A Common Reader . . .

Review: The Glass Room - Simon Mawer

A reviewer of books should not enthuse too much.  You don't want readers of your reviews to think a. you're too easily impressed, or b. you are in the pay of the publishers, or c. you are a friend of the author.  None of these apply to me (there are quite a few critical reviews on this website, I never receive inducements to write favourable reviews and I've never heard of Simon Mawer before).  However, this book receives from me the closest I've ever been to a standing ovation.  It is just so very, very good. 

The Glass Room refers to the dramatic living area of a modernist house built on a hill-side in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s.  Its architect was commissioned by Victor Landauer and his wife Liesel, with a brief to design a house made of glass and steel, devoid of ornamentation or unnecessary decoration, a house fit for a stylish couple, owners of the Landauer company, makers of luxury motor-cars. 

The house is built and lives up to expectations, the young couple receiving guests in the glass room, with its onyx walls and its breathtaking views.  Victor and Leisel are wealthy and thoroughly modern couple and their new house matches their style perfectly, "living inside a work of art is an experience of sublime delight - the tranquillity of the large living room and the intimacy of the smaller rooms . . . the most remarkable experience of modern living".

Review: Liberty - Garrison Keillor

Just a short mention today of a recently published book, not particularly literary and not a landmark in any way, but still a book I would had to read as soon as I saw it.

Ever since Lake Woebegon Days, I have read every Garrison Keillor book that comes along.  It wouldn't be fair to call Lake Woebegon an industry, but certainly, the creation of radio show and film and seven or eight books, shows that for many people the small Minnesotan town has a charm which gets under the skin. 

Admittedly, the formula sometimes creaks a little.  The previous book in the series, Pontoon, did little for me, but the latest volume, Liberty shows a return to form, which kept me amused for a couple of days and reminded me why I started to read Keillor in the first place. 

In Liberty we read about Clint Bunsen and his preparations for the Fourth of July parade.  Clint chairs the planning committee and anyone who has ever sat on a committee will recognise Keillor's grasp of the painful and frustrating proceedings which beset all such gatherings.  Clint has been fairly successful in previous years in cutting out such traditional events as the parade of tractors, the reading of the Declaration of Independence, and the Ladies Sextette riding in the fire-truck and singing "Its a Grand Old Flag".  But he has found to his cost that personal success means that,

1. people resent you for it
2. expect you to do it again
3. watch for signs of pride on your part, and,
4. await your debacle with cheerful anticipation.

Review: Making an Elephant - Graham Swift

Making an Elephant is one of those books which I thoroughly enjoyed from the moment it arrived through the post - a nicely designed and substantial book with plenty of interesting content (including quite a few well-chosen photographs).  And from a favourite author, providing considerable insight into the writer's life, with illustrations and stories aplenty. 

Swift writes on a vast range of topic, and rarely fails to please.  I first came to his work through Waterland, one of those books which managed to draw me into a wholly believable yet utterly strange landscape (in this case The Fens) which I had never encountered before.  Since then I lingered in the Fens while on a business trip to King's Lynn, a journey which I found myself interpreting through my memories of Waterland. 

Then Last Orders came along and quite rightly won the Booker Prize (and was later filmed so effectively with Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and others).  Since then I've read most of Swift's books and enjoyed them all so it was difficult to resist this varied collection of pieces from such a wide range of sources. 

In Making An Elephant, we find episodes from Swift's life, illustrated by short articles, portraits of other writers, interviews, poems and essays.   It is an ideal book to dip into, but I found myself reading the whole thing over a couple of days, conscious that it is also a book I will enjoy having on my shelves to refer to when thinking about the writing process or just wanting to recall some of the evocative scenes described in it. 

Review: Home - Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson's earlier novel Gilead was much admired for its depiction of elderly Congregational minister, John Ames.  It has now been followed by Home, which focuses on Jack, the son of Robert Boughton, a retired Presbyterian minister and an old friend of John Ames.

As the book opens, we find Robert Boughton's daughter Glory at home caring for her elderly father. Glory has returned home after a lengthy but failed engagement to a man who is only referred to as "the fiancé". She has settled into a sort of grown-up childhood, where the familiar paraphernalia of home surrounds her, but with the role-reversal of elderly care in which the child now looks after the parent.

And then Glory's brother Jack returns home.  Jack is the black-sheep of the family and has not been seen for 20 years. While his siblings were following the rules of this Christian home, Jack was climbing down drain-pipes at night to go out on the town, and learning to behave as we would now expect teenagers to behave. However, the type-casting of this family is impossible to resist and Jack's sense of failing to live up to expectations drove him away for years, leading to a spell in prison and even missing his mother's funeral.

Review: Missing Persons - Hartmut Lange

According to the Toby Press website, Hartmut Lange was born in Berlin in 1937 and is well-known in Germany as a contemporary novelist and playwright.  He has been awarded numerous literary prizes. 

The book contains three longish short stories, all in one way or another covering the theme of disconnection: a sense that all is not quite right, with unresolved questions left hanging in the air. 

In The Poster, we meet Henninger, a German bank director, who has travelled to Vienna for business purposes.  He sees a list of missing persons on a pillar and takes a pen and scrawls his own name on it, seemingly to proclaim to the world that he is not as he appears to be.  The time comes for him to return to his office in Berlin, but while waiting for his flight at the airport, "it occurs to him that it might be possible for him to exchange his ticket to Berlin for a flight to Venice". And so his adventures begin.

As with all acts of spontaneous rebellion, Henninger worries about the effects of his absence back home.  He tries to send a telegram to his office, but realises the impossibility of making an adequate explanation for his whim and tears up the telegram form. 

Review: The Reader magazine

I occasionally review literary magazines, and was pleased to receive this week through the post a complimentary copy of The Reader.  The Reader is a quarterly magazine covering (according to its strapline) new writings, book talk and news and views. The magazine is published by the charity The Reading Organisation which runs workshops and events aimed at encouraging people to read and enjoy literature.  

The magazine is attractively-produced, being not much more than a paper-back book in size with thick card covers.  The edition I have contains 128 pages.  It is very well designed with clear type-scripts, enough white space to save the magazine from looking too dense, and photographs where required. 

The magazine is edited by Phil Davis of Liverpool University, and in fact is published by the English School at the University.  The Reading Organisation seems to be very active in that part of the country and I think provides work experience for students on the English Literature course.

The contents page shows a good mix of articles about books and poetry, interviews, news, extracts from current work, reviews and recommendations.  Although The Reading Organisation is aimed at encouraging new readers, I would say the magazine would appeal to already enthusiastic readers who would appreciate a literary magazine with a wide-range and a good variety of features.  I can't help but compare The Reader with Granta which is similar in format and content.  The Reader would be more populist and accessible than Granta, but Granta would be more challenging I think, with rather more of a coherent theme or message to each edition.  I make comparisons with other magazines later in this review.

Review: Hitler's Private Library - Timothy W Ryback

I am always interested in the way reading affects people, and also in the psychology of the German people in the build-up to the Second World War.  Timothy Ryback has studied the remnants of Hitler’s private library, some 1200 books, which occupy shelf-space in the rare book division of the Library of Congress in Washington.  In his new book,  Hitler's Private Library:  The Books That Shaped His Life, Ryback describes the original collection of 16,000 books, and how as the sub-title suggests, they "shaped his life".

I am used to hearing how books educate, inform and enlighten and it was a surprise to read that the wholly unenlightened Adolf Hitler was "possessed by a voracious appetite for reading".  From his earliest years after returning from the First World War battle-front in France, Hitler scoured the book-stalls of Munich to fill two book cases in his rented rooms.  He read "intently, even fiercely", usually late into the night, and Ryback records an occasion when Eva Braun interrupted a reading session and was "dispatched with a tirade that sent her hurtling red-faced down the hallway". 

Associates  recalled, "I can never remember Adolf without books", and "books were his world", with reading being a "deadly serious business".