november-december 2018 books…

Time Present And Time Past (Deirdre Madden): This novel (published in 2013) is set in Dublin in 2006 – at the height of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ – but with reference to Madden’s own rural Catholic upbringing in County Antrim. It’s the story about family bonds, about its members, about memories, about secrets, about speculation (‘what might have happened if…’) and about our attitudes to the present. It’s a fascinating and beguiling novel (strangely, the voice in my head didn’t have an Irish accent… which was a little disappointing!). Family photographs (and the story of photography) play an important part and I particularly liked a section near the end of the book which ‘froze time’ and gave a brief account of what was to become of each of the family members, their careers, their future families… and, in some instances, their deaths. For me, meeting up with cousins again over the past couple of years for lunch and catch-ups (and old and very old photographs) has conjured up all sorts of memories that I’d perhaps very nearly forgotten and seeing images of people I’d never met. I recall someone once saying “middle age is a time for transformation as well as reflection” – well, I think “old age” can be seen in the same way! A very good, enjoyable, thought-provoking book.
Hong Kong (Jan Morris): This book was published in 1990 – 7 years before HK reverted to Chinese sovereignty (after 156 years of British rule). I first read it some 25 years ago (but have a strange feeling that I didn’t finish it first time around). As ever, with Morris’s books, it’s full a fascinating facts and observations. One of my favourite ‘asides’ relates to the importance of sport from the very earliest days of British rule… references to a ‘fine cricket field’ with its pavilion on the waterfront… and about one of the popular annual cricket fixtures was Monosyllables v Polysyllables (captained by Messrs D’Aeth and Holsworthy)! I found much of the colony’s C19th history, in particular, hugely depressing (all about the Empire, don’t you know!). In its latter years as a British outpost, HK was clearly regarded as something of a success story (eg. by the 1960s, it boasted ‘perhaps the most modern and efficient public transport system in any of the great cities of the world’). Amongst other throw-away comments, Morris remarks that I found amusing: “I have been told of the particular effectiveness of Sir Murray MacLehose, Governor from 1971-82, not so much because of his intellect or decision, but because he was 6’6” tall”! On the whole, Morris conceded that British Government in HK had been ‘good government’, but also felt that it “had failed to honour their best own values” – consistently declining to give political power to the people (or even keep them properly informed). Morris has clearly been intrigued by Hong Kong for many years but, unlike Oxford, Venice or Trieste for example, not captivated by it. An utterly fascinating book.
Chamber Music About The Wu-Tang (Will Ashon): The book tells the story of the acclaimed 1993 hip hop album “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)”. I bought it after attending a book talk by Ashon at our new, brilliant local bookshop (StorySmith Books). I’d heard the album several times over the years but, in all honesty, have never really ‘got’ hip hop music. So, I’m quite possibly the oldest person to have read this book! Ashon has a background in the music industry – as a journalist and founder of his own record label – but, as he freely admits: “I am white, I am male, I am middle class, I am Oxbridge-educated, I am from England”. Nevertheless, for him, “Enter” represents ‘one of the greatest albums of all time’. The book hasn’t been authorised by the Wu-Tang Clan or any of its individual members. The original Wu-Tang Clan (as you probably know) comprised nine members – all black, all male and all with ‘tag’ names such as ‘RZA’, ‘Genius’, ‘U-God’, ‘Masta Killer’ and the like. Hilariously, I ended up having a printed out sheet of Clan mini-biographies beside me as I read the book to remind me who was who! It’s hugely articulate and very well-researched and I learnt an awful lot about the genre and the background it comes from: poverty; drugs; brotherhood; essentially fatherless; violence; race; police stop-and-search and brutality; unpunished white-on-black crimes; unfair justice system; macho; gangs; control; martial arts; gurus; culture wars; kung-fu movies… I found it a surprisingly compelling, fascinating book and I only struggled when Ashon focussed on specific album tracks and some of his descriptions of the people involved – which, to my mind, frequently became verbose, over-confident and somewhat pretentious in the language used – clearly geared towards ‘hip’ young people and not grumpy (very) old geezers like me!
Devotion (Patti Smith): This short book was written for the ‘Why I Write’ series is based on the Windham-Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University. It consists of a crafted tale of obsession - a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need. Smith then takes us on a second journey, exploring the sources of her story… to the South of France to Camus’s house; the garden of the publisher Gallimard; tracking down Simone Weil’s grave in a Kent cemetery; and wandering through the Paris streets of Patrick Modiano’s novels… and, through it all, we glimpse some of her own writings, composed in a café or a train. I initially feared the book might be something of a pretentious work by a famous celebrity, but I was wrong… I found it rather beautiful, elegant and illuminating.
The Runner (Peter May): There are 7 books in May’s “Chinese Thrillers” series and, typically, I’m not reading them in sequence (this is book 5 and I’ve previously read book 2)! I was somewhat critical of the previous book I’d read (“Fourth Sacrifice”) and felt that it was probably 200 pages too long. I’ve got no such reservations of this one (435 pages) – a real ‘page-turner’… and a very clever one at that.