Tag: holiday

Atlantic Books, Author, Book review, Fiction, France, Herman Koch, literary fiction, Publisher, Setting, translated fiction

‘Summer House with Swimming Pool’ by Herman Koch

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Summer House with Swimming Pool

Fiction – paperback; Atlantic; 411 pages; 2014. Translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Earlier this year I read Herman Koch’s The Dinner and loved its dark twist on family morals. His latest novel, Summer House with Swimming Pool, is just as dark, if not more so. But where The Dinner is based on a meal from hell, Summer House with Swimming Pool  is based on a holiday from hell: there are family arguments, forbidden love affairs and a few cross words between friends. But there’s also a dark undercurrent of menace and misogyny that has deep repercussions for everyone in this sorry saga.

A dodgy doctor

The story is narrated by Dr Marc Schlosser, a General Practitioner, who has a long list of rich and famous clients. Most of them have come to him because they know he’s a soft touch: he doesn’t mind how much they drink and he’ll hand out painkillers and other medication without batting an eyelid.

One of these clients is a rather famous (and obese) theatre actor called Ralph Meier with whom he develops a friendship. The friendship, however, turns out to be a little one-sided: Marc regards him as a lecherous old man who has an eye on his wife, Caroline:

It took a couple of seconds before I realised Ralph was no longer listening to me. He was no longer even looking at me. And, without following his gaze, I knew immediately what he was looking at.
Now something was happening to the gaze itself. To the eyes. As he examined the back of Caroline’s body from head to foot, a film slid down over his eyes. In nature films, you see that sometimes with birds of prey. A raptor that has located, from somewhere far up, high in the air, or from a tree branch, a mouse of some other tasty morsel. That was how Ralph Meier was regarding my wife’s body: as if it was something edible, something that made his mouth water.

When the book opens we know that Ralph is dead and that Marc has been accused of his murder through negligence. As he prepares to face the Board of Medical Examiners, the story rewinds to explain how events have lead to this dire predicament.

From this we learn that the previous summer Ralph had invited Marc and his family — his “tasty morsel” of a wife and their two daughters, Lisa, 11 and Julia, 13 — to stay with him at his “summer house with swimming pool” (hence the name of the novel). Initially, Marc does everything in his power not to stay at Ralph’s — the family camp nearby instead — but doesn’t want to appear rude by turning him down directly.

Eventually, when they do move in —thanks to Caroline’s insistence — they find themselves sharing the house with a cast of rather abhorrent characters, including an odious Hollywood producer called Stanley and his much younger girlfriend, Emmanuelle. They pass their days in the sun, swimming and drinking or visiting the local coastal resort. It all seems rather carefree, but there’s an undercurrent of sexual tension between all the adult couples — Marc finds himself attracted to Ralph’s wife, Judith, for instance — and there’s even a fledgling romance between Ralph’s son and Marc’s teenage daughter.

Eventually that tension spills over into something dark and dangerous, the outfall of which has long-lasting repercussions.

Moral codes

Fans of The Dinner will probably like this book very much. I’m not convinced it’s as accomplished or as well plotted, but it still features some of Koch’s trademarks: vile characters you can’t help but be intrigued by; a sneering, ethically dubious narrator; lots of unexpected “reveals” or twists as the story unfolds; and an examination of moral codes of conduct from almost every conceivable angle.

The pacing is a bit uneven — it took me a long time to get into and I almost abandoned it at the half way mark, but when it takes off it goes like a rocket. I was left breathless, not only by the lightning quick narrative, but by the turn of events, which are so unbelievably shocking I felt like I’d been run over by a truck.

All of the male characters, including the unethical narrator, are self-centred and loathsome. The women, by contrast, are all quite normal, which I expect is a deliberate ploy by the author, seeing as the book explores in various different ways the ideas of sex, sexual attraction and misogyny. Ralph and Stanley are sexually repellent, yet seem to somehow attract the prettiest of women, for instance, and even Marc, who sees himself as a kind of protector of women (or at least he is very protective of his teenage daughter, Julia), is sexually attracted to a woman who is not his wife.

If nothing else, Summer House with Swimming Pool is a story about society’s double standards when it comes to the way women are regarded. But it’s also a dark analysis of modern morals and the consequences of acting on our most wanton desires. It’s not a light read, but it is a strange and compelling one.

Author, Book review, David Bezmozgis, Fiction, literary fiction, Publisher, Russia, Setting, Viking

‘The Betrayers’ by David Bezmozgis

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The Betrayers

Fiction – Kindle edition; Viking; 240 pages; 2014.

David Bezmozgis’ The Betrayers has been shortlisted for this year’s Giller Prize. It’s not the first time he’s made the cut — his first novel, The Free World, was shortlisted in 2011.

This new book is also focussed on Russian Jews but is vastly different. Set in current times, and spanning just 24 hours, it focuses on two aged men — a Russian dissident turned Israeli politician, who is embroiled in a sex scandal, and a 70-year-old Soviet exile, who is in poor health and struggling to make ends meet — whose paths cross in Yalta, a holiday resort on the Crimean peninsula.

The book is divided into four main parts — the first focuses on the politician, Baruch Kotler; the second on Vladimir Tankilevich, the Jew who informed on Kotler 40 years earlier; the third on their reunion;  and the fourth on the outfall of their meeting.

Soviet dissident meets Soviet informer

In a nutshell, the story goes something like this: in his role as a cabinet minister, Kotler has taken a stand against the destruction of West Bank settlements and has refused to be blackmailed into keeping quiet. As a result, photographs of him in a compromising position with his young assistant, Leora, have been published in the papers. Kotler and Leora decide to lay low by taking a short vacation in the Crimea, where they rent a room from a Russian woman. By coincidence, it turns out that the Russian woman is married to Tankilevich. The two men meet, have a long conversation about their past, and then Kotler and Leora return home to face the consequences of their actions.

Of course, it would spoil things to outline the detail of the conversation between Kotler and Tankilevich, which makes up the bulk of the book, but suffice to say it largely fleshes out the novel’s theme, which — as the title would suggest — is very much focussed on betrayal and its long-lasting repercussions. This betrayal is not only between the two men at the heart of the story, but also on other characters, including Kotler’s betrayal of his longstanding wife Miriam (by taking up with Leora) and Leora’s betrayal of  Kotler’s daughter, Dafna, with whom she is very good friends ( by taking up with her father).

It could even be argued that it is the fear of betrayal that forces Kotler’s son, a solider in the Israeli Army, to ignore his superiors by refusing to take part in the destruction of the Jewish settlements — even if he has to injure himself so that he is unable to do so.

Politics and humour

While The Betrayers deals with many heavy themes — including political oppression and the ways in which Soviet Russia manipulated its own citizens to turn against one another — Bezmozgis uses wry humour to lighten the load. For instance, early on in the novel, Kotler is very much aware that his relationship with Leora is preposterous given the difference in their age — and he knows this fact hasn’t been lost on the hotel receptionist who turns them away on the basis she can’t find their booking:

Perhaps someone could think, considering them, that here was a dutiful daughter vacationing with her father. But wasn’t that yet another of the changes, the increased number of daughters and fathers who seemed to be vacationing together?

And later:

What a picture they made, he thought. This voluptuous, serious, dark-haired girl with her head on the shoulder of a pot-bellied little man still wearing his sunglasses and Borsalino hat. Fodder for comedy.

Fast-paced “spy novel”

Admittedly, I have an aversion to novels that are focused on political betrayal (I’m not a fan of Cold War novels, for instance), but there was a lot I liked about this one. It’s fast-paced, too, and can be easily read in a day or two.

The male characters are well drawn (the females less so) and the dialogue is very good — short, sharp and punchy — enough to suggest it would make a terrific screenplay. That’s not to say Bezmozgis is light on detail, because he’s not — his descriptions of Yalta are particularly vivid and even the way he describes the inner life of Tankilevich, forced to beg the Jewish charity in Simferopol to extend his 10-year stipend, has a ring of authenticity to it.

But, on the whole, The Betrayers feels very much a “male book”, which may not bode well for winning a major literary prize like the 2014 Giller Prize, which will be announced in a week’s time (10 November).

For another take on this novel, please see KevinfromCanada’s review.

Author, Book review, crime/thriller, Fiction, Harper Collins, Lisa Brackman, Mexico, Publisher, Setting

‘The Day of the Dead’ by Lisa Brackman

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Day-of-the-dead

Fiction – paperback; Harper; 376 pages; 2012. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

I’m not sure what made me keep this book when it arrived unsolicited months and months ago, but it survived two or three book culls and I took it away with me on holiday thinking it would make the perfect read for a wintry day. I was right. Lisa Brackman’s Day of the Dead — published in the US under the title Getaway — is nothing special in terms of psychological thrillers, but it’s fast-paced and (slightly) more intelligent than your average “airport novel”.

The holiday from hell

The story is not a particularly original one — woman alone on holiday has one-night stand with dangerous man and then gets herself into all kinds of bother — but who cares when you are looking for some instant gratification of the easy reading variety?

In Day of the Dead, the main protagonist is Michelle Mason, a feisty if somewhat naive young widow from Los Angeles. On holiday in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, she is trying to come to terms with the loss of her husband and the subsequent loss of all their assets — it turns out rich hubby got caught up in the global financial crisis but didn’t let his wife know. He continued to fund their luxurious lifestyle — which he couldn’t afford — and now Michelle has been lumbered with all his debts.

But that turns out to be the least of her concerns, because when she meets Daniel, a handsome expat American (aren’t they always handsome in these kinds of novels?), and takes him back to her hotel room, she unwittingly gets caught up in events that are beyond her control. By page 16, it’s clear that the dream holiday is about to turn into a nightmare.

A Faustian pact

It’s a bit tricky to explain much else without spoiling the plot. But essentially Michelle is trapped in Vellarto, thanks to a missing passport and lack of cash, and doesn’t know whom she can trust. Even the police are suspect.

When a shady man called Gary asks her to spy on Daniel in exchange for her personal debts being paid off, Michelle baulks at the idea — but then she realises she has no alternative: Gary will kill her if she refuses to play his “game”.

Once Michelle agrees to this Faustian pact, the narrative goes through all kinds of twists and turns, so that you’re never sure what is around the corner for our poor heroine caught in the dangerous world of drug runners and corrupt police officers. While the ride is wild, to Brackman’s credit, the plot developments and the life-or-death situations in which Michelle finds herself don’t feel too far-fetched. Even the characters, of which there’s a small but defined cast, seem considerably fleshed out for a novel of this type. And despite the simple prose style, it’s very visual — it would make a terrific Hollywood blockbuster.

Day of the Dead won the Grand Prize for general fiction at the Los Angeles Book Festival in March 2012. It may not be highbrow literature, but it’s entertaining, smart and fast. The point is to just go with the flow and enjoy the journey.

Author, Bloomsbury, Book review, David Park, Fiction, Holland/Netherlands, literary fiction, Northern Ireland, Publisher, Setting

‘The Light of Amsterdam’ by David Park

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Light-of-amsterdam_final

Fiction – hardcover; Bloomsbury; 384 pages; 2012. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

They say travel broadens the mind. It can also shake us out of complacency or give us the opportunity to see things in a new light. This is what happens to three people from Belfast who travel to Amsterdam for a long weekend one December.

Three diverse characters

Alan, a university art teacher, is still coming to terms with an adulterous “fling” that resulted in the end of his marriage. Karen, a worker at a care home, is struggling to save enough money for her daughter’s upcoming wedding. And Marion, who runs a garden centre with her husband Alan, is feeling old and unloved.

All three, who do not know each other, are middle-aged. But they have other things in common, too. Each one nurses a private hurt, lacks self-esteem and is beginning to think that life has passed them by. Their individual trips to Amsterdam — all taken on the same weekend and on board the same flight — show them it is possible to change things for the better.

It also shows them that their loved ones are not the people they imagined them to be.

Multiple narratives

As with David Park’s previous novel, The Truth Commissioner, the book is comprised of multiple narratives. But this time around, instead of isolating each narrative thread in a self-enclosed section, Park intertwines them in alternate chapters. This choppiness helps keep the momentum going and reveals the unusual and often unpredictable ways in which these characters bump against each other, both in Belfast and in Amsterdam. And it also helps highlight the similarities between them, such as their poor personal morale and the need to find new meaning in their life and relationships.

As each character’s story unfurls, we get to see their flaws and weaknesses — as well as their understated strengths. There are “lightbulb moments” for each character as they suddenly see things in a new light — the light of Amsterdam of the title — and realise there is a way forward out of their current rut.

Alan, who is trying to relive his youth by attending a Bob Dylan concert, finds a new way to reconnect with his monosyllabic teenage son, who has reluctantly joined him on the trip. Karen, who is at her daughter’s crazy hen party, realises she no longer has to be taken for granted by the self-absorbed young woman she has struggled to raise alone. (I loved this bit, and I think a cheer may have emitted from my lips when the pair of them have the world’s biggest row.) And Marion, in Amsterdam for her birthday, discovers that she has misunderstood her husband’s needs for far too long.

A compassionate novel

The Light of Amsterdam is a gentle, worldly-wise novel about human relationships. It explores the gap between generations — and within marriage — and shows how our desire to be loved and respected is a common trait among all people, regardless of age or background. But it’s also a lovely and evocative portrait of Amsterdam, its tree-lined canals and quiet cobbled courtyards.

The Light of Amsterdam is David Park’s eighth novel. It has just been named on Fiction Uncovered’s list of British fiction for 2012, so expect to hear more about this book and its Belfast-born author in the weeks and months ahead.

Antal Szerb, Author, Book review, Fiction, Hungary, Italy, literary fiction, Publisher, Pushkin Press, Setting, translated fiction, Venice

‘Journey by Moonlight’ by Antal Szerb

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Journey-by-moonlight

Fiction – paperback; Pushkin Press; 240 pages; 2010. Translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix.

Antal Szerb’s Journey by Moonlight has been on my wishlist since November 2007 when I spotted it in my local Waterstone’s. At the time I was looking for novels set in Venice, and this one seemed to fit the bill perfectly. So I was delighted when it was chosen as the July read for the book group to which I belong.

Sadly, Venice only plays a minor role in the story, much of which is set in other parts of Italy, including Perugia, Florence and Rome.

It deals with a Hungarian couple, Mihály and Erzsi, who get married following a one-year affair in which Erzsi leaves her husband. By all accounts they should be madly in love, yet the cracks are beginning to show when they go on their honeymoon to Venice. For a start, Mihály, keen to explore the city’s secret alleyways, stays out all night, without telling his new wife. Then, when he meets an old school friend, who is appallingly rude about Erzsi to her face, he gets lost in a world of nostalgia that only serves to strain their relationship further.

Things go from bad to worse when he gets on the wrong train, having disembarked for coffee en route from Florence to Rome, leaving Erzsi behind. I don’t think it is a plot spoiler to say the marriage is effectively over, but it is how both parties deal with the outfall that makes up the bulk of the novel. While most of the narrative follows Mihály’s quest to come to terms with his past, we do get fleeting glimpses of Erzsi’s new life.

Yet the book is frustrating, because the narrative is so uneven, and the (meagre) plot is littered with far too many coincidences to be believable.

But the novel’s strength lies in its intellectual ruminations on death, not just the physical ending of life, but on the loss of youth and how we grieve for past lives and experiences which can never be recaptured. For Mihály, a man from a privileged background, it is almost as if has never learnt to do anything or decide anything for himself; he’s been swept along by other people, including a dominant father, and he has never figured out where he truly belongs, other than in the past, where he felt “alive” amongst his childhood friends, a set of intriguing siblings, Éva and Tamás.

In fact, Mihály might be in his mid-30s but he seems alarmingly adolescent in his inability to grow up and get on with his life. And there are elements of his passivity, his ennui, which suggest to me that he might be suffering from undiagnosed depression.

But lest you think Journey by Moonlight suffers under the weight of its own pretensions, the novel has some comic, often absurd moments. And Szerb, who wrote this book in 1937, isn’t afraid to poke fun at his characters. Indeed, he seems to relish making some of them, such as János, who is accused of being a pick-pocket, a little bit dastardly.

While I cannot pretend to love this book as much as others — the reviews on the blurb from The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement make it sound like a masterpiece — it’s an interesting story about a lost soul trying to find his way in life.

Author, Book review, Fiction, Italy, literary fiction, Muriel Spark, Penguin Modern Classics, Publisher, Setting

‘The Driver’s Seat’ by Muriel Spark

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DriversSeat

Fiction – paperback; Penguin Modern Classics; 128 pages; 2006.

Oooh, my goodness, the late Muriel Spark did a fine line in totally batty, off-the-wall characters, didn’t she? In this novella, first published in 1970 (and recently long-listed for the the Lost Man Booker Prize), she introduces us to the 30-something Lise, who escapes her boring office job for a holiday to “the South”. Except this is no ordinary holiday — and Lise is no ordinary office worker.

From the outset she behaves in inexplicable ways. When she throws a complete strop in a clothes shop for what seems like a very odd reason indeed — she didn’t like knowing that the dress she wanted to buy was made from stain-resistant material — the reader immediately wonders whether Lise is highly strung or simply a bit weird. When she returns to the office and begins to laugh hysterically and then starts “crying all in a flood” you think maybe she’s just hormonal.

But later, when she eventually buys the outfit she wants to take away with her, a garishly designed dress comprising “a lemon-yellow top with a skirt patterned in bright V’s of orange, mauve and blue” and a clashing summer coat featuring narrow stripes of red and white, with a white collar, you realise she’s just completely barmy. This opinion is cemented when Lise tells the disbelieving sales assistant that:

The colours go together perfectly. People here in the North are ignorant of colours. Conservative; old-fashioned. If only you knew! These colours are a natural blend for me. Absolutely natural.

Oh yes, Lise is a nutter. And you just know her trip to the Continent is going to be filled with one narrow escapade after another.

And this is where I break one of my reviewing rules and reveal a plot spoiler, so if you don’t wish to know what happens next, can I suggest you skip ahead to the very last paragraph.

Just when you are looking forward to finding out how the supposedly well-travelled Lise is going to negotiate a foreign culture wearing such a hideous combination of clothes, Spark introduces a curve-ball. You are only on page 25 and Lise hasn’t even got on the plane, when you find out that she will be murdered:

She will be found tomorrow morning dead from multiple stab-wounds, her wrists bound with a silk scarf and her ankles bound with a man’s necktie, in the grounds of an empty villa, in a park of the foreign city to which she is travelling on the flight now boarding at Gate 14.

Right-o. So, immediately, the tension gets ratcheted up a few notches because you want to know how Lise meets her sorry demise. And so you follow her shenanigans with a weird mix of fear and fascination, because even though she’s a screwball character you don’t want her to die.

And that, I suppose, is the magic of this wonderful book. It’s only 107 pages long and easily read in one sitting, but it is such a masterpiece of plotting and suspense that you wonder how Spark achieved it in so few a words. Everything is pared down to the bare minimum without losing that sense of excitement and sheer horror as Lise bumbles her way through the streets of an unnamed European city.

The Driver’s Seat is terribly dark fodder, but I loved every moment. I don’t think it will win the Lost Booker, if only because it’s so short and is over before you’ve even begun it, but it’s definitely a book that demands a second or third reading to see if you can discover exactly how Lise plotted her journey of self-destruction.

Author, Book review, Fiction, general, Greece, Maeve Binchy, Orion, Publisher, Setting

‘Nights of Rain and Stars’ by Maeve Binchy

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NightsofRainandStars

Fiction – paperback; Orion; 400 pages; 2005.

Reading a book by Maeve Binchy is akin to sitting in front of a roaring fire on a cold winter’s day with a box of chocolates and a bottle of red wine: cosy and comforting. Maeve Binchy is one of my guilty pleasures, although it’s been about a decade since I last succumbed to temptation.

Night of Rain and Stars is not strictly typical Binchy fare, mainly because it’s set in Greece (not Ireland) in current times (not the 1950s or 60s). But it still has heart-warming characters, each of whom is struggling with personal issues. First, there’s David a young Englishman on the run from his parents who want him to work in the family business; Elsa, a beautiful and kind (there’s always one of these characters in a Binchy book) TV journalist from Germany on the run from a lover she cannot trust; Fiona, a naive nurse from Dublin who’s hooked up with a violent boyfriend her family can’t stand; and Thomas, a Californian academic on sabbatical who is still hurting from a divorce in which he lost custody of his young son.

These four characters are thrown together after a shipping disaster in the harbour of the idyllic Greek village they are all visiting for the summer holidays. Within days they have forged firm friendships with one another and discovered that they are all on the run from problems at home. Together, with the help of two local residents —  Andreas the elderly Greek taverna owner and Vonni the middle-aged expat Irishwoman who runs a craft shop — each person finds a solution they’d not ever anticipated.

Okay, it sounds a little soppy — and completely unrealistic (I mean, who makes instant friendships on a holiday?), but to be honest, I thoroughly enjoyed this lovely story which is about family relationships and the bonds of friendship. It’s an easy read, helped by ginormous-sized printing (perhaps indicating the “older” age group this book is likely to attract), but it’s a quick read too if you don’t mind stories without an obivous plot and a happy, relatively predictable, ending.

This book isn’t going to challenge you on any literary or intellectual level, but it doesn’t make any claims to do so. And sometimes it’s nice to read something completely escapist and “dependable”, isn’t it?

Author, Book review, crime/thriller, Fiction, India, Katy Gardner, Penguin, Publisher, Setting

‘Losing Gemma’ by Katy Gardner

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LosingGemma

Fiction – paperback; Penguin; 307 pages; 2002.

As much as I know I overuse this phrase to describe books I like, I’m going to use it again anyhow; Katy Gardner’s Losing Gemma is a page-turning read that you can’t put down.

It’s a gripping story about two young English 20-something backpackers who journey to India on an “adventure of a lifetime” yet only one comes back alive.

The two female travellers have been friends since childhood: Gemma lacks confidence and is somewhat frumpy and bookish; while Esther, the main narrator of the story, is headstrong, pretty and successful. Unfortunately, during their travels the cracks in their friendship begin to appear, and both wrestle with the unexpected emotions this causes.

This is by no means an “intellectual” read but it has an intriguing undercurrent of menace which propels the plot along at a cracking pace. As one strange thing after another occurs to the girls on their trip, it’s hard not to wonder what will happen next. Of course, we are told right at the beginning that Gemma dies and despite the fact that you know this, Gardner holds your attention by not revealing the means of death until the very last moment.

The book also has an interesting twist at the end (although I guessed it fairly early on), while the descriptions of India and the intricacies of the backpacking lifestyle add an exotic flavour. And if you can bear the often whiny, self-obsessed voice of the narrator, this is a book to enjoy in just one or two sittings.