenfelds… it’s 1932 and Germany is changing, troubles are brewing and the impact on their friendship will be devastating.  The narrator speaks from America 30 years after his family send him there for his safety.

We know history, we know with the power of hindsight what happened in the world in that time, we know what’s about to happen to the character and then makes the story so much more powerful.  We know the why, and the sadness and the horrors and the heartaches and the unspeakable… they two boys don’t…so this story of friendship, and growing up, and the realisation that the adult world is complicated and unfair and increasingly wrong and scary takes on such a power.  Becomes big, very very big.

‘ The reason , I swear by all the gods, has nothing to do with being ashamed – it is far more simpler and more unpleasant. My mother comes from a distinguished – once royal – Polish family, and she hates Jews’.  ‘And if you want the whole truth: I’ve had to fight for every hour I’ve spent with you; and the worst of all ; I didn’t dare talk to you last night because I didn’t want to hurt you’  ‘Please accept me like I am, created by god and by circumstances which I can’t control. I’ve tried to hide it from you’. ‘ Am I responsible for my parents’?

It’s a perfect little novel because so much is said without being said.  The language is measured and not a word is out of place and superfluous.  You think it’s gentle and delicate… and then the next line hits you like a sucker punch to the stomach and leaves you king of breathless.

And the ending… well, the ending is just perfect too.

I cried.

I dare you not to.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Gosh, where do I start with this one.  Ok, first… I almost didn’t read it and it nearly end up in a charity bag a few times..Firstly because i don’t why I bought this it.  Last year I had read another one of his, The Ocean at the end of the lane (bought mainly because of its title), and hadn’t liked it at all…  Secondly it’s a very long and I’m running out of time if I want to finish my quest by the end of the year…

BUT… what a crazy read!

According to Mr Gaiman himself there are various versions of this book.  The text of the one I read was published in 2004, but the original came out in 2001…

It reminded me of long reading days when I was a teenager and I would hide with the biggest book I could find and totally lose any sense of time and place.  I found it really easy to immerse myself into the story, the place and the characters.  It gave – to me – the same suspension from reality that one the long Stephen King’s novel gave me.  It’s not a horror book, but it has its ‘magical’ elements and it’s very gripping.

The premises of the story go like this:

but this is just the surface… it’s soo much cooler than that… and it’s not an ‘easy’ book and the more you think about it the deeper it gets…

America if full of old world gods that have been brought over hundreds of years ago… gods that exist only if people believe in them, and people are stopping, and gods are disappearing and being replaced by new gods like television and media etc…  so the battle for people souls is on…  this is the underlay of the story…  it’s also a road trip book in the best tradition of road trip books (no need to mention Kerouac… but also it reminded me a little of ‘Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance’ in its tone or ‘Lila, en enquiry into morals’ although that was a boat journey).  It’s about middle town America and the middle of nowhere… it’s a little bit like an hallucinogenic trip, you lose track of what’s real and what’s not because it’s all real (or is it all not real? mmmhhh).  A little bit Disney fable, a little bit Tarantino movie…

It’s a battle of good and evil, about turning a blind eye, about love and redemption and doing the right thing or choosing the wrong side…

…  I’m not certain of anything any more.  It’s like one of those dreams that changes you.  You keep some of the dream forever, and know things down deep inside yourself, because it happened to you, but when you go looking for details they kind of just slip out of your head…

…Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you—even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. So none of this is happening. Such things could not occur. Never a word of it is literally true…

… People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen.

… He sat down on a grassy bank and looked at the city that surrounded him, and thought, one day we would have to go home.  And one day he would have to make a home to go back to.  He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough.

Absolutely fascinating.  If I’d read it as a teenager I would have become quite obsessed with it.

There are passages – the slightly more trippy/weird descriptions ones I wasn’t too keen about but I’d say 95% of it is absolutely brilliant.

 

 

The list so far

2018   Mr Hanckock and the mermaid

2017 – Magari domain resto (Lorenzo Maroni)

2016 – Upstream (Mary Oliver)

2015   –  Reasons to stay alive (Matt Haig)

2014 – Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer)

2013 – Careless people (Sarah Churchwell)

2012 – Wonder (RJ Palacia)

2011 – The Paris Wife (Paula McLain)

2010

2009 – Let the great world spin (Colum McCann)

2008 – The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga)

2007

2006 –  The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

2005 – Never let me go (Kazuo Ishiguro)

2004 – American Gods (Nail Gainman)

2003

2002 – Everything is illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer)

2001

2000 – Coram Boy (Jamila Gavin)

1999

1998

1997 – Paradise (Toni Morrison)

1996 – Wilfred and Eileen (Jonathan Smith)

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991- Regeneration (Pat Barker)

1990 – Darkness visible (William Styron)

1989 – Like water to chocolate (Laura Esquivel)

1988

1987 – Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami)

1986

1985­ – Oranges are not the only fruit (Jeanette Winterson)

1984  – Hotel du Lac (Anita Brookner)

1983 –  Heartburn (Nora Ephron)

1982  – The colour purple (Alice Walker)

1981

1980 – Emmeline (Judith Rossiter)

1979– The bloody chamber (Angela Carter)

1978

1977

1976

1975

1974

1973 –  the honorary consul (Graham Greene)

1972

1971  – Reunion (Fred Uhlman)

1970  – A slipping down life (Anne Tyler)

I know, I know… another post about books but I’m really behind with my books posts so you might get more in the next few days.

Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin.

This was given to me by my sister in law who’s a primary school teacher and I wasn’t sure at all about it … to be honest.  In fact I put off reading it for ages… my mistake entirely.

Oh and I must say first that this is a book for children/young adults… just in case you start reading it and wonder.  And there’s a stage version too.

Basically it’s a lovely story set in 1800 London and surrounding areas… there are orphans and orphans snatchers, there are really bad people and good people, there’s love and greed, there’s friendship, loyalty, honour, cruelty and heroism, orphans and slavery and redemption of course.

The story is fast paces and the descriptions are really well done, you ‘see’ the places, you ‘smell’ the city, you ‘hear’ it.  I think I would have enjoyed this one very much when I was younger;  I would have sat in my favourite chair and spend the last lazy days of summer reading it and ignoring my brother and sister.  Ah those were the days…