On the Road
Jack Kerouac
London, Vintage
Oh the irony of this being the first book I am reading in my new life. This was meant to be the last book I read in my Staff Book Club, but due to life being mad over the holidays, I finished it a little later than usual.
In the late forties, Sal Paradise (what a name!) sets off from his aunt's home in New York on a series of national adventures. Dean Moriarty is the cause of each - an eccentric, energetic young man who inspires Sal to cross America to Denver, San Francisco and finally into Mexico. Their trips are fuelled with drugs, drink, and sex, and are enabled by hitch-hiking and borrowed cars.
Along the way, the men tell share everything with each other, from childhood memories to lose change to women. The novel explores masculinity in a time and place where the future seemed uncertain and the past haunted your every step. Young men were better educated than past generations; the threat of nuclear war hung over their heads, but they were not sent to Europe to fight on the front lines like their fathers. Equally, the American dream thrived in post-war success; and Sal and his friends push the boundaries of this ideal to the very limit.
On the Road is written in Kerouac's well-known stream of consciousness style (not that I would actually know, having never read his work before). Great paragraphs flow through the pages, describing scenes of marijuana-filled ecstasy or beer-crazed jazz clubs.
I didn't particularly like the characters in this book - the men were all selfish and the women were uninspiring - but I loved the way the story was told. Each part contained a new trip, with new faces and new towns. And each journey felt like a struggle - a battle with long, dull roads, against broken down cars and jobsworthy policemen, with limited money and no end goal.
But every time they returned to their normal lives, they found themselves bored of the mundane nature of the every day; so unable to stay still for long, Sal and Dean would set off again for another journey.
All it makes me want to do is book some flights. Somewhere. Anywhere.
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Karen Jay Fowler
London, Serpents Tale, 2013, 308p
Last week, just before the winner of the Man Booker Prize was announced, the OSA staff book club met for ice cream and a discussion about one of the shortlisted books.
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a very unusual novel. Before reading it, I knew there was a twist, but not what that twist was (I love that avid readers do not share plot spoilers with each other, and will strive to continue that here).
The narrator is Rosemary, who commences her story at the midpoint. Having been a talkative child, she has learnt to start in the middle; but her story jumps back and forth so that it slowly reveals itself over time. As an adult, she confesses to being a lot more thoughtful and quiet than she was as a child, and that may be because she has not seen her brother or her sister for many years. Instead, she has carried the burden of her parent's loss (the details of said "loss" not being immediately explained), and has become an introverted young woman.
Rosemary admits to being a biased and potentially unreliable narrator. She notes that,
"An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture."
As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that her childhood memories are not the same as her parent's maturer adult experiences. But the profound effect of her upbringing is clear in her adult life.
Parts of this novel reminded me of William Fiennes, who writes autobiographical accounts with extracts of scientific information, about birds or epilepsy. Towards the end of We Are Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Jay Fowler talks increasingly about animal rights; though in our book club, we felt there were a few too many inconsistencies between Rosemary's account of her experiences and her examples of cruelty to animals.
One of our book club members managed to read the book twice, and said it revealed much more on a second reading. I enjoyed the experience of reading We Are Completely Beside Ourselves, but I am not sure if there were too many coincidences for my liking.
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway
London, Arrow Books, 2004, 293p
This is a rather delayed write up, considering I actually read this novel about a month ago for the second of our staff book club meetings - a lovely gathering to discuss Hemingway. Last time, we realised that none amongst us had read the American great before, so we set out to rectify this!
Frederic Henry is an American ambulance driver for the Italian army during World War One. On a simple level, A Farewell to Arms is about Henry's love affair with an English nurse, Catherine Barkley; but that is only one small part of this novel. It is a vivid story about conflict, masculinity and the beauty of Italy.
Having read so much children's literature recently, Hemingway's prose was initially somewhat hard to get into; but as I read on, I found myself engrossed in the long, descriptive passages and the conversational style. What I particularly enjoyed was the fact that he did not indicate who was talking in sections of dialogue, leaving it up to you to work out who was saying what. As I got to know the characters better I could work out who was talking by their style of speech and the voices I had created for them in my mind.
This is not a particularly action-packed novel. Sometimes, when people were killed, it took a moment for me to realise because nothing was written literally. The realities of war felt distant from the protagonists, as if they could protect themselves by blocking out the death and devastation around them.
In terms of the plotting, this novel is a perfect model of realist writing - opening a window into the life of a soldier, viewing for a short while, and then closing. More modern fiction tends to be preoccupied with the psychology of the characters, embedding flash backs to contextualise their childhood. I found myself wondering how Henry had ended up in Italy, and Hemingway never satisfied my curiosity, but I really appreciate this. Instead, A Farewell to Arms presented me with a perfect snippet of the lives of Frederic and Catherine.
Sweet Tooth
Ian McEwan
London, Vintage, 2012, 370p
Due to high demand amongst staff at my school, a colleague and I are establishing a staff book club, starting with Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth.
Although McEwan has a tendency to be incredibly tough on his protagonists, I like his writing. He is gritty, getting right into the minds of his characters. They are not flawless objects you cannot believe in, but detailed and flawed individuals who often cause their own demise.
Serena Frome is no exception. She is an attractive, intelligent young woman, fresh out of Cambridge, when she is spotted by MI5. She is recruited for operation Sweet Tooth, a project to mould the face of British culture through supporting writers who reflect the government's desired national mood. It is 1972 and society is in a difficult place, with the Provisional IRA threatening terrorism, workers going on strike, and the Cold War hanging over Europe. Serena is told to manage Tom Haley, an English professor who has shown an aptitude for writing what MI5 want to see. She admires his work, and when she meets him, falls for the man himself.
This novel did not unfold in the manner I had expected. The blurb is enough to make you anticipate fast-paced action, but the drama occurs in a rather more leisurely manner. The reader is aware that Serena is doomed from the beginning, unable to tell Tom who she really works for. The secret builds between them as they become closer and closer, threatening to unravel their peaceful seaside idyll.
And yet, I hugely sympathised with Serena. It might have been her unadulterated love of reading or her misguided approach to romance, but despite her being incredibly different from me, I related to her feelings. This is where I think McEwan is highly skilled: he gets right into the subconscious of his characters, breaking down their motives and movements so that the reader becomes in tune with the protagonist, and you start to believe you might have acted exactly as they did.
I am really looking forward to discussing this novel with my colleagues and friends - even if we conflict, I love exploring a novel through someone else's eyes.
