Inge's BookRaves

Despite Ian McEwan’s excellent writing and an interesting topic, I can’t say I enjoyed this book. It’s very, very wordy with little dialogue and an exceedingly unlikable main character. And yet, there are moments of great humour, clever irony and such sharp observations on human hubris and frailty, I still think it’s worth reading.

There are two key themes in Solar: global warming and the scientists involved in researching and solving it on one hand, and on the other hand a particular kind of male ego and how it reacts to relationships and aging. The main character is a scientist and Nobel Prize winner. He is also inexplicably attractive to women (read it to find out why it’s inexplicable) and has numerous relationships. There are many interesting thoughts here, but they almost drown in endless detail and drawn out musings. It’s a pity McEwan didn’t make this a shorter, sharper work – his ideas deserve to be more succinctly put.

If you haven’t read anything by Ian McEwan yet, I suggest starting with On Chesil Beach – a truly amazing work.

The problem with reading Alice Munro’s short stories is they’re so good that you let yourself race ahead, devouring them one after the other, like a packet of chocolate biscuits. And then it’s all over and you sit there feeling a bit cheated because there aren’t any more and you haven’t fully appreciated each one as they went down.

I found the first story absolutely chilling, a miniature thriller. The next is both funny and sad, but I don’t want to give any more away, other than to say how engrossing they all are. Each one an everyday, every life drama. Even in short story format (though some of them are fairly long), Alice Munro manages to give you complete characters and complex scenarios with elegance and what feels like ease, it’s so well written.

I’m going to put Runaway aside for a while and then read it again, slowly. The writing and storytelling is far too good to put this book in the been there, done that basket.

This book won the Whitbread Novel Award in 2005 and was shortlisted for a number of other awards, so it’s no slouch. But it is strange. On a purely physical level, the layout is just unusual enough to tell you to expect something different, maybe a bit weird. And it is.

I think this story is about an angel coming to help a family find it’s way, which is not your everyday kind of occurrence, but also not completely out of whack in today’s popular culture. In fact, we seem to have taken a real liking for the otherworldly, which says something about how insecure we feel, I think. Anyhow, The Accidental is about a family that is quietly slipping apart at the seams. The mother has withdrawn into her writer’s block, the stepfather has become a serial misbehaver with his female students, the son is in agony over a prank gone bad and the 12 year old daughter is – well, 12 years old and very funny. One day a woman arrives and, through a series of misunderstandings, is able to take up residence with the family at their holiday rental in Norfolk. As I said, I think she’s meant to be a modern day angel who in her infinite wisdom gives every family member what they need.

I enjoyed reading The Accidental. It’s quirky on several levels and some of the chapters are both funny and clever, but ultimately this book is a bit too light on and the problems too easily resolved to be completely satisfying.

You can always approach a P.D. James book with confidence. She writes extremely well and consistently creates interesting mysteries. Of course, there is a certain formula to what she does – the often remote setting with a small group of captive suspects. Keeps it neat and tidy. But she’s great at describing settings and fleshing out her characters to make them real and believable people. The motive for murder sometimes seems a bit farfetched – would someone really commit murder for the reasons she comes up with in this book, for example? I don’t know, maybe my life is too cloistered and I just don’t realise what’s happening ‘out there’.

The Private Patient is about an investigative journalist who decides in middle age to have a significant scar on her face removed. She chooses to have it done at a private clinic in the country where a cast of rather complex characters – and, of course, murder – awaits her. Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is called in and sorts it all out with his trusted team of two. I noted with amazement that P.D. James is now 89 years old and that this book was written when she was in her mid-eighties. Unbelievable. It does feel as if she means this to be her last murder mystery with all the personal ends satisfyingly tied up for her main characters.

This book was written in 1939 and is the grand-daddy of all detective stories. It features Philip Marlowe, a private investigator in the style immortalised by Humphrey Bogart: a cool and tough talking ladies’ man who is undaunted by anything and anybody. This is a very enjoyable book. It’s clearly dated in some parts, but the dialogue is sometimes so funny and even charming, it doesn’t matter. Philip Marlowe is the lone wolf detective that so many subsequent characters have been modelled on. He likes women and liquor, has been to jail and doesn’t do divorce business, as he states in the introduction. In this book, he takes on a case which starts out as blackmail, but soon becomes about murder and mayhem.

The story certainly has plenty to keep you entertained, but it’s the writing that does it for me. Marlow is so cool, so unimpressed by everything that the dialogue and his description of people and events makes me laugh: “Fine. Let’s dip the bill. Got a glass? The purring voice was now as false as an usherette’s eyelashes and as slippery as a watermelon seed.” Read and enjoy.