The Postman Always Rings Twice

By James M Cain
Initially, and as Hercule Poirot would say (sort of), I didn’t buy the psychology in this one – our protagonist, Frank (I won’t call him a hero), rocks up at a diner, manipulates the boss into giving him a job, fancies the missus (Cora), forces himself on her within a short space of time and bites her lip badly enough to make it bleed, and yet she appears to fancy him back. She has, apparently, “lips that stuck out in a way that made me want to mash them in for her”. What the?! Surely Cora’s husband, Nick the Greek, must have been a total monster, if Frank is an attractive proposition?? Yet the only crimes she fingers her husband for is being “greasy”. (Not only are the main characters generally unpleasant, they are also racist! And sexist! Still, it was written in the 30s, I suppose).

After a while, though, I got used to the “psychology” of the characters, even though Frank is so repulsive - and Cora’s not exactly fabulous either. So I was in for the ride as Cora and Frank try twice to kill off Nick the Greek and then go through the inevitable court case and relationship problems. This is not a happily-ever-after story! There is some satisfaction, I suppose, in seeing them get their just desserts…

I haven’t seen either of the films upon which this is based, or even any of the other films based on Cain’s novels (e.g. Double Indemnity) but it is not hard to imagine them as films – they are quite visual, and the writing style very fast and punchy. It reminds me a bit of Psycho, where the person who gets killed in the shower is morally flawed, and the story follows her crime and ultimate downfall.

Incidentally there is no postman in this book, which is a tad confusing because I was imagining some kind of “Cape Fear” story with a psychopathic postman. In fact I don’t believe there are even any doorbells rung. I googled it and apparently the phrase “The Postman Always Rings Twice” is code for the general sentiment “What Goes Around Comes Around”. I wonder if Justin Timberlake ever considered an alternate title for his song??

Rating: 6 out of 10

The Andromeda Strain

By Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton must be a rich man. This book was written in 1969, and was followed fairly quickly by a a film version (involving lots of white lab coats, I’m told), and it seems barely a year has gone past since without some other Michael Crichton blockbuster on our screens or bookshelves.

Well, I’m pleased to report that The Andromeda Strain is a bit of a page-turner. A space probe returns to earth and is found by some unsuspecting civilians. It seems that the probe contains some kind of alien life form, because shortly after the unsuspecting civilians find the probe, they are all dead – so quickly they probably didn’t even have time to think something like “By Gad, that probe must have contained some alien life form!”. (It’s only a small town of about 50 or so, though; in a modern film version I imagine they’d up the body count). The government agents sent to retrieve the probe also die mysteriously, although not particularly gruesomely (the bug causes blood to clot almost instantly, so there are no bloody external hemorrhages from orifices or anything). This puts in motion the “Wildfire Protocol”, in which five specialists are called in to deal with the situation.

However, those smartypants at mission control who thought they’d thought of everything had missed a few tricks. They’d obviously never had to put together a Disaster Plan because one of the critical specialists was ill (busted appendix or something) and they had no back-up!! Maybe things work differently in top-secret government circles. Several other things went wrong during the response; the book is kind of written like a after-the-fact review of what went wrong with the plan - what us Disaster Planners like to call a “debriefing”, because it makes us feel important.

The Andromeda Strain has a kind of “old-time” feel about it, being a 60s jobbie and all, but not just because the technology described is so obviously now out-of-date. The old-time feel is also due to the pacing and the focus – like how even that gem of an action film, Die Hard, seems awfully slow to get going by today’s standards. By today’s standards, the Andromeda Strain didn’t feature nearly enough gruesome deaths, and the inevitable containment-field-broken-will-they-stop-the-self-destruct-bomb cliffhanger sequence was over remarkably quickly. Crichton spends a lot of time talking about the science of it all – how they set up Wildfire (hidden in a cornfield, no less! Were all those episodes of the X-files merely an homage to Andromeda??), why they set up the area, the design of Wildfire, the decontamination processes, what happens exactly when such and such occurs…it all lends to the aura of plausibility, but after a while I did wish for a bit less scientific justification of the plot and a few more acts of unsubstantiated derring-do. After all, these days all you have to do is have someone say something like “By Gad, Captain, some alien force has constructed a web of crippling anomalies!” and we don’t bat an eyelid. Those tricky crippling anomalies – they’ll get you every time!

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Fight Club

By Chuck Palahniuk
I did a bit of research on Wiki after I finished this book, because I wondered if it had ever been banned anywhere – it does read like a bit of a primer for civil disobedience, after all, and that usually gets the book-banners’ blood boiling. Waiters spitting (and worse) into restaurant food, selling soap made from liposuction fat to the ladies who had the liposuction (at outrageous prices), bare knuckle fist-fight clubs, blowing things up…this book had it all. I can also easily imagine the society depicted in Fight Club appealing greatly to the disenfranchised, angry, despairing, bored and/or lonely – the type of person who can often end up in a cult. As Hercule Poirot would say, the psychology of the book was right.

Well Wikipedia didn’t mention any attempts to ban the book (or the subsequent film), although Fight Club has attracted some criticism for its violent nature, suggestions of misogyny etc. (Incidentally, my own inbuilt misogyny detector was not activated while reading this book). The Wiki entry on Fight Club did indicate, however, that it has generated rather a lot of deep and meaningful essays and critiques. (Arrrgh). To quote Wiki, “[Fight Club] is now widely considered to be a defining work and an uncompromising critique of humanity's loss of identity through mass consumerism.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_club). Oo-er.

Interestingly, the fight club society that evolves in the book is made up entirely of men. I’m not sure if this makes me prey to gender stereotypes, but I don’t think I would have found it believable if there were lots of women joining up to bash each other’s faces in and obey ridiculous rules unquestioningly. Tell me if I’m falling prey to gender stereotypes, won’t you? I'd hate to fall prey to gender stereotypes...

Fight Club is a curious book – definitely worth reading – it feels like it’s being written by someone with ADD (or possibly extreme sleep deprivation, which is what our unnamed hero suffers from), but as you get towards the end and it all comes together…geez! I mean, I didn’t see that coming! I think Chuck Palahniuk is a bit clever.

Also Fight Club has the rare commendation of being a book that invites comment by total strangers on public transport. I was only on about page 5 when a bloke on the train started telling me what an awesome book it was; I can only recall two other books inviting comment from strangers, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 and one of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels.

I think I’m going to give this book a 10, even though I didn’t quite like it as much as my other favourites, but it was just so well done. A dangerous book!!

Rating: 10 out of 10

She (2006)

By H Rider Haggard
I have a vague memory of seeing the film of this book, probably from when I was about 12, something about a woman stepping into a pillar of blue light and shrivelling up into a very old woman. How could I not want to read the book?? So, finally I got around to it.

Written by the same author who wrote King Solomon’s Mines and other tales of derring-do, She sees our heroes, Holly (a bloke, not very attractive, by his own admission, about 40-odd, the narrator of our story) and his adopted son Leo (very attractive, twenty-five, not quite as brainy and wise as Holly) travelling to deepest darkest Africa in search of a legendary race of people (the Amahagger) and their legendary Queen, Ayesha, who is said to have lived for thousands of years on the wild plains of Kôr. (This is the titular “She”, always italicised and short for “She-who-must-be-obeyed”; yes, this is where Rumpole got it from).

Our heroes know about all of this because of the writings on a ancient potsherd and various other bits and pieces left to Leo by his birth father, all contained in a locked chest with strict instructions not to open it before Leo’s 25th birthday. (And in true Victorian fashion, they even stop to have a cup of tea before opening it – obviously those Victorians would have passed the delayed gratification marshmallow test with flying colours, but I fear those Victorian adventurers could have waited so long for the second marshmallow that the original marshmallow would have rotted away, if such a thing is possible. I mean, imagine if the delayed gratification tester went out of the room and got hit by a bus? They might have waited for ever! Certainly the Victorian adventurer would never survive in a modern movie version of such events).

Anyway, Leo is apparently descended from Kallikrates, an ancient Greek priest loved by She but (mysteriously) also murdered by her. I think we can all see where this is going, can’t we? So Holly and Leo struggle through wild seas, fever-filled swamps and fight off dastardly natives (who speak Arabic, interestingly enough, which when translated into English for our benefit, contains lots of “thees” and “thous” and "didst thy knowests" and so on, which I must say was a little tiresome) who would kill them by putting a large red-hot cooking pot on their head, before eating them for tea, in order to find She and (supposedly) avenge Kallikrates death. Amazingly, it turns out that Leo is the exact image of Kallikrates!! Who would have thunk it??

This book is interesting in that Ayesha is not presented as evil – both men fall in love with her, although Holly concedes it might be because she is so amazingly beautiful and nothing to do with her brain, which is in pretty good shape, it must be said. (Ayesha holds her own in lots of philosophical discussions about right and wrong, good and evil, life vs. death and so on). In fact, Ayesha reminded me a lot of Akasha, Anne Rice’s Queen of the Dead – a two-thousand-year-old babe with a brain, neither truly good or bad, but wrapped up in her own desires. I wonder if Rice may have been influenced by Haggard? Anyway, call me Alisha from now on, obviously this style of name has got something going for it.

Rating: 6 out of 10

The Queen of the Damned (2006)

By Anne Rice
I’m always a bit suspicious of books that contain the word “frisson”. It turned up relatively early in this book, but at least I didn’t notice a repeat offence. This book all seemed a bit silly at first, but I got sucked in (Ha!) by all those eternally youthful beautifully beautiful dark and mysterious and sexy vampires. Really, it did start to bother me after a while that they were all so attractive. Rice even muses, through the voice of her hero vampire Lestat, are there any ugly vampires? Well I think I spotted one, but he didn’t last very long.

This book is the third in Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, following Interview with the Vampire (the one made into a film with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt; not bad, from memory, surprisingly…) and The Vampire Lestat. To sum up, Lestat has gone and woken up the Mother of All Vampires (I’m not kidding), the titular (that’s for you, Ian) Queen of the Damned, Akasha, who has been dormant for thousands of years, but now she’s awake again and this time she’s a lot crosser.

For some reason, the Queen seems to be killing off all the vampires, except for our favourites of course. What is she up to?? We find out along the way how vampires came to exist and what the Queen’s badass dealio is anyway. I got a bit addicted to the whole story, if a little impatient with all the descriptions of how gorgeous and tortured everbody was.

Rice even manages to weave in some serious topics, a la Cocoon. For example, if someone offered you a smoothie that would make you immortal, would you drink? (Ha!) If someone dangled a tempting tidbit in front of you that would make your loved ones immortal, would you bite? (Ha! Ha!) Also, more to the point, would you ask them first?? Would a world run by women really be any less violent than one that’s still pretty much ruled by men? (You’ll have to read the book to see how that one fits in). She also offers some interesting alternative theories as to how embalming and mummification came to be the dominant way of honouring the dead – as opposed to eating their corpses, of course. (I must confess I began to be persuaded of the merits of this option – eww!! Boy, I was really sucked in).

This book was written in 1988 and I’m wondering if that was the same era as Virginia Andrews and Flowers in the Attic and so forth – it has that same kind of outrageous gothic scandalous mixed up relationships thing going. Hmmm…must re-read some good old Virginia Andrews sometime…

Rating: 6 out of 10

The Prisoner of Zenda (2003)

By Anthony Hope
Okay this one’s not being counted in my Readathon tally either – again, I only got up to about page 50 before giving up. This is one of those “oh-my-god-you-look-just-like-the-King-who-has-just-mysteriously-disappeared-can-you-fill-in-for-him-and-get-it-on-with-his-chick?” books, written in “Boys Own Adventure” style. The Swashbuckling Hero is Rudolph Rassendyll, on holiday from England in the green forests of Zenda. The Bad Guy is “That damned hound, Black Michael”, the King’s brother. People say “Courage, lad!” to each other, look “paler than was his wont” and seem to bite their moustaches a lot when they’re nervous (??). There’s lots of drinking and smiting. It even features the odd buxom wench and rosy damsel!

I often like this kind of book (I’m eagerly waiting for the word “cad” to come back in style) but this was very tedious – too tedious to laugh at even. Don’t bother – I’m pretty sure a film was made of this one and for once I feel that the movie must be superior.

Rating: 0 out of 10

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (2003)

By Washington Irving
In case you were wondering, this book bears very little resemblance to the recent movie of the same name – there is a headless horseman in the book, and many of the characters’ names are the same, but that’s about it. There are no wicked stepmothers, no crazy witches, no secret Wills, no bizarre dreams about long-dead parents, no magical symbols drawn on the floor, no autopsies and not much of a love story. Also, the hero isn’t anywhere as good-looking as Johnny Depp, but then dentistry wasn’t as advanced back then, was it?

The book isn’t very scary either, but it was written in the nineteenth century and tastes were different then – after all, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, everyone seems to sit around drinking cups of tea, despite the presence of an all-consuming evil that could destroy the world at any minute.

It is well written, and kind of cute, but not very relevant, somehow – it’s good, but not compelling. I can’t see that many people would find it very interesting these days. It does have the advantage, though, of being very short.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (2003)

By Jean-Claude Carriere
Written as a sort of journal, this book details the holiday of the accident-prone Monsieur Hulot, as seen through the eyes of a terminally bored and jaded man on his annual holiday to some dreary beach in France. While some of the scenes are entertaining, this book ultimately failed for me because nothing really happened – no characters had a crisis or came to a greater understanding of anything about the world or the people in it. Also, I found it difficult to be sympathetic towards the character of the narrator, who obviously found his wife stupid, inane and boring and consequently his own life stupid, inane and boring but was too pathetic to do anything about it but be glad that poor old Monsieur Hulot was there to make an ass of himself and liven things up a bit.

When I saw this book at ye olde second-hand book sale I had a vague idea that it had been turned into a movie of some repute and therefore may be of literary merit. I have to say I was disappointed. When will I ever learn!!!

Rating: 3 out of 10

The War of the Worlds (2005)

The War of the Worlds
By HG Wells

I grew up listening to the 1975 rock opera of “The War of the Worlds”, co-written by someone from The Moody Blues and featuring the voice of Richard Burton as hero-voiceover man. It was one of my favourite pieces of music in the whole world, along with “Carmina Burana” by Karl Orff. (Yes, my mother was worried). So, which is better – the book, or the 1970s rock opera?? The rock opera. No wait a minute, of course I didn’t mean that…the book, the book is better, of course, it’s the book. But the rock opera will always hold a special place in my heart…

Still it was peculiar reading the book knowing the words to the rock opera nearly off by heart – bits of sentences would lapse into Richard Burton voiceover and synthesisers in my head and then lapse back into my imaginary 1890s voiceover, which made it a bit of a disjointed reading experience. The rock opera was quite clever at pulling out Wells’ really striking sentences though. I will have to go and see the film now and find out if they used any of the original text – I hope not, because I really don’t want to have Tom Cruise voiceover in my head as well.

Interesting to compare the differences between 1895 and 1975 though – in the book the main character is married (i.e. does not have a girlfriend called Carrie living in London with her Dad), there is no “Beth” who is the pastor’s female companion (I think they must have decided they needed at least one chick in the rock opera so they made her up), the whole section with the Parson is much more “Lord of the Flies” than I expected, and the aliens do not run around going “Ooohhhlaaaaaa!” (spelt “Ulla”) like they do in the rock opera. (There are a few Ullas at the end of the book when the Martians are feeling a bit poorly). The aliens still get killed by “minute, invisible bacteria” though – oh dang, I just gave away the ending!

It was also interesting reading this book in today’s climate of terrorist attacks and live media coverage. Back in 1895, when the book was written, Martians could attack Woking and it would take a few days for the news to reach London, all communication was by telegram, and even then no one really believed it. (MARTIANS LANDED STOP SEND REINFORCEMENTS STOP). The hero and his wife escape on a horse and cart. People learn all their news from the papers. (Golly the hero reads a lot of papers – including the St James’ Gazette!). Not being from 1895 and therefore unable to check matters of accuracy, the book seemed a surprisingly realistic account of how an alien invasion may have progressed at the time, and I’m not surprised it fooled some people when it was broadcast as a radio show a few decades later.

Still, I’m very glad to find out that Wells was not responsible for the line (on discovering one of the Martian attack machines has headed off to London) “London! I hadn’t dreamed there could be danger to Carrie and her father so many miles away!” which struck me as a stupid thing to say even when I was 10 because after all they’ve already made it from Mars.

The 1890s make themselves felt in other ways, as demonstrated by the following excerpt: And before we judge them [the Martians] too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought…upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. I’m not sure which was the more startling assertion – that the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were “like” humans, or that a war of extermination was waged – it’s not often you hear of that part of our history actually called a war, or even that there was a conscious effort to kill the Aboriginals, and it is particularly unexpected in a nineteenth-century text.

Rating: 8 out of 10
A book to read because it is interesting, rather than because it is emotionally involving.

A Clockwork Orange (2005)

By Anthony Burgess
I wanted to read this book because I decided it was high time I read the real thing and not rely only on the Mad Magazine version of the film by Stanley Kubrick. (Interesting fact: the film is based on the US edition of novel, which did not include the semi-redemptive last chapter). I imagine most people are familiar with the premise – Alex, a very violent teenager, undergoes treatment while in prison that makes him physically unable to commit violence in any way. In a word, this book is confronting – mostly for its straightforward descriptions of “ultraviolence”, including bashing and gang rape. It is not written in a voyeuristic manner, a la Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, just as it happens, from the point of view of one of the perpetrators, who clearly enjoys what he is doing. So, maybe two words: confronting, and disturbing.

It is also, though, a deeply interesting book, leaving the reader with a lot to think about at the end. The central question the novel presents (and I know this because I read it in the introductory essay afterwards) is this: is it better to choose to be wicked than to be forced to be good? I guess central to any code of conduct, religious or otherwise, when we really think about it, is the concept of choice. I remember someone once telling me that Brenda was the only really interesting character on Beverly Hills 90210 because you could see her deciding to be a good person from episode to episode, rather than automatically being one, like all the rest of them, although the assertion that the gang at the Peach Pit were “good” people may have come under fire from the book reviewer in the St James’s Gazette of 1890.

But that is another story…also interesting was Burgess’ depiction of society’s conflicting attitudes to violence: all agree that Alex’s acts of violence are reprehensible, but then embrace violence as part of his punishment. There is as much violence in prison, in this novel, than out of it, and not all of it is committed by fellow inmates – a bit like how in every cop show these days the cops threaten pretty young men into confessions by reminding them of the atrocities against their persons that they can expect in prison. Now, I’m not past a bit of the old “eye for an eye” myself, but I found this book (intentionally or not) quite a strong argument against vengeance. Mind you, all this does not solve the problem of how we should punish people who commit violent crimes, which is a topic too large for a humble book review, I suppose.

The last thing to say about this novel is that Burgess’ use of language is truly astounding – if a little hard to decipher at times. I wonder if Moloko the band took their name from Alex’s word for “milk”?

Read this novel when you’re feeling strong, but do read it.

Rating: 9 out of 10
For being a powerful and original piece of writing, but not really because the reading of it was enjoyable.

Fahrenheit 451 (2004)

By Ray Bradbury
It was such a relief to read this book after trudging through Ulysses and other books requiring intense concentration. Here’s an author who calls a flame thrower a flame thrower. Guy Montag is a “fireman” who’s job it is to burn books (with flame throwers!!), but who comes to the realisation that maybe there’s something to them after all. It feels a bit lightweight somehow, and even though Bradbury is trying to be all meaningful and so on it reads more like a potboiler - sort of a science fiction Mills and Boon, if that makes sense. (OK it doesn't really). Still, I kind of enjoyed it – I might give Bradbury another go sometime, maybe after I’ve actually finished Ulysses, in order to realign my brain to normalcy.

Rating 6 out of 10

The Hours (2004)

By Michael Cunningham
The book upon which the recent movie of the same name was based is pretty good. You would hope so, seeing as it won the Pulitzer Prize AND the Pen/Faulkner Award when it was published in 1999.

The novel describes the interlinking lives of Virginia Woolf, who wrote (amongst others) the novel “Mrs Dalloway”, Laura Brown, a 1950s housewife who is reading Mrs Dalloway, and present-day Clarissa, who is called Mrs Dalloway by her friend Richard (a poet dying of AIDS). All three are trying to deal with physical and mental illness – for Woolf and Brown it is their own, for Clarissa it is Richard’s. The author’s portrayal of mental illness (or at least, deep unhappiness) was particularly effective, in describing the small, everyday successes and failures which can change a person’s mood so drastically and make death seem alternately attractive and inconceivable.

I liked this book a lot, although I found the present-tense style a bit annoying (e.g. “Clarissa opens the door and looks outside” etc). Maybe that’s what you have to do to win Pulitzers these days. Anyway, a good holiday read, if you happen to be going on one soon.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10