Marlon Brando’s over for coffee.

Publisher: Accent Press
Pages: 291
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-783-75257-7
First Published: 22nd December 2014
Date Reviewed: 17th August 2015
Rating: 3.5/5

When his wife Jane springs a divorce request on him, David is lost, but not for long. The school reunion he attended, at which he realised bullies will always be bullies and people change beyond recognition, led him to meet Bridget for the first/second time and they got along rather well.

A Street Café Named Desire is an oft-funny book, and a romance told from a male perspective, that has a lot going for it but doesn’t quite reach its potential.

Gould has a way of writing that can pull you in when you’re sitting somewhere noisy. His writing style is comfortable, the humour a mix of straight-forward and subtle – guaranteed to put a smile on your face – and the characters steeped in reality. David is very British, just an average chap trying to live his life which he was doing well until his narcissistic wife told him she was having an affair. He may not be the most thrilling of people but that’s part of the point – he shouldn’t have to be – and regardless, he’s very likeable.

The humour is all British and, if you’re British or know a lot about the Isles, you’ll ‘get’ it. Mishaps, children old enough to know what’s going on, orange paint that isn’t orange actually. The humour is never forced, it rolls out naturally.

The first half of the book is super. The plotting is good, the characterisation works well, and the way Gould has written the children is just great. Rachel in particular isn’t ready to let her mother get away with running off with a friend; in many ways Rachel takes on what David ‘should’ have been doing, getting angry on both her own and her father’s behalf and refusing to see her mother. It is a good part of the story because it shows both the difference between David’s relatively passive behaviour and his daughter’s assertiveness, whilst also delving into the teenager’s hurt and therefore the way the wronged parent has to comfort others whilst they themselves are in pain.

Bridget, too, is a fine character, and matches David’s contentedness with vividly-coloured passion. The attraction between them is something Gould shows brilliantly and Bridget’s no-nonsense responses to David’s worries read as true.

The issue, then, comes in the second half. Whereas the first half is rather excellent, the second half is full of info-dumps and minor, two-line, characters who are given lengthy backgrounds. It slows the story, which gets lost in amongst the detailing, and gives you a lot of information about people and situations there is no need to know anything about. Secondary characters, too, have sections given to them that don’t have much or any baring on the plot at hand.

A Street Café Named Desire is fun, true to life, and promising. It’s a fair read, and worth it, but needed more editing.

I received this book for review from the author, who I’ve met.

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Because communication isn’t always the problem.

Publisher: Vintage (Random House)
Pages: 160
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-099-56384-6
First Published: 1926
Date Reviewed: 26th August 2015
Rating: 5/5

Original language: French
Original title: Le Malentendu (The Misunderstanding)
Translated by: Sandra Smith

Yves spots Denise when her child throws sand over him; he is entranced from that moment. The two begin an affair as Denise’s husband leaves for work and continue seeing each other for the remainder of their holidays. Back in Paris, it’s not the same. Yves, once rich, has to work for a living, whilst Denise lives in luxury; and that is just the start.

The Misunderstanding is one of those novellas in which the reader is privy to the issues at hand and will see that the couple have a lot to work on if they’re going to be in with a chance. It was Némirovsky’s first book, so it’s not as polished as others – the language is overly detailed, romantic, and the author favours angst for angst’s sake – but nevertheless it’s exquisite – even as a twenty-one year old this writer knew her stuff.

In the foreword, Sandra Smith states that the French version of ‘misunderstanding’ Némirovsky uses means three different things: a specific event; ‘the person who is misunderstood’; ‘incompatibility’. It’s a good thing to note because it is indeed that way in the story. There are a couple of events, one in particular, that cause the couple problems. Neither Yves nor Denise understand each other, understand the other’s life and where they’re coming from. And this, perhaps more so than their respective rank in life, causes their incompatibility.

This incompatibility has to be explored. In a past life, or, rather, if Yves had remained rich (he lost his parents’ fortune during the war) the two would be very compatible. The main thing that gets in the way is the financial distance, the difference between luxury and necessity. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a problem if Yves didn’t feel so hard done by (he is constantly in debt because he lives above his means, trying to emulate his childhood) but Denise’s relative obliviousness to her lover’s situation creates distance all by itself. Yves can’t go out in the evenings, he needs to sleep – something Denise cannot understand on a fundamental level. So Yves resents Denise, resents the way she’s overbearing in her love, and in pushing her away as he starts to do, Denise resents him in turn. She listens to her mother’s advice and applies it to her relationship, and it works up to a point, but she pushes it too far.

In some respects The Misunderstanding can be compared to The Great Gatsby – the love of a once penniless soldier compared to the once rich man. A topic often discussed is whether Jay Gatsby would ultimately be happy if he had Daisy, and this is something we could ask of Yves. Does Yves love Denise because she represents what he was and would like to be? Doubtless he believes they would’ve had an easier time were he still rich, but then things would have been different across the board.

Yves’s feelings on the divide are summed up by this line:

“When I’m with her… I always have to be mentally wearing a dinner jacket.”

Would Denise accept him if he were poor and didn’t proffer to pay for expensive luxuries as he does? The chapters written from Denise’s point of view suggest that she would, but then if she is unable, as Némirovsky notes, to understand his relative poverty, she is surely living a sort of fantasy.

Yves cannot see what is in front of him any more than Denise can. It would take the reader breaking the forth wall from their side and stepping into the novella themselves to patch things up to a good level. Denise’s mother has it right; she knows what’s going on and has good advice, but there is a level of pain, hurt, that has been somewhat manufactured by Yves and Denise that stops them breaking the barriers between them. Self-loathing runs smoothly in this book, informing everything.

So The Misunderstanding is not on the same page as Suite Française, nor, even, Fire In The Blood (a book with content that’s not as complex or as likely to bowl you over as this one), but it’s incredible nonetheless. It’s quite obviously the work of a new, young, fearless writer who has yet to learn that flowery language doesn’t make a good book, but at the same time it’s also the work of someone with an immense understanding of her subject and the knowledge and empathy to write it well.

Should you read it? Oh, but you must!

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A book about books and fairies.

Publisher: Corsair (Tor)
Pages: 398
Type: Fiction
Age: Young Adult
ISBN: 978-1-472-10653-7
First Published: 18th January 2011
Date Reviewed: 25th August 2015
Rating: 3.5/5

Mori can see and talk to fairies. With her twin gone and her mother out to get her, too, she runs away and ends up living with her absent father and his sisters. Sent off to a prestigious boarding school, she’s out of place but finds solace in the library. She’ll try to stop her mother gaining power if she can and will read the entirety of the library’s science fiction section in the interim.

Among Others falls somewhere between fantasy and magical realism. A book about books, it’s mostly the thoughts of a reader with a bit of spell-casting thrown in.

Something that’s intriguing to discuss is the way Walton deals with magic in this book – it could be argued there is no magic. What exactly is magic, after all? The reader does not see much of Mori’s mother and there are no incantations or blood bindings – such things are spoken of but never really shown. This is not to say there is no magic as such, more that it could be argued the magic is the magic of nature – Mori finding comfort in nature and in her imagination. This is what makes the book fall between fantasy and magical realism. Whether it’s magic in the typical sense of the word is down to the reader’s own interpretation.

And that is a wonderful thing. That Among Others can be interpreted in various ways makes it special. When Mori speaks of adults having power over her are they really casting spells or is it her fear of the unknown, of these relatives who are strangers to her? Her mother is unsafe to be around – the authorities wouldn’t have sent her to her father if Mori were dreaming it – but is this mother actually a witch or is it more of a metaphor? Is Mori using the idea of magic to cope with abuse? In the time span of the book, a year or so (barring a glimpse of the past), Mori gains knowledge of sexual desire and has her first boyfriend. She also grows as a person, very much so, and another section that could be viewed as a metaphor concerns the last time Mori deals with her sister, and her grief.

I’d like to talk about the scene concerning Mori’s father – the person Mori has obviously taken her ‘reading genes’ from. The potential abuse is never mentioned again – Mori wipes over it but not in a way that suggests she needs to in order to cope with it, more that she does not, or did not, understand what was happening. Mori seems not to see the issue with it and never speaks of it again. As a reader you can see the issue with it, the potential for the book to take on a different tone; it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. But then Walton makes you question what you’ve read, whether accidentally (and, if so, this should have been rectified) or on purpose – Mori’s not phased by it and comes to enjoy her father’s company, as a meeting of equals if not as father and daughter, and whilst you are only ever in Mori’s head, nothing further happens or is asked. I don’t think one could say that the suggestion that Daniel is interested in his daughter is wrong, but certainly you’re challenged by it.

Another thing to love is the way Walton deals with Mori’s acquired disability. It’s always there but never takes over the plot; a good depiction of disability that states the pain and then lets Mori’s personality shine through.

So this is a book about books. It’s the diary of a reader, a list of what she’s reading with commentary. Sounds blissful, doesn’t it? And in a way it is; particularly for those who read science fiction and fantasy, Among Others is like coming home. References to classic science fiction abound (the book is set between 1979-1980). (This means that those who don’t read science fiction are less likely to understand the references, however it’s the sheer passion and the intellectual literary conversation that Walton emphasises, so it doesn’t really matter if you don’t catch every nuance.) In a way, however, it’s an issue – you are essentially reading the naval-gazing diary of a teenager who thinks she knows it all. A very ‘today I did this… and this…’ diary.

Now this isn’t so bad by itself, even if it is a bit boring sometimes to read about someone reading and doing little else – the problem is the name-dropping. This book reads as an attempt to gain love, it’s the written version of Walton putting her hand up and saying ‘author I love, notice me!’ Mori, or, as could be asserted given Walton’s age and preferences, Walton herself, gushes profusely about Ursula Le Guin (who incidentally blurbed the book, making this a nice cushy circle) and various other authors, most of whom are still around today and thus liable to read Walton’s love letter. It’s very much as though Walton has written this book to get noticed so she can get in with her idols and it’s all very cliquey and doesn’t feel very welcoming – because it’s not really. This book is for authors.

This is where the magic – be it stereotypical or not – gets let down. Pages about books and then, oh yes, I forgot, this is meant to be about magic, must add it in… and now I can get back to talking about myself and my love of science fiction. The book is very low on plot, the characters are fairly well developed but evidently not important (a great pity considering some of the content), and really all there is to take away – all you are given to take away – is a long list of books you should be reading. The ending, whilst powerful in its way, showing strength, doesn’t solve the puzzles Mori unwittingly sets for the reader.

Among Others will remind you why you seek out book clubs, festivals, and literary conversation. If you know the work of those referenced well, you’ll likely get more from it but on the whole a proper memoir about someone’s reading life and a straight out fantasy book would be better choices.

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War comes with a price.

Publisher: Phoenix (Orion)
Pages: 216
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-753-80470-4
First Published: 1995
Date Reviewed: 23rd August 2015
Rating: 5/5

Original language: German
Original title: Der Vorleser (The Reader)
Translated by: Carol Brown Janeway

At the age of fifteen, Michael has an affair with an older woman. Hanna entices him but he notes the distance she keeps between them, the way she avoids discussing her past. A few years later, whilst studying law, Michael sits in on the trial of several women who were guards in the SS. Amongst them is Hanna.

The Reader is a fantastic book. It’s compelling, informative, and quite moving, too.

Let’s start with the history the novel is based on: Schlink introduces the reader to the way war crimes of Germans were dealt with by the German courts. You get to see the views of the everyday people of their history and the characters run the gambit – people want justice, children dislike their parents even if the parents didn’t play a role (they dislike them for not fighting against the Nazis), and then you’ve Michael who doesn’t defend the war in any sense but looks at those who participated (via Hanna) in an objective light.

Of course whether or not it’s truly objective, so to speak, is down to the reader. Because the personality and personal history of Hanna is so intrinsic to who she is at the trial, and because of the affair, it could be inferred that Michael is biased towards her somewhat. He doesn’t believe she’s innocent – she’s not – but he looks at her in light of her choices, the reasons for them. (‘No, Hanna had not decided in favour of crime. She had decided against a promotion at Siemens, and had fallen into a job as a guard.’) Schlink, through Michael, then, doesn’t just question Hanna’s involvement in the war, he questions her choices away from it. He questions her as a person, questions the decisions she makes. Hanna is all about honesty when it comes to the trial – whilst the other women lie, she simply affirms or denies. Michael sees in her behaviour someone who knows this is what should happen. Where personality is involved we see the affect illiteracy has on Hanna’s answers. Beyond all else, it seems to Michael, is Hanna’s worry of being exposed as illiterate. Keeping hidden her lack of education, in a place where being able to read and write was is, is more important than avoiding jail.

This is where the idea of ‘the reader’ takes to the stage; this book is about far more, literary-wise, than Michael’s reading aloud in the bedroom. Michael realises that far from making the noted weak women of the concentration camps become her slaves, Hanna’s assigning them to read to her is an attempt to make comfortable what little time they have left. Although she later learns to read and write, Hanna is very much a reader.

In the subtext there is a question: is Hanna selfish? She provides money for a survivor to give to charities – in her, Hanna’s, name. She takes Michael to bed though he is underage and she affectively on the run. She gets those bound for the gas chambers to read to her. Are these displays of selfish or unselfish behaviour?

Both Hanna and Michael take control. Hanna controls Michael in the bedroom – not literally, but in experience – and Michael later controls their contact when she’s in jail. Michael uses Hanna’s imprisonment to atone for his guilt but only so much – he records himself narrating fiction but never goes to visit her. He exploits the literal and emotional distance between them.

Precisely because she was both close and removed in such an easy way, I didn’t want to visit her. I had the feeling she could only be what she was to me at an actual distance… How could we meet face to face without everything that had happened between us coming to the surface?

Michael liked the idea of Hanna and the teenage view of perfect love he had, he doesn’t want to spoil it; he doesn’t want to grow up, in fact – every woman he is with in his life is compared to Hanna. And he doesn’t want to face what’s happened. When Hanna leaves Michael, the reader will note she’s (finally) doing the right thing by him, taking her past with her, letting him be a child again and not rolled up in the affects of war, but of course he doesn’t see that himself.

This book isn’t atoning for involvement; it is the case that it shows how people could be pulled in – by the promise of more pay, for example – because as we know that’s a lot of what it was. We can compare Schlink’s writing of the events of WWII with Irene Némirovsky’s Suite Française: Némirovsky wrote of the war whilst she was living it as a person of Jewish heritage hiding from the Nazis. Both Schlink and Némirovsky show the human side of the Nazi party, or, rather, the human side to those who were at the bottom, the low-ranking soldiers who did what they were told to do, or at the very least did what they felt they had to do. Of course in Némirovsky’s case this is more profound, she’s giving a voice to fictional versions of the people who were hunting her down as she wrote, but both Némirovsky and Schlink write in such a way that asks for thought, does not suggest forgiveness nor ask for it.

It’s almost too obvious to state, but there is a lot of information about Auschwitz in The Reader, and about the role of women in the SS. The books ends in a way you may feel it ‘ought’ whilst showing there are far more reasons behind it than the ones on the surface.

A brief word on the writing – beautiful. Simple, to the point, and full of sub-textual imagery. The words may technically be Janeway’s but Schlink’s prose seeps through.

The Reader is a book of great magnitude. The potential for impact is high, the content hard to read but invaluable, the journey sad but necessary. It is a book for everyone.

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Faith, love, and misunderstanding.

Publisher: Salt
Pages: 144
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-784-63029-4
First Published: 10th August 2015
Date Reviewed: 17th August 2015
Rating: 5/5

Kauthar, a white Brit, found herself in Islam. A lack of something in her life from childhood led to a conversion that she felt was always her destiny. And so she changes her name, wear hijab, learns to pray. She finds a husband, too, and sticks to her beliefs when questioned by her parents, who continue to call her Lydia. But as the world changes and thus affects Kauthar, she begins to change, too.

Kauthar is Ziervogel’s spectacular third novella, a book about identity and self-worth as much as it is about faith and religion.

Islam, and to a minor extent, Christianity, features in this book, but religion is not a point Ziervogel is making with her character (it is made, so to speak, but in general). What begins as a story about conversion with Islam at its centre (and a great one at that, details later) becomes a story about the English convert who doesn’t really understand the faith she has felt called to, and so ultimately you see religion both from those who truly believe and the convert who misunderstands. Suffice to say Ziervogel’s book is one of great tolerance, of teaching, and of comparisons that seek to show how people of different backgrounds can get along regardless of faith; Ziervogel shows how location is more important, how the place a person calls home, on the earth, defines who they are as much as their faith.

Conversion and religion isn’t the ‘issue’ with Kauthar, not really. It’s her lack of identity, the feelings of displacement she’s felt throughout her life that defines her adulthood. She views situations strongly – falling off the monkey bars at a park in childhood onto her knees she sees as her first step towards Islam, humble and profound. Kauthar, Lydia, has a lot of love in her life, but not quite enough nor of the type she ‘required’; a fine example is the way her mother continues to call her Lydia and wonders when her ‘Muslim phase’ will be over – you, the reader, whether or not you share her faith or even believe in religion at all, feel the brunt of such a brushing off of the faith as much as Kauthar does herself. You see first-hand, if you will, the reason why Kauthar feels the need to pen a long letter about scripture, which is similarly brushed off.

The book is set around 11th September and so Kauthar’s somewhat fragile state breaks apart completely when she feels the need to defend herself, to hide herself, and often out of her own fears rather than others’ opinions, though there is a scene that starts it off. Kauthar feels discomfort, the hatred that Muslims felt at the time, but takes it differently. It makes her defensive in a certain way because Islam has become so intrinsic to her self-worth and identity, something she has to prove as an outsider – Kauthar is Islam and you would certainly say towards the end that Kauthar regards Islam as her. No one is as faithful as her or correct in their faithful ways. In wearing a chador and later bhurka, she is hiding herself away from view, vocally to abide by Allah’s wishes but also, sub-textually, in ways the reader notices but perhaps not the character, to hide from herself and her past. From the husband she loved and who was one with her – now considered not good enough, not Islamic enough. In a way she also hides herself from her own faith which, as suggested by my paragraph on religions, she considers not godly enough.

Lastly, this is a book about love. Love for Allah – seen from many points of view – love for one’s spouse, and love for one’s home. It is in part Rafiq’s feeling that he ought to return to London, that that’s where he should be, that causes the gulf between him and Kauthar. And the love between the couple is true; you see the utter devotion Rafiq has for this woman he felt called to.

In all Ziervogel’s novellas, the prose is lovely but in many ways, most especially here, it’s not the point. The book is all about what isn’t said, what you can see in your imagination as a result of the words. And what’s so special about Kauthar is that you know without a doubt that you have the picture, the scene, correct, even though you know it’s not there on the surface, so to speak. There is nothing else like it. The word ‘unique’ is tossed about, given to everything so that it looses its meaning; in Kauthar it has a worthy cause.

This isn’t to say that this style runs throughout the book – reading between the lines for a whole 144 pages would be a daunting prospect – but it comes at the defining moment. The moment when you realise the section you thought might be info-dump really wasn’t and that it was the first obvious step towards what was going to happen. The moment where a book that you thought you had figured out fairly well takes a new turn, in a written version of what is happening in the character’s reality.

This is a book that takes conversion, the white convert in particular, and looks at the reasons people choose to make the change. It shows how profound, amazing, true conversion and finding one’s religious and faithful self can be, and the joy of that. And none of that is tainted because Ziervogel doesn’t make Kauthar and Islam part and parcel. A lot of research and knowledge accompanies this book.

Kauthar is a very different book about identity that outclasses many others. Highly recommended to those who enjoy the theme as well as those who like diversity and high tolerance in their reading when it comes to western fiction.

I received this book for review from the publisher.

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