Everything is Illuminated (2006)

By Jonathan Safran Foer
I’ve been trying to write this review for ages and can never get anything coherent out. From what I can tell, Foer is one of the latest darlings of the literary world, a bit of a boy genius, and his book is suitably complex and unique in style and subject matter. Foer once tried to find a Ukrainian woman who saved his Jewish grandfather from the Nazis, and he has used this true story as the spring board for Everything is Illuminated, even including himself as a character in the book.

More often, however, the story is told from the viewpoint of Alexander, a young Ukrainian man who Foer hires to be his guide and translator in Ukraine. Alex’s command of the English language is less than perfect, but very entertaining. (It does make the start of the novel a bit hard going, though, until you get used to Alex's unique vocabulary). Alex’s cranky sort-of anti-Semitic grandfather (who claims to be blind) is their driver, as they search for the town where Foer’s grandfather used to live, and they are also accompanied by Alex’s good-natured but rather slobbery dog, Sammy Davis Jr Jr. At the start of the book Alex is not a terribly likeable character, but it is his story that was the most moving in the end for me, in a book that involves the stories of many people from many different generations.

I really enjoyed this book and am keen to read Foer’s next novel, which is apparently about a child searching for his father on the day the Twin Towers collapsed in New York City. Foer’s writing style is engaging, humorous and unique, although a few ‘literary devices’ towards the end of the book seemed a bit silly. I think you should read this book, because people will probably be talking about it at parties. Also, it’s good.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Breakfast of Champions (2006)

By Kurt Vonnegut
You know, I’m starting to think I should develop a more complicated rating system than the good old “score out of ten” method. There are some books that are good in so many ways, yet strangely unmoving. I’m afraid I found this book to be one of them - The Master and Margarita was another.

Vonnegut tells the story of the not-so-gradual disintegration of the mind of Pontiac salesman Dwayne Hoover, intertwined with the semi-adventures of one Kilgore Trout, science fiction author, and a number of other characters. (Many of these characters appear in other novels by Vonnegut). From the books I’ve read, the disintegration of the human mind appears to be a recurrent theme of Vonnegut’s – and there is always a suggestion that it mirrors Vonnegut’s own experiences quite closely. But who can tell – authors are paid to make things up, after all.

One interesting thing Vonnegut describes in this novel is how he wishes to make all the facts and people presented in this book equal in weight, with none more important than the other – the structure and style of the book made a lot more sense after I read this bit, not unlike how you need commentary to fully appreciate an abstract painting. (NB: Another Vonnegut creation, the modernist painter Rabo Karabekian, also makes an appearance in this novel). Vonnegut feels that everyone expects their life to resemble the structure of a novel, with major players, bit players, beginnings, middles and ends (and so on) and thinks instead that we should all just get used to chaos and our unalterable insignificantness in the universe.

The way in which Vonnegut tells his stories is so different from anybody else, which makes his books quite fascinating to read. (E.g. “I had a paper tube in my mouth. It was stuffed with leaves. I set it on fire.”). Normal things become surreal. But the emotional aspects of this one left me a bit cold – strange, because Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 is one of my favourite books ever.

Writing style: 9
Brain food: 8
Emotional drain: 3
Enjoyment factor: 6

The Master and Margarita (2006)

By Mikhail Bulgakov
I wanted this book to be one of my favourite books of all time, but it isn’t – which isn’t to say I didn’t like it; it was enormous fun!! Just look at the rating I gave it!! I did enjoy it, but it didn’t move me, I guess. (So eat a prune…).

The Devil arrives in Moscow (during Stalin’s era) in the guise of a Mr Woland, professor of black magic, with an entourage that includes a kind of rubbery-looking man named Koroviev, a man with a fang named Azazello, a nude witch called Hella (her character is not terribly developed, unfortunately) and a large walking talking living cat, Behemoth. (I became quite fond of Behemoth, but it might have just been because he was a cat). They proceed to cause havoc, especially amongst the local literary elite, many of whom are of course athiests, and pompous to boot, and could be said to get their just desserts.

It’s all a bit like a “Carry on Satan” film until the character of Margarita appears, who decides to see if she can use Woland to find her lost lover, an unnamed man (the “Master”) who has checked himself into the local asylum without telling her. He has written a novel about Pontius Pilate, known of course for having Jesus executed, which Margarita thinks is a work of genious (she might be biased, of course) and Woland finds it of interest because of course he was there at the time. The story of Pontius Pilate is woven throughout the whole story, I think with the aim of showing him redeemed at the end of the novel, but I’m not quite sure about that. I confess I was a bit mystified by the whole Pontius bit, which is perhaps another reasons why this book wasn’t a fave.

Rating: 8 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

The Mezzanine (2005)

By Nicholson Baker
This is a book about the little things in life – the truly, truly small and seemingly insignificant things that we think about every day. Essentially the story of one man’s lunch hour (he works on the mezzanine floor of a large building) and the intellectual history behind his thoughts of this hour, this book celebrates shoelaces, straws and finer points of office interaction.

There is bound to be one topic in this book that makes you think, “By golly he’s right!”. For me, it was the bit about vending machines. (I love vending machines! I wish everything was sold in vending machines. Except maybe fresh meat). More particularly, how the flap at the bottom of chocolate bar dispensing machines is too stiff to open properly with one hand. I have often thought this, struggling to retrieve my Twix bar from the bottom of the machine while trying to minimise contact with said flap, to avoid germs. Okay I know we should all have some germs otherwise we’ll develop asthma and allergies to chocolate bars, but really, if we ever get TB back in this country I’m wearing disposable gloves when I retrieve my goodies. How many germs could there possibly be on a vending machine flap, I hear you ask? Well I don’t know – that might make a good thesis for someone. What I resent is the extreme contact which your hand is forced to make with that damned bit of lead-enforced plastic, or whatever they make it out of, and the way it wants to snap back on your fingers and chop them off. Mind you, if I was a vending machine I wouldn’t want to let any Twix bars out of my little pouch either.

Now that little rant is probably a good example of what the book is like, except it’s better. (The book, not my rant, that would be a bit show-offy of me to say, wouldn’t it?). It is always a pleasure to see in print the expression of things you have privately thought but not thought worth the trouble of expressing to anyone else. One thing, though – the lengthy footnotes did annoy me. They are a clever tool in this book and I wouldn’t argue for their removal, it’s just that they make you lose track of the narrative and you are forced to place thumbs and fingers in between different pages so you can flip back and forth between text and footnote…

Rating: 6.5 out of 10
A book that will make you respect the inventors of elevators, perforated paper and above all, vending machines.