The changing face of Booker

The dining room of the real Hotel du Lac

Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac (Jonathan Cape, 1984)

This was a wonderful little book. Sad to say, I am one of those young ladies unreasonably devoted to period English romance. Persuasion and Howard's End are among my all-time favourite novels, and I share Bridget Jones's compulsion to rewind Colin Firth's dive into the pond in the BBC's definitive adaptation of P&P. So imagine my pleasure at discovering this throwback among my old books. Hotel du Lac was published in 1984, but it takes place in the 1950s or 60s, and reminds one most strongly of Forster's A Room with a View, both in setting and tone. No one writes serious fiction of this stamp anymore, or so it seems.

Edith Hope is a marvelous heroine. She hopelessly out of step, hopelessly independent, and hopelessly true to herself, choosing to be the mistress of a man she loves instead of the wife of a man she likes (twice). We cheer her on, partly because, unlike so many other romantic leads, she is neither pretty nor charming enough to be so bold. And she writes romance novels (!), proof that she is much more passionate than people (herself included) give her credit for. 

It is noteworthy that Brookner won the 1984 Booker Prize. The event says more about the prize than the book. Despite its obvious merits, I wager that Hotel du Lac would never receive such recognition if it was published today. Over the last twenty-five years, fiction's frontiers have moved far beyond Europe, and the winningest books now wrestle with issues of colonialism, identity, migration, poverty, violence. Their protagonists skitter along the peripheries of the bourgeois world, the world in which Edith Hope, notwithstanding her quirks, is entrenched. Yes, it is arguable that Brookner's novel is a feminist re-reading of postwar, middle-class spinsterhood, but from the perspective of today's Man Booker judges, second-wave feminism is passé, even quaint. The politics of publishing and promotion have changed, and perhaps for good reason: there are new, more urgent stories to be told. But I wonder how many talented Anita Brookners are out there today, trying in vain to get published.

Half a boy and half a man

Nick Hornby, Slam (Penguin, 2007)

Every time I read a Nick Hornby novel my expectations are kind of low. Strange, considering that I have relished everything of his that I've read, especially the literary mix tape Songbook, which taps into the very personal reasons behind his (and my) attachment to popular music. 

So why are my expectations persistently low? I think it is because, with the possible exception of A Long Way Down (about four suicidal people who help each other push through their despair), all of Hornby's novels are about the same thing: "men" in their thirties and forties still growing out of their adolescence. How much mileage can one writer get from this?

Quite a lot, in fact. Hornby has the Woody Allen-esque ability to endlessly capitalize on the theme of adult neurosis. The difference with Slam is that the central character is not an immature adult, but an actual teenager. Nevertheless, the emotional challenges are startlingly similar to those faced by much older protagonists in High Fidelity and About a Boy. 

So after four or five books, I expect mediocrity. But Slam was as delightful to read as all the rest. Hornby writes about very tender things - in this case the feelings of a sixteen-year-old father-to-be - with the light touch they deserve. Most impressively, his adolescent vision seems authentic. The highly constructed paragraphs of The Outlander and Oryx and Crake seem leaden in comparison. Of course, Hornby's scope is much less ambitious, but that is what makes Slam feel like such a treat. Now that I have had that refreshing drink of water, I can swallow something heavier.

... but she didn't use the word "ornery"

Nicole's pick: Gil Adamson, The Outlander (Anansi Press, 2007)

Discussed: 30 April 2009 @ the Locus Restaurant (4121 Main Street)

After warming up to the story for the first fifty pages or so, I was as hot on the Widow's heels as her grumpy pursuers. Initially, this was because I had no idea where the story was going. Surely Adamson constructed it this way; the reader is meant to be as directionless as the protagonist (the Widow, Mary Boulton). By the book's final section, "World Without End," I was certain of the finish, and again this was likely Adamson's intention - by the end of the story, the Widow too has found her bearings. But I kept reading to see the romance unspool. 

So I burned through the book eagerly, as did the rest of the club. It was a great read, lively, and well-constructed, but I doubt, as Nicole remarked, that it will remain with me for years to come. Two things in particular niggled at me much of the time. The first was her language. Erudite, but a bit showy. (And I suppose I'm being showy by using the word "erudite," but there it is.) Is it odd to use such language to describe the thoughts and actions of a person who is almost illiterate? I found some of Adamson's descriptions just plain irksome, especially when she repeated certain obscure words and phrases ("vertiginous," "organic angles"). At other moments it worked ("... his voice shredding with emotion"). I was more impatient with Adamson than the others. Jennifer loved the descriptions, and Leanne found the account of Mary's baby's decline "arresting." So maybe I'm just cranky. 

With The Outlander, the reader is also forced to make dubious judgments of the central characters in order for the story to work itself out neatly. It is obvious that we are meant to sympathize with the Widow, and even condone her murder of her husband. But he was dastardly, nothing more. Same goes for the "twins": cold fish to be sure, but loyal to their brother's memory, mindful of the procedures of law and order, and decidedly less violent than their sister-in-law. I couldn't help but feel for them at the moment of their final defeat. Nicole informed me that Adamson intended this moral ambiguity, but if that is so, then the uniformly happy ending is a little too neat. (And unconvincing. Kerry-Lynn pointed out that if a man leaves you once, he'll do it again...) In the end, The Outlander teeters strangely - or admirably - between populist historical fiction and high-brow literature. Our stars out of five below.

Nicole: (a confident) 3.75

Kerry-Lynn: 3.5

Leanne: 3.5

Jennifer: 4

Amanda: 3.5

Not sci-fi, but speculative fiction

Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (Random House, 2003)

The back-cover synopsis of Oryx and Crake states, "This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers." Very true. If Atwood did not possess such literary power, I would have closed the book when it began to recount Oryx's history of poverty, captivity, and sexual exploitation, and would never have opened it again. I normally can't stand to read about that kind of subject matter. But Atwood is so compelling that I pushed through my revulsion and finished this unhappy novel. It was great, and I don't know where to begin.

Of course, the "speculative" vision is clever and precise and plausible. It takes no great imaginative leap to imagine biotech experiments gone awry. Nor the corporatization of health care, law and order, education, and property ownership. Nor the elimination of the middle class, as the human population becomes divided between those protected from biological threat, and those not.

What (perhaps?) separates Atwood from other writers of the genre, is that she fetishizes her vision less. The story is not simply about the world she has created. For instance, she might have had her hero, Snowman/Jimmy, move restlessly around the world, exploring both the compounds and the unprotected "pleeblands" (presumably "plebian lands"), discovering many more juicy details of the dystopia. (Director James Cameron once said of Titanic that he made it a love story because it allowed him to show every part of the ship. Thus the movie was about the ship more than the characters.) But Jimmy's perspective is always narrow and biased, and his emotions, not the structures of the society he inhabits, drive the most consequential actions in the novel. I like that. There are always the grand narratives of science and society, but it is good ol' familial loss and heartbreak that shape the characters most profoundly - not just Jimmy (whom Atwood has called a "romantic"), but also Crake, who is an idealist, not a realist. In the end, people are people, even when they are non-people. The book ends as the Children of Crake, defying their creator's every intention, turn to myth and worship in order to make sense of their existence.

An old look at the new millenium

Amanda's choice:

Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Discussed: 24 Mar 2009

@ the Dockside Pub (Granville Island)

This was only my second selection for the book club, so I was still frightened that an unwise pick would get me thrown to the curb. However, I decided to go out on a limb (or what constitutes "out on a limb" for the likes of me) and opt for something less literary than what we've been reading so far. I've been meaning to explore the sci-fi genre ever since reading H.G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895), so I picked the classic 2001. What usually attracts me to science fiction is not just what it tells us about the future, but what it says about its own time; how it takes present-day issues and extrapolates a fantastic but plausible vision of their ultimate effects. Sci-fi novels are marvellous historical documents. 

But this is not why I enjoyed 2001, although it does capture the cold-war era determination to pursue the limits of space exploration. In fact, I did not enjoy the book for the first eighty pages or so. The story initially seemed silly, what with the screeching ape-men named Moon-watcher or whatever.  Clarke's writing struck me as clunky, and his characterization particularly shallow. These men were cartoons. (Later, when I read Clarke's foreword to the 2000 Roc edition, I learned that he had written the novel at the same time as he and Kubrick were writing the screenplay for the film. And, as Jennifer I think mentioned, it reads like a function of the film, and not like a free-standing, complex narrative.) I was similarly unimpressed with Clarke's renowned "wit." Jokes about the technicalities of interstellar masturbation, for example, have not aged well, although his mention of the scarcity of "dusky maids" in space did make me chuckle. (Leanne, thanks for reminding me of that gem.) Incidentally, Kubrick's cinematic handling of humour is much more successful.

By halfway through the novel, against all odds, I was completely engrossed, and this has everything to do with the power with which Clarke conveys the impression of the solitude and magnitude of "outer space." His astronauts don't have to be paragons of human complexity, because they are utterly insignificant next to the real show. And our hero, Dave Bowman, demonstrates his humanity most poignantly in his passion for discovery, his explorer's spirit, which ultimately trumps even his concern with survival. 

A general complaint voiced by my fellow readers was that, after the tense and thrilling confrontation between Bowman and HAL, the ship's sentient central computer system, the story sort of peters out, with a comparatively obscure, tacked-on ending. I do agree that the action peaks with HAL's meltdown, but the playing out of Clarke's evolutionary vision, in which organic beings transform into something I can only describe as "energy," is hugely compelling, precisely because the mind can grasp it. 

The club's response to 2001 was largely positive, and I was especially pleased with Kerry-Lynn's four-star (out of five) rating, after she had declared her aversion for "space" literature at the previous meeting. Nicole, quiet (and exhausted) through much of the meeting, did eventually declare her unequivocal dislike of the book - always an exciting event - and uttered the quote of the evening: "I could relate to nothing in this book." Awesome.

I hope to post each member's individual ratings in the future. For now, you'll have to settle for mine (and Kerry-Lynn's): 4 stars (out of 5)

My intentions

I belong to a smallish book club that meets about once a month for dinner, drinks, and book talk. We are: Amanda (yours truly), Nicole, Leanne, Jennifer, and Kerry-Lynn. There are no fancy rules: we each take turns picking our monthly selection, and we are free to choose any kind of book we want, although our general tendency is to choose fictional novels of the more substantial variety. Past picks include: Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, David Chariandy's Soucouyant, Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan, Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip, Anne Enright's The Gathering, Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. 

This blog is essentially an extended book club forum. I'll try to transmit our various thoughts about each book, and the result will (hopefully) be a series of concise little reviews, with perhaps a comment or two about the Vancouver restaurants we savour during our literary travels. 

I will bastardize the proceedings slightly by posting about what I read between book club selections (it is my blog after all). I invite the other honourable members to do the same.