april-may 2023 books…

Biography Of X (Catherine Lacey): I’d previously read Lacey’s book “Pew” and purchased this one after going to hear her speak at a Storysmith book evening. She’s a very impressive, intelligent, articulate woman. This ‘epic novel’ is entirely a work of fiction… a fake biography of ‘X’ (she’s “an iconoclastic artist, writer and shapeshifter”) supposedly written by her fictional wife, CM Lucca (‘CM’). CM justifies writing the ‘biography’ on the grounds that she wanted to dispel the lies (in her view) contained writer Theodore Smith’s earlier biography of X. X lived something of a wild life… of secrets and betrayals; the novels recounts of her supposed collaborations (and feuds) with the likes of David Bowie, Tom Waits and Susan Sontag. She ‘died’ in 1996, but it seems she was one of the more enigmatic cultural figures of the 20th century. She always refused to confirm her place or date of birth, and after she took the pseudonym ‘X’ in 1982, it was never clear which if any of her previous identities – Dorothy Eagle, Clyde Hill, Caroline Walker, Bee Converse – corresponded to her actual name. It’s a wonderfully detailed and complicated book supposedly drawing on X’s archives and a range of interviews with the people closest to her – complete with “original images assembled by X’s ‘widow’ and hundreds of cross-references to fictional interviews, books, performances.
Pretty soon it also becomes clear that the events of the book take place on “an alternative timeline of US history in a world very different from our own” (as The Guardian’s review puts it). There’s a female socialist president in the 1940s; some of the southern states have their own dictatorial governance (complete with their own morality police) – walled off from the rest of the country until 1996; the north, meanwhile, has pursued (but not actually realised thus far) a range of enlightened, progressive policies. It’s a long (some 400 pages), haunting, clever book – sometimes so clever that I failed to maintain my concentration!
Whale (Cheon Myewong-Kwan): This is our Storysmith’s bookgroup next book (it’s one of the longlisted International Booker Prize 2023 books). It’s a complicated, bizarre saga set in a remote village in mid-20^th century South Korea and blends fable, farce and fantasy. It follows the lives of three linked characters: Geumbok (an extremely ambitious, enterprising, somewhat selfish woman with a shrewd business brain despite being born into poverty) who thrilled at her first sighting of a whale in the ocean; Geumbok’s mute ‘giant’ daughter (she weighed 15 pounds at birth), Chunhui, who communicates with elephants and is a gifted brick-maker; and a one-eyed woman who controls honeybees with a whistle. It’s a long, surreal, satirical book (367 pages) in three parts - with a complex list of characters and situations. It’s a fascinating, clever, frequently funny book, but also an unsettling one (eg. sexual attitudes and behaviour of men towards women; violence; the plight of women in 20^th century Korea etc). Although I found it a very impressive book in many ways, it wasn’t really quite ‘my cup of tea’.
Hugh Casson’s Oxford (Hugh Casson): After the intensity and complexities of the previous two books, it really was rather lovely to envelope myself in Hugh Casson’s book of Oxford (which I’d been given for the 40^th birthday by my architect partner and friend Eric Hardy). It’s a book of the author’s wonderful watercolours and alongside his insights on a city he knew intimately (he died in 1999). His ‘sketching’ technique is very impressive – quick, accurate watercolours depicting the building details with, often, just the merest hint of pen/ink embellishment. My lovely old boss at The Oxford Architects Partnership, Geoffrey Beard, even gets a brief mention.
Death And The Penguin (Andrey Kurkov): This is our next ‘Blokes’ book. This book, first published in 1996) is the second of Kurkov’s books I’ve read (the other was ‘Grey Bees’). Russian-born Kurkov lives in Kiev and, sadly – given the Russian invasion last year – this political satire of a novel neatly reflects ‘life imitating art’. The background to the book is one of contract killings, executed journalists, rampaging political corruption and an environment of profound moral chaos. The novel's hero, Viktor Zolotaryov, is a frustrated, unsuccessful short story-writer who reluctantly takes up a job as star obituarist for a newspaper… with a brief to select powerful figures from Ukrainian high society and prepare mournful, pithy articles in readiness for the possibility that they might suddenly die… which, of course, they do! I’ll refrain from providing further details (*no spoilers*), but Viktor's ‘career’ is watched over by his pet penguin, Misha - adopted a few months earlier from the impoverished city zoo… and it’s the penguin that is the only being capable of inspiring any real affection in Viktor. In the cynical atmosphere of post-communist Kiev, the penguin is the only being which inspires in Viktor real affection (and produces delightful dark humour into the novel). Apparently, the author saw the penguin as something representing a portrayal of post-Soviet chaos ('the penguin is a collective animal who is at a loss when he is alone. In the Antarctic, they live in huge groups and all their movements are programmed in their brains so that they follow one another. When you take one away from the others he is lost… This is what happened to the Soviet people who were collective animals - used to being helped by one another. With the collapse of the Soviet Union suddenly they found themselves alone, no longer felt protected by their neighbours, in a completely unfamiliar situation where they couldn't understand the new rules of life'). It’s a depressing story but, despite its bleak moral landscape, one which I also found very funny and nourishing.
Shy (Max Porter): This is the author’s fourth book… and I’ve read all of them. It’s set in 1995 and Shy, a 16-year-old boy, is a pupil at the Last Chance boarding school – an unconventional institution for the rehabilitation of some of the most disturbed and violent young offenders in the country. He’s been expelled from two other schools and has a history of drugs, violence, crime and, not surprisingly, has alienated his mother. The novel is about childhood, cruelty, compassion and despair. It makes for a tough, disquieting and exhilarating read… brilliantly impressive in the way Porter gets inside Shy’s head and expresses his thinking and actions in a blunt, shocking way. I don’t want to divulge how the story evolves; all I’ll say is that, as with Porter’s previous books, I love the way he constructs his stories - even how they appear on the page… different type faces and font sizes, careful considered layouts. I’m a great lover of Porter’s writing style and found this short, but intense, book hugely impressive.