When The Finkler Question won the Man Booker Prize in 2010, many critics raised their eyebrows and muttered about it being a 'comedy'. However, the gentle wit of the book is overshadowed entirely by the needle-point precision of Howard Jacobson's prose and his beautiful turn of phrase, an attribute which he shares with other Man Booker winners such as Margaret Atwood and Arundhati Roy. A further common feature amongst these writers is their ability to look beyond the cynical stereotypes inflicted upon and indeed perpetuated by their societies, and connect with their characters not as aspects of the caste system (Roy) or as Jews, (Jacobson) but as humans. By examining the nature of Judaism through the eyes of Treslove, a central character who is not Jewish but wants to become so, Jacobson opens up world which can sometimes seem closed off or incomprehensible to outsiders. The fact that Judaism is a...
Read MoreReaders who approach The Liar expecting the acerbic wit of Stephen Fry demonstrated in his QI outings may find themselves disappointed. That is not to say that The Liar is not a humorous book, but it is self-consciously so and whilst it could not be described as a laboured effort, it is perhaps a little “sixth-formerish” in places. The action centers around the principal character Adrian, who spends the first chapters playing at being a dandy in his public school in England. It is difficult to warm to him, as his verbosity can come across as affected rather than a manifestation of his, we are assured, fertile mind. The plot is in parts disjointed, which proves to be both an excellent example of the use of a selective narrative, Adrian being the primary source of information for the reader but also exposed as unreliable, “Liar” of the title, but also a...
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Having now finished the most recent autobiographical offering from Stephen Fry I can say without hesitation that he is an individual brave in his honesty. His thoughts are, or at least appear to be, for the most part unedited. Lengthy passages conveying his hopes and fears and the waning confidence in his own abilities and talent, open this individual to a world of vulnerability. The academic, actor, comic and journalist whom Fry embodies seems to ooze self-confidence and control, yet the picture Fry paints is often that of a lost human being. Certainly when it comes to matters of his career everything he touches seems to turn to gold. Award winning playwright, television comedian, radio host and author, he turns his hand with apparent ease to each new endeavour. A confident character travelling through life effortlessly is certainly the impression the world gets, but Fry attests that it is never so...
Read More“You’re gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle.” From the author of Starter for Ten, One Day spans twenty years in the lives of two people; Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew. The pair meet on the night of their graduation – 15th July 1988. The book looks at where the two are on the 15th July the next year, and the year after that - and the year after that - for the next twenty years. The plot is laced with humour relevant to the passing decades, which were probably known for being the Labour party’s “Boom years”. Nevertheless, those of you who aren’t politics fans should not be put off;...
Read MoreAuthor Joe Bageant grew up in working class America - Winchester, Virginia to be more specific. Bageant’s first book Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches From America’s Class War is a satirical, exuberant, hysterically passionate look at class in America, with a focus on the “working class Americans [who] believe that they are middle class Americans”. He grew up with these “rednecks”, but became exasperated with their stupidity and duplicity, opting to move far away from it all when he was a young adult. However, on his return to Winchester, many years later, this book was born. It provides great insight into this world of American people who are “poor, conservative, politically misinformed or oblivious, and patriotic to their own detriment”. Powered by fluid, hilarious prose, this book acknowledges an American class war from which alcohol, junk food, and Jesus are the preferred avenues of escape. Bageant sets the scene in a popular...
Read MoreLast fall, I received a retrospective collection of Eric Clapton that spans four decades beginning with Cream. The promotion company also sent me a copy of his biography that was released concurrently with this "best of" collection. Though I quickly penned a review for the CD, I hesitated on playing literary critic because it would require a significant time commitment and worse yet, necessitate reading. Dispensing with my trepidation, I chipped away at Clapton’s story and am proud to present my thoughts on his recent work. In standard chronology, we learn that young Clapton was raised by his kindly grandparents Jack and Rose, in a small English village during the post World War II era. As a boy, Clapton was traumatized upon learning that he was the illegitimate son of Rose’s daughter Patricia, who was initially passed off at the boy’s aunt. Additionally, he never knew his father, a Canadian airman who...
Read MoreAs a literature major, I am forced to read quite a bit of dated, boring dreck quite often. Now, some of it can be quite good mind you--but a lot of it isn't. I thought that things could only go from bad to worse when beginning a recent "Young Adult Literature" course, and to be honest a lot of it was bad, angst-filled teen books. But, amongst it all I made a startling discovery: John Green's Looking For Alaska. Though marketed as young adult, this piece is a positively stellar read, and I would recommend it to anyone in the mood for a thoughtful, sad, laugh-until-it-hurts type of book (and aren't we all?). Green breaks the mold here with his tale of misguided youths at a boarding school, and you'd be hard pressed to find anything this side of The Catcher in the Rye that deals with the true pain faced in...
Read Moreby Sigur Ros / Artist In Residence [Artist In Residence] You would assume a photography book titled In a Frozen Sea: A Year with Sigur Ros would be some sort of photo-journal. After all, it has a defined, specific period of time in the title. Well, you assumed wrong. The Artist in Residence (A+R) team includes several promotional photos of the band throughout the book. It’s not a significant amount of photos, but it clearly undermines the “year with” frame. Disregarding the concept of a photo-journal, A Year with Sigur Ros is still a solid book. Using a variety of photographs and layouts, A+R does a wonderful job of presenting the band from multiple angles. A+R includes photos of the fans, photos from the fans, and breathtaking photographs of Iceland, where the band spent last year touring. It’s the later category of photos that overshadows the rest of the book. Seeing the...
Read Moreby John Sellers [Simon & Schuster] We all have "that one band." The one group for whom our appreciation and three-dimensional level of understanding is unmatched, due to the fact that it's just not possible under currently acknowledged laws of physics for anyone to "get" them any more than we do. We believe deep down that even their roadies would wilt in amazement under our endless supply of obscure factoids and uncommon insights into the lyrics that the songwriters themselves weren't even aware of. We bristle even in the instance of the most equitable criticism, defending our heroes to the hilt, even if it requires flights of cheap character assassination just to make ourselves feel better, in the rare event that we've been beaten. This strategy, of course, reestablishes the reality (in the worst case scenario) that the assailant couldn't possibly be a bigger moron, hopeless in their ineptitude after so wildly...
Read Moreby Mark Millar, Steve McNiven [Marvel] These days you’d have to search pretty hard for people who read comic books. Once upon time one title could sell a million copies a month, nowadays anything that breaks 100,000 units is considered a smash hit. Yet comic book characters have become the hottest ticket in town. From movies, to television, video games and toys, comic book characters haven’t been this popular since the halcyon days of the 60s. So if the humble comic book was ever going to make a grab for mainstream attention, the time to strike is now and that’s exactly what Marvel has set out to with its epic mini-series, Civil War. Civil War makes no bones about being set in the post-9/11 world. Terrorism is the zeitgeist and even the people we’re supposed to look up to can’t get it right. So when the actions of some well-meaning but inexperienced young...
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