Colleen McCullough - Angel

I loved The Thorn Birds when I read it, almost ten years ago. Never went near another book by Colleen McCullough after that, as I was scared it would ruin The Thorn Birds for me. However, while browsing around at the library, I saw a fair few books by McCullough, and decided to take the plunge. So happy that I did - I loved this book! It's a diary of twenty-one year old Harriet Purcell in the 1960s. An X- Ray technician, Harriet's engaged to the boy she's been dating for a long time (but he doesn't even kiss with his mouth open!), and she shares a bedroom with her grandmother.

Despite what, on the face of it, seems like the perfect life, Harriet isn't completely happy. So, much to her parents' chagrin, she moves out of home to The House, which is located at the sleazy side of Sydney, Kings Cross. Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz is her landlord, and her neighbours include artists, prostitutes and lesbians. Harriet, having lived an extremely sheltered life, hadn't ever interacted with any lesbians prior to this!

The main thing that convinced Harriet to move into The House was her landlady's daughter, Flo - a four year old child, who's affectionate but a mute. She helps Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz in her profession as a soothsayer - a business she initially started as a racket, but with time, her predictions became accurate thanks to Flo. Harriet fell in love with the child at first glance, and continuously refers to her as an "angel." She does have her nemesis in Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz lover, though...

Harriet matures as she keeps writing her diary - she takes a walk on the wild side; has her first affair, has a long-lasting affair with a senior doctor, learns how to cook, and works hard to first be transferred to Casualty, and then asked to run the X Ray unit in Casualty. She's intelligent, energetic, generous, conscientious and presumably attractive (based on the number of men who are attracted to her). She's also got a strong independent streak, and has a wicked sense of humour (referring to her ex-fiance as a "constipated Christian boy." At times, she comes across as a hedonist - someone who loves life, and wants to live it to the fullest!

And though this is only a few days old, I'm already well into a fat exercise book, and I'm quite addicted. Maybe that's because I can never sit still and think, I always have to be doing something, so now I'm killing two birds with the same stone. I get to think about what's happening to me, yet I'm doing something at the same time. There's a discipline about writing the stuff down, I see it better. Just like my work. I give it all my attention because I enjoy it.

She's also naive and innocent, struggling to figure out some things which everyone around her seems to understand - be it about sex, or lifestyle, or life at Kings Cross. Full credit her though, as she befriends all the social "outcastes," without paying much heed to their lifestyle choices. She sees them as "real" people, and doesn't put them in the brackets that society does.

Tonight has been a blinding enlightenment. I can never think the same about people again. Publicly one thing, behind closed doors something very different. Dorian Gray everywhere.

Of course, as things roll, there's a twist and a turn, but annoyingly enough, there's a perfectly happy ending, where everything just falls into place, and makes sense, and they all live happily ever after, despite it looking as if there would be no light at the end of the bleak metaphoric tunnel, for the longest time. I'm not really the biggest fan of books that end with all the loose ends tied up perfectly, but somehow, it did work for this novel, and left me feeling very glad that I'd read it.

Have you read anything by Colleen McCullough? If yes, what would you recommend I read next?

Grace Metalious - Peyton Place

Oh, it's been absolutely ages since I've read a 470+ page book in a day, but boy, this one was absolutely worth it. It's been labeled "wicked", "sordid" and even "cheap". I half thought of The O.C. as I was reading it, albeit set in the late 1930s, and not the twenty-first century. I've heard of Peyton Place in passing before, but never realised it was a book until quite recently, when everyone in the blogging world seems to be reading it. I wasn't actually planning on reading it, as such, but when I stumbled upon it in the library, I figured I might as well see what it's all about. I wasn't disappointed.

Set in a small fictional town (Peyton Place) in New England, just before the second World War, this book focuses on the hypocrisy and the downright gossipy nature of the inhabitants of this small town, where a good story includes one of three: a suicide, a murder, and an unmarried girl getting pregnant. Needless to say, in this book, all three events occur!

It's a book that's quite hard to write about, simply because of the plethora of characters that were introduced and developed: some you couldn't help but hating, and some you just couldn't stop rooting for.  It's commendable, how well Metalious (a pseudonym) has developed all the characters, though, considering there are well over fifteen characters whose life the book follows. Not once did I get confused as to which character she was talking about, nor where they stood on various issues. For me, the two main characters were two teenage girls, coming from totally different worlds : Allison, who lived with her successful mother after her father had passed away; and Selena, who lived with her parents and siblings in a shack. The latter's father was an alcoholic, and made life miserable for the rest of the family. Allison carried her own burdens - she wasn't aware that she was an illegitimate child (a fact that haunted her mother continuously), and she had some very set, almost naive, ideas about how her life would turn out: she wasn't going to fall in love, but was going to live a life full of affairs.

In terms of the adults, again, there were two characters who stood out more than the others, as they were almost too good to be true. Doctor Swain and the new Greek principal of the school, Tomas Makris. Both want to do the right thing - even if, at times, the so-called "right thing" is illegal or frowned upon.

Other characters include a batty old spinster with a cat (quite stereotypical, don't you think?), the village handyman who is also an alcoholic, the son of the richest man in town who's an out and out hedonist, and the poor teenager whose mother is unhealthily possessive, and insists on "giving him an enema and putting him to sleep."

As already mentioned, in Peyton Place, everyone knows everyone, and everyone talks. That's the one thing that's been a constant at the little town.

"The public loves to create a hero....Sometimes I think they do it for the sheer joy of knocking him down from the highest peak. Like a child who builds a house of blocks and then destroys it with one vicious kick."

Yet, the writing is wonderful: extremely easy to read, but full of wonderful metaphors and analogies. The opening line itself is beautiful,

Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay.”

and then, a couple of pages later:

Those grown old, who have had the youth bled from them by the jagged edged winds of winter, know sorrowfully that Indian summer is a sham to be met with hard-eyed cynicism. But the young wait anxiously, scanning the chill autumn skies for a sign of her coming. And sometimes the old, against all the warnings of better judgment, wait with the young and hopeful, their tired, inner eyes turned heavenward to seek the first traces of a false softening.

Agreed, it's not the most "literary" book out there, but it really is an enjoyable read. Being from a society prone to gossip and talking, I could only empathise with the characters, although again, being a part of society means I had to judge some of them as well.

Haruki Murakami - Kafka On The Shore

Surrealism. I've reached the conclusion that it's the only word that can be used to describe Murakami's books. Kafka on the Shore is no exception. Leeches and fish rain down, there's a character called Johnnie Walker, and another called Colonel Saunders (of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame), a mysterious childhood "accident" results in one of the characters being able to speak to cats, and there's a portal to a parallel universe. The book follows two characters in interleaving chapters: Fifteen year old runaway, Kafka Tamura and Nakata, an elderly man who is considered "dumb" by most as he is unable to read or write. While neither of them are aware of the other's existence, there's a greater (almost supernatural) force that connects them.

Kafka ran away from home, after this father had cursed him with the Oedipus prophecy: that he would kill his father, and sleep with his mother and sister. His mother and sister had left home when he was merely four years old, and he has no recollection of them whatsoever. He figures he just has to be the toughest fifteen year old boy. Or, so "a boy called Crow" tells him.

And I bet the longer I live, the emptier, the more worthless, I'll become. Something's wrong with this picture. Life isn't supposed to turn out like this! Isn't it possible to shift direction, to change where I'm headed?"

Then there's Nakata, who fell unconscious after a bizarre attack while he was still at school. This so-called "attack" left sixteen children unconscious, but when they came to, their memories and intelligence was left intact. They simply had no recollection of the event itself. Nakata, however, lost all his intelligence, and his ability to read or write. Instead, he was bestowed with the ability to talk to cats, which led to him earning a little money by finding lost cats, in addition to the government "sub city" (subsidy) he received.

Kafka runs away to Takamatsu in Shikoku, and starts working in a small private library. He befriends the librarian, Oshima, as well as gets closer to the beautiful albeit melancholy Ms. Saeki, the manager - a lady who still mourns the demise of her long lost love, who was killed about thirty years previously.

Nakata, on the other hand, runs into a dangerous man, Johnnie Walker, in Kafka's hometown, who is kidnapping cats, and then killing them brutally in order to make a flute of their souls. In order to save the cats, Nakata ends up killing the man and then following his "fate" - he doesn't know what it is, but he'll know it when he sees it.

This was an obscure novel, which on finishing, I had more questions than answers. Who is "the boy named crow"? Did Kafka succumb to his fate, or did he manage to avoid it? Can ghosts of living people exist? Can ghosts of people's past exist? What connected the two characters? And, what actually happened to Nakata in his childhood, that left him bereft of his intelligence?

Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed this book, as I do most Murakamis. And, I would recommend it. Just remember, if and when you read it, it'll be a hell of a ride, and you'll be second guessing everything right till the last page - and beyond. While some bits were tedious to read, all in all, the characters and the surrealism made it a must-read for me.

Note: Kafka on the Shore is the first Murakami I ever had on my shelf. It was given to me as a present sometime in 2008, and I kept "saving it" for the right occasion. I planned on reading it when I went on holiday to Barbados last year, as part of the Japanese Literature Challenge 3 hosted by Bellezza last year, and a couple of other times as well. Finally read it about a year later, while the Japanese Literature Challenge 4 is being held. Have been meaning to write a post about the challenge itself for awhile, but kept getting sidetracked. Apologies.

Anyway, head over to Bellezza's, to find more reviews of Japanese Literature, and to see what everyone else is reading. Hope to see some of your reviews around as well. :)

James Scudamore - Heliopolis

Ludo, born in the favela of Heliopolis (a shantytown), is "lucky." He's escaped a life of squalor, on being formally adopted by the extremely rich Carnicelli family, who have also hired his mother as a cook in their farmhouse.

When she had nothing but a handful of beans to her name, the tough nugget of pride at her core sustained her. Then along came Ze and Rebecca, and took away that pride, replacing it with impotent gratitude. Like the mythological pelican slashing open her breast to sustain her young, my mother fed me her blood, and she took a mortal blow for me in the process.

Now in his mid-to-late twenties, Ludo reflects on life, the city he lives in, and his rags-to-riches story, which puts him in the awkward role of supposedly knowing both worlds : the squalor and the wealth, and trying to figure out where he belongs.

He's in love with his adopted sister (who he sleeps with occasionally, despite her being married), thinks his job (in advertising) is completely pointless and is mostly passive about most things - almost to the point of the passiveness being criminal! However, he's an insightful narrator, who sometimes has you nod in agreement and sometimes, just chuckle.

Practise your confidence tricks on the street and you risk getting shot by trigger-happy security guards; do it in the office and you get put on the board.

The other primary character, in my opinion, is Sao Paulo itself. The epigraph of this novel is a quote by Marlene Dietrich: Rio is a beauty. But Sao Paulo - Sao Paulo is a city. From a social perspective, the class divide that's shown, the general acceptance of it by the public, and the dignity with which the shantytown dwellers are portrayed makes the novel so much more colourful. Ze (Ludo's adoptive father) has not stepped on the grounds of the city for fifteen years, as his helicopter is his only mode of transportation, as nobody who's anybody gets driven to work in the city these days.

And then of course, you have the ambience of the Brazilian city, which is captured, almost to perfection:

Since the city took off in the nineteenth century, wave after wave of developers have ripped through it, obliterating what lies in their path. But occasionally, the past remains in isolated fragments that seem as if they have escaped the halo of a nuclear explosion.

The novel is fast-paced, and incredibly easy to read. It's not a translation, and Scudamore, in my opinion, has done an amazing job of making the book sound "Brazilian" enough, without anglicising the content overtly - a massive bonus! The other thing that I quite liked about this book was that each of the chapter headings reference food, be it Mango or Orange Juice; Crab Linguine or Feiojada. The food referenced in the chapter heading invariably appears in the chapter, and also plays a role in defining both: the social and cultural aspects of the city.

This is the first book I've read, that's based in Brazil, and I'd love to read more books set in Latin America. Do you have any recommendations? Possibly not a rags-to-riches story (although, I did read an interesting fact : the President of Brazil was buffing shoes and selling peanuts on the streets when he was ten years old! It's a city where the rags-to-riches story aren't always only a fairy-tale!), as I've read a fair few them in the recent past?

Muriel Spark - Loitering With Intent

There's a thin line between reality and fiction; they oft' reflect each other very closely, so much so that the line is indiscernible. But - what happens when reality starts imitating fiction? That's the basic premise of Spark's 1981 novel, starring Fleur Talbot: an aspiring writer in London in the 1950s. She's writing her first novel, Warrender Chase, but she needs a job to get by while she finishes it. And so, she takes up the position of the secretary to Sir Quentin Oliver, and his brainchild: The Autobiographical Association.

The Autobiographical Association comprises of a bunch of people who write their memoirs, which are to be published in the future, when anyone and everyone mentioned in the autobiographies are dead. In a manner of speaking, it's almost like a time capsule.

A myriad of entertaining characters are created by Spark, to fill in the roles of the members of the Association - each more warped than the other. Fleur, the narrator, ends up "enriching" their otherwise mundane autobiographies. However, right before her eyes, the scenes from the office start resembling her novel - which she had started before taking the job! What's is Sir Quentin's end goal? And to what lengths is he ready to go to in order to achieve his end goal?

In Fleur, we have a witty likeable narrator, who says it as she sees it.

I always desired books; nearly all of my bills were for books. I possessed one very rare book which I traded for part of my bill with another bookshop, for I wasn’t a bibliophile of any kind; rare books didn’t interest me for their rarity but their content. I borrowed frequently from the public library, but often I would go into a bookshop and in my longing to possess, let us say, the Collected Poems of Arthur Clough and a new Collected Chaucer, I would get into conversation with the bookseller and run up another bill.

She befriends Sir Quentin's mother, Lady Edwina, who is an eccentric character, with a mischievous side. And then there's the despicable Beryl Tims - the apparent love interest of Sir Quentin - who works with him, and finally, Sir Quentin himself - a character who's extremely unlikeable and becomes a shade more repulsive with each turn of the page. It's these characters that carry this work of metafiction, and makes it a fascinating read.

I think I didn't get enough out of the book, by virtue of not knowing much about a couple of authors (Benvenuto Cellini and John Henry Newman) whose works Fleur (and a couple of other characters) refers to at regular intervals (quoting passages as well), setting them as model autobiographies.

I also thought Warrender Chase sounded like a pretty dreadful book (not one I'd like to read, anyway). Maybe in a parallel universe, where novels are actually a byproduct of reality, this book exists, and the "lucid readers" are singing a different tune. If not that, maybe it has a "cult" following. What do I know?

Lorrie Moore - A Gate At The Stairs

A Gate At The Stairs is one of "those" books - beautiful writing, intelligent conversation flowing through the book, a sensitive plot, and a book with great potential. Tassie is a college student in the Mid-western town of Troy, who finds a job as a baby sitter for Sarah, an affluent restaurant-owner who adopts Emmie, a "biracial" child. Sarah is perpetually busy running the upmarket restaurant, and Tassie ends up spending a fair bit of time mothering Emmie.

While there are two other parallel stories (Tassie's "first love" and Tassie's brother contemplating his future at the military), the adoption of the biracial two year old by a white couple was the one that had me glued to the book.

When a boy uses the infamous n-word at Emmie, the babysitter reports it to Sarah, who starts a "group" for parents with non-white children. The group meets every Wednesday, and contemplates what the future holds as well as discusses the present-day situation of the African American race. In a post 9/11 world, racism in midwestern America is still rampant, and the lives of the minority is still under question. The snippets of conversation on Wednesday evenings that Moore penned down had me absolutely boggled. Call me naive, but I don't think much about racism or how a person's caste or skin colour can affect their place in society. In my ideal world, it shouldn't, and maybe because I've not witnessed it first hand, I'm absolutely oblivious. As Martin Luther King once said, "judge not a man by the colour of his skin, but by the content of his character" - but that doesn't really happen, does it?

Yes, I've read a fair bit about slavery and the troubles African Americans face, but, most of those books are from a different age, and in my little head, that time had just gone by. The unfairness of racial abuse towards biracial children literally had me perplexed!

Anyway, I digress. Back to Moore's book.

As one might expect, the plot twist comes from a blast from the past that reminds the many characters that the past does not forget. In my opinion, this was a little excessive as well, and Moore was trying to make the plot more dynamic, more "exciting" - to an extent, she did succeed, but, it just left me feeling perplexed.

The book was an interesting read, but, the last seventy pages just ended up taking a gigantic detour and having a story which didn't really fit in with everything else. Again, maybe it was something that does belong to the post 9/11 world? I don't know - I think the book would have benefitted from either streamlining the story, or avoiding some of it, despite it being emotionally powerful, and relevant in this day and age.

You can't fault the writing style though. It's beautiful, witty, insightful, and although Tassie at times comes across as way too mature for her age, at other times I could relate to her and her college lifestyle. Even Sarah and Edward (Sarah's husband) characters are well-developed, and while I didn't care much for the latter, I did sympathise with Sarah.

Think this book is worth a read, and I'd love to read more of Moore's works, to see if they're as insightful.

Have you read anything by Moore? How do you think her short stories compare to her novel?

Truman Capote - Breakfast At Tiffany's

"Charming" - That's the first word that came to mind when I turned over the last page of this novella. I haven't seen the Audrey Hepburn movie, so I didn't really know much about the plot (maybe I really do live in my own little cocoon) prior to reading the classic. There's Holly Golightly, who gets the star billing, as the writer recounts memories of his glamourous neighbour many years later. Holly Golightly is a young woman, drifting through life in New York in the 1940s: the bars, the martinis, parties, the social scene. A complex character, who's a wonderful combination of being naive and stubbornly independent, she keeps her friends close yet at a distance.

As her past tries to catch up with her, and she unknowingly gets entangled with the Mafia, she contemplates what she wants from life.

I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together.  I'm not quite sure where that is just yet.  But I know what it's like.... It's like Tiffany's.... Not that I give a hoot about jewelry.  Diamonds, yes.  But it's tacky to wear diamonds before you're forty...

This was my first foray into the world of Capote as well, and I was blown away by the rich lyrical writing, by the richness of Holly's character, and by some of the cleverly crafted paragraphs. It was a delightful read, and I think the story is going to stay with me for a long time, as will Holly: a character that frustrated me to no end, but I still couldn't help but like her.

Monica Dickens - Mariana

I bought this book back in January, simply because the blurb likened it to I Capture The Castle, and ended up "saving" it for the Persephone Reading Week (hosted by Verity and Claire). I had great expectations from this book (if you may excuse the totally unnecessary pun), not only because of the blurb comparing it to one of my favourite books from last year, but also because the writer is Charles Dickens' great-granddaugher, and I wasn't disappointed. The title of this book is inspired by Tennyson's Mariana:

She only said, "My life is dreary, He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary; I would that I were dead!"

and it's the story of a young girl, Mary, reflecting on her life as a child, teenager and finally, an adult. In the opening chapter itself, Mary hears the news that a British Destroyer has sunk, and the next-of-kin of those departed have been informed. There are some survivors. There's a storm outdoors, the telephone lines are down, and there's nothing she can do in that point in time to find out whether she's going to be the recipient of good news, or bad; whether her dearest has survived or not.

While she restlessly awaits the morning to go into town, she reflects on her life - from the time she was eight years old until now. The idyllic visits to her grandparents' estate in Chabury during the vacations, the stress of school, her hilarious experience at a school for drama, her fantastic year in Paris (being courted by the romantic Pierre) and of course, the "happily ever after" before now.

I don't know what it is about the name "Mary," but the characters are oft' quite contrary (as in the nursery rhyme). The protagonist of the Dickens' novel is no different. She's spoilt, wants her own way most of the time, and her mother normally gives in.

"You're so utterly wrapped up in yourself that you have no interests outside your own egotism. You've obviously been accustomed to having your own way all your life - someone to do this and that for you, to listen to your complaints and pander to your moods -"

Despite that, I found myself rooting for Mary through the book - her naivety coupled with her innocence and idealism make her quite a charming character. There were times she was annoying, and deserved to be put in place, though, and at some points she just seemed very weak-minded and self-pitying. Was it the childhood romance gone wrong? Or, the indulgent Uncle who lived with her and her mother? Or, just a part of growing up, struggling with identity and desiring independence?

The writing is humorous, and the book an easy, "fun" read. It's not like one giant reflection on her life. Instead, it's like numerous continuous flashbacks, with no nod to the present.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and half-wish I'd read it when I was still a teenager. While I had no trouble relating to Mary now, I think I'd've loved her much much more when I was sixteen.

Have you read any other Monica Dickens? Would you recommend them?

And how's your Persephone Reading Week coming along?

Angela Carter - Shadow Dance

Angela Carter's debut book, Shadow Dance, is the fifth book by her that I've read, and it's as bizarre as the previous three. Due to a million other things, I wasn't able to get my thoughts out on this sooner, which is a pity, as I wanted it to tie in with Claire's Angela Carter  Month, which I have mentioned before. Oh well, better late than never, I guess. Shadow Dance is set in London in the 1960s (similar to Several Perceptions), and it focuses on the darker side of London, with unlikeable characters taking centerstage. The opening chapter of the book itself dove straight into the story: the return of a young beautiful girl who was raped and had her face knifed (and subsequently scarred for life) by the idiosyncratic Honeybuzzard.

However, neither the girl (Ghislaine) nor Honey are the protagonists of the book - at least, neither of them seem to be the protagonists to me. Yes, the book does revolve around them, but it's through the eyes of Morris - a weak indecisive character, who runs an antique shop with Honey.

Morris had slept with Ghislaine, despite being married, and spends most of the book trying to avoid her, as she returns to reality, after spending a fair bit of time at the hospital. Her return affects a fair few people, who frequented the same bar as her. It also affects the wives of the many people who slept with her.

Honeybuzzard is away when Ghislaine returns, and when he makes an appearance in the book, it's with a new lover in tow: Emily. Emily doesn't know Honey (or Morris) very well, but she does cook for them and help them keep the store. A mysterious character, obsessed with cleanliness, Emily rarely smiles and remains a figure of much contemplation.

As the many characters in the book come together, so the story evolves, and keeps the reader turning page after page, delighting in the beautiful, yet macabre, writing.

He lived in a state of guilty fear, starting at sudden noises, frightened of shadows. He was tormented by a recurrent dream, a mutation of the nightmare of the first night. /he dreamed he was cutting Ghislaine's face with a kitchen knife. The knife was blunt and kept slipping. Her head came off in his hands, after a while, and he cut her into a turnip lantern, put a candle inside and lit it through her freshly carved mouth.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, which is an incredibly strong debut. I find it takes a special kind of talent for the writer to write a book, where none of the characters are really likeable, and yet, the story is completely captivating. One keeps hoping that one of the characters will redeem themselves, and one keeps wondering how much worse a character can get. It's a fascinating glimpse into people, their personalities and how they live with themselves, just to get by.

I do wonder though, how I'd read this book, if it was my first Carter. Would I enjoy it as much as I did, or would it be way too disturbing?

José Saramago - Death At Intervals

Death At Intervals (also published as Death With Interruptions) is an extremely surreal book by the Nobel Laureate, José Saramago. In a country (not necessarily futuristic), people have stopped dying one new year's day, in spite of illness, accidents and life in general. The different strata of society react differently: people are initially joyous as they contemplate immortality; the religious people and the philosophers try debating it out - without death, what is the point of religion - and, the politicians, who try and figure out the socio-economic repercussions.

However, the implications of immortality are far severe than people initially realised, and while they resort to euthanasia, and taking relatives outside the country, in order to die a natural death, a new criminal organisation, the maphia, come into action, who provide the services of ensuring old, ill and suffering family members die.

The maphia would not be what it is had it failed to find a solution to the problem. It really is a shame, if you will allow us a brief aside, that the brilliant intellects leading these criminal organisations should have departed from the strait and narrow path of respect for the law and disobeyed the wise biblical precept that urges us to earn our daily bread by the sweat of our brow, but facts are facts, and while repeating adamastor's sad words, ah, but my heart is sick to tell the tale, we will set down here the distressing news of the trick deployed by the maphia to get round a difficulty which was, to all appearances, insoluble.

While the first half of this book asks the important philosophical questions about the importance of death, and debates euthanasia, the second half of the book has the anthropomorphic death herself as the narrator. The significance of "death" signing off with a "d" instead of "D" is also discussed, when she (yes, death is anthropomorphised as a female) sends a letter to a newspaper editor, where she says Death is far scarier and omniscient than she, herself.

She changes tactics, from ensuring no one dies to sending a letter to the victim a week prior to his death, so that he has sufficient time to wrap up his affairs. Of course, when it comes to death, a heads up might not be the best way forward....

I can't say I enjoyed the book despite its interesting premise though. It's not that I didn't enjoy it - I just found the writing really difficult to read at times (above quote withstanding). The punctuation is random, and even long conversations lacked quotations, so much so that I had to go back and re-read chunks to figure out the flow of the conversation.

Don't get me wrong - it is a fantastic book with captivating debates on politics, religion and economics, and I think it's one of those that would definitely be worth a re-read.

Have you read this book by Saramago? Or, any others? How do they compare? I think I'd like to try Blindness next....

Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex

I was born twice: first as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. So opens Eugenides' epic novel, Middlesex. Calliope "Cal" Stephanides was declared a girl when she came into this world, against the odds. Her grandmother's spoon (which had successfully predicted the sex of previous unborn children) had swung indicating a son would be born, but, Calliope's father begged to differ saying, "it's science" - well, maybe so, but, fourteen years later (despite being raised as a girl), the Stephanides family learnt that "Cal" had a 5-alpha reductase deficiency, which resulted in the doctor figuring a girl had been born, not a boy.

Narrated by Calliope (and then Cal), this novel isn't just about the experience as a hermaphrodite. In fact, the narrator goes back three generations, where the ancestors were fleeing Greece during the Greek-Turk wars in the 1920s. Time moves on to World War II, the Depression, the race riots in Detroit, Detroit and the assembly line and finally, the present. The story adapts and evolves with each historical event, and its significance in the life of Cal and his ancestors.

This book is quite a chunkster at over 520 pages long, and while the gist seems to suggest its predominant focus is Cal's identity crisis, more than half the book focuses on the history and how the relationships through time have resulted in the present. There are incestuous relationships, the whole talk of what is acceptable and what should be avoidable, the "woman's" role vs. the "man's" and the filial and parental devotion that runs through the book, making it interesting and captivating.

The writing style is slightly bizarre, switching between third and first person, almost as though there's two streams of consciousness. But then again, that's one of the things I do love about Eugenides' writing (think The Virgin Suicides and the collective "we" narrator). The book is interesting, and despite being fairly long, it doesn't drag on or feel as though it's missed the final edit. It's humorous, witty and perceptive, with the scope of its narrative being ambitious, and in my opinion, Eugenides does a wonderful job of pulling it off.

This is the first book that I've read, where the central character is a hermaphrodite. It's also the first book I've read which deals with the Greek-Turk wars. However, I have read a fair few books around the whole immigration malarky, and this does manage to not be stereotypical.

Are there any other books you'd recommend which talks of the Greek-Turk history? How about books belonging to the "LGBT" category?

Simon Lelic - Rupture

We live in a world of the Columbine High School shootings, the Red Lake High School shootings and the Virginia Tech shootings. Something pushes people to pull the trigger on innocent people, and hard as we may try, the horror that ensues just cannot be justified. In Simon Lelic's debut novel, Rupture, the shooter, Mr. Samuel Szajkowski, was a teacher at a London public school. At assembly one morning, he shot three students and one teacher, before turning the gun on himself. The novel reads as a fast paced mystery novel, despite the perpetrator of the crime already being dead. Inspector Lucia May is in charge of what seems to be a fairly straightforward case, and her superior wants a to-the-point report, which will close the case for good. However, Lucia starts looking into the "why" of things, as opposed to immediately closing the case as her boss wanted her to, which annoys him to no end.

It's a book about bullying, physical and verbal, and the unfairness of it all; how some people get away scott-free, whereas some people feel compelled to act in a rash manner. No one said life's fair, but when you're pushed, how far will you go?

It's undoubtedly an ambitious novel, with the testimonies of fifteen people interleaved with May's account of how the investigation is progressing (as well her own life, and contemplations). The voices of the fifteen people sound real - ranging from fellow teachers to students to parents, and the reader feels as though they have been given the whole story - not just one side of it.

However, and here's the BIG however, some things about this book really annoyed me. For some reason, people in this country have decided that saying "should of" instead of "should have" and "would of" instead of "would have" is acceptable. Every time I see something like that, I wince. When the students' accounts are peppered with these, it's almost (but not quite) acceptable. However, when teachers and parents use the same, it just sounds wrong! The author really should of done better with that.

Second, and this might stem from my doubts about twenty-first century technology in books - the author manages to bring in bullying via text messages (and in text speak, no less) as well as mentioning Facebook. The latter seems to be more "name-dropping" than anything else, and it just makes the novel feel so current.

Finally, some parts of this book seem unbelievable. I studied in an all-girls school, which had uniforms, daily inspection and severe disciplinary actions for any small wrong-doing. I've been asked to stand outside the classroom for looking at my watch during Chemistry, so, you get the picture. I just can't imagine a school where bullying, taunting and being undisciplined is overlooked, and the students and teachers responsible aren't reprimanded at all.

Oh, and while the below quote has absolutely nothing to do with the story, I could so relate, and thought I'd share it.

The books filled the shelves the landlord had left for her, as well as her IKEA bookcase. She liked to let her eyes gaze upon the spines. She liked being able to identify a book without being close enough to read its title. The battered corners, the creases on the cover - they were a mark of familiarity. They were a comfort.

Have you read any books on school shootings? What did you make of them? Do you think anything can justify it?