Northern Lights

By Philip Pullman

The first in Pullman's "Dark Materials" trilogy, this book was made into a film recently, starring Michelle Pfeiffer as the evil person, which I haven't seen but I think I will get on on DVD so I can take a look. I liked it! I know, I know, it's one of those books for "young adults", but those young adult books are still some of my favourites. And, they're also quite easy to read because they aren't trying to be all post-modern or redefine the novel or anything.

The story is set in another kind of alternate reality world, a bit 19th century but where humans are born with "daemons", who seem to be little spirits that are attached to you for ever and can change their form to look like different animals. Cool - I want one!! I wouldn't mind a little mousie companion that could change into a tiger when I was cranky. (That is, they can keep changing until you hit puberty, when they decide on one form and stay that way. Apparently, the servant classes tend to have dogs as daemons. Who knew the class system and speciest stereotypes could even persist into fictional alternate realities??). Lyra is our young heroine, a bit of a bossy tomboy type growing up in an Oxford College. True to the best "young adult" fiction, Lyra has no parents around to bug her - only a bunch of Oxford dons. However, someone out there is kidnapping children, and soon Lyra is caught up in a gripping adventure. Liked it a lot - apparently there has been a lot of hoo-hah about this series because it is seen to be criticising the Church. I dunno, it didn't really occur to me while I was reading it, but then it wouldn't, would it??

Must buy the next in the series...only the edition with the nice linocut-style illustrations like above, though...oh yes, have to note that the wicked woman in this book has a daemon who takes the form of - a golden monkey!! (Ha HA!!! I told youse all they were trouble...).

Rating: 8 out of 10

The Yiddish Policeman's Union

By Michael Chabon

Another lovely book from Michael Chabon, I think I actually liked this one better than "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", which I read last year. This one's quite a bit shorter, and based in an alternate world where the Jewish people were sent to Alaska after World War I instead of Israel. Meyer Landsman is a policeman in the Jewish state of Sitka, who tries to solve the case of a murdered chess-playing junkie. Chabon has created a whole society, complete with Jewish gumshoe lingo (which I found a bit hard to get my head around, but no more than actual gumshoe lingo), a bit of sass, a brooding atmosphere and snappy dialogue. Minor quibble in the presence of chess, which I think annoys me because it turns up in quite a few novels as some kind of plot device, but handled here so much better than all the others. At least Landsman also hates chess. Go on, read it...reeaaaddd itttt...

Rating: 9 out of 10

Sputnik Sweetheart (2006)

By Haruki Murakami
I don’t suppose you’re really supposed to know precisely what’s going on in any of Murakami’s novels, but just once, I’d like to know FOR SURE what happened. I nearly had this one nailed, but then in the last couple of pages he threw in a metaphysical curveball (or something) and my brain missed. The confusion is part of the charm of Murakami’s writing, but every so often I have a sneaking suspicion that the author has no idea what’s going on either and so purposely leaves everything vague and uncertain at the end, correctly assuming that the reader will assume that they are an idiot if they don’t get it.

Sputnik Sweetheart is narrated by K, who loves Sumire, who unfortunately for K falls in love with Miu, who in turn isn’t really capable of loving anyone. (Read the book to find out why). In other words, unrequited love double jeopardy. I’ve read three of Murakami’s books now, and I think I see a recurring theme – people who somehow manage to split their personality between this world and some other place (e.g. ‘the other side’). What this other place is supposed to be I’m never to sure about, and in Sputnik Sweetheart I couldn’t even tell on which side the narrator ended up.

There’s certainly no other author I can think of that writes quite like this, so if you haven’t read any of Murakami’s novels this one might be a good place to start. I liked this book, but didn’t love it – I think I liked Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World better, but it was a while ago that I read that now. Overall I felt more satisfied with Sputnik Sweetheart than I did with Kafka on the Shore, but I really loved Kafka up to a certain point, the point where reality started shifting sideways and my damn left brain refused to go with the flow.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

The Eyre Affair (2003)

By Jasper Fforde
I thought this book was tops. It follows the adventures of our heroine, Thursday Next, who works for a special government agency that tracks down crimes against literature (eg forgeries, exceptionally bad productions of Shakespeare etc). Things get a bit weird when the villain, Acheron Hades (a truly villainous villain), steals the original copy of Dicken’s Martin Chuzzlewit and threatens to take out the hero and thus change the manuscript for ever – with the help of Thursday’s uncle’s new invention, the Prose Portal. (In the testing stages his wife gets trapped in one of Wordsworth’s poems – and it turns out Wordsworth’s a bit of a flirt). When this evil plan doesn’t work out quite as he intended, Hades decides to pick on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre instead.

Next’s world is one in which literature is much more popular with the masses than in ours – so much so that there is a copy of William Shakespeare’s Complete Works in every hotel room, along with the Bible and several other religious texts, and the true authorship of Shakespeare’s plays is a frequent and serious topic of discussion. I liked the character of Thursday Next extremely (she’s a smart chick! Maybe not at genius level, but pretty good), and Acheron Hades was an excellent villain. I think I’ve found a new favourite author and will be looking for a hardback copy for my bookshelves.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Slaughterhouse 5 (2003)

By Kurt Vonnegut
I think I’ll find it difficult to say anything meaningful about this book because although it’s written in an amusing style it is about terrible things – the experiences of members of the American army during the fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War. Vonnegut himself was in Dresden at this time, as he says in the first chapter, but writes the story through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain’s assistant who became a successful optometrist after returning from the War but who also became “unstuck in time” – he may be in Dresden during the war one minute, and then 40 years ahead in his life the next, writing letters to the local paper about the planet Tralfamadore and how he was kidnapped by its inhabitants and kept in an intergalactic zoo for over 6 months. It manages to be both light and tragic simultaneously. Hmm I’m not sure what to say next, only that I thought this book was excellent and I will be reading more of Kurt Vonnegut soon. Although it has some science fiction overtones, it is primarily a book about how horrible people are to each other, so I don’t think despisers of science-fiction should worry.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Lost in a Good Book (2003)

By Jasper Fforde
The second in the Thursday Next series, this book lives up to the high standards set by the first. Thursday finds herself somewhat of a celebrity after the events of The Eyre Affair, she is happily married and expecting a kiddywinkle in several months – but then things go a bit weird. Her husband is “eradicated” by the ChronoGuard and the evil Goliath Corporation, and she discovers that there is a police network that acts within works of fiction, that has decided to bring her up on charges for changing the ending of Jane Eyre. (The trial scene is particularly good – Thursday and her lawyer have the misfortune to draw the magistrate from Kafka’s The Castle to oversee her trial).

It’s great to discover a new favourite author. I am looking forward to the third book in the series, which is apparently due out any time now.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10