Category: review

Helen Simpson makes me cry!

Sara Crowley1 Comment

Yesterday was a busy blur of a day. I had to get up as if it were a school day despite it being the first day of the Christmas holidays. We stuck to our routine and were out of the house by 8.30 to catch the one bus an hour to take us to hospital. The bus jolted and bumped us around several villages, turning what can be a 15 minute car trip into an hour and 10 minutes. I dropped the boys off at their O/T arts and crafts group and went into town. It was a freezing day, and I felt ill. I am on antibiotics for a chest infection, and have other tedious health issues too. There was no point going home, it’d have taken too long, so I pottered around the shops. I tried on various unflattering garments, bought some last minute Christmas bits and bobs and generally tried to waste time not money.

In Boots my vision became blurred and gold ribbons seemed to streak across my eyes. When I looked at the words on products I lost the first half of them. This has happened before, I think it’s an eye migraine or something. I felt sick and exhausted. I went into a cafe and ordered some toast and a bottle of water so that I could swallow my tablets. It was noisy in there, and smelly. Fried food lingering in the air made me feel queasy. I sat at the only available table, squished into the wall with a branch from an artificial Christmas tree prickling my head. I pulled out my book; Helen Simpson “Constitutional”. I have read the stories before at work as I couldn’t wait. Now my friend has sent me the paperback for Christmas and I slung it into my bag because it is lighter to carry around than the hardback I am currently reading. I opened it to a story called “Early in the morning.” and read. It is a small tale about the car journey to and from school that a mother makes with her son and yet it encompasses so much; marriage, love, mothering, what it is to be a woman, disappointments and desires, and it opens up and out and becomes enormous. Sitting in the stuffy cafe, chomping on food that I didn’t want, I blocked out the world, and really immersed myself in her words. I even got tears in my eyes at the end of the story.

She is an amazing writer who translates the passion, needs and hope beneath the mundane. These are stories of life and death and much of the in between bits too!

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=3779244

The only negative I have to say is that I don’t think these stories blew me away in quite the same way that “Hey yeah right get a life” did. If you are coming to her work fresh I have to recommend them over this latest collection.

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=5459083

Books

Sara Crowley2 Comments

I just finished Curtis Sittenfeld’s follow up to Prep. It is called “The man of my dreams” which I think is an appalling title, and the jacket cover pictures a frog with a crown on. Blerch. I wouldn’t usually touch such a book, but knowing how astonishingly good her debut was I was full of gleeful anticipation.
Oh. It is rubbish. How sad. I know that she is a very talented author, she has to be to have written Prep, but this is mulch, it’s a nothingy story with none of the wry observations that made Prep such a thrill.

My newest book is Courtney Love’s “Dirty Blonde.” I am sceptical that these really are notes and scribbled bits of this and that, kept for years and unearthed now, but it’s so gorgeously arranged I don’t really care. It’s a beautiful book, very enticing. My lovely colleague Kate went to the book signing in Piccadilly (as did Mr Bookseller to the Stars), and got the book signed to me. Yay! Courtney did the anarchy sign on the last A of my name which I think very old school punk and sweet.

Fuck! Have just seen that it’s now half price…
http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=5004467
How can you resist?

She does seem to polarise opinion tho’, so many people have said disparaging things about Ms Love to me. I honestly think she’s ace as a very ace thing, and I do resent the way that she (in her own words from the Jonathan Ross show)”…has been defined by her relationship to a man.” I am so sure that without Kurt we would still all know her name. So there. Plus, whoo, she full on rocks.

Erasure by Percival Everett

Sara CrowleyLeave a comment

I bought this in one of Waterstone’s “buy this for 99p” offers. The hope, I assume, is that by selecting very good books and selling them ultra cheaply one will read author’s that one wouldn’t usually, and then be persuaded by the quality of the work to purchase more from that writer’s back catalogue.
Worked on me!
This book is fabulous. I am shit at book reviews (and everyone at work always says “But you write fiction, you should be great at doing them.” Not true, I am rubbish and repetitive. So apologies.) The story is (roughly) that of a black American author whose works are at the high end of the literary market and thus don’t sell. He works as a literary professor and seethes at the Oprah culture that he feels betrays his race by hawking ghetto tales of poor, violent, ignorant black people. When a novel written in ghetto slang becomes a best seller he writes his own parody entitled initially “My pafology” and then simply “Fuck.” This is included within the book “Erasure” alongside a story of family and death and the search to belong. It is funny, witty, clear and smart.
You should read it.

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld.

Sara Crowley1 Comment

I loved this book, absolutely adored it. It was insightful and fun and embarrassing and wonderfully observational. It is about an American “Prep”; a boarding school for rich people that Lee, the main character, wins a scholarship to. So some of the things described are alien, but the teenage stuff is excruciatingly spot on and universal.

Truth and recognition in any book, film, music or comedy is what makes me fall in love with it. I suppose the things that I feel as truth are personal to me, and so when I hear them articulated by somebody else I feel a little less alone in the world. This paragraph just thrilled me;

“…I looked at the floor around my chair to make sure I hadn’t dropped anything. I was terrified of unwittingly leaving behind a scrap of paper on which were written all my private desires and humiliations. the fact that no such scrap of paper existed…never decreased my fear.”

Perfect!

I devoured this book. It’s wonderful when you read something that captures your imagination so much that you are constantly waiting for the next opportunity to read. I will definitely buy her next novel, and feel sad that this one is finished.

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=3821701

All my friends are superheroes by Andrew Kaufman

Sara Crowley5 Comments

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1846590000/qid=1155044787/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_16_1/202-4444388-9384622

This is utterly irresistible. It’s a slim volume, with an intriguing title and cover. It is so sweet, without being in any way saccharine. I feel like I don’t want to give too much away but the central concept is that everyone that Tom is friends with really is a super hero, but their special powers are not what you would guess. I know several people who have read it (it is a read in one go kinda book) and men and women alike adore it in equal measure. Nobody has had a bad word to say about it at the bookshop, which is rare. It is the sort of book to give as a gift, but you’ll need one for yourself too!

Douglas Coupland "J-Pod"

Sara Crowley2 Comments

Hmmm. Well I was thrilled to purchase the limited edition hardback complete with stuck on “Doug” squiggle and J-Pod figure. I adored the typography as I flicked through. I anticipated reading it much as one does a particulaly delicious treat. Once I began, however, I kept putting it down and not bothering to pick it up again for a few days. I loved “Hey nostradamus!” so very much, it explored god and God and nature and life and death and love in such a subtle and light way. I felt it was incredibly profound and J-Pod would therefore be its polar opposite; ultra light and all about the gags. The story romps along with characters who never become more than their sketchy (lazy?) profiles and who could care about them or their adventure?
I am used to his work veering from great to just alright, but I am disappointed. It won’t put me off buying his next novel though, I will always make time for his writing which at its best is gorgeous.

UNDERWORLD by DON DELILLO

Sara Crowley6 Comments

Countless people have recommended this book to me as being the novel to read and describing Mr DeLillo as being the definitive American author of our time. I dutifully purchased the book a couple of years ago, and it has sat on my bookcase ever since, gathering dust, until I was brave enough to begin. (I love books and reading but 827 pages is a lot of heft to be carrying around.) 5 weeks ago I started it.
I read it in the staffroom at work, and one of my colleagues exclaimed how much he adored this novel, so much so that he has bought it in 5 different editions. Such passion for it seems to be quite common, I understand that it inspires a lot of respect and love. But I just find it really, really irritating. I am half way through, and I just don’t know that I have it in me to finish. Another colleague remarked yesterday that the first half was the best, and in so doing has destroyed any further desire to continue reading, so I am debating if I should just abandon it in search of juicy, delicious reads.
The writing is wonderful, of course it is. Peoples speech rhythms and intonations are beautifully captured. He sets scenes wonderfully. His male characters are believable. His one main female, Klara, is a hollow nothing, I don’t think she could exist except except in a man’s mind.

If I was to sum up his writing I would say it is detailed, and sometimes it’s way too much. He sets scenes with sentence after sentence of minutiae;
“He spread the mayonaise. He spread mayonaise on the bread. Then he slapped the lunch meat down. He never spread the mayonaise on the meat. He spread it on the bread. Then he slapped down the meat and watched the mayo seep around the edges.”
Yeah, yeah, I got it already, there was mayo!

I think that perhaps it is a boys book. There are such things. There are male writers who men and women love, and vice versa, and then there are the male writers that women generally struggle with. Maybe Phillip Roth and Saul Bellow. Maybe, I am just wondering.