Book Club
6 July

I've read quite a lot recently, on holiday and since (mostly riding to and from work on the train).

So, I'm going to do a catch up in one large batch.

I didn't read an awful lot whilst I was on holiday but I did polish off The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Unlike The Shadow of the Wind, this is a book aimed full square at the young adult audience and was, in fact, written well before he achieved world-wide fame with his more adult novels. Nevertheless, much of the Gothic atmosphere of the later novels is present from the very beginning - as are themes of lost innocence, magical parallel realities, destiny and lives pursued by fate, thwarted love, secrets and mysteries.

I wouldn't pretend that this novel is in the same class as the later work but it was readily enjoyable and for that I'm happy to offer up three stars.

The other book which I read on holiday was The White Queen by Philippa Gregory. She's mostly known for her Tudor novels like The Other Boleyn Girl. This novel is the beginning of a series which will look at major female figures in the Wars of the Roses. So far so good. The Tudorbethan period of history is really done to death. However, the sourcing materials for that period are much more detailed than for the previous century. The Tudors obviously got rid of a lot in order to bolster their world view and their legitimacy as sovereigns. You'd think therefore that it would allow an imaginative author much more scope for interpretation and personalisation.

Initially, anyway, this is what I thought that I was going to get. My knowledge of this period is limited to a passing acquaintance with Holinshed's Chronicles by way of Shakespeare's Henry VI in its three parts and Richard III and what I've picked up from This Sceptered Isle.

I found it quite enthralling to hear about a little known story from the perspective of Edward III's queen, a woman about whom I knew very little. But sad to say, the experience fizzled out. As the plot advanced, so the writing just became less and less engaging and more and more (from my perspective) disjointed. It's a shame because this could have been really good.

I had really liked The Remains of the Day when I read it earlier this year. I had never read anything by Kazuo Ishiguro before and so it had been a real revelation. I picked up Never Let Me Go with a certain amount of trepidation, therefore. I was simply prepared to be let down.

I don't think that it is as good a book but certainly packs a slowly burning emotional punch as it gradually becomes clear that we are in a future present which is ours but which has also become skewed by one central fact which only becomes clear as the novel progresses. The secret which underpins the lives of all of the central characters is both shocking and plausible and very cleverly realised. However, the coolness and detached objectivity of the prose, whilst it contributes enormously to the unsensational approach to the unthinkable, did mean that I felt cool and detached as well. So, it was good but not excellent.

Ian McEwan is an author whose work I have been reading for over thirty years. I must remind myself to revisit some of those early works like The Cement Garden and The Comfort of Strangers at some time. More recently, of course, Atonement has made an enormous impact both as a film and as a novel - I hear that there is also the prospect of an opera on the way.

Despite the publicity blurb on the back cover telling us that we were in the presence of a masterpiece, neither Ross nor I could warm to this short novel. It's well written; it's well observed; it's beautifully executed. From a technical point of view, it's faultless. However, the story of a heterosexual relationship in the early 1960s which goes off the rails because neither party understands the sexual nature of the other failed to interest either of us. Perhaps, we simply didn't want to engage with a study in English embarrassment.

And so therefore it was a blessed relief to reach The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell which was simply of a different order of magnitude when it came to imaginative engagement. Ever since I chanced upon Cloud Atlas, I've enjoyed this author's work. Black Swan Green was good. Ghostwritten, earlier this year, was very good. And this tale also is a rich and heady brew.

It's an historical novel set at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as Japan was about to be opened up to Western trade and the Dutch East India company was about to collapse. It's about the end of two Empires (Dutch and Japanese) and the beginning of another (the British) and the Americans rate ne'er a mention although it will be they who eventually succeed. It's about the difference between cultures and the whole is viewed from multiple perspectives. It's a love story - it is several love stories. It's a murder mystery. It's an adventure novel. It's a quest - it is several quests. I loved it. And, best of all, it was a birthday present from my Rossi.