The Road

There is always the danger in reading “it” books, that the book you read can never match the book that has been raved about by everyone you know.

This should not be your concern in approaching Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

McCarthy paints a bleak picture of a post-apocalyptic world, and a father and son who are trying to make their way through it. Food is scarce, crops and animals virtually non-existent, but McCarthy manages to argue that even in situations such as these, to simply survive is not enough. We must also hang onto what makes us human, or else all is lost. So, the father and his son (whose names we never know), walk through the tattered and dangerous landscape, calling themselves “the good guys” who carry “the fire”. This is how the father makes his son understand how important their humanity is to them.

As they march on and see things that are truly chilling, it is ironically the father who teeters on the edge of losing this precious spark, the boy never falters.

I wont spoil the ending, as wondering what is going to happen is one of the primary joys of a book such as this. But it is well worth reading, and has not been so talked up as to be a disappointment to anyone. But be prepared for quite a few tense moments. Not for the faint of heart.

Amsterdam

I’m not exactly sure I found this Booker prize worthy, but it wasn’t bad. To be fair though, I do find McEwan a bit hit and miss.

The novel begins at the funeral of Molly Lane, introducing us to the two main characters – ex-lovers of hers and now friends – Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday. The funeral starts Clive, an erratic composer, thinking about his own mortality…. Molly had been very ill and was greatly altered in her last days. Thus, Clive asks Vernon if he is ever in that situation, would Vernon just help him die? Vernon, a methodical newspaper man finally answers – only if you do the same for me.

In these scenes, McEwan builds up a seemingly beautiful and unshakeable friendship. But as the novella progresses, this is slowly broken down… and McEwan presents us with an ending that the blurb describes as a “delicious shock”. I didn’t think it was that shocking… I had expected it by then. But it is still an interesting story about two self-involved characters, and how quickly rancour can occur to poison a friendship… you’ll get it when you read it!

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

I am a big fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Somehow he can make even the most unusual of stories beautiful (I mean, have you ever read Love in the Time of Cholera?). And this new novella, his first in ten years is no exception.

The main character decides on his ninetieth birthday that he will treat himself to a virgin prostitute. But when he meets her, asleep on the bed, all he wants to do is watch her. So, he goes back night after night and kisses her sleeping figure, reads to her, plays her music in her sleep - all this has a dramatic effect on him. For the first time in his life, he is in love. The weekly column he writes for the newspaper reflects this and the whole city celebrates him as a grand lover and lover of life.

Of course, there are always complications, but the novel tells us that is never too late to love - nor is it ever so unlikely as to be impossible. A beautiful little story.

After Dark

After reading so many duds lately, it was just wonderful to delve into something truly fascinating. Haruki Murakami may not be one of those authors who likes to spell it all out for you, but he sure knows how to inspire interest.

After Dark spans one night that is somewhat eventful for each of the characters. The character it settle most often on is Mari Asai, a young woman who does not want to go home. She plans on spending the night reading in a Denny’s, but has a few adventures instead. She is approached by Takahashi, who has met her before, and while she rejects him at first, the two eventually talk and bare their souls to each other.

She also is caught up in the scandal of a beaten up Chinese prostitute, left stranded at a love hotel. The befriends the employees there, who eventually make her feel safe enough to sleep.

Meanwhile at home, her extraordinarily beautiful sister Eri Asai is sleeping. In fact, she has been sleeping for quite some time now. But tonight she is touched and drawn into a whole other world… its hard to explain – and in fact Murakami never does – but nonetheless very interesting.

It’s Mari’s story really – of coming into her own, escaping the shadow of her sister and finding a way to reach her in her somnambulistic state. I loved it, even though it didn’t answer all my questions. Want to read more.

A Minimum of Two

Tim Winton can be visionary at times, and this collection of short stories is one of the most brilliant things I have read by him.

The stories surround a collection of characters who are all struggling with a feeling of loneliness, even though they are surrounded by people. They are also quintessentially Australian, in terms of the setting and characters.

This text has been studied at VCE, showing a range of themes and values being espoused.

Short stories can be very refreshing – you can finish them quickly and no time is wasted on building a plot. You simply get an interesting character at a pivotal time in his/her life.

The Brief History of the Dead

I picked this book by Kevin Brockmeier up on a whim when last at the library – it looked kind of interesting. The whole premise is that the dead go to a place much like here “in between worlds”, while there are still those on earth who remember them.

So, the book goes on about this for a little while, and eventually we learn that some kind of extinction level event has occurred on earth. A plague of some description. Slowly the waiting place dwindles to just a few. Intertwined through the story of this is the story of Laura Byrd, a scientist in the Antarctic. Laura finds herself alone on the ice, and struggles to understand what has happened the world she is at the remotest end of.

Where Brockmeier could have been subtle, he is heavy handed, explaining concretely to the reader that everyone left is someone who knows Laura. I really do hate that expectation that a reader to too obtuse to pick up this kind of subtlety.

In the end, it was a struggle to finish this for precisely that reason. Give it a miss.