The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Signature of All Things is one of the best books I have read in a long time: a fine, entertaining, informative and, above all, enjoyable tale.  What we have here is a finely wrought simulacrum of the very best of 19th century story-telling (I'm thinking of Anthony Trollope) imbued with a 21st century sensibility.  A strange thing to do, but it works beautifully.  I loved Trollope's The Warden and Barchester Towers.  Gilbert's novel, then, is in very good company.

Alma Whittaker, born on 5 January 1800, begins her life at the very beginning of the 19th Century.  Her story will come to echo some of the events of a century that was marked by great industrial developments, scientific achievements and social progress.  Alma's tale is prefaced by an engaging account of the rise of her father from obscurity in England to becoming one of the wealthiest men in a newly independent United States of America.

So, Alma grows up rich, she inherits a fine, enquiring mind and a practical aptitude for learning from both her parents, but she is not bonny.  These three hallmarks will, of course, come to shape her life  - and in some most unexpected ways, too.  New and interesting characters come into Alma's life, and they bring with them the seeds of love, pain, loss and sacrifice.  I don't want to say anymore about character and plot in case I spoil the book for the reader.

It is remarkable how Gilbert seems to know so much about so many things of the period, and she has a knack for conveying this information effortlessly and without being overly didactic.  The narrative voice is perfectly at home in the period, so the mood created rings authentically rather than seeming to be the product of exacting 21st century research.

 Overall, a remarkable achievement and an enjoyable read.  Highly recommended.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Remains of the Day is the story of a reserved man who gets cracked open, and a tender evocation of world long since gone.  It is also a road trip and a fictional memoir.  The road trip takes place in the 1950s, while the memoir covers the interwar period.  Ishiguro has done a masterly job of exploring  issues of social class, deportment, service, emotions, loyalty and remembrance.   

Stevens, the protagonist, was a servant and then head butler to Lord Darlington between the two world wars.  After the Second World War ended, Lord Darlington passed away and his estate was sold to an American business man, Mr Farraday, who retains Stevens as his butler.  One day, Mr Farraday tells Stevens to have a week off, take the car and get out to see the English countryside.  

Stevens decides to drive to the West Country.  He does this for several reasons, one of them being to visit Mrs Benn, from whom he has recently received some personal letters. Twenty years earlier, Mrs Benn (then Miss Kenton) had been the head house-keeper in Darlington Hall. Stevens suspects Mrs Benn may want to return to her former employment.

The book, then, is split into two narratives: one detailing the trip to the West Country; the other being a memoir of Stevens' time serving Lord Darlington.  The narratives contrast in several ways.  The former recounts the present day experiences of an aging Stevens and his encounters with people of his own class; the latter mainly concerns Stevens as a younger man and his service to Lord Darlington, a self-appointed amateur diplomat, and his distinguished guests (including Winston Churchill and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Nazi Foreign minister).

In telling his memoir, Stevens puts forward his thoughts on what makes a great butler.  He tells us it consists of dignity and reserve, of being able to subordinate one's personal feelings to the greater purpose of service.  Through his recollections, Stevens makes it clear (perhaps unintentionally) that he had all but dehumanised himself by the unflinching application of his philosophy.

The road trip, however, works changes upon Stevens.  The change is almost imperceptible for most of the novel - Stevens still clings to dignity and reserve as the best methods for dealing with the world; but the world has changed, and Stevens is venturing into new territory, both literally and figuratively.  All of this works upon him, and eventually something occurs that cracks him open.  Even this late in his life, Stevens realises the possibility of changing, and changing for the better.

Stevens unwittingly presages the need for change very early in the novel when he accepts the necessity of the alterations Mr Farraday makes in the affairs of Darlington Hall.  He tells us:

Now naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways. But there is no virtue at all in clinging as some do to tradition merely for its own sake.

Near the end of the story, Stevens says:

... I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day ... particularly if it is the case that in ********* lies the key to human warmth.

If you want to find out ********* is, you will have to read the book.

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

What a crashing disappointment this one was.  A Booker Prize winning book with glowing reviews, extolled as a comic novel: it turned out to be a play with two miserable acts and a happy intermission.

Julian Treslove is a sorrow junkie.  Luckily for him both his best friend and his best frenemy are Jewish.  The former is an elderly ex-Hollywood gossip columnist of mittel-European origin, the latter is a celebrity populist philosopher, á la Alain de Botton.  Their heritage (and the fact that both are recently widowed) provides an ocean of sorrow for Julian to splash around in.  And he does.  He is perfectly miserable (and loving it) until he meets Hephzibah.  Julian falls in love, is happy as happy can be, and then seeks out the means to make himself miserable again.

On the whole, the characters in this novel are unattractive, especially Julian Treslove and his frenemy Sam Finkler.  Perhaps it is Hephzibah and her uncle Libor that bring any kind of sympathetic redemption to the dramatis personae, but it is far too little to rescue the story.  And in the end, why would you care about the cast or their situation?  In this respect The Finkler Question reminds me of that great Aldous Huxley misfire Those Barren Leaves.  Whilst Jacobson may be a great prose stylist, his skill is not enough to redeem either the characters, the story or its content.  Perhaps this is a satirical novel, but is the kind of satire that is lost on me.  Also, a few puns sprinkled here and there do not make this a comic novel, despite what the reviewers say.     

The Finkler Question supposedly explores what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century.  It would seem it means being filled up with all manner of unpleasant neuroses, if one assumes Jacobson to be an honest broker on the subject. In addition, there is the problem of Israel.  How are Jews meant to feel about the way Israel is behaving in the Middle East?  It is a question that is raised but not really examined or answered to any extent.

I found The Finkler Question both unenjoyable and unedifying. Most definitely not recommended. 

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The Hobbit and Heart of Darkness.  They are next to each other on the bookshelf, and they are both 'there and back again' stories; but, oh, what a difference.

The story begins on a ship moored in the Thames estuary, waiting to depart on the turn of the tide.  On board is Marlow, who recounts a tale from his past to an attentive ship's company - the tale of his journey up the Congo River and into the heart of the Dark Continent in the late 19th century. (Marlow was the storyteller in Conrad's Lord Jim) 

At the staging post marking the mid-point of his journey, Marlowe begins to hear rumours of Kurtz, 'a remarkable man'.  Kurtz is the manager of the company post much further up the river.  Marlowe comes to believe that he wants to meet Kurtz, and he does what it takes to continue his journey.  What he finds shakes him to his roots.

Heart of Darkness was written in 1899.  Conrad had visited the Belgian Congo years earlier and had witnessed some of the depredation the agents of King Leopold II were committing on the native population: starvation, killing and mutilations amongst them.  News of the atrocities and their magnitude was slow to reach to Europe.  

Despite the stories folk in the home countries might tell themselves about the civilizing force of Empire, all Imperialism is rooted in power and violence.  Conrad puts it like this:

They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

Although natives (Conrad used the N-bomb) play little part in the narrative apart from being bearers and messengers,  we do see something of their hardships through Marlowe's eyes:

Near the same tree two more, bundles of acute angles, sat with their legs drawn up.  One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its [sic] forehead, as if overcome with great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or pestilence.

As terrible as these things may be, the story is about white men abroad, and the effect that an untamed and alien continent has upon them. Africa unhinges Kurtz, and the extent of his warped aspirations in the upper reaches of the Congo is limited only by the magnitude of his genius.  Marlowe arrives too late to save Kurtz, and he is torn between damning or salvaging the madman's reputation.  It is something Marlowe never resolves within himself.

The questions of evil confronting Marlowe should be very familiar to modern readers.  The Holocaust is not that far removed in time, and we have witnessed the ethnic atrocities in Rwanda and Serbia.  We can wonder whether what Marlowe found in Kurtz's inner core is explanation enough for humankind's darkest deeds.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

It has been years since I found a book this enjoyable.  It tells the story of Juliet Ashton, a London-based author who receives an unexpected letter in 1946 from a man living on the English Channel island of Guernsey. Before long, Juliet is corresponding with a half-dozen or so islanders, and friendships develop.  Over the course of some months, Juliet discovers what happened to the islanders during the Nazi occupation, and how the individuals and their community are going about rebuilding their lives and repairing their island.

The first thing to note about this book is that it told entirely through letters, telegrams and diaries.  I thought that this storytelling device would quickly become wearisome, but I was wrong.  The authors were able to imbue each piece of correspondence with the spirit of its writer:  old London friends are warm and open and supportive of each other; new Guernsey friends are tentative and mistrustful in varying degrees, but once the ice breaks, each blossoms in their own unique way.

But perhaps the genius of this book resides in the use of levity to counteract the gravity of the stories regarding the Nazi occupation without trivialising it.  The authors do not pull any punches about the darkest deeds of human beings; but as they have laid the foundations of the story on the uplifting natures of intelligent, witty and loving human beings, the weight of the subject matter of the occupation does not seem to press as heavily upon the reader as it might otherwise have done.

It may be fair to say that the finale of the book does not live up to the high standards of all that went before it.  But so what!  Overall, it is a splendid and enjoyable book.

I read the Allan and Unwin e-book.

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

Inspiration is a funny thing: I find that my motivation for reading Joseph Conrad came more from the Alien series of movies (Ridley Scott named his spacecrafts after ships in Conrad's novels) than it did from the more conspicuous Apocalypse Now (a modernised vision of Heart of Darkness).  And I chose to read Lord Jim after I saw a cartoon drawing of some castaways floating on a raft.  Yes, sometimes my choices are as capricious as that!

Lord Jim is a story of redemption.  The eponymous protagonist of this story (we never do learn his last name) is confronted with a crisis and then has a serious lapse in judgement.  The consequences of Jim's actions are twofold: firstly,  he is publicly humiliated and branded a coward; secondly, he has to try to reconcile the person he knows himself to truly be with the man who panicked in a crisis, and this eventually leads to his death and to his redemption.

Conrad's narrator Marlow ( who appeared in Heart of Darkness) spends the greater part of the novel dissecting and re-dissecting Jim's action, character and mental state.  It is as though he is in pursuit of the true and tangible core of any human being; however, he finds nothing but doubt and mystery.  Marlow's motivation for doing this is simple: in Jim he recognises himself and his audience.  On at least six occasions he says of Jim: "he was one of us".  Sailor? Whiteman? Human?

While the unrelenting analysis of Jim's character and situation did get a touch wearisome, Conrad was able at times to produce intense prose capable of lifting the reader out of the narrative and onto new planes of thought.  Here are two examples:

To fling away your daily bread so as to get your hands free for a grapple with a ghost may be an act of prosaic heroism ... and men who had eaten and meant to eat every day had applauded the creditable folly ...  He was indeed unfortunate, for all his recklessness could not carry him out from under the shadow.  There was always a doubt of his courage ... but what I could never make up my mind about was whether his line of conduct amounted to shirking his ghost or to facing him.  (Page 147)

 Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds.  I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies.  I do not mean to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions -- and safe -- and profitable -- and dull.  Yet you, too, in your time must have known the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone -- and as short-lived, alas! (p.166)

I am very glad to have read this book by Joseph Conrad.  I found it challenging and thought-provoking, and the prose was a joy to read.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

In their delightful spoof on history, 1066 and All That, Sellar and Yeatman state: "History is not what you thought.  It is what you can remember."  Perhaps we can say of Julian Barnes' latest book that personal history is not what you thought but is what you can remember.

Tony Webster is in his late sixties and is retired.  He spends his time recommending books to people in hospital who are sick or dying.  His life has been fairly sedate, having been married once and divorcing amicably.  Sedate, that is, until one day when he receives a letter from a solicitor; then his mental life is thrown into turmoil as something from his past rears its ugly head.  Tony has to confront his past, what he remembers of it and how others remember him.

The Sense of an Ending is divided into two parts.  In the first, Tony recounts a sliver of his life when he was a senior schoolboy and later a university student.  A good deal of it takes place in his history class where the teacher forces the boys to examine the nature of history.  In the second part, Tony narrates the course of his life after he receives the letter from the solicitor.  The tale is told in the first person by Tony, and we spend a lot of time looking at the world through his eyes as he remembers and evaluates his past, and as he tries to solve the mystery raised by the letter.

Barnes has given us a powerful novella about memory, the tales we tell ourselves to make life bearable and about males dealing with their feelings - in this case, a straight-laced Englishman.  In the short space of 150 pages, Barnes manages to create the inner-life of Tony Webster in the most convincing way.  The supporting characters are less well-drawn, and necessarily so, as they are catalysts, mirrors or sounding-boards for Tony's thoughts and emotions.  Old certainties are torn down only to be replaced, first, by bewilderment and then by a creeping sense of ... well, you'll have to read the book to find out what's creeping.