Tag: family

Allen & Unwin, Australia, Author, Book review, Charlotte Wood, Fiction, literary fiction, Publisher, Setting

‘Animal People’ by Charlotte Wood

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Animal People

Fiction – paperback; Allen & Unwin; 264 pages; 2011.

Charlotte Wood is an accomplished and award-winning writer who is largely unknown outside of her native Australia. I’ve read two of her novels — The Submerged Cathedral and The Children — having purchased them on trips back home and loved them both. Animal People, picked up on my last trip, only confirms my high opinion of her work.

A day in the life

The book spans just one day in the life of Stephen Connolly, a middle-aged man who’s feeling slightly lost and depressed with the way his life has panned out.  We have met Stephen before — he’s the “drifter” in Wood’s previous novel The Children (but note, you don’t need to have read that book to appreciate this one — they’re completely stand-alone novels), the one who’s never followed a “proper” career path, the one who his parents and his siblings are always worried about and fretting over.

Now, several years later, he’s living in Sydney, working a dead-end job in a food kiosk at the zoo and is constantly mistaken as a chef because of his (quite hilarious) penchant for wearing black-and-white chequered trousers, a bargain purchase from Aldi.

On the day in question, he’s decided that it’s finally time to dump his long-term girlfriend, Fiona, who has been putting pressure on him to move in with her and her two (bratty) children from her failed marriage.  But as the day enfolds, Stephen’s plans get thwarted, then sabotaged, and before he knows it, he’s beginning to doubt whether dumping Fiona is the right thing to do at all.

Trying to fit in

Animal People deals with one man’s struggle to find his place in a world that feels completely foreign to him — in all kinds of ways. The book’s title comes from the notion that you either love animals or you don’t, and Stephen, who has an allergy to cats and dogs, falls into the latter camp while everyone around him — his own family, his neighbours —  are slavishly looking after and spoiling pets of all sizes, shapes and descriptions, while sneering at homeless people or those unable to fend for themselves.

When Stephen told people he worked at the zoo their faces would light up. ‘Oh, I love animals! How wonderful!’ they gushed. How lucky he was, how privileged. They held him in high regard, and waited for tales of giraffe-teeth cleaning or lion-cub nursing. When he told them he worked only in the fast-food kiosk, their faces fell. But then they recovered. Still, to be surrounded by all those beautiful creatures. He usually agreed at this point, to finish the conversation. He did not say he found the zoo depressing. It was not the cages so much as the people — their need to possess, their disappointment, the way they wanted the animals to notice them.

Struggling to cope with commitment, city life and modern living, Stephen’s constantly pulled in different directions and fails to live up to anyone’s expectations — even expectations that are morally dubious.

For instance, when he accidentally hits a woman — a junkie — in his car on his morning commute, he takes her to the hospital, but when he relates the story to his colleagues afterwards — scared and a little bit embarrassed by the incident — he’s shocked when they tell him he should have just left her on the road. “My sister had a junkie boyfriend once,” one of them says. “They’re all scum, and they all lie. If she dies she deserves it. Probably would have O’D anyway.”

Unsurprisingly, given the book is set at a time of unprecedented prosperity in Australia’s history, one of the themes of Animal People is class. Stephen might have a job, but he’s down near the bottom of the social rung, scraping by as best he can, not that far removed from the junkie he tries to help.

And perhaps that partly explains his reluctance to make a serious commitment to Fiona, who was previously married to a rich lawyer and has an amazing house filled with everything anyone could possibly want: how can he ever compete with that?

Big themes, but lots of humour

Wood has a remarkable eye for detail, of getting dialogue pitch-perfect and sketching characters that are three-dimensional and believable, but she never wastes a word: the prose is reined-in, almost clipped, and yet it reads as elegantly and smoothly as a ride in a sleek sports car.

She knows what makes people tick, what scares them, what delights them, what makes them jealous or angry. And she completely understands the tensions, rivalries and complicated relationships between siblings (and their parents) in a way that sets her apart from your average run-of-the-mill novelist.

While the story deals with big themes — our obsession with material goods, social prestige and climbing the career ladder; the ways in which we relate to animals and anthromorphisise them; and how we find our place in an ever-changing world  — it’s done with a lightness of touch and a good dose of humour. I laughed a lot while reading this book — and not just at Stephen’s fashion sense. There’s a terribly funny team-building exercise that had me cringing inside, and an hysterical children’s birthday party that turns into my idea of a nightmare.

But what makes Animal People such a terrific read is Wood’s ability to tell a relatively modest story about an ordinary man in a truly entertaining (and effortless) way. I was gripped from start to finish, and then I wanted to turn back to the start and read it all over again.

Unfortunately, this book is not available outside of Australia (it doesn’t even have a listing on Amazon.co.uk), but you can buy a signed copy direct from the author’s official website or try Fishpond.co.uk to import it postage free.

Atlantic Books, Author, Book review, Books in translation, crime/thriller, Fiction, Herman Koch, Holland/Netherlands, literary fiction, Setting

‘The Dinner’ by Herman Koch

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The-Dinner

Fiction – paperback; Atlantic Books; 311 pages; 2012. Translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett.

Appearances can be deceptive and so it is with Herman Koch’s rather dark and delicious novel, The Dinner, which looks like a simple story that unfolds over the course of a family dinner, but which turns out to be so much more than that.

A five-course menu

The book, which is set in Amsterdam, is divided into five parts — Aperitif, Appetiser, Main Course, Dessert, and Digestif — across 46 relatively short chapters. As you might expect from its title and the naming convention of the sections, it’s set in a restaurant — one of those fancy, upmarket nouvelle cuisine type restaurants, where there is more white plate on show than food. Or, as our often witty and slightly sneering narrator puts it when his wife’s appetiser arrives:

The first thing that struck you about Claire’s plate was its vast emptiness. Of course I’m well aware that, in the better restaurants, quality takes precedence over quantity, but there are voids and then there are voids. The void here, that part of the plate on which no food at all was present, had clearly been raised to a matter of principle.

Over the course of the meal, we become familiar with the two couples sitting around the table, each of whom has a 15-year-old son. There’s an undeniable tension between them from the start, mainly because the narrator, Paul Lohman, and his wife, Claire, would have much preferred to eat in a more down-to-earth establishment, a local café, but they have already agreed to meet Serge and his wife, Babette, at the fancy restaurant because that’s the kind of place they like to eat at.

Serge, it turns out, is not only pretentious and a bit of a wine snob — “all this I-know-everything-about-wine business irritated the hell out of me” — he’s a renowned (and popular) politician. In fact, he’s the leader of the Opposition in Holland and is expected to be the country’s next Prime Minister.

But there’s more to this initial tension than mild envy: it turns out to be a ferocious — and unspoken — clash between parenting values, because their teenage sons have committed a rather horrendous crime and each couple wants to deal with it in a different way. The subject, however, isn’t one that can readily be discussed over pink champagne and goat’s cheese salad…

An unexpected and compelling read

I have to say that I didn’t quite know what to expect from The Dinner, but it turned out to be a highly original, often uncomfortable and totally compelling read, by far the most unusual book I’ve read in a long while. It’s not quite a black comedy, but I did laugh a lot, mainly at the narrator’s sneering, judgemental tone and witty one-liners. The further I got into the story, however, the more my laughter simply felt wrong, because this is the kind of book that tilts your whole axis and tests your empathy for certain characters to the absolute limit.

It’s a hugely entertaining read, but there’s a lot of social commentary here, some of which is clearly tongue-in-cheek — for example, the whole pretentiousness of Western cuisine and food writing — and most of which is not. I’d like to use the term “hard-hitting” to describe it, but that’s too overused — a cliché if you will —  and it doesn’t quite convey the creeping sense of unease I felt as I got closer and closer to the ending.

The Dinner is a disturbing morality tale of the finest order, the kind of novel that makes you marvel at the writer’s ingenuous plot, filled as it is with unexpected turns and eye-opening revelations, all carefully structured and perfectly paced to keep the reader on tenterhooks throughout — think Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, but less showy and more intelligent. It’s bold, daring and shocking, but it’s also bloody good fun.

Author, Book review, Fiction, Ireland, literary fiction, New Island, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Setting

‘You’ by Nuala Ní Chonchúir

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You

Fiction – Kindle edition; New Island Books; 157 pages; 2010.

Nuala Ní Chonchúir‘s debut novel, You, is a lovely, heartfelt and completely engrossing story about a 10-year-old Irish girl grappling with issues out of her control: the loss of her best friend Gwen, who moves to Wales; the impending birth of a new half-sibling to her father’s second wife; and a new man in her mother’s life.

A Dublin childhood

You is set in Dublin in the 1980s and revolves around the unnamed girl, who is largely responsible for her two siblings — her younger brother Liam, and “the baby”, who is her half-brother — because her mother is partial to a drink. A couple of neighbours also help out.

Every so often the girl and Liam go to stay with their dad, who lives on the other side of town. He has remarried and there’s another baby on the way.  Eventually, they stay with him on an extended basis when their mother goes to hospital for “a little rest” but all the time the girl longs to return home, to her damp, crumbling house by the river Liffey, because she’s convinced that her step-mother has it in for her.

Indeed, the girl is never quite sure where her loyalties lie — she loves her mother but hates her new boyfriend; and she loves her father but doesn’t like his new wife. The one constant in her life, however, is  her best friend Gwen, who causes another spoke to fall off the wheel, as it were, when she announces that she’s moving across the Irish Sea to live in Wales. It’s almost too much for the girl to bear…

A funny, feisty narrator

You is told in the present tense and in the second person from the viewpoint of the girl, who is feisty and funny and opinionated and cheeky — and fiercely independent.

I’m not normally a fan of second-person narrators, but it’s testament to Ní Chonchúir’s skills as a writer that the story clips along at a steady pace and never feels laboured. You get pulled into the story because of the girl’s voice and get to experience everything she experiences, which makes her tale feel more immediate and real. Here’s an example:

Sometimes you wish that your ma was dead and that you, Liam and the baby lived in an orphanage. The people in the orphanage would feel really sorry for you and they would sing songs to you and let you sit on their lap. They’d bring you on picnics in meadows and they’d have a big basket, a checkered blanket and a flask and stuff. Then one day a rich couple would come and adopt the three of you and you would all live happily ever after in a big old house with ponies to ride on. The adoption ma would be movie-style pretty and the adoption da would be tall and handsome and he’d wear a suit and tie. Your da never wears a suit because he’s an electrician and he wears jeans or cords and jumpers. You like to think about all that sometimes, but the good feeling of it doesn’t last because the guilt starts creeping up your body and into your mind. It’s not right to wish that people are dead, especially not a close relative, even if they are narky all the time and make your life a living hell. Your ma has her good points; she just doesn’t like to show them very often.

I often laughed out loud at some of the girl’s observations and at other times I wanted to cry. Much of what she thinks and feels provides great insight, not only into her own small world, which is fragmenting at the seams, but at the ways in which her mother is struggling to cope with single parenthood, depression and the fact her ex-husband has moved on and she has not. For that reason, this is a very warm and human book.

Admittedly, I wondered where the narrative was going to take me, but then something quite dramatic and shocking happens mid-way through and suddenly what had been an eloquent character study is transformed into a brilliant family drama tinged by tragedy and heartbreak.

You might be a short and simple story, but it’s evocative — of time, of place, of childhood — and incredibly poignant. I loved every word.

Author, Book review, Doris Lessing, England, Fiction, Flamingo, horror, literary fiction, Publisher, Setting

‘The Fifth Child’ by Doris Lessing

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FifthChild

Fiction – paperback; Flamingo; 160 pages; 2001.

Doris Lessing is one of those authors you know you ought to read but never do. A case in point: I’ve had both The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist in my possession for more than three years and never once cracked them open. The sheer size of the books and the weight of the subjects contained within, combined with Lessing’s awesome literary reputation, have made me doubt my ability to understand and enjoy her work. Easier, then, to leave well alone.

That was until I read John Self’s review of The Fifth Child followed in due course by another review of the same book by Isabel from Books and Other Stuff. Maybe it was time to take the plunge? A slim book — just 160 pages — seemed the perfect introduction to her work.

And so this is how I came to read my first Doris Lessing last week.

The Fifth Child is billed as a horror story but it’s not from the Stephen King school of horror — it’s slightly more subtle but oodles more menacing because of it.

It’s about two people — David and Harriet — who meet at an office party in the 1960s and get married shortly after. Lessing describes them as “freaks and oddballs”, not least because they have old-fashioned views about sex at a time when the sexual revolution was in full swing. But also because in each other they saw what they were looking for:

Someone conservative, old-fashioned, not to say obsolescent; timid, hard to please: this is what other people called them, but there was no end to the unaffectionate adjectives they earned. They defended a stubbornly held view of themselves, which was that they were ordinary and in the right of it, should not be criticised for emotional fastidiousness, abstemiousness, just because these were unfashionable qualities.

With their minds set on living in a big house within commuting distance of London, they purchase a “three-storeyed house, with an attic, full of rooms, corridors, landings… Full of space for children in fact”. And then waste no time filling it with offspring — four children in ready succession — even though they can barely pay the mortgage.

Fortunately, David has a rich father who helps with the bills, while Harriet’s mother, Dorothy, is able to move in on a semi-permanent basis to help with the childcare. This enables the pair to create a welcoming, cosy home visited by a steady stream of relatives. Christmas and Easter become big family events that stretch into week-long parties. It seems an idyllic kind of life on the surface, but underneath there are sores that are beginning to fester: David has to work longer and longer hours in the city to pay for his children’s upkeep; Dorothy finds herself being taken for granted and brands the pair “selfish and irresponsible”; and Harriet becomes more and more exhausted with each pregnancy.

It is only when Harriet falls pregnant for the fifth time that things take a turn for the worse. The unborn baby is a “wrestler”, causing Harriet so much pain and discomfort she starts taking sedatives on the sly.

The drugs did not seem to be affecting her much: she was willing them to leave her alone and to reach the foetus — this creature with whom she was locked in a struggle to survive. And for those hours it was quiet, or if it showed signs of coming awake, and fighting her, she took another dose.

When she eventually gives birth to 11-pound baby Ben she notices that he doesn’t look quite right. He had a “heavy-shouldered hunched look” and a strange hairline. “He’s like a troll, or a goblin or something,” she tells David.

This feeling of having produced a non-human baby continues when Ben continually tears at Harriet’s breast, roars and bellows to the point of turning white with rage, and stares at her with cold malevolent eyes.

To say anything more would ruin the plot of the book, but essentially Ben’s mental development stalls, which has consequences for the entire family. Much of the story hinges on Harriet’s relationship to her child and raises that age-old dilemma of whether it is nature or nurture that shapes who we become.

If you are thinking that The Fifth Child sounds like a disturbing read, you’d be right. But it is also a memorable, thought-provoking one. The brevity of this book does not make it less interesting or less controversial than a more page-heavy novel, because within this slim volume there are so many issues worth debating: does class structure affect our family lives? To what extent should a mother take responsiblity for her child’s misbehaviour? Is it responsible to have so many children when you must rely on help to raise them?

Personally, I found the narrative immediately gripping, although the fast pace left me breathless at times. Everything seems to move so quickly, and Lessing is brilliant at hurrying things along with a minimal of detail or explanation — which is a necessity if you are to cover one couple’s life from courtship to raising teenage children in the space of 160 pages. I thought it was a rather effortless read and it has now given me enough courage to delve into Lessing’s rather extensive back catalogue, the first of which is likely to be the sequel to this book, Ben in the World, which looks at how Ben copes with life as a strange, inhuman adult. Fascinating.