Taking ‘do as I say’ to the extreme.

Publisher: One (Pushkin Press)
Pages: 293
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-957-54885-5
First Published: 11th February 2015 (in translation); 26th February 2015
Date Reviewed: 3rd March 2016
Rating: 3.5/5

Together with his four elder brothers, Ben starts going to the river to fish, secretly, because the town views the previously-worshipped waters with suspicion. The boys are caught by a neighbour, whipped by their father, but the real trouble with creeping out alone is yet to come. One day the madman Abulu, considered religious by some, happens upon the brothers and tells them that one will kill another.

The Fishermen is a book that incorporates folklore, old customs, and 1990s Nigerian social and religious culture into its tale of tragedy. A literary venture, it takes its time on one particular element, bolstered by a background of politics, fundamental Christianity, and the kind of child discipline we now call too much.

Dealing with the writing style first because it’s the first thing to make its mark, Obioma favours a detailed, sometimes overly-wordy, almost studious style that nevertheless has the power to wow on occasion. He likes ‘big’ words, beautiful sentences, and his young narrator, Ben, is just the right side of well-spoken rather than appearing too old for his years. Obioma narrates in a way similar to the spoken narration you often find in Victorian adaptations, films – that slow, wistful narration most common to women. There’s an oral tradition feel to it, poetic, storyteller. It could certainly be called too much – it’s one of those styles you’ll likely either love or hate. Obioma is entirely unapologetic; he wants a well-written book, old fashioned – understandably more 90s than nowadays – and he will have one. (You do have to remember the setting when considering the style, the time and the place.)

It’s not completely well-written but whether that’s down to Obioma or the editing process is hard to say. Certainly the myriad uses of ‘in’ instead of ‘on’, of ‘on’ instead of ‘at’ and so on, are at odds with the rest of the text, suggesting an oversight or perhaps a slight discord between our literature professor and the publisher’s editors. Whatever the reason, the constant misuse is distracting and means keeping your mind on the story is difficult.

There is a disconnect of sorts between Ben and the reader; where Obioma is so focused on the way he writes his tale – the words, the genres, the background – Ben, his brothers and other family are not so detailed. They are detailed – they’re not one-dimensional at all – but there’s no pressing reason, no feeling of the need to care, which is a problem when the story involves a lot of tragedy. And it’s hard to get to grips with the family – the way the father metes out punishment, the mother quick to manipulate and throw her children under the proverbial bus, are perhaps more difficult to read than the author hoped.

Not much goes on in the book – this sounds too ironic to be true so I’ll explain: the book is a series of tragic events with some politics in the background, but not much beyond that. This isn’t a failing in itself, many books are similar, it just means that The Fishermen is more about the sum than the parts. The book is not as interesting to read as it is to contemplate after the fact, when you’re able to put everything together and see that Obioma’s goal has been to provide an overall meaning, a message, even.

Superstition or prophecy? Obioma presents the possibility of both and asks you to form your own conclusion. What was it that made things happen as they did and can and should religious ideas take precedent? Obioma looks at the psychological factors ruling his characters’ choices, the way one thing said by a person considered mad has a knock-on effect. And as much as the characters are Christian, the author shows that mythology and old ways can still creep into life, that we can move on to new ideas but those old ones will remain ingrained for a time.

A note on one of the tragedies – this book deals with under-age crime in a way that may make you uncomfortable. This is actually a reason to read it rather than not because it opens you to the situation and says more by its inclusion than Obioma could say without it – more than he could say just in words. It’s viewed through a similar lens as the rest of the book: it happens, whether it’s right or wrong is irrelevant here.

Overall, then, The Fishermen is a good book, but doesn’t quite keep the promise of the first pages. It does make for some interesting contemplation but the contemplation is fairly short-lived. Take it as a look at 90s Nigeria, its politics and its culture and society and you’ll be best off.

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When politics force people apart.

Publisher: Chatto & Windus (Random House)
Pages: 369
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-701-18819-1
First Published: 5th June 2014
Date Reviewed: 8th February 2016
Rating: 1/5

Iona is tasked with translating a set of letters and diary entries handed to a publisher by a Chinese woman. The publisher has a mind to release the work but first they have to know what it’s all about.

I Am China is a semi-literary novel about personal/political problems in China. It promises much but delivers little.

There are major issues with the book, namely the way the story is told. The set up is all very convenient, contrived; the story of Jian and Mu is told through the letters but it would’ve been much better had we heard directly from the characters themselves. The translator, Iona, is nothing but a plot device inserted to allow the story to come to fruition, as are the other few characters – the publisher, for instance. The problem becomes two-fold when Guo starts to try and make more of Iona. Guo is all about telling, never showing, and it’s far too obvious that she’s trying to insert some meaning into Iona’s own story – you can practically see the thought process as the author realises her readers are going to see through Iona as nothing but a device and she doesn’t want you to see her as a device.

Amongst all this telling, then, is repetition and a distinct lack of emotion and character development beyond Iona. Guo is relating a very important subject but that subject never becomes important because of the lack of anything to pull the reader in and make them care. The author tacks on various statements about Iona’s emotional state whilst reading these letters but it never rings true. And a publisher planning to publish work without any idea what it’s about or permission from the owner of the text… one of those, possibly, but both?

Unfortunately the writing itself is also problematic. English is Guo’s second language so it’s understandable there would be errors but it seems the author was left completely alone when it came to the copy-editing stages.

I Am China is a fair idea gone horribly wrong. Look elsewhere for books on the aftermath of Mao.

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The modern British version of the American dream.

Publisher: Picador (Pan Macmillan)
Pages: 466
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-447-24164-5
First Published: 15th June 2015
Date Reviewed: 7th December 2015
Rating: 3/5

Ranjeev’s father is ill and despite his claims to the contrary, cannot work any more. The family, once fairly high up in society, find themselves nearing poverty. Avtar’s family is in need of money too, especially as his brother has to keep studying. Tochi’s family was killed in a gang war, their low caste status meaning they were hunted. The three men decide to take a risk and travel to England. Then there’s Narinder, the British Sikh who married Ranjeev because she felt called by God to help those in need. Britain may be said to offer better options, but as the men find, it’s not quite the opportunity they were led to believe.

The Year Of The Runaways is a long novel of job searches, spiritual searches, pain and suffering. It is more of a report than a story, the ending is a bit of a rush job, and it can be as arduous to read as the characters’ lives are to live.

There is a lot, and I mean a lot, of Punjabi in this novel. I’m not the best person to comment on this as I can speak a fair amount of Hindi (similar enough to Punjabi for me to have understood the majority of it) but anyone who knows only or less than how to say ‘hello’ in the language is going to be stumped, often. It’s an interesting situation because on the one hand it’s nice not to have a running translation commentary, which I think anyone could understand – those who speak the language don’t have to read everything twice and those who don’t speak the language don’t have to feel the language, being translated, is rendered pointless – but there is no glossary and only one or two translations for paragraphs of text. I would say that a small amount can be figured out from the English replies Sahota writes, but most cannot and you can’t always Google the words because everyone transliterates differently (I myself had many light bulb moments when I realised, for example, that ‘beita’ was ‘beta’ – an obvious example, but you see what I mean).

If you understand the language or are able to get past it, there is the general writing to consider. It’s mostly good but there’s some clunky phrasing and sudden uses of very colloquial terms in amongst the otherwise literary text.

As said, the book is a novel of job searches. Not much happens beyond the cycle of job search, fast food and construction work, losing the job, searching for another, getting harassed, and hiding from the authorities. Is it true to the real life situation? It would seem so, but it doesn’t make for a very good story when you’re talking over 450 pages and a non-ending. As far as the ending is concerned the story just suddenly stops, in the sense that you flip over the page to keep reading and find only a blank one, an epilogue tagged onto the end of the book, set a year or so into the future. The epilogue doesn’t fit the rest of the book and contains the most rose-tinted of rose-tinted scenes.

What is good in The Year Of The Runaways are the discussions of caste, wages, and treatment of the underclass – if we can call them that. The men find themselves at the mercy of others who share their ethnicity but have been in England most of if not their entire life, as well as at the mercy of each other. They are nobodies both figuratively and in the sense that they have no honest paperwork. They get less than minimum wage because of the catch-22 – they can’t complain because they’ll be deported and their employers can pay them as little as they want because it’s all under the radar.

Indian caste divisions apply to England – the low-caste Tochi, a chamaar (‘leatherworker’) is viewed as below the rest of the men even when he’s the one doing fairly well for himself and they are practically on the streets. This said, the man who is high-born doesn’t understand why that fact doesn’t have any sway in his treatment; he becomes the lowest of the lowest as far as living conditions are concerned. Throughout Sahota does not say anything, he lets his words, his stories, do the talking, and even then it is subtle. It’s a ‘take what you will’ method of storytelling and as such there are bound to be many views and interpretations as to what he is saying and what’s important. Sahota has said that his book owes a lot to those he’s met, the stories of NRIs in the UK.

In regards to Sahota’s fairly journalistic stance, it could be said that it doesn’t quite do what it ‘should’ be doing. You might expect a book about illegal immigration to show you there are reasons for it, that these people ought to be where they travel to and the residents of that country should welcome them. Sahota does this but only a little. Tochi, the chamaar, goes to England because his family have been killed, his auto-rickshaw has been destroyed, and he is being hunted because of his caste. His presence in England poses a question: shouldn’t he be a refugee? In many ways Tochi is the definition of the sort of immigrant host nations look for: he works hard and would surely look for a job for which workers were sorely needed if it weren’t for his status as an illegal. Sahota doesn’t look into refugees, the book doesn’t go into the process, but he is the character you are likely to remember most.

If you take away the issue of immigration and focus solely on the social issues, the book seems stronger. It has more going for it. The discussions of caste and money and religion, in a largely objective manner, are very detailed. Sahota shows both sides of the stories, for example, Narinder’s devotion that may look a bit much on occasion – certainly to those around her – but is built on true belief and love – and then her lessening belief as she sees the horrors in the world and cannot understand why God would bring so much misery. In this way you see that glimmer of a different viewpoint as she sees herself, a believer who can trust that god will help her fairly well-off self, contrasted with others who are not so lucky. The caste issues show that it can be easy to find help and help is available, but only if the classes match and that sometimes success, in this case financial, is of no matter – sometimes even no success is better than success.

In this way – the success or no success – Sahota also comments on the way people are sent abroad to help their families – not just the way it happens but the way one person is compelled to put themselves at risk and the way there’s no certainty. Considering the characters he writes we can assume he is making the point that sometimes it’s not needed, and it’s not that he’s saying it simply shouldn’t happen, it’s that he’s asking if all Randeep goes through, for example, is worth it. Is Randeep’s plight as a homeless man, is what Avtar goes through that requires urgent care, okay when placed against their family’s wishes to get to England, to have money? Now Sahota isn’t saying it isn’t, he isn’t saying that, no, this is not okay and it shouldn’t happen, because he’s included the other side, Tochi’s need to be in England – what the author is asking is that things be given more thought. And likely they are given a lot of thought, but Sahota is pressing the idea because of the tales he has come across. Like my analogy at the start of this review, he’s suggesting that the idea of going abroad isn’t what it seems, it’s not the gold mountain those who immigrated to America thought America would be… or at least that’s what the book says up until the ending.

To go back to the ‘should be doing’ debate and to look at that ending, the other characters besides Tochi are in that grey area. Randeep, high-born, is sent on a marriage visa so that he can get a good job and keep his family in the luxury they’re accustomed to. He is the one Sahota gives the most hardship to, once in England, but the ending (it’s difficult to call discussing it a spoiler) does kind of ruin it, leaving the character ultimately learning little or at least learning nothing that Sahota thinks important to impart. Narinder, Randeep’s visa wife, is the one who learns the most but it’s a bit too subtle and her section of the ending is strange. The other character, Avtar, who sells his kidney and gets a student visa, shows the desperation and a will to be himself and do well whilst trying to balance the hopes of his family. It’s the families that push their sons on, the sons living in dire straits whilst their relatives, by comparison, are wealthy. And then Randeep gets his planned divorce and brings his family over, Avtar gets the medical help he needs and throws college away for good, and there are no questions as to the horrors of the men’s lives whilst their families waited for them. Surely in real life something would be said, but Sahota’s ending is a dream world in which the men are suddenly in high-powered jobs with no telling of how they got there. Narinder and Randeep are free of their marriage but they applied for a divorce just days after a suspicious inspector visited which would’ve surely made the inspector even more suspicious. It is this gap in the narrative that would’ve made the book excellent had it been included – the drudgy of work and running is important but it’s not the be all end all of it.

To briefly sum it up, The Year Of The Runaways is okay but it’s not compelling enough for the length it is and requires a great amount of your attention due to its reliance on extreme subtlety. It’ll be your background book, so to speak, that one you’re reading alongside a slew of others.

I received this book at the Young Writer of the Year award blogger event.

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Figuring out the past. Concerning the present.

Publisher: Chatto & Windus (Random House)
Pages: 60
Type: Poetry
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-701-18869-6
First Published: 7th May 2015
Date Reviewed: 21st November 2015
Rating: 5/5

I’ve never reviewed a book of poetry before, never reviewed a poem at all. As you may know I’m not a big reader of them – technically I like them a lot, the words, phrasing, beauty – but they often confuse me.

I’m giving it a go this time; Howe’s poetry is on the short-list for the Young Writer Of The Year award and having heard the poet read one of them herself, being able to hear her voice in my head and knowing when to pause, helped me a lot.

So, then, Howe’s collection is about her mother’s early life in China as an unwanted and later adopted girl. It’s about Howe’s own experiences as a young child in Hong Kong before the family moved to Britain. It’s a bit about politics, a bit about history, and a bit about Howe’s relationship with her husband. Many of the poems are also based around the divisions of animals as proposed by Dr Franz Kuhn. (The descriptions are included before the poetry begins.)

And whilst some of it flew over my head, I can still say it’s incredible. Howe makes use of various styles. She writes in one-word lines, she writes in a sort of way that echoes prose more than poetry, she uses long sentences, short ones, indented lines. The style that’s most compelling is the one used in the title poem. This is a poem wherein she’s listening to her mother talk about her life and near the end she writes as her mother speaks, using white space between words and phrases to show where her mother is pausing. You get a really good sense of how this conversation played out in reality.

Howe’s written voice moves through perspectives. She often writes from a distance, the third person. Sometimes she writes in the first; but the best times are when she questions the audience directly, or questions herself, or speaks in a particularly intimate way that defies description. It’s really lovely and makes you feel as though you’re privy to something special.

One of the standouts is Tame – hard-hitting, excellent. This is a poem in which Howe uses a quotation about how it’s better to raise geese than a girl as her base and works a fairy tale from it, dark, brutal ending and all. She wraps around the subject, coming full circle. Another is Innumerable wherein Howe remembers going on a day out around the time of Tiananmen; she contrasts the two and brings them together to show how things can be swept under the literal rug but not really.

About half the poems are stories, the other half tiny glimpses. The glimpses work well, you need to keep your wits about you to discover their true meaning.

The writing is quite flowery as you would expect, and very, very literary. Howe’s writing may require you to use a dictionary and you do have to pause sometimes, more than you usually would, to really make sense of what she’s saying – sort of the first step in the discovery program.

It’s a brilliant collection which I can confidently rate top marks even though I didn’t get it all.

I received this book at the Young Writer of the Year award blogger event.

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In which war and peace both have a place in an affair.

Publisher: Various (I read the Penguin Classics edition)
Pages: N/A
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: N/A
First Published: 1878
Date Reviewed: 7th November 2015
Rating: 4/5

Original language: Russian
Original title: Anna Karenina
Translated by: Pevear and Volokhonsky

Anna catches Vronsky’s eye whilst he is supposedly courting Kitty. The attraction is mutual and so they begin an affair to the sadness of both Kitty and Karenin, Anna’s husband. It may not be all doom and gloom for Kitty – she’d turned down a proposal from Levin due to Vronsky and Levin still wants her, but Anna’s life will be very different as there is more to consider than she wishes to think about.

Anna Karenina is a tome of a book that focuses on the lives of five main characters and several secondary ones. Whilst the climax may deal with the titular character she is not the be all, end all – that’s to say the book’s about far more than the one woman. At 800-odd pages, no matter the edition, it’s a slog sometimes, but a good book nonetheless.

You likely won’t be surprised to hear that Tolstoy is wordy. There are limits as to how much can be put down to translation and Tolstoy can drone on on occasion – compared to Dickens it’s nothing but it does make for lulls in the text. This is somewhat but not completely to do with the themes of the novel; Anna Karenina owes much to philosophy – economic, religious, political, social.

This philosophy is explored through the character of Levin who in part represents the author himself. The narrative of Levin and Kitty’s courtship is comparable to that of Tolstoy and his wife, Sofia, and beyond that much of Levin’s thinking is based on Tolstoy’s own. This is surely why there is so much non-Anna in the book and knowing that it relates to Tolstoy can make it far more interesting than it would be by itself.

Whether because the author flipped back and forth himself or because he just wanted to explore the ideas (the likelihood is of Tolstoy flipping) there is a lot about Levin’s thinking that is objective. Tolstoy sends Levin’s thoughts flying in one direction before pulling him back the other way, not on every subject but a vast many. Of course he comes to particular conclusions in the end that may or may not fit the reader but he gives ample time to other viewpoints beyond his own. He appropriates lifestyles and thoughts whilst Levin figures out what he wants – and he aims to be respectful even if it doesn’t end up that way. Besides this consideration of one character, Tolstoy provides counterparts in Levin’s friends and family. Levin’s story isn’t exactly thrilling; it is the inactive (as opposed to physical action, extroversion) musing that balances out Anna and Vronsky’s social life.

To Anna then – yes, it feels odd not to have spoken of her thus far but somewhat right nevertheless – Tolstoy succeeds in luring you in. Everyone who meets Anna falls a little in love with her and damn it if you won’t also. It is in this way, the almost interactive nature of the text wherein Tolstoy makes you love her too, that the author shows you why people do the things they do. Making the reader fall for Anna does the job better than any descriptions, even if descriptions are what make you fall. Things get a little awry later insofar as reasoning goes – not everything Anna does makes perfect sense – but in general she is a fantastic character in that whether you like or dislike her she will make her mark on you.

With Vronsky it’s a little different. You don’t ‘have’ to fall for him and likely you won’t. Tolstoy sets him up as only a semi-hero from the start. Because you hear so much from both men – husband Karenin and lover Vronsky – you’re never in danger of putting them before Anna, which is quite possibly what Tolstoy planned. You will feel for all three characters in the triangle at various points, Tolstoy showing no major favouritism, rather exploring to an objective outcome the effects of an affair in such a time and society.

Explore he does. Of initial interest, perhaps, in our modern view with our particular mores, is the fact that it’s not the affair itself, the affair as a concept, that is the issue in this book. The society of which Tolstoy writes does not care for morals in this way – people have affairs all the time. What it does care about is divorce and the actual physical relocation of a couple from the bonds of marriage. It is Anna’s move to Vronsky’s side that heralds the start of her troubles, a queen moving anywhere she wants on the board that will eventually be brought down no matter how far she goes. Anna’s incapability to accept the changes in society’s view of her causes many problems and whilst Tolstoy invariably strikes her story with a God-like hand he then sits back and lets it play out. He may be saying something, moralising as he does with Levin, but he wants the reader to see things for themselves, to come to their conclusions without too much help.

There are no evil-doers in Tolstoy’s book, no wicked husband, no wicked wife, no stepmothers keeping children from balls. A huge part of the book’s triumph lies in its objectivity – again that same word. Yes, Anna decides to have an affair when she had previously loved her husband and could have said ‘no’, but even though Tolstoy has a narrative all prepared for her that may be upsetting and unnecessary to us nowadays it is somewhat a result of the era rather than the character herself. And Vronsky may become rather disaffected and you may emphasise or dislike him for it but you can see his reasons and they aren’t bad; there’s a misunderstanding afoot. Karenin is shown in a fair light, very fair, but whilst you will feel sorry for him Tolstoy never rams him down your throat, indeed he gives Karenin a bit of get-up-and-go that will have you wishing he had held back.

The questions are thus: is this right or wrong? Why? What should be happening? What is going to happen and ought it? There is certainly something to be said regarding Tolstoy’s choice to end the book with several chapters devoted to Levin rather than the aftermath of the triangle but whether that’s moralising or simply down to Tolstoy’s wish to talk about himself is hard to decipher.

A note on Kitty, then, because I’ve left her out, and Dolly because there’s a short piece that is mightily compelling: Kitty’s a nice enough character. She represents the home life Levin hopes for and is obviously meant to balance out Anna’s presence in the text. She’s the wife whose existence brings Levin to the place Tolstoy wants him to be, who grounds him from going too far with the appropriating. It could be said she’s what stops Levin from just throwing his money away and pitching in with his workers – which may sound like appropriation itself but is a welcomed change from it because it becomes uncomfortable reading about a rich man helping out in the fields and being jolly about it because it’s a novelty and nothing he’ll have to do full-time. Kitty’s character lends the book a younger feel, providing readers who may be on the cusp of age but not quite someone they can relate to as they wade through a mature text. Dolly? She helps Tolstoy explore the emotional effects of affairs, more so than Karenin, because of her husband’s (Oblonsky) inability to stay faithful. Society may see affairs as almost inevitable but Dolly reminds us not everyone feels that way. The compelling short piece? Tolstoy has Dolly consider for a moment how her life might have been had she not had children. It is only a moment, it takes place amongst a few pages only and is neatly tied up by the end of the chapter with the assertion that she much prefers life the way it is – as you would expect of a novel from the 1800s. But it’s there and it reveals perhaps a tiny inkling of Tolstoy’s possible opinion that women ought to have more say and a bigger role in society. When added to the statement several chapters before that a woman’s lack of rights stemmed from a lack of education and vice-versa, it becomes quite the poignant concept in terms of Tolstoy’s message.

As said, Tolstoy waffles on occasion. He repeats himself and talks about things that would be edited out these days. Worthy of 800 pages this book is not, but it’s also not bad. The writing is fair and insofar as one can judge when referring to a translation the text is easy to read and alluring. It can be funny. And when not bogged down in meetings that will never get anywhere it’s a quick read. I must recommend the translation I chose, Pevear and Volokhonsky’s. The colloquial English grammar at times overlooks the fact it’s Russian but it’s a much simpler read than some. The Maude translation, which I read 500 pages of, is quite clunky and poorly written. (Not to mention it seems one of the Maudes disliked Tolstoy – they knew each other – so what they were doing translating it in the first place and how much that infers reliability is quite the question.)

Anna Karenina is an undertaking. In deciding to read it you’re signing yourself up for the long haul and whilst it’s a good long haul it isn’t the most thrilling or satisfying one out there. There are parts you can take away with you but the likelihood is you’ll be relieved once you’ve finished.

Read it; it’s worth it and it feels good to say you’ve read it, but have another book on the go at the same time and remember to keep your wits about you because everyone has three to four names they go by.

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