Book #54 There But For The by Ali Smith

There But For The

This book had two five star reviews on Amazon and has an interesting premise, that's why I chose it. Apparently it was also well reviewed by The Guardian. A couple in Greenwich hold a dinner party, one of their guests Mark brings a friend Miles, between the main course and the sweet, Miles locks himself in the spare room and refuses to leave, this lasts for days, then weeks then months.

The blurb of the book says :

Imagine you give a dinner party and a friend of a friend brings a stranger to your house as his guest.

He seems pleasant enough.


Imagine that this stranger goes upstairs halfway through the dinner party and locks himself in one of your bedrooms and won't come out.


Imagine you can't move him for days, weeks, months. If ever.

So, this is the question, and the people this happens to are Genevieve and Eric Lee (Gen and Eric - ooo isn't THAT clever....? Sigh.) Gen and Eric and Miles are the people that are caught in this event, but we do not hear from them. The novel is split into four sections 'There' 'But', 'For' and 'The' and each section focuses on a different character.

'There' introduces Anna who is summoned to Greenwich by Genevieve after she finds Anna's email on Miles' phone, but Anna hasn't seen Miles in nearly twenty years and cannot do anything for Genevieve and cannot explain why he had her email address.

'But' gives us Mark Palmer, the man responsible for bringing Miles to the dinner party but he barely knows him either.

'For' gives us Mary, the most connection she has to Miles is that he still remembers the anniversary of her long dead daughter Jennifer, and visits her or sends a card once a year.

'The' ends the novel with Brooke and the perspective on events of a nine year old who attended the dinner party with parents.

The 'But' section told in the third person about Mark recounts in minute detail the events of the dinner party. Gen, Eric and their friends are revealed to be patronising, self important fools who invited Mark because he was homosexual (my, how interesting) and Brooke's parents because they were black (how disappointing that they were not from Africa, as was thought, but Harrogate) On previous occasions they had included a Jewish and a Palestinian family at one of their soirees. (so entertaining) The dinner party conversation, a long, or it felt long section basically amounts to reading about a group of insufferable people having insufferable conversations. If I had been attending this dinner party I would have made an excuse and left, and that's what I wanted to do with this book, leave. If this book is making any social comment it is about privileged white people looking down their noses at minorities and using them for a curiosity and entertainment value. The fact that the characters are so dislikeable makes it thoroughly unpleasant reading.

In addition, the rest of the book is quite random. We are introduced to elderly Mary in her hospital bed, and are told her story, and you spend the majority of her section wondering who she is, how she connects, and when you discover why she does, what the hell it has to do with anything. Mark's section is random too, a hodge-podge of his inner thoughts and rhymed conversations with his dead mother (Irritating) and then Brooke, the written equivalent of a precocious child talking at you incessantly for a very long time about nothing. Intensely irritating. Waffle.

The really frustrating part of this book is that the true story rests with the characters Gen, Eric and Miles and we hear NOTHING from them. The psychology of an event such as this, the effect of an intruder within your personal home, your space who won't leave, and the psychology of a  man who feels the need to do this, the inner workings of his mind whilst isolated in a spare room, are NOT EXPLORED WHATSOEVER. And that is not only what would make the book intriguing, but is also what it falsely purports to be about.  Even the introductory section with Anna involves much pointless waffle. 

Also, I refuse to believe that the Lee's would have allowed the situation to continue as interminably as they did for the sake of an expensive door. I refuse to believe that the Community Mental Health Services wouldn't have intervened very early on, or at least that the police wouldn't have taken more action than simply knocking on the door. The ending is also a waste of time, a TOTAL anticlimax.

Ridiculously exasperating this novel is without a doubt the worst I have read on this challenge. Pretentious and the worst case of Emperor's New Clothes I have EVER seen. 0/10

Book #34 The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman

The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ
 
After I'd completed this novel I read that it belonged to The Canongate Myths Series, a range of books by prominent authors retelling popular myths. Margaret Atwood chose the Odyssey and wrote The Penelopiad, Michael Faber chose Prometheus and wrote The Fire Gospel, Jeanette Winterson chose Atlas and wrote 'Weight' etc. For Pullman, an atheist, Christianity was his myth of choice.

Philip Pullman of course is most famous for the popular 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, a series of books that I have always meant to read and never have. I remember being quite excited when I saw this book, an adult book, being released and immediately intended to read it. I have an interest in philosophy and theology, I was quite excited by it.

I don't know why I expected it, but I expected grown up, intriguing detailed, original prose, asking important questions and sparking thought. The central conceit is interesting of itself that instead of having one child Mary had twins, one called Jesus and the other known as Christ. In their childhood it was Christ who was considered special but in adulthood Jesus became the preacher and Christ his biographer taking notes of his teachings. Christ, religious in himself wants to build his own Church and so he begins to make changes to the stories of Jesus to "improve" them or leave things out according to his own agenda.

I think Pullman thinks he's being very clever here by using the Christ character to point out that the Gospel stories as we know them are probably not an accurate depiction of the life of Jesus and that the authors of the Bible had their own agenda. However anyone with a basic amount of New Testament theology knowledge knows The Bible was written many years after the death of Jesus.
That which we call the Gospel According to "Mark" is actually a redaction of multiple sources most notably the Q source and that there was probably no "Mark" in the first instance. So this isn't news to me. Even most educated people without theological knowledge are not under the assumption that the Bible Stories are entirely fact; just the written record of the oral tradition of the Jewish people and early Christians, which of course is subject to loss and change over time prior to becoming a written record.  It's the only point he really makes, and I probably just made the same point in a better way. It feels quite patronising in a way like atheist Pullman thinks he's just come up with this idea that none of these " silly Christian types" have considered, the fact that an editing process went into constructing the Bible and how far can we trust it as an accurate historical document therefore? Perhaps I'm wrong but I'd like to think that most Christians have considered this as a philosophical issue. "History is written by the victors" said Winston Churchill. The history books are biased too.

He got a lot of flak from Christian fundamentalists for blasphemous content, but I don't even think its particularly blasphemous. It is frustrating and it is irritating. The basic content of the book is Gospel Stories, but they are written in such a simplistic style that it literally feels like reading a Child's Bible. He just tells the stories you already know if you grew up with them with no vast differences between what Pullman's Jesus says and the Jesus of the Bible despite the rather minor, it has to be said, meddling of the scoundrel Christ.

If you ask me you'd be better off reading a copy of the New Testament whilst bearing in mind that the stories therein probably didn't occur exactly as described if indeed they occurred at all. I found this book a massive disappointment, I was expecting something a lot more, perhaps a lot more adult, a lot more challenging and I think crucially a lot more controversial and informed. I think I wanted that. Instead what I got was a rather pointless alternate spin on the New Testament for kids with delusions of grandeur of mentally ill proportions. I don't think it was meant as a kids book though, it certainly wasn't marketed that way, which leaves me sort of flummoxed by it.
As far as I was concerned it's all a bit Emperor's New Clothes.

I do like the word Scoundrel though. It's a great word.

I think I can only give this book a 3/10. If I wanted to read a Child's Bible I'd buy one.