A ruthless killer stalks LA, simultaneously taunting and avoiding the suspicions of his old airforce buddy – now a policeman – and becoming obsessed wA ruthless killer stalks LA, simultaneously taunting and avoiding the suspicions of his old airforce buddy – now a policeman – and becoming obsessed with a woman who lives in his building. Noir perfection, absolutely gripping, as well as a wonderful portrait of the place and era in which it is set....more
I have sometimes thought that I have been burdened with a pack of ten misfortunes, any one of which if borne by my neighbour would be enough to make aI have sometimes thought that I have been burdened with a pack of ten misfortunes, any one of which if borne by my neighbour would be enough to make a murderer of him. This statement is typical of the narrator of No Longer Human, the troubled Oba Yozo, whose story is told through a series of notebooks in the possession of a stranger. Yet, considering that this is an iconic novel of the ‘social outcast’, Yozo participates in society and interacts with people much more than I had anticipated; it’s just that he perpetually feels like he’s on the outside. That, of course, is the tragedy of his ugly narrative, which takes in his schooldays, failed affairs, a suicide attempt, alcoholism and a disastrous marriage – and the overpowering sense of alienation that runs through it all. It’s a short book that practically demands to be read quickly, both because it is powerful and because of its absolute bleakness.
Borges’ stories are so dense – it took me several hours to read this tiny volume (54 pages); I’d usually read a novella twice the length in half the tBorges’ stories are so dense – it took me several hours to read this tiny volume (54 pages); I’d usually read a novella twice the length in half the time. This collection is a perfect introduction to the work of a writer who can seem intimidating to the uninitiated. It has given me the confidence to read more Borges, and that seems to me exactly what these small Penguin Modern collections should do.
I’ve said this before, but there’s a special thrill to reading a famous writer’s work and immediately understanding how they've informed the work of other authors I love – that feeling of a missing puzzle piece clicking into place. From this small selection of stories, I can already see clear influences on some of my favourite books by Nina Allan and Joshua Cohen.
I’ve tried to read 'The Garden of Forking Paths' (1941) in the past and found it impenetrable (ironic, I know). This time I persisted, and although it took me a while (relatively speaking) to have any idea what was going on, by the end I saw its beauty and genius.
'The Book of Sand' (1975) was my favourite, and also the most accessible. (I wonder if that has anything to do with when it was translated – presumably much later than the others given its comparably late original publication date? It's not clear from the information at the beginning of the book.) A fascinating concept and a perfect ending.
'The Circular Ruins' (1941) is a cosmic, dreamlike fantasy, evoking its settings (the jungle and the world of one's mind) with a claustrophobic accuracy.
'On Exactitude in Science' (1946) is a paragraph only, framed as an extract; I would have taken it for an epigraph if not for the table of contents. A perfect example of a passage you have to read a few times to fully grasp its imagery.
'Death and the Compass' (1942) is a labyrinthine murder mystery. Not the sort of plot I expected to find here, and all the more pleasing for that.
Darkness at Noon is a dramatised version of real events, an obvious but unnamed simulacrum of Stalinist Russia, with Rubashov, formerly a senior membeDarkness at Noon is a dramatised version of real events, an obvious but unnamed simulacrum of Stalinist Russia, with Rubashov, formerly a senior member of the Party, suddenly arrested and imprisoned for invented crimes. Driven not by character or plot but by ideas, it depicts Rubashov's state of mind and thought process as his incarceration forces him to contemplate the part he has played in building a dictatorship, and his disillusionment with the political philosophy he has imposed on others. It's perhaps a weird thing to say about a book with such sombre themes, but it felt like such a relief to read something like this - it's such a powerful and intelligent novel, and it reminded me why 'classics' are worth reading.
The stars have thrown their spears down and departed. There seems to be nothing except primordial chaos outside the window. Utterly still, utterly alo
The stars have thrown their spears down and departed. There seems to be nothing except primordial chaos outside the window. Utterly still, utterly alone, I watch the darkness flower into transient symbols. And now there is danger somewhere, a slow, padded beat, like cushioned paws softly approaching. What an ominous sound that is to hear in the night. (p9)
Sleep Has His House is an extraordinary book, one that defies description – or, at least, it defies my powers of description. It's a fusion of novel, memoir and literary experiment. On the back cover of my copy, it's said to have 'startled with its strangeness in 1948'; it is no less startling or strange in 2020, though it's gratifying to know that it is now regarded as one of Kavan's best, having been poorly reviewed on publication.
The narrative is largely composed of surreal dream-scenes; they are structured around the (by all accounts somewhat autobiographical) story of a girl known as B. Sometimes writing in first person, and sometimes observed, B relates her conviction that human existence is divided between the 'day world' and the mysterious language of the night. As the day-to-day experience of her childhood becomes more difficult, B retreats into what she calls the night world or nightland. 'I had to prevent the day world from becoming real,' she tells us; 'I waited all through the day for the moment of going home to my night world.' This dark, fantastical space represents an escape from the isolation B endures in her daily life.
At school and at home it was the same; I was alone. This I accepted and knew it would always be so, wherever I went, and whatever happened to me. There was no place for me in the day world. My home was in darkness and my companions were shadows beckoning from a glass. (p101)
Sleep Has His House is a feast of language. Glance at any page and you will find a sentence or phrase unique in its beauty. 'The descending swell burns translucent'; 'livid swaths of light fall as if cut by a scythe'. Reflections from silverware create 'smothered prismatic gleams'; through the gap between curtains, 'a small moon quizzes coldly'; a figure beckons from 'the sapphire recessive night', and 'a huge spectral white owl with lambent eyes' glides overhead. Rarely have I encountered such painterly descriptions, such vivid, powerful images.
The pre-realist fantasia opens up in an inchoate sort of Marie Laurencin dream of delicate tints. No form to speak of. Just a pearly billowing and subsiding of fondant chromatics. (p28)
A sombre landscape eventuates, worked out in blacks and greys and the very gloomiest shades of viridian. A scowling sky, ominous mountains, water cold, still and solid-looking as ice, trackless fir forests, the fine spray from the gigantic waterfalls fuming slowly like ectoplasm. (p79)
B is often portrayed calmly reading a book. In some scenes, she sits and reads quietly as the story of creation unfolds around her, as 'the monstrous efflorescence of the universe burgeons'. Here, the backdrops are evocative not just of art but of cinema, of the kind of visual effects impossible at the time Kavan was writing.
There's a split second's glimpse of the vast sad blackness of infinity before the perfectly bare void is spattered by this glittering exsurgence, this bursting fountain of molecules, instantly crystallizing to sequins of differing size... the stars roar past like stratoliners to destinations not checked in quadrillions... the thunderous revving of the cosmic machines settles to the steady beat of eternity. (p31)
The eye is checking a record of silence, space; a nightmare, every horror of this world in its frigid and blank neutrality. The actual scope of its orbit depends on the individual concept of desolation, but approximate symbols are suggested in long roving perspectives of ocean, black swelled, in slow undulation, each whaleback swell plated in armour-hard brilliance with the moonlight clanking along it; the endless, aimless, nameless shoreline, flat, bald-white sand, unbroken black-tree palisade; the heavy and horrid eternal onrush of breakers suddenly exploding their madness of futile power, millions of mad tons piling, booming, collapsing, swirling in chain-mail mosaic of mad moon splinters; blanched mountain range a ridge of clenched knucklebones. (p89)
(I think the above might be my favourite passage from the book, and also seems so perfectly representative of it... the rich beauty of the description set against the bleak images it relates, the overpowering sense of desolation, of loneliness.)
Yet, as you can see from the above ('... depends on the individual concept of desolation...'), Sleep Has His House possesses a sense of humour, of sorts. It is sometimes sardonic, sometimes absurd – 'remember a whatsit's whatsit may depend on your whatsit' – and some of what was presumably intended as near-nonsense, an expression of the limitless possibilities of the nightland, now seems oddly prescient ('the radio announces various kinds of truth to suit every listener').
I have sometimes found Kavan's short stories tough to get into, and have wondered whether I would ever recapture the sense of amazement I felt when I read Ice for the first time. Sleep Has His House brought that feeling back, and reminded me of everything I found so utterly entrancing about Ice. This is the sort of writing that leaves me reeling.
Kavan's brief, lucid stories have the quality of remembered nightmares. The first work published under the name of Anna Kavan rather than Helen FergusKavan's brief, lucid stories have the quality of remembered nightmares. The first work published under the name of Anna Kavan rather than Helen Ferguson, Asylum Piece - a patchwork of interlinked vignettes that could be considered a novel or a short story collection - is sometimes brilliant, but a little patchy. The title story, made up of eight mini-stories, is somewhat hit and miss - while it's the longest and most complete piece, it's also the only one to deviate from the first-person narrative (seemingly always belonging to the same person) Kavan uses elsewhere, and it suffers for that. The motifs used throughout the rest of the stories build up themes of oppression, paranoia and the impossibility of escape familiar from Ice.
Stories in this book: 'The Birthmark', 'Going Up in the World', 'The Enemy', 'A Changed Situation', 'The Birds', 'Airing a Grievance', 'Just Another Failure', 'The Summons', 'At Night', 'An Unpleasant Reminder', 'Machines in the Head', 'Asylum Piece' (i-viii), 'The End in Sight', 'There is No End'...more
The stories in I Am Lazarus, first published in 1945, are concerned with war and its aftermath. Indeed, at its beginning the book seems saturated withThe stories in I Am Lazarus, first published in 1945, are concerned with war and its aftermath. Indeed, at its beginning the book seems saturated with sorrow and loss, a grey wash, and the first few stories paint similarly bleak pictures of young men with PTSD, in some cases suggesting they would have been better off without treatment. Then comes the transcendent 'Glorious Boys', a story in which every sentence is a grenade. It's alive and crackling with energy, but not pleasantly: alive and crackling with energy like you feel when you're having a panic attack. 'The Brother' is grief as a horror story. 'The Gannets' is a two-page scream against human cruelty that evokes 'The Birds' (interestingly, Kavan's story predates du Maurier's). Something about 'The Picture', its atmosphere of torment and humiliation, really got to me. 'All Kinds of Grief Shall Arrive', 'Benjo' and 'Our City' form a trio of tales of surreal bureaucracy, harking back to Asylum Piece, in which 'official procedure' and 'the authorities' are shadowy shape-shifting enemies. This is not a perfect collection – it sometimes feels that the stories are a little mismatched – but it's filled with glimmers of Kavan's unique style and inimitable skill at portraying the isolation of madness and sadness.
Stories in this book: 'I Am Lazarus', 'The Palace of Sleep', 'Who Has Desired the Sea', 'The Blackout', 'Glorious Boys', 'The Face of My People', 'The Heavenly Adversary', 'The Brother', 'The Gannets', 'The Picture', 'All Kinds of Grief Shall Arrive', 'A Certain Experience', 'Benjo', 'Now I Know Where My Place Is', 'Our City'
Being 'prose poetry', a concept I admit I am uncertain about - where is the line drawn between lyrical prose and prose poetry? - Elizabeth Smart's By Being 'prose poetry', a concept I admit I am uncertain about - where is the line drawn between lyrical prose and prose poetry? - Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, acknowledged everywhere as 'a classic of the genre', is dense and florid. Too often I felt like I was looking at a Magic Eye picture, struggling to make out the actual story and meaning in the confusion of language. This was all the more frustrating because having read a bit about the background of this story, Smart's correspondence, affair and ensuing relationship with the (initially married) poet George Baker, I was keen to know more. Nevertheless there are some - many - beautiful lines, a few of which immediately jumped out at me as being recognisable from Smiths songs, especially those used in 'What She Said' (a song particularly close to my heart because, as I may have mentioned before, for part of my A Level English coursework I wrote a dramatic monologue based on it. The monologue was from the point of view of a woman who has murdered her husband's lover. What a weird and coincidental closing of the circle!) This is undoubtedly a beautifully written book, and as much of the praise of it points out, it feels very timeless. However, I struggled to appreciate the raw honesty and passion it's famous for because I just found it too abstruse, too mired in wordplay, metaphor and reference to be truly moving. ...more
Hmm, not entirely sure why this didn’t really click for me – perhaps it was just a case of bad timing, or not the best book to pick as my second tasteHmm, not entirely sure why this didn’t really click for me – perhaps it was just a case of bad timing, or not the best book to pick as my second taste of Nabokov... Whatever the reason, it took me a frustratingly long time to plough through a relatively short novel. Despite some beautiful sentences and plenty of wit, I was never particularly interested in the truth of writer Sebastian Knight’s life, nor his half-brother’s attempts to write about him.
Simple and eloquently written, this novella about chess is also a semi-allegorical tale about Nazism. The narrator is travelling on a cruise ship and Simple and eloquently written, this novella about chess is also a semi-allegorical tale about Nazism. The narrator is travelling on a cruise ship and learns one of his fellow passengers is Czentovic, the reigning chess world champion. He is keen to challenge the renowned player - well known for being a simple, 'rustic' peasant of no outstanding intelligence - to a match, which is made more interesting when the game is interrupted by a stranger, Dr. B., whose intellectual understanding of chess seems incomparable. This character's background becomes a story within the story, as he explains to the narrator how he attained his expertise. As I have no knowledge of chess whatsoever, the more technical aspects went straight over my head, but you don't need to have an understanding of the game to enjoy the story. I was gripped by the narrative, which is moving and disturbing. Though it was his last published work, this is a great introduction to Zweig's writing....more
Brideshead Revisited is a book I've been meaning to read for years. I've actually owned a copy of it for quite some time, and can't really explain proBrideshead Revisited is a book I've been meaning to read for years. I've actually owned a copy of it for quite some time, and can't really explain properly why I haven't come to read it before now. I'm always a bit dubious about classics; I've written before about my difficulty with separating my awareness of the status and 'importance' of the book from the act of actually reading and enjoying it. Thankfully, I didn't have any problems getting into this and immediately felt drawn in by the story. The plot doesn't need much of an introduction from me; the book opens with Charles Ryder, the protagonist and narrator, finding himself back at Brideshead as an army officer during World War II - Brideshead being the ancestral home of the Flytes, the family Charles became entangled with during his younger years. The novel thereafter is divided into Books I, II and III but can be broadly separated into two halves, the second beginning with Book III (which, admittedly, is too small to constitute a literal half, but feels so different in tone and theme that it stands apart from the rest of the book). The first half deals with Charles's education at Oxford University, his infatuation with the eccentric Sebastian Flyte and his first visits to Brideshead. The second picks up the story some years later and follows Charles, now married, as he re-encounters Sebastian's sister Julia on a cruise ship and the two embark upon an affair.
My existing impressions of the story centred around the bits I've seen of the TV and film adaptations, and the fact that I've read various reviews citing Brideshead Revisited as a major influence on some of my favourite books. All this prior knowledge was concentrated on the first half of the book, particularly the Oxford part, and I therefore had a vague impression that it was all going to be like that. I found this half completely enchanting and quite magical in its rich evocation of the romance of nostalgia. Charles's obsession with, and envy of, Sebastian's life and family is also masterfully portrayed. As Sebastian descends into alcoholism, his decline and the general loss of innocence and optimism is reflected in the progression of the plot, and religion - specifically the Flytes' Catholicism, which both tortures and defines them - emerges as a major theme. The second half is very different in tone. It has much more of a satirical feel (which I gather is more in keeping with the rest of Waugh's work) and is funny in a sharp kind of way, particularly in the depiction of the strained relationship between Charles and his wife Celia. The stage is then set for a poignant ending in which Lord Marchmain, patriarch of the Flytes, returns to Brideshead to die, and Julia eventually revokes her decision to marry Charles because of her religion. This brings the reader back to the situation glimpsed in the prologue, with Charles finding Brideshead in a state of some disrepair and ruminating on the passage of time, its effect on himself, the Flytes, and the house; ultimately, he recognises the power and endurance of religion.
I wanted to love this book so much, I wanted it to be a favourite - one of the reasons I held out on reading it for so long was that I always thought I'd adore it and I almost wanted to 'save' it for later rather than reading it immediately, knowing how good it would be when I did get round to it. I wasn't entirely wrong; the first half of the book is something I could read over and over again. I found the second half much more problematic, and never really got used to it. I just kept waiting for Sebastian to come back into the story, and when he didn't I felt it was all something of an anticlimax. (I suppose this has to do with my expectations as a reader of mainly modern novels - if this book had been written today, no doubt Sebastian would have made a dramatic reappearance somewhere towards the end.) I also didn't find Charles very likeable at this point; his complete lack of interest in his own children is weirdly glossed over.
This is a beautifully written, elegaic and often witty novel which truly deserves its status as a classic. I thought it was a fantastic read, but although I admire the whole book immensely, I couldn't quite get past the fact that I didn't fall in love with the second half as I did the first. I loved the relationship between Charles and Sebastian, and the enchanting atmosphere of their time at Oxford, and when their interaction disappeared from the book (along with the romantic prose that portrayed it), I couldn't help feeling like something was missing - Julia, though a great character, seemed a poor substitute. This is the reason it gets four stars, not quite five. ...more
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