Book #6 Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum

Hausfrau 

Hausfrau will be released on 26th March 2015, my thanks to Mantle for the complimentary copy


I read Hausfrau, the debut novel from Jill Alexander Essbaum, in one night last night and I'm still thinking about it today. It's the story of Anna Benz who, after getting pregnant, married the father of her child and emigrated to Switzerland. Several years later more children have followed, but Anna has never assimilated into Swiss society and stands on the outside looking in. I was struck by the duality of my response to Anna as a character. On the one hand, I felt like I didn't understand her at all, on the other I felt as though I understood her completely.

It flummoxed me that after nine years in the country she had never made a true effort at learning the language, a thing bound to isolate. So too, that she had not learned to drive, and does not have a bank account. Is this her own failure or unwillingness to fully commit to a life chosen by accident, or something else more sinister, engendered by her husband? The question hangs in the air, neither one or the other, perhaps both.

Anna, depressed, somehow got caught in a vicious circle, a psychological rut that she does not know how to escape. Alone becomes her default, no longer just her condition, but her coping mechanism, finding Swiss society insular, she goes through a private insulation of the self, rejecting as she feels rejected and her sense of self splinters.

My favourite quote was :

It is possible to lead several lives at once. In fact, it is impossible not to. Sometimes these lives overlap and interact. It is busy work living them and it requires stamina a singular life doesn’t need. Sometimes these lives live peaceably in the house of the body. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they grouse and bicker and storm upstairs and shout from windows and don’t take out the rubbish. Some other times, these lives, these several lives, each indulge several lives of their own. And those lives, like rabbits or rodents, multiply, make children of themselves. And those child lives birth others. This is when a woman stops leading her own life. This is when the lives start leading her. 

Unsurprisingly, the stifling, controlled, isolation of her life has led to the need for an outlet. And in Anna's case the outlet becomes sex, but both this outlet and her inability to establish human connection will have dire consequences.      

I found the way that it was written really interesting, and admired it, it was reminscent of Marilynne Robinson's recent novel Lila. Anna will, for example, be at a party, in one sentence and in the very next suddenly be in bed with her lover, or at her therapy session, ( with the worlds most cold, judgemental, therapist) before being recalled back to her present. The natural habit of suddenly getting lost in a thought, an echo, a memory, and no longer feeling present in the moment or the place. By writing it in this way, it feels like we the reader are inside her head, it also further reinforces Anna's disconnect, she can never fully function because she is never in the moment.

As well as the clear contrast to Anna Karenina, Hausfrau is very much in the same tradition as Doris Lessings 'The Grass Is Singing' and Ibsen's 'A Dolls House' as a reflection on the loss of identity through marriage.

A bleak tale, certainly, yet somehow, a compelling one.

10/10

2015 Challenge : A book that takes place in another country

Book #4 Remember Me Like This by Bret Anthony Johnston

Remember Me Like This

In Bret Anthony Johnston's novel Remember Me Like This,  Justin Campbell has been missing for four years, his family have buckled under the strain and are fractured, but are by turns attempting to carry on with their lives. His Mom volunteers in deliberate anonymity at a sea-life centre, his brother hangs out at a skate park and is on his way to getting his first girlfriend, his father is having an affair. As his father departs from his regular rendezvous with his mistress, his phone rings, the police believe they have found Justin.
 
Back in the day, I used to watch a fair bit of Oprah, and as a result came across the story of Shawn Hornbeck, a boy who went missing in 2002. UK readers may not be familiar with the case. He had not been as many thought, murdered, but had been abducted and held captive by a paedophile who police only caught 4 years later when he struck again. 

Justin Campbell's backstory is pretty much that of Hornbeck. In fact, it does not so much echo the case as replicate it. Like Hornbeck, Campbell was living within an easy distance of his family and had seen missing posters and appeals for his whereabouts, though allowed certain freedoms, he remained in the psychological thrall of his captor and was afraid to leave.

I've considered before in reviews how I feel when fiction stories borrow heavily from true life events. In this particular instance it feels a bit grotesque - despite the frankly unmistakeable similarity, no acknowledgement is made towards the Hornbeck case in the Authors Note. Given that the boy spent his adolescence being exploited, this feels like further exploitation by somebody he's probably never met for creative gain and profit. I would definitely like to know if Johnson sat down with Hornbeck or his parents at any stage.    

But then, fiction and the real life inspiration diverge as it is doubtless all fiction bar the backstory itself. Johnson at least has the decency not to focus on what happened to Justin during those years, instead focusing on the period of adjustment his family go through upon his return. Justin's own perspective is silent, leaving him an enigma. The authorial point of view switches between parents, brother and grandfather, and this is a really interesting and worthwhile story.

You last see your son when he is 11, and he returns a 15 year old, you live in the shadow of the perpetrator filled with hatred and devastation - your child is not forthcoming about what happened and you really don't want to ask. He is both the son and brother you remember, and yet a stranger with unfathomable behaviour and secrets.  

In that respect by focusing on the psychology of the family both how they coped with his disappearance and again with his reappearance, it was a really interesting story to read.

It did have a tendency towards a soap opera effect - and whilst the epilogue is there to keep you guessing the prologue is somehow superfluous, containing a frustrating spoiler element about an aspect of plot that didn't need spoiling.  The prose has that "American tone" that I so often dislike, and there were sections that I found quite dry.

Though it has an interesting and unique angle to pose as a novel, can it really be called original? And more than this is it not somehow an insult to give a speculative public narrative to a very real and intense private pain?

Verdict : 7/10

2015 Challenge : Despite the lack of acknowledgement, I'm calling this my book based on a true story. 

Book #2 Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Everything I Never Told You


Everything I Never Told You is the story of Lydia Lee who is already dead when the novel begins, though her family don't know that yet. It initially appears to be heading into the territory occupied by The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, but instead becomes a very different kind of story unique unto itself.

I felt that the story was the embodiment of the famous Philip Larkin poem 'This Be The Verse'. The more we learn about the lives of the Lees, the more we see how their entire dysfunction has been created by the emotional baggage both parents have carried through from their own childhoods, which then accidentally dictates their interactions with their own children. Or more specifically, Lydia.

James is Chinese and his wife Marilyn is All American. The children and the couple themselves face the kind of prejudice as a mixed race family one would expect from small town 1970's USA.

Though they have three children, all the hopes of both parents have fallen upon their middle child, Marilyn's by design and James's by accident and they each want for her everything they feel they failed to have. A parenting mistake that is never rectified has led older son Nath to be overshadowed, and unplanned youngest child Hannah is almost deliberately ignored.   

Though it begins as a novel about her, there is some great writing which shows that if anything as the novel progresses Lydia becomes more and more a ghost, less and less knowable and as a result the situation becomes so much more tragic, in many senses as realistically forgotten whilst living as either of her siblings.

It also manages to cleverly subvert a couple of story cliches I think, the dead girl in a small town cliche generally, and 'the Clever Asian Kid' cliche.

It is mournful and it has this pervading sadness without being depressing,  People think of love as a tremendously positive thing, and neither parent is a bad or evil person, but loving in the way they think of as loving.  It is almost an elegy to the harm we can do we with love. And this is what makes it noteworthy and this is what it makes it haunting, as a family filled with silent despair finally implodes.    

9/10

2015 Challenge :A book you can finish in a day.
     

Book #47 We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

I think it's fair to say that I have read far less books this year then I would have normally by this time of year. But, it's also pretty fair to say that on the whole I've read very few books I didn't enjoy which is an improvement upon previous years.

'We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves' follows this years pattern. Shortlisted for this years Booker Prize, for my part I was completely seduced by the attention grabbing title, it was always pretty much a certainty I was going to give it a try. And I thought it was great.

Told from the point of view of Rosemary Cooke who begins her story in the middle before concluding it around present day, she once had two siblings : Fern and Lowell. Fern disappeared when she was 5, to be barely spoken of again. Lowell ran away in his teens, and she hasn't seen him since either.

There is so so much I'd like to say about this book, a lot of things I'd like to debate, mostly in reference to their parents and the nearly criminal level of  psychological damage their choices inflicted on their children. Unfortunately, I'm loathe to do so. A twist comes roughly a third of the way in, which makes it near impossible to review without absolutely wrecking the beginning.

This is exactly what happened to me - An Amazon review gave this away, and so I already knew. The thing was, too, that as I read it I knew that far from guessing the twist I would have made (possibly from what life experiences I bring to the book as a reader) entirely different assumptions.

Because I can't really talk about the plot, what I will say is that I found Rosemary as a character incredibly believable, even with the uniqueness of her life and the circumstances, I felt like if I'd had her life I'd be like her too. If anything there is not enough of either Lowell, or the parents, possibly because it's being narrated from Rosemary's viewpoint. If the narrator had been omniscient or if each character had taken a turn this might have been better, but this would have really changed the feel of the book and consequentially made it a different book. It's just there's a lot more I wanted to know, and hoped the mothers' journal would reveal but it didn't.

I think I expected it to be a funny book, indeed it's described as comic, but I thought it was incredibly sad. There were parts of brilliantly observed and astute points about life and family, and being a human in general. In fact, I enjoyed the writing so much, I will certainly seek out her other novels. Though the chronology of the storytelling occasionally feels fractured it wasn't really to its detriment.

Also, in the general scheme of things, the originality in terms of plot here is inarguable and it is genuinely good as a reader to have a book that you can't even slightly accuse of being a tale you might have read something like before. 

10/10
      

Book #45 When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman

When God Was A Rabbit

Length Of Time In Possession : Roughly 8 months 

Two years ago, Amazon must have emailed me suggesting I buy When God Was A Rabbit more than ten times. I got annoyed, and decided never to read it on that basis. I also thought its title was incredibly twee and irritating.

If one should not judge a book by its cover one should also not judge a book by its title, a friend insisted on my lending it, promising it was good, and actually, though it almost embarrasses me to admit it, given how ill disposed I was to it, it is!

I've seen complaints around the internet that it was disappointing and didn't live up to the hype, but, as I entered it with incredibly low expectations, the novel had the opposite effect on me.

It is a coming of age story about Elly, a quirky off beat damaged little girl who feels she doesn't belong anywhere or to anyone except her brother Joe. Their father struggles with depression, believing he is cursed and their mother is openly in love with both their father and their aunt.   

Both Joe and Elly have one special friend in Joe's case Charlie and in Elly's, Jenny Penny and for them, that is enough. The novel moves through their childhood into adulthood, and, like Elly's later newspaper column is about 'Lost And Found' that which we lose and find again, in the best of ways.
It is about love too, and love in all the forms it exists within. I felt envious of what Elly and Joe had within each other, a relationship special and vital to each.

Throughout the prose there is this sad nostalgia, but a kind of beautiful sadness if that makes any sense? Thoroughly engaging, I'm not sorry I read it, and perhaps ought to have listened to Amazon's automated recommendations, damn you for knowing me too well!!!

Verdict : 9/10

Destination : Return to Owner
  

Book #41 Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Life After Life

Length Of Time In Possession : 4 months

Prior to reading Life After Life the only Kate Atkinson novels I had read were her Jackson Brodie private detective series beginning with Case Histories, a literary spin on the crime genre. I really liked those books, but had not managed to get "into" Behind The Scenes At The Museum when I tried it many, many years ago.

The premise of Life After Life (what if we could do it again and again until we got it right?) proved too enticing to me to resist. Instead of the Buddhist principle of moving from one life to another, this novel has more in common with parallel universe ideas and quantum theory : "Everything that can happen does happen" - the idea that you can go back and change your destiny from the point at which two paths were open to you.

Ursula is born on a snowy night in 1910, the midwife is unable to reach her mother, and Ursula does not survive. The novel rewinds, Ursula is born on a snowy night in 1910, she survives and goes on to grow up with her siblings Maurice and Pamela. At age 5 she drowns. Ursula is born on a snowy night in 1910.....and so on and so forth.

This novel is tremendously interesting : the impact of multiple lives begins to affect Ursula in her "next time around". She does things such as tell the maid Bridget her boyfriend is unfaithful or pushes her down the stairs. She does not know why she does this at the time, but in previous cycles, Bridget's relationship had dire consequences which Ursula instinctively knows she must prevent, but she is not psychic, and only has a vague idea, a deja vu.

Why do we, as people, experience deja vu? What is our mind REALLY trying to tell us? That vague sense of knowledge that we cannot quite grasp.....

There is also the idea that though destinies can change, certain things are set in stone. Elder brother Maurice is never anything more than despised, Auntie Izzy is always "a free spirit", Ursula always has a close bond with younger brother Teddy.

It reminded me about certain comments made in Doctor Who that some events are unalterable, but why them and not all? It's an intriguing question.

Who hasn't thought things like - what if I'd gone to a different university? What if that relationship had succeeded? What if I had been hit by that car that night? What would have changed? Who would I be, and would I still be the same me that I am now?

As a piece of prose the novel I thought this bore most comparison to was The Children's Book by AS Byatt, set within a similar era, a similar family and against the backdrop of history. There the likeness ends as they are very different novels, but I make the reference because I adored The Children's Book and equally loved Life After Life.

I thought this book was beautiful, eloquent and intelligent, both in terms of what it was saying and how it said it. I read this book in two sittings, and in a year when I've struggled to find things I've loved think this may be my book of 2013 thus far. I even wrote a poem inspired by it. Go buy it!

Verdict : 10/10 

Destination : Ebook storage

Book #30 Julian Corkle Is A Filthy Liar by D. J. Connell

Julian Corkle Is A Filthy Liar

Julian Corkle Is A Filthy Liar is an incredibly amusing novel from D.J Connell. Right from his birth his Mum decides her Julian will be a star, what follows is a rite-of-passage novel about Julian's childhood, and his attempts at fame.

Even from childhood Julian is quite clearly gay. The book, which is Australian, strikes a very humorous Aussie tone  and I found I was hearing Aussie accents as I read it. Julian is born in the Sixties, his father is an out and out homophobe who attempts to "play away the gay" by encouraging Julian to play with Meccano and get involved in cricket. He makes dark references to Julian's gay Uncle Norman who somehow disgraced himself in the past. For Mr Corkle it is his worst nightmare that Julian should become a hairdresser or a male nurse. For his part Julian wants to be a TV star and would much rather have a Nancy doll like his sister Carmel.

Though it tells of the awkward childhood many gay children suffer through with a parent who doesn't accept them for who they are, it deals with it with wit rather than misery, and reminded me greatly of the short stories of David Sedaris. I enjoyed the progress of Julian's childhood and school years, his friendships and his crushes.

Where the book faltered for me slightly was in the later stages, when Julian quits school and tries several jobs. I was not as engaged with these chapters as I was with his early years at school though Julian as a character remains very funny.

Carmel too is often highly amusing, and though she is the "apple of Daddy's eye" because of her sporting aptitude, I felt there was more than a hint that she may not be straight either.

Julian Corkle Is A Filthy Liar is a book that I would recommend for a light hearted comic read, which came at an opportune moment for me after two quite "heavy" books, it isn't perfect, but it is very enjoyable. 8/10