The First Phonecall From Heaven
In summary of the plot, The First Phonecall From Heaven by popular American writer Mitch Albom is about a group of people from a fictionalized Clearwater, Michigan who begin to receive phonecalls from loved ones who are deceased and the ensuing consternation, scepticism and media coverage.
This is not a book that I would ever have voluntarily chosen but it was selected for Book Club this month. Normally, when I take a dim view of a book before reading I chastise myself for prejudice and book snobbery and hope, sometimes correctly, that I will be proven wrong.
Unfortunately, my prejudices against this novel were entirely borne out. This book is so badly written that I cringed. It is tripe of the highest order, complete and utter bilge. It is easily the worst book I've read in the last 3 years since the blog began in 2011, and would probably rank highly as one of the worst books I have ever read in my whole entire life.
Diabolical.
Verdict : 0/10
Monday, 23 June 2014
Sunday, 22 June 2014
Book #20 Tampa by Alissa Nutting
Tampa
I bought Tampa by accident on a buy one get one half price - I didn't read the back cover and had literally no idea what it was about. I started it on the train and was in minutes mortified both by what I was reading and that anyone I knew should see me reading it!
Tampa is without a doubt one of the most controversial and shocking novels I've ever come across - it is also by far and away the filthiest, and I have read The Fifty Shades Trilogy. If you are easily offended, I do not recommend this book.
For my part I found it genuinely disturbing but it is tremendously well written with that.
I have never read Nabokov's Lolita but I have some idea what happens in it, and Tampa is a similar novel with a woman at the centre. I have never read a book about a paedophile before and certainly have never read much of any kind about the female sex offender.
What struck me as I read this book is the number of times cases both in this country and in the USA have emerged of teachers having relationships with underage pupils. Are these men and women in love as they profess to be with their young charges or are they simply perverted predators?
Alissa Nutting quickly dispenses with the idea that her protagonist Celeste Price is anything more or less than a paedophile who is only interested specifically in fourteen year old boys, and is not interested in long term relationships with them or any relationship extending beyond them hitting puberty proper.
Written as a first person narrative Celeste Price is clearly delusional and a sociopath with literally no interest in anything beyond sexual gratification and not being caught.
This book was a very intense, often uncomfortable experience but as a piece of original and unique creative writing is also worth reading. In her review for the Times Helen Rumbelow says "by the time I got to the end I was traumatised and in awe" and I can only echo that I think. Dazed and Confused also called it "truly dangerous fiction".
Because it made me uncomfortable as it would I think any normal person I would hesitate to recommend it, however, though I was reminded at some points slightly of Notes On A Scandal, there is no book like this, you will never read a book like this unless you read this one. The other questionable thing about Tampa I suppose is that if this protagonist or this author were male - this book might well have been banned, which leads to an interesting debate.
For that a 9/10 verdict with a warning that it is utter unrelenting filth, and from the point of view of both parents and teachers pretty scary filth at that.
I bought Tampa by accident on a buy one get one half price - I didn't read the back cover and had literally no idea what it was about. I started it on the train and was in minutes mortified both by what I was reading and that anyone I knew should see me reading it!
Tampa is without a doubt one of the most controversial and shocking novels I've ever come across - it is also by far and away the filthiest, and I have read The Fifty Shades Trilogy. If you are easily offended, I do not recommend this book.
For my part I found it genuinely disturbing but it is tremendously well written with that.
I have never read Nabokov's Lolita but I have some idea what happens in it, and Tampa is a similar novel with a woman at the centre. I have never read a book about a paedophile before and certainly have never read much of any kind about the female sex offender.
What struck me as I read this book is the number of times cases both in this country and in the USA have emerged of teachers having relationships with underage pupils. Are these men and women in love as they profess to be with their young charges or are they simply perverted predators?
Alissa Nutting quickly dispenses with the idea that her protagonist Celeste Price is anything more or less than a paedophile who is only interested specifically in fourteen year old boys, and is not interested in long term relationships with them or any relationship extending beyond them hitting puberty proper.
Written as a first person narrative Celeste Price is clearly delusional and a sociopath with literally no interest in anything beyond sexual gratification and not being caught.
This book was a very intense, often uncomfortable experience but as a piece of original and unique creative writing is also worth reading. In her review for the Times Helen Rumbelow says "by the time I got to the end I was traumatised and in awe" and I can only echo that I think. Dazed and Confused also called it "truly dangerous fiction".
Because it made me uncomfortable as it would I think any normal person I would hesitate to recommend it, however, though I was reminded at some points slightly of Notes On A Scandal, there is no book like this, you will never read a book like this unless you read this one. The other questionable thing about Tampa I suppose is that if this protagonist or this author were male - this book might well have been banned, which leads to an interesting debate.
For that a 9/10 verdict with a warning that it is utter unrelenting filth, and from the point of view of both parents and teachers pretty scary filth at that.
Book #19 The Mitfords : Letters Between Six Sisters ed. Charlotte Mosley
The Mitfords : Letters Between Six Sisters
I will start by saying that I was utterly obsessed by and engrossed in this book. After I, for no apparent reason read the letters between Deborah, Duchess Of Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor, I had to know more about both Debo and her sisters.
Most people have very ordinary lives : school, job, house, car, marriage, children. The same cannot be said for the Mitfords who each had extraordinary lives.
Their letters are touching as they often write to each other using their childhood pet names 'Dear Boud', 'Dear Hen', 'Dearest Woman', 'Dear Honks' and so on, on some occasions the letters are mind blowing, particularly the pre-war ones written by Unity. Though later letters have neither the same energy nor the same level of bonkers they are still excellent from a historical perspective.
Why would anyone be interested in reading a book about 6 sisters you may not have heard of? I'll give a short biography on each, which may explain why this book enthralled me so much.
Nancy :
Though Nancy was a successful writer she was quite bitter and jealous of her younger siblings, largely of their romantic successes in comparison to her own. She had a fake engagement to a gay man, a short lived marriage to a man who only cared about her money and status and an ongoing affair with a Colonel she adored to whom she was merely one of many. She informed on her sister Diana to the British Government during the war, something Diana, who cared for her devotedly towards the end of her life never knew. Of her Debo says "When you take away the books, she had a miserable life really"
Pamela :
Known as Woman, Pamela seldom writes but through the letters of her sisters I built an image of a Miss Trunchbull type character who is large, strides about with dogs in tow, hates children and is obsessed with food.
Diana :
Diana married young to the heir of the Guinness fortune, but, feeling stifled, left him following an affair with Oswald Mosley the fascist, whom she later married (in Goebbels house!) Both massive Nazi sympathizers they were interred at Holloway for the duration of the war as threats to the British nation. Following this, they became pariahs and lived in Ireland and France.
Unity :
Unity and Diana bonded over their mutual affinity for fascism, and their letters to one another are by far the strangest and most alarming to read. Unity had what was tantamount to a schoolgirl crush on Hitler and her letters about him read like a teenager talking about a member of a boyband. "I heard he was in a cafe so I rushed straight there" When war breaks out Unity shoots herself in the head in Berlin, she doesn't die, but has the mental age of child and is prone to rages. The brunt of caring for her falls to her Mother and Debo whose letters reveal how terrible it was. There is a strong sense that no-one in the family besides Diana and their mother, ever took Unity remotely seriously and Debo comments that she hates how Unity is only ever associated to the 'Hitler thing'.
Jessica :
'Decca' was a Communist but was closest to Unity and never parted ways with Unity the way she did with Diana. There is a sense that this is not only due to what befell Unity but because Diana was the more sincere fascist and therefore the more dangerous. Decca eloped with her cousin and after various relatives were unable to persuade them home, married him. Decca was beset by tragedy, but became a civil rights activist, one photo shows her playing Boggle with Maya Angelou! Her Americanisation caused her to both distance herself and become distanced from her sisters who remained quite traditionally British Upper Class. Though unable to ever forgive Diana her far right views; and following upset caused over her autobiography, difficulties among all her family relationships, Jessica bonded with Nancy in later life over the shortcomings of their parents and their anger over never receiving a formal education.
Deborah :
Debo had the happiest childhood of all the sisters, but as the youngest was repeatedly impacted by their outlandish deeds, telling Decca in later life that her elopement was one of the worst things that ever happened to her. Their father once commented : "Whenever I hear of a peers daughter in a scandal I already know it's going to be one of you". She married Andrew Cavendish and when his brother died in the war they became Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. She often socialised with the great and the good, and now in her 90s still does. She was also related by marriage to both JFK and Harold Macmillan, all the Mitfords were also related to the Churchills. I read an article by Guy Walters regarding her memoir which heavily criticises her for not condemning either Diana or Unity for their politics. Having read two sets of Debo's letters, Debo both couldn't care less about politics and loved her sisters no matter what and is the most unilaterally loyal of all and to all of them. When asked by Princess Margaret why Oswald Mosley is in attendance at a soiree, Debo is alleged to have replied with : "Well, he IS my brother in law" As they all aged and passed away, Diana became Debo's last link to her childhood, hardly surprising she would not condemn her and hardly fair to ask her to.
Sometime during the Seventies, there is a resurgence of public interest in the sisters and this leads to a massive falling out, chronicled in letters over both a biography of the departed Unity and a missing scrapbook which Pamela has accused Jessica of stealing. From the Thirties onwards Jessica refused to speak to Diana as their politics drove them apart, in later years, due to rifts, Debo, the most well adjusted of the sisters becomes the hub, and it is sad to watch the letters peter out until only Diana and Debo are alive and then just Debo alone.
This is a fascinating chronicle of a group of women, from a historical perspective, a class perspective and a female perspective and if I haven't whetted your appetite here with my descriptions of them then there's something wrong with you.
Verdict : 10/10 - and the blog is likely to feature a host of Mitford related items over the next year, as I have become slightly obsessed with them. (Though I was dashed to find no mention of Debo's friend Sybil Cholmondeley anywhere)
I will start by saying that I was utterly obsessed by and engrossed in this book. After I, for no apparent reason read the letters between Deborah, Duchess Of Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor, I had to know more about both Debo and her sisters.
Most people have very ordinary lives : school, job, house, car, marriage, children. The same cannot be said for the Mitfords who each had extraordinary lives.
Their letters are touching as they often write to each other using their childhood pet names 'Dear Boud', 'Dear Hen', 'Dearest Woman', 'Dear Honks' and so on, on some occasions the letters are mind blowing, particularly the pre-war ones written by Unity. Though later letters have neither the same energy nor the same level of bonkers they are still excellent from a historical perspective.
Why would anyone be interested in reading a book about 6 sisters you may not have heard of? I'll give a short biography on each, which may explain why this book enthralled me so much.
Nancy :
Though Nancy was a successful writer she was quite bitter and jealous of her younger siblings, largely of their romantic successes in comparison to her own. She had a fake engagement to a gay man, a short lived marriage to a man who only cared about her money and status and an ongoing affair with a Colonel she adored to whom she was merely one of many. She informed on her sister Diana to the British Government during the war, something Diana, who cared for her devotedly towards the end of her life never knew. Of her Debo says "When you take away the books, she had a miserable life really"
Pamela :
Known as Woman, Pamela seldom writes but through the letters of her sisters I built an image of a Miss Trunchbull type character who is large, strides about with dogs in tow, hates children and is obsessed with food.
Diana :
Diana married young to the heir of the Guinness fortune, but, feeling stifled, left him following an affair with Oswald Mosley the fascist, whom she later married (in Goebbels house!) Both massive Nazi sympathizers they were interred at Holloway for the duration of the war as threats to the British nation. Following this, they became pariahs and lived in Ireland and France.
Unity :
Unity and Diana bonded over their mutual affinity for fascism, and their letters to one another are by far the strangest and most alarming to read. Unity had what was tantamount to a schoolgirl crush on Hitler and her letters about him read like a teenager talking about a member of a boyband. "I heard he was in a cafe so I rushed straight there" When war breaks out Unity shoots herself in the head in Berlin, she doesn't die, but has the mental age of child and is prone to rages. The brunt of caring for her falls to her Mother and Debo whose letters reveal how terrible it was. There is a strong sense that no-one in the family besides Diana and their mother, ever took Unity remotely seriously and Debo comments that she hates how Unity is only ever associated to the 'Hitler thing'.
Jessica :
'Decca' was a Communist but was closest to Unity and never parted ways with Unity the way she did with Diana. There is a sense that this is not only due to what befell Unity but because Diana was the more sincere fascist and therefore the more dangerous. Decca eloped with her cousin and after various relatives were unable to persuade them home, married him. Decca was beset by tragedy, but became a civil rights activist, one photo shows her playing Boggle with Maya Angelou! Her Americanisation caused her to both distance herself and become distanced from her sisters who remained quite traditionally British Upper Class. Though unable to ever forgive Diana her far right views; and following upset caused over her autobiography, difficulties among all her family relationships, Jessica bonded with Nancy in later life over the shortcomings of their parents and their anger over never receiving a formal education.
Deborah :
Debo had the happiest childhood of all the sisters, but as the youngest was repeatedly impacted by their outlandish deeds, telling Decca in later life that her elopement was one of the worst things that ever happened to her. Their father once commented : "Whenever I hear of a peers daughter in a scandal I already know it's going to be one of you". She married Andrew Cavendish and when his brother died in the war they became Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. She often socialised with the great and the good, and now in her 90s still does. She was also related by marriage to both JFK and Harold Macmillan, all the Mitfords were also related to the Churchills. I read an article by Guy Walters regarding her memoir which heavily criticises her for not condemning either Diana or Unity for their politics. Having read two sets of Debo's letters, Debo both couldn't care less about politics and loved her sisters no matter what and is the most unilaterally loyal of all and to all of them. When asked by Princess Margaret why Oswald Mosley is in attendance at a soiree, Debo is alleged to have replied with : "Well, he IS my brother in law" As they all aged and passed away, Diana became Debo's last link to her childhood, hardly surprising she would not condemn her and hardly fair to ask her to.
Sometime during the Seventies, there is a resurgence of public interest in the sisters and this leads to a massive falling out, chronicled in letters over both a biography of the departed Unity and a missing scrapbook which Pamela has accused Jessica of stealing. From the Thirties onwards Jessica refused to speak to Diana as their politics drove them apart, in later years, due to rifts, Debo, the most well adjusted of the sisters becomes the hub, and it is sad to watch the letters peter out until only Diana and Debo are alive and then just Debo alone.
This is a fascinating chronicle of a group of women, from a historical perspective, a class perspective and a female perspective and if I haven't whetted your appetite here with my descriptions of them then there's something wrong with you.
Verdict : 10/10 - and the blog is likely to feature a host of Mitford related items over the next year, as I have become slightly obsessed with them. (Though I was dashed to find no mention of Debo's friend Sybil Cholmondeley anywhere)
Wednesday, 18 June 2014
Book #18 This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
This Is How You Lose Her
I wasn't planning on reading 'This Is How You Lose Her' because I didn't get on with miserabilist 'The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao' at all. My friend Nana, however is a big Diaz fan and convinced me to give him another try.
A collection of short stories all save one revolve around Yunior, Oscar's sister Lola's boyfriend from the novel. It becomes hard not to see Yunior as an alter ego of Diaz's as he shares so many autobiographical similarities. I did not like the character of Yunior much in the novel, he got on my nerves, but this collection feels somewhat different.
Every story is in some way about the tragedy of love in its various forms from loveless marriages and couplings to being in love with someone and being unable to make them happy, to continuing to pine over someone five years after the end of the relationship.
As in Oscar Wao, Yunior is incapable of conventional fidelity even as he acknowledges it is destroying all his hopes of happiness.
Pathos surrounds the work as a whole, and I thought the stories were very sharp and beautifully written, as a result I will probably read more Diaz and I'm rather sorry it wasn't this one I read first.
Verdict : 8/10
I wasn't planning on reading 'This Is How You Lose Her' because I didn't get on with miserabilist 'The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao' at all. My friend Nana, however is a big Diaz fan and convinced me to give him another try.
A collection of short stories all save one revolve around Yunior, Oscar's sister Lola's boyfriend from the novel. It becomes hard not to see Yunior as an alter ego of Diaz's as he shares so many autobiographical similarities. I did not like the character of Yunior much in the novel, he got on my nerves, but this collection feels somewhat different.
Every story is in some way about the tragedy of love in its various forms from loveless marriages and couplings to being in love with someone and being unable to make them happy, to continuing to pine over someone five years after the end of the relationship.
As in Oscar Wao, Yunior is incapable of conventional fidelity even as he acknowledges it is destroying all his hopes of happiness.
Pathos surrounds the work as a whole, and I thought the stories were very sharp and beautifully written, as a result I will probably read more Diaz and I'm rather sorry it wasn't this one I read first.
Verdict : 8/10
Monday, 16 June 2014
Book #17 Orange Is The New Black by Piper Kerman
Orange Is The New Black
Piper Kerman's prison memoir which inspired the Netflix series of the same name is, unsurprisingly not nearly as eventful as the series it gave inspiration to. Kerman's real life experience is a much tamer affair though there are several moments which translated straight to screen.
Notable differences include that Piper was close to 'Pops' who inspired 'Red' and certainly was never 'starved out' by her and 'Pennsatucky' a vulnerable girl who Piper tried to help.
Nevertheless the story of a middle class woman whose intense lesbian affair with a drug dealer in her 20s caused her to commit a minor felony, before she came to her senses and left the relationship; only to find her past actions catch up to her, was absolutely ripe to be made for television.
And an entertaining, mind boggling tale it is, so unusual that really you couldn't make it up. An easy, quick and enjoyable read, I would recommend it especially if you enjoy autobiography, and I definitely recommend the show.
Verdict : 8/10
Piper Kerman's prison memoir which inspired the Netflix series of the same name is, unsurprisingly not nearly as eventful as the series it gave inspiration to. Kerman's real life experience is a much tamer affair though there are several moments which translated straight to screen.
Notable differences include that Piper was close to 'Pops' who inspired 'Red' and certainly was never 'starved out' by her and 'Pennsatucky' a vulnerable girl who Piper tried to help.
Nevertheless the story of a middle class woman whose intense lesbian affair with a drug dealer in her 20s caused her to commit a minor felony, before she came to her senses and left the relationship; only to find her past actions catch up to her, was absolutely ripe to be made for television.
And an entertaining, mind boggling tale it is, so unusual that really you couldn't make it up. An easy, quick and enjoyable read, I would recommend it especially if you enjoy autobiography, and I definitely recommend the show.
Verdict : 8/10
Sunday, 8 June 2014
Book #16 Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse 5
Slaughterhouse 5 has long been pinned in the back of my mind as 'To Read'. It appeared on that bygone BBC list of books that must be read for a start, and that came out when I was still at school. A friend of mine is a massive Vonnegut fan and I ended up buying it for a train journey a while ago.
There the problem started, I read about half of it on that journey, and at roughly 173 pages it shouldn't have been hard to finish at yet somehow it was.
About the serious folly of war and the damage that it inflicts on the individual fighting it, the novel has a lot of merit; even the science fiction element wasn't what grated because I thought it was a clever way of illustrating the nature of PTSD and its feeling of being outside your linear chronology.
I couldn't and in many ways still can't explain why I couldn't engage with this book, why its prose disengaged me so. At one point, with all the restarts I must have read the section where Billy wakes up to find his 'fat, ugly' fiance Valencia, at the bottom of his bed eating chocolate FIVE TIMES.
This book took me with about 4 restarts and one mid book reconvene about 8 weeks to read, twice I went to my monthly book club and told my friend 'still haven't finished Slaughterhouse 5' and seriously that must be some kind of record for me.
With that, I acknowledge the importance of the book and its message. So why didn't I like it? Why did it get on my nerves so much? I still don't know. If you've also read Slaughterhouse 5 and didn't like it, I'd love to hear from you.
Verdict : 4/10
Slaughterhouse 5 has long been pinned in the back of my mind as 'To Read'. It appeared on that bygone BBC list of books that must be read for a start, and that came out when I was still at school. A friend of mine is a massive Vonnegut fan and I ended up buying it for a train journey a while ago.
There the problem started, I read about half of it on that journey, and at roughly 173 pages it shouldn't have been hard to finish at yet somehow it was.
About the serious folly of war and the damage that it inflicts on the individual fighting it, the novel has a lot of merit; even the science fiction element wasn't what grated because I thought it was a clever way of illustrating the nature of PTSD and its feeling of being outside your linear chronology.
I couldn't and in many ways still can't explain why I couldn't engage with this book, why its prose disengaged me so. At one point, with all the restarts I must have read the section where Billy wakes up to find his 'fat, ugly' fiance Valencia, at the bottom of his bed eating chocolate FIVE TIMES.
This book took me with about 4 restarts and one mid book reconvene about 8 weeks to read, twice I went to my monthly book club and told my friend 'still haven't finished Slaughterhouse 5' and seriously that must be some kind of record for me.
With that, I acknowledge the importance of the book and its message. So why didn't I like it? Why did it get on my nerves so much? I still don't know. If you've also read Slaughterhouse 5 and didn't like it, I'd love to hear from you.
Verdict : 4/10
Book #15 Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris
Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls
Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls is the third David Sedaris short story collection I have read following Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day. Of the 3 I have read it is probably the most consistently enjoyable.
Included are four short stories, though whilst authored by Sedaris are not his usual style - one is from the point of view a selfish teenager and another the POV of an ignorant American mother. These are a bit weird, Sedaris says he has included them as offerings for teenagers who might be doing "Forensics" at school which sounds nothing like its title and is more like the Speaking and Listening portion of GCSE English. None of these work particularly well as short stories and all illustrate an extreme of some kind.
The main body of the work is the sort of stories I've come to expect from Sedaris. What differed this time round is that whereas in Naked, and Me Talk Pretty there were stories that I thought were brilliant and others which I thought terrible or boring, all of the stories in 'Owls' are good. Whilst this means there are no standout boring ones, it is also true that there's no standout amazing one either. They are all of a similar average.
The best Sedaris stories by far are the ones about his Greek immigrant family living in Raleigh, North Carolina and the best in 'Owls' are, customarily, the ones about his Dad. All however are imbued with his customary strong wit. Sedaris recently read in Liverpool and I couldn't go because I had to honour a prior commitment, reading 'Owls' has made me more sorry that I couldn't.
Whilst the reference to Owls in the title is for reasons that become obvious, I can't fathom what diabetes had to do with anything. There isn't a diabetes story, that I noticed. Anyone?
Verdict : 7/10
Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls is the third David Sedaris short story collection I have read following Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day. Of the 3 I have read it is probably the most consistently enjoyable.
Included are four short stories, though whilst authored by Sedaris are not his usual style - one is from the point of view a selfish teenager and another the POV of an ignorant American mother. These are a bit weird, Sedaris says he has included them as offerings for teenagers who might be doing "Forensics" at school which sounds nothing like its title and is more like the Speaking and Listening portion of GCSE English. None of these work particularly well as short stories and all illustrate an extreme of some kind.
The main body of the work is the sort of stories I've come to expect from Sedaris. What differed this time round is that whereas in Naked, and Me Talk Pretty there were stories that I thought were brilliant and others which I thought terrible or boring, all of the stories in 'Owls' are good. Whilst this means there are no standout boring ones, it is also true that there's no standout amazing one either. They are all of a similar average.
The best Sedaris stories by far are the ones about his Greek immigrant family living in Raleigh, North Carolina and the best in 'Owls' are, customarily, the ones about his Dad. All however are imbued with his customary strong wit. Sedaris recently read in Liverpool and I couldn't go because I had to honour a prior commitment, reading 'Owls' has made me more sorry that I couldn't.
Whilst the reference to Owls in the title is for reasons that become obvious, I can't fathom what diabetes had to do with anything. There isn't a diabetes story, that I noticed. Anyone?
Verdict : 7/10
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