I’ve written too much of late about what I haven’t read. Here’s what I have.
Travels with my Aunt, Graham Greene
A sort of spy novel with a dash of Are you My Mother. Henry Pulling is drawn from the quiet decay of retirement and his dahlia-packed garden and into the racy underworldish life of his aunt. It’s a late coming of age for Henry as he scoots around Europe and finally South America, seeking out the seedy haunts of his Aunt’s yesteryear and rubbing shoulders with thoroughly disreputable characters for this first time in his life – most of them his aunt’s old lovers. Funny, accessible and a great example of why (apparently – thanks New York Times – the French call Graham Greene the ‘Grim Grin’).
Swamplandia!, Karen Russell
Exclamation mark indeed! Released last year – it was recent holiiiiiiiiiday (see Burmese Days below) reading for me. Actually – like Travels with my Aunt I think it could be described as a dark coming of age story. Ava Bigtree’s Mum has died and the bank is about to foreclose on their family home slash alligator wrestling theme park. Her Dad’s not really dealing with the situation and her sister Ossie is eloping with a ghost. Hilarious, kooky, a ‘lil bit spooky… I thought, until Ossie explains that she has no interest in dating the living because black fruit, a human decay rots inside us. I’ve trawled the book looking for the passage again but can’t quite put my finger on it. At any rate it was a drawn breath moment for me – the first of many. Enter the Birdman, promising Ava he’ll help her journey to the underworld to pluck her sister from the grasp of her ethereal husband. But what sort of grown-up promises something like that? Swamplandia! held me between the real and the imagined or magical, never sure which interpretation was the right one. Until all of a sudden, at about the same moment it becomes clear to Ava, it became all-too-clear for me too.
Burmese Days, George Orwell
Myanmar/Burma is where I went on my holiiiiiiiiday last month and so at the end of the trip I decided to give Burmese Days a go. Apparently George Orwell – then a policeman in Burma – arrived home to England to announce to his family that he was giving up his steady job in the colonies to become a writer. The result was this, his first novel Burmese Days (and presumably a little bit of family tension). Hints of what’s to come from Orwell abound. Not unlike 1984 it’s the story of a man who passionately hates the system he lives in but who lacks the strength of character to do anything about it. Here the system is colonial rule… so it’s a novel that in many ways was well ahead of its time. Except in its treatment of Burmese women – who just aren’t portrayed as very bright or very real. But the scenery described is evocative and it gives a painfully compelling picture of its main character John Flory’s boredom and desperation as a self-appointed outsider trapped amongst the drunken British sahibs of the club.
