Amsterdam - Ian McEwan

Amsterdam was a frankly weird story of moral boundaries. It begins with the funeral of Molly Lane and then revolves around three of her former lovers and her husband in the fortnight that follows.

A bit of dynamic is added when you learn that two of the lovers are close friends, and the third they despise, while the husband wants them all out of the way. All four of them hold positions of power in some form or another. 

You have the despised lover, Julian Garmony who is the foreign minister and subsequently a senior politician. His life becomes a little unstuck when George, Molly's husband, finds some interesting pictures of him that belonged to his wife. 

You have Clive, the greatest composer in the UK, who lives alone and is working on a symphony for the millennium,  which is to have a preview in Amsterdam at the end of the book. 

You have Vernon, editor of flailing newspaper, The Judge. A bit of a general failure himself.

George offers the photos to Vernon's newspaper, Vernon buys the photos, Clive tries to dissuade Vernon from running the photos and subsequently 'shitting on Molly's grave', Vernon runs the photo's and they have a big bust-up. Clive escapes to the Lake District in order to find some peace and write the end of his symphony, just as he reaches an epiphany he sees a man and a woman arguing and the man treating the woman with some force. Vernon puts two and two together and realises this is the Lakes Rapist. He informs the police jeopardising the symphony for good. 

Both fake apologies and sell each others lives to a rogue Dutch medical company which will bump off your elderly relatives for a small sum and their signature. 

I'm not quite sure why it's supposed to be a very good book, it held little appeal for me and it's moral messages loomed false. I think the only reason I felt comfortable reading it was that it was only 178 pages.

Rowen

Clarissa's Review

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie

I actually finished reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd nearly a month ago now, I just was struggling to be able to write the review of it.

The Murder of Roger Acroyd frankly both exceeded and fell short of my expectations. I don't often read murder mysteries as they're part of a genre which doesn't much appeal to me. In that sense it exceeded my expectations as it managed to keep me fairly interested for the most part. 

However I read an Agatha Christie book when I was about 12, it wasn't a part of one of her big series, it was set in Ancient Egypt. I can't for the life of me remember what it was called, but I do remember it ended with a twist which i thought was quite fascinating.

This book also ended with a twist. It's a twist which was probably somewhat innovative at the time it went to print, but it's now become fairly commonplace. The twist, and look away now if you don't want the plot ruined, is that the narrator is the murderer. 

I have to admit I never entertained this possibility, I at some point or another suspected nearly every other character, but never Dr Sheppard. And the fact that it was him and that he was offered the opportunity to commit suicide somehow disappointed me to the extent that I've been conflicted enough to prevent me writing this.

It's still a worthwhile read though.

Rowen

Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott

On Sunday I finished reading Ivanhoe, it took me a while, but I put this down to the Olympics, because it was fantastic!

Ivanhoe is a book of daring adventure and turbulent times, it reflects it's period as we all know it. It has three distinct parts to the story, which takes place over the course of about a week as King Richard the Lionheart returns to England to defend his throne from his brother John. 

I thought the title was a little odd given that in the first third of the book Ivanhoe was known only as 'the Disinherited Knight', in the second third he was mostly bed-bound, and in the final third he did his only really valiant act in saving Rebecca the Jewess in the second last chapter. However I suppose it wouldn't have sounded so good if it had been named after either Wamba or Gurth!

I can see why this book is a classic for sure, and why so many people over so many years have loved to read it. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes an epic adventure, cos sure it's written in a different style of language to that we use nowadays but for the sake of one of the best tales ever told it's easy to overcome!

Sir Walter Scott knew how to tell a good story that's for sure.

Rowen

Clarissa's Review

Orlando - Virginia Woolf

Orlando was a weird book, there really is no other way to describe it. In what other world would a man simply go to sleep for a week and wake up a woman? In what other world would someone be alive for 400 years and yet only be 36 years old at the end of the time frame? I know that it is really a comment on literature and it's evolution in many ways and that's the reason behind it's oddity but still it weirded me out a little.


The book had some pace at the beginning, and then Orlando changed sex. This threw me and I practically put the book down for a week. When I picked it up again I was by bribery able to make it to the end, but I can't say I relished the time I spent reading it. 


I felt some empathy towards the character of Orlando and sympathy for him in the beginning, he seemed to be someone who had feelings, was repressed and even rebuked for them. He left the country to escape their effect, and on his return was a woman who spent 300 years in a slightly mental state. She was cruel to a suitor as a woman she had suited as a man had been cruel to her.


There was some small connection with her in the 10 pages or so leading up to her eventual marriage, but as her husband then left and was never really seen again it wasn't lasting. As for the son she gave birth to, he was mentioned only in the line informing of his birth and a vague reference to the need to buy 'boy's boots'.


On the whole it seemed disconnected and I would avoid reading it if I had my time again I think. 


Rowen

Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

A tale of woeful reminiscence, Charles looks back on his association with the Aristocratic Marchmain family, and appears hollow as he reflects on how one by one he lost them.

I loved this book, it was fantastic. The way that the sheer emptiness and helplessness is related through the narrator. I loved the way that the time period it was set in echoed through its pages.

I felt true sympathy for Charles as he lost first Sebastian to Alcohol and then Julia to the same religion her mother had. A religion which in several different ways had poisoned the relationships Lady Marchmain had with all those she loved.

I thought it was interesting how well it was explained, or perhaps demonstrated, the destructive effect that faith can have.

In fact I’m not sure there was anything I disliked in this book, the worst I can say about it is that the story saddened me, but therein lies it’s strength.

Rowen

Clarissa's Review

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway

I liked the story in this book. I didn't like the way it was written. I found the language stilted and it had a lot of repetition which I felt was unnecessary . It actually quite disappointed me because I'd heard a lot of good things about the book and as such I had high expectations of it.

I felt that the story, or rather the action within the story, really picked  up during the latter half of the book. It had a better pace and I felt more invested in reading it.

I wish that the romance which took place and was one of the central themes had more background to it. Personally I found the whole situation rather rushed. They met each other and 12 hours later had slept together and were madly in love, it just didn't seem to click. Robert Jordan also seemed to have conflicting views concerning Maria, at times he just wanted to protect her and other times he looked on her as a form of lesser human.

I did feel that the romance, although not quite right, lent some extra depth and emotion, without which it the book would have rung hollow. I also have to say I'm glad that I can assume Robert Jordan died after the end, not because I dislike him, more because it felt right. He wouldn't have made sense in a world where they'd escaped.

Rowen

Clarissa's Review

London Fields - Martin Amis

It's taken me a while to write this post. I finished this book about a fortnight ago and even now I'm unsure what I make of it. 

Near the end it drew me in, but throughout the reading of it I struggled against it.  At times, frankly, it bored me.

I didn't like the use of language. Nothing happened, plot-wise, for most of the book. And most of the characters seemed shallow and underdeveloped. 

I felt sorry for many of the characters, each being subtly abused. Mostly I felt sorry for Sam, who thinks he has it all worked out, but he really doesn't.

I'd have liked for more to have happened. To have felt some movement. If the book had been a quarter of the length it was I feel it would have done a much better job of telling the story it had to tell. In and of itself the story was good.

I just didn't like the way it was told. Personal preference I guess.

Rowen

Clarissa's Review

Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte

Agnes Grey was a lovely book to read. It was an example of it's period both in the language used and the scenes and settings within the book. 


The theme of the story was of a young girl moving away from home to become a governess after a financial crisis within her family and subsequently suffering disillusionment. She suffers at the hands of her employers in both situations she holds over a period of about 3 or 4 years, and the primary causes of these sufferings are unwilling pupils, neglectful parents and a tendency for others to look through her. 


The story takes a brighter turn when one Mr Weston moves into the neighbourhood and becomes her friend. As one of the few people, and the only one of equal station with her, who treats her civilly and with the respect she deserves it is unsurprising that she falls in love with him. After her long period of doubt as to his affections it is a happy ending when she agrees to be his wife.


I'm not sure really what the purpose of the first situation was within the book, unless to show how cruel and blind the very rich could be, or to make the second family who were by no means a fluffy fairy-tale seem much less harsh. I suppose it made her affection for her pupils within the second family understandable.


Not a bad book.


Rowen

Casino Royale - Ian Fleming

The first thing I have to say about this book is how blatantly sexist Ian Fleming is and how he projects that onto his central character. Bond is a shallow protagonist who believes himself to be God's gift, and is interested in woman only for their attractiveness and willingness to sleep with him. 

Vesper, the female lead, is made out to be an empty-headed simpleton who turns out to be a double agent who has simply be stringing Bond along, although at some considerable cost to her own heart and health. When Bond finds out what she's done and why she did it, he completely compartmentalises her and removes all traces of her from his life. This being a woman who he was willing to marry.

My second comment has to be on how surprised I am that Bond isn't dead. On page 8 of the book, and I quote 'he lit his seventieth cigarette of the day', forget about dying of lung cancer or a bullet, how isn't he dead from smoke inhalation???

I also thought it came across well how different a time period the book was written during than the present day.

It was a good book, but having both read the book and watched the film I have to admit that the film was an excellent version of the story which brought it up to the present day brilliantly. If you're not one for shallow dialogue and would rather see the action played out than painstakingly reading about it it's probably more worth your while just watching the film, something I don't often say!

Rowen

Clarissa's Review

Disgrace - J.M.Coetzee

I don't know how to describe this book. I didn't enjoy it exactly, but I didn't not enjoy it either. It was a bizarre book of self-discovery in one who by rights should be too old to discover a lot about himself. He learns to hate himself and what he has become.

The book starts with an act by him towards a young woman. Not rape, she was willing. But it is then echoed in the rape of his own daughter. After this event he begins to reflect more upon his own actions. He realises an apology from himself. 

It is odd because where society would have accepted a false apology from him at the start of the novel they are unwilling to accept a true apology later on.

David Laurie is made to feel continually awkward and so becomes a recluse. The only people he is able to capably interact with are the dogs which he puts in the incinerator.

Rowen

Clarissa's Review

The End of the Affair - Graham Greene

Not at all what I was expecting from this book it started out very bitter and ended very bitterly and had a joyous stage in the middle. I had been expecting a happy beginning and a bitter ending. The bitterness in the ending doesn't stem from the reasons you would expect either.

At the center this book is a tale of two lives gone wrong. Two people who are so much in love you could say they are destined to be together who never get that chance and deliberately estrange themselves from one another.

You get the chance to see what religious fanaticism can do. How it can spoil lives on a small scale. 

You observe jealousy and you empathise. It's easy to empathise, because at the center of yourself you know there is a part which would be exactly the same under those circumstances.

Observe in this novel the easiness with which multiple men, a string of them, fall in love with a beautiful, kind and caring woman. How they continue to love her, against their own reason, long after she has left them.

It was a very good book, I can understand why it has become a modern classic.

Rowen

Clarissa's Review

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

This book was indescribably unique from the perspective to the composition. The style of writing compelled you to read more and the story was all there. It was a book I couldn’t face putting down.

There were so many things I loved about this book. Seeing as I’m studying maths all the mathematical content couldn’t help appealing to me. I loved the fact that the chapters were numbered using the Prime numbers rather than the Natural Numbers. I loved the fact that the Narrator broke things up a bit. I loved the way he took things to heart. I loved the fact that you could understand the perspective of someone with Asperger’s Syndrome during the telling of this novel.

It was brilliant.

It was possibly the best book I’ve read this year.

I would definitely recommend reading it. It’s almost definitely not inside your usual style of book. But it’s definitely worth taking the time to read.

Rowen

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson

This was a light-hearted novel about a downtrodden middle aged woman who has reached her absolute limit, if she doesn’t get work today she’s headed for the workhouse, as a result she has decided to grasp anything that comes her way.

The novel becomes a tale of her drastically changing herself to fit in with her new friends. As you read it you delight in the carefree attitude that embodies the specific class she has fallen into in the mid 1930’s.

It’s delightful watching a confirmed spinster lose her prudish attitude and fall in love herself. It’s miraculous being witness to her successful attempts at saving her hostess when she is constantly describing herself as a failure.

The novel seems to have little substance but is a delight to read none-the-less.

Rowen

Clarissa's Review

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey

One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was a strange experience. From it’s confines you could witness true madness, but it wasn’t madness which terrified, it was a madness which evoked pity and empathy.

The Narrator of the story, Chief Bromden, was someone who had spent much of his adult life isolated and looked through, continuing to the extent that he started to pretend to himself that he didn’t exist. He acted both deaf and dumb while he was perfectly capable of speaking and hearing. His madness was primarily a sense of Paranoia which was perhaps justified from one who suffered not just one or two, but hundreds of electric shock treatments.

The Main Character, McMurphy, probably was incredibly mad, but he was madness perfectly capable of acting within the confines of complete sanity. He was a leader of a revolution. While it was saddening to see him dead at the end of the book, you can understand why Chief Bromden killed him in the manner he did, to retain his pride and prevent him from further suffering.

The maddest Character of all is Nurse Ratchett. She dishes out medicines and treatments which she would probably benefit from some herself. Her overbearing nature is not helping any of the men who are supposedly under her care and from the very first page you come to despise her and her cronies.

The whole book can, in some ways, be summarised in the words of the nurse on the disturbed ward, who voices her wish to keep the two men away from Nurse Ratchett’s control, but bemoans the fact that it is out of her power.

This story is at it’s heart one of hope. How goodness and human nature and resilience can grow and flourish when nurtured even in the most difficult and trying of circumstances.

Rowen

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams

A short but witty novel about the interconnectedness of all things and the somewhat mad Dirk Gently who uses this system to solve crime and con his way out of paying the bills.

This book is itself an example of the elemental concept upon which it is based. The first several chapters are seemingly unrelated but quickly resolve themselves into a single and cohesive whole.

The book is hilarious in the style which no-one but Douglas Adams would ever be able to replicate. The humour is unique but brimming and the sci-fi elements are subtle enough that most anyone could relate to them but definately present for the enthusiast.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, like other of Adams' books that I've read was written purely for pleasure and I thoroughly enjoyed the process. It was so easy to read I managed in a day.

Rowen

On a side note I promise I'll try and read more of these soon and get up to date, it's nearly the summer and then I'll have much more free time.

Tom Jones - Henry Fielding

I was anticipating that this book would take a while to read, it's both long and old. I wasn't expecting it would be so tedious and consequently take me four weeks to read, it steered me off target when i'd been so well on target to that point.

The basic plot line of Tom Jones is very simple and as such I feel the story could have been significantly shorter than it was. While I know that it's length is a result of the way it, and many other books from the period, was published, it didn't fail to irritate me.

The book contained a lot of waffle, with Fielding often repeating himself, or simply rambling aimlessly. The book was comprised of several shorter 'books' each of which started with a chapter devoted to fielding preaching about literary infidels and how he hoped he wouldn't be looked down upon. I've never come across this in any other book and it was a major sticking point for me as every time the story gained momentum i would hit one of these chapters and be stuck trying to force myself onwards. The book was full of purposeless details, such as four chapters describing the earlier life of a character whose only purpose was to let Tom sit in his living room overnight. Tom Jones also seemed somewhat cyclical to me. There was a seemingly enless series of Tom chasing Sophia, being caught in an act of moral failure and losing her only for it to once again resume.

The first 400 pages of this book bored me to the extent that I was using Chores to bribe myself through it. If asked I would say I have no idea how this tedium became a classic and would recommend you find a plot summary rather than read the book, you'd gain as much from it and waste much less time.

Rowen

Clarissa's Review

The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood

This book compelled me and confused me. At it’s heart it’s about a woman who’s in her eighties and

is reflecting on her life with a multitude of regrets and sorrows and guilt.

Her name is Iris.

The book starts with the phrase ‘10 days after the end of the war my sister drove off a bridge’ I finished this book a fortnight ago now, I know bad me, and that phrase is still playing around in my head. The book is about 650 pages and I’d guess it had nearly 100 chapters, I didn’t count them and they’re not numbered, it’s a guess. But it wasn’t until about 3 chapters before the end of the book that the reason, or reasons, she killed herself come to light.

Some of the first chapters are newspaper clippings. They describe the suicides, cleverly covered, of Iris’ Sister, Husband, Daughter and Father.

The book is written in parts which alternate between the old Iris reflecting on her life, and a young woman living it, living an affair to be specific. It was the young sections which sucked me in, drew me back. I read them for their story and the second story they contained. They contained hope, while the old chapters contained despair. When I started reading I thought they were about one woman, by the end of the book I knew them to be about another. It doesn’t really matter both stories were told in a roundabout way.

This is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and yet it haunts me...

Hideous Kinky - Esther Freud

Hideous Kinky was like looking into a diary. From the point of view of a five year old. With more sophisticated language.

It was a series of recollections from Lucia, the little girl, about the year or two she spent in Morocco. It is obvious that she was very young when she arrived there because her memories of beforehand are very hazy.

It's a genious book, because it has a simplicity which can only be woven from a child's perspective. However it also has complexity in that it very much simplifies so very difficult struggles. Such as the constant wait for "my money from England".

You can't help but sympathise with Lucia and her sister, two children who're uprooted every time they settle in. And at the end you feel Lucia's pain at leaving behind Bilal who has very much so been treasured by her.

I raced through this book, literally couldn't put it down.

Rowen

The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childers

This book was described as one which 'never loses pace' by the Independent on Sunday. It's fairly accurate, the book doesn't ever lose pace, it does however take a while to pick it up. I think it was around Chapter 12 before I felt that there was any progression within the story.

I felt that while the earlier chapters were necessary to the plot they could have been combined to increase the speed of it; for example the first Chapter describes Carruthers receiving a letter from Davies, and in the second he collects some items which he was asked to bring. If I'd been using my dad's 50 page rule this book would have been gone before it reached the good bits, and I think that's a shame.

My other criticism of this novel is that it has too many technical details for my taste. They are relevent to the story but I don't think there really needed to be so many... This is just personal preference, I'm sure the details would appeal to many men and boys, especially those from the era in which it was written. However it's definately possible to tell it was written by someone who, like Davies, is an enthusiast.

I really enjoyed this book, once it gained pace. I became involved with the characters and because of the emotions I felt for them felt that the ending was a bit too abrupt, I would have liked to have eased out.  I think to have made it perfect for me I would have needed a few more chapters at the end and a few less at the beginning.

Rowen

Austerlitz - W.G.Sebald

This one was a struggle. To be honest I always expected it would be, I don't really like the Author's style of writing. I started it nearly a fortnight ago and had visions of being able to say it was a lot easier read than I expected.

This is because the first hundred pages flew by, or if they didn't they did at least hold my captivation to an extent. I know that this is because I read them while on a train journey, it helps, it definately helps. I got home however and hit a standstill, I didn't even pick the book up for nearly a week, not a good move when you're doing a challenge which requires you to read. I read an entire book in the middle of it, and had to bribe myself through the final 150 pages using a third book.

I won't say the book was awful, it wasn't, parts of it were very easy to read, but I don't get on with Sebald's style. My biggest issue with this book was not the style or the content however. It was the fact that it was approximately 400 pages with no breaks. There wasn't a new paragraph, a new chapter or a page break in the entire thing. Maybe I wrong him. There may have been three. This made it incessantly hard to read, and when I put the book down it became very difficult to find my place, something I usually have no trouble with.

It was interesting and I did feel I learnt something. It just wasn't for me.

Rowen