Racial divide? What’s that?

Publisher: Picador (Pan Macmillan)
Pages: 306
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-447-23713-6
First Published: 27th February 2014
Date Reviewed: 6th January 2016
Rating: 3/5

Boy, a girl, runs away from home, and the abuse from her father. She gets off the bus at the end of the line, moves through a few menial jobs, makes friends. The boy who loved her, who she loved, is forgotten as life takes her towards businessman Arturo and his reputedly perfect daughter, Snow.

Boy, Snow, Bird is based around three girls/women. There isn’t much plot – what little there is isn’t particularly compelling – this is a book written as a study. It’s not bad but beyond the study there’s little to cling to and the ending comes out of left field.

This study, then, forms the subtle backbone of the story. It’s great, full of the sorts of sentences that beg quotation for the meaning they provide because the handling is really very good. Oyeyemi hasn’t a unique viewpoint, but the way she’s written it is wonderful. To sum it up, the book is about race – divisions and broader social issues in the mid 20th century.

To speak of it in long form, the book is about the way this fictional group of black Americans – whose role in the story is to illustrate this particular angle – try to fit into the mostly white society. Strictly speaking, it’s about colour, for example you aren’t told until 1/3 of the way through that particular characters are black, showing the importance of the question, ‘does colour really matter?’ Now of course you may have viewed these characters as black anyway, the lack of detail at the beginning lets you imagine what you want to imagine – but being shown, suddenly, almost, that they are black is what Oyeyemi seems to have been aiming for, not in order to shock you (in case you’ve seen them as white people) but in a literary fiction shocking way, if that makes sense.

The family of Boy, Snow, Bird accomplish their desire to fit in by never acknowledging their colour. That the book is fictional, verging on magical realism, means that they are able to completely ignore their colour in a dismissive way (without actively being dismissive) that furthers the point without the need for the reader to suspend belief. A prime example of the way the family functions is in the scene wherein Boy is asked, by her black in-laws no less, if she slept with a coloured man to produce her mixed-raced daughter.

On the surface Boy, a white character, finds no shame in differences, and never mentions it beyond her discussions with her in-laws.

“Nice try, but I’m not going to stand here while a coloured woman tries to tell me that maybe I’m the one who’s coloured.”

Oyeyemi’s Boy is open, firm, no nonsense; rather than seeming at all superior, she causes Oyeyemi’s study to be more obvious. There is never any sense that Boy is higher or indeed lower because of her whiteness. Or is there? Why did Boy send away her beautiful step daughter?

The above said, you can likely see where ‘Snow’ comes in. Snow is not white but she’s the apple of her relatives’ eyes, a girl supposedly of lighter skin who everyone adores because of it. She fits into the white society, supposedly tricks white people into thinking she’s like them – of course that she’s like them is Oyeyemi’s whole point so the book is a little meta. As says Boy:

Snow’s beauty is precious because it’s a trick. When whites look at her, they don’t get whatever fleeting, ugly impressions so many of us get when we see a coloured girl – we don’t see a coloured girl. The joke’s on us.

In addition to this basic premise, Oyeyemi takes a glance further back to the days of plantations and the differences between ‘house negros’ and the people who worked in the field, the hierarchy there.

Moving on from this subject, it must be said that Boy, Snow, Bird is no fairytale re-telling. Yes there is a beautiful girl called Snow, and yes her stepmother sends her away, and there are mirrors, but beyond that there is nothing. If you want to read an exceptional dialogue of race relations and fitting in, give this book a try, but if you’re looking for a retelling go elsewhere.

Mirrors in this book suggest beauty, look at beauty and identity. What Boy sees in the mirrors she’s obsessed with point to many issues she has and it is primarily here that the book shows the distinction between fantasy and magical realism. It’s a fair subject and an interesting look at both the outer world and the inner world – what one sees in themselves, what others see, and what can cloud perception.

Where Boy, Snow, Bird fails, then, is in the way it’s written. It’s not the words – Oyeyemi writes beautifully – it’s the execution. The addition of characters that don’t aid the plot. Letters when prose and actually meeting the characters would’ve been better. An ending that seems thrown in for good measure. A lack of detail and a general confusion, different to the planned racial confusion, and distance between reader and characters, make it difficult to lose yourself in the text and work out where the characters are, what time they’re in, what’s going on, and what the book is about. Unfortunately the question ‘what does this book want to be?’ can be applied here.

It’s hard to say why the ending was written. In the last few pages Oyeyemi starts up on a completely new issue that is interesting in itself but has no baring on the rest of the book – or at least it shouldn’t; Oyeyemi sort of jams it in. If it is an attempt to provide a reasoning for abuse it fails miserably because it’s not a very nice thing to use in comparisons, at least not in the way it’s been written. If it’s to try and show that the author hasn’t forgotten the set up, it really wasn’t needed here. And if it’s some sort of girls in it together idea it just falls flat. (This issue warrants the use of an extra genre tag but I’m not going to use it because the book does not do that tag and its readership any favours.)

If Boy, Snow, Bird had been a novella or short story, more focused, it would’ve been excellent. As it is although there’s much to like about it on a historical and intellectual level there’s just as much that isn’t so good and as such it’s difficult to fully recommend it. If there was ever a chapter book to dip into, this one is it.

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Broad horizons. Land’s end.

Publisher: William Heinemann (Penguin Random House)
Pages: 304
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-434-02309-7
First Published: 19th March 2015
Date Reviewed: 17th October 2014
Rating: 5/5

Chloe’s glad to hear Cabel’s dead. He tried to hurt her sister. The girls live with their Dad in a small house; they aren’t as well off as their ancestors. But the ancestors didn’t have great lives either.

It’s easier to carry on the summary in this way: The book sports a ‘fractured narrative’ (a term Taylor uses herself), a style in which the author looks at one person’s life as a short story, then looks at one of their relatives, and so on so that you end up zipping from the twentieth century back to the nineteenth and into the future, learning about the various branches of the same family tree. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is.

The Shore is a fantastic book. From the first chapter – the first story – it pulls you in and whilst there are dips every now and then it soon draws you back, yes, not unlike the tide.

Taylor’s writing is lovely. She uses a variety of persons and tenses, ensuring each story is different, and whilst every chapter boasts its inevitable literary style, the characters are varied. The world building is naturally limited in space – most of the book is set in the same place – but unlimited in scope. Taylor aptly describes her settings but there’s space to put your own mark on it; much of the beauty of this book is in its potential for numerous visuals. (And for the most part it doesn’t matter how you see the setting as although there is history in the book, other genres are more important, for example, fantasy.) What’s not so varied are the themes; this is part of the book’s concept. Underlying almost every one are a few particular ideas: to have or not to have children, to do what is right or not, to drink or not to drink, to stay or not to stay – the same basic themes run throughout.

Most poignant of these is surely the question of children. It’s a question that isn’t in every single story – some of the chapters are about children themselves so it wouldn’t be appropriate – but individual agency and the right to choose, most particularly in the sense that throughout history women have had that mother, home-maker role to play, are very important to the text. A lot of the women in this book are happy to have children, but many of them are not so keen. The second group are most often victims of abuse. You also have a few members of the family tree who know how to use herbs to prevent pregnancies and the stories surrounding them are full of neighbours coming to their door for help. It’s a study of choice, the ability or not to choose, the extremes of either choice, and history.

Always in the background, or in the foreground, abuse. It’s often the same characters who happen to feature, whether in person or in reference, and one in particular who has an affect on a number of people. The Shore can be hard to read on occasion; Taylor doesn’t shy away from telling the details. And the cycle continues; Taylor shows the classic concept of traits, decisions, in this case abuse, passing down the family tree however in this case it’s not quite the stereotype – it misses generations, it comes in from another branch, and so forth.

The book presents itself as your average nostalgic read, one of those books that is quite comfortable in its telling if not its content, the sort of book about American life that can draw non-Americans to it due to the setting being so different. There’s a hint of magic in this book, there are paranormal elements, and there’s some science fiction. It’s these three elements that stop the book from dipping too far (in the way I suggested earlier) because there comes a point where everything starts to come together, when things you didn’t know you needed to know about, things you didn’t know anything about, all get twisted up into that very satisfying literary notion, that feeling that causes the recently coined phrase ‘you guys, this book!’ Taylor doesn’t just deliver a gratifying literary experience, she delivers a gratifying literary experience with bonus points. And she plays with the concept of religion in an interesting way.

There are a few houses in this book, but two are more important than the others. These houses are as much characters in their own right as Manderley and are a further factor that unites the already tangled family members. The houses keep the family grounded in their history; they couldn’t leave forever even if they wanted to.

The Shore is exceptional. It’s written well, it’s planned well, it’s executed well – it’s everything well. It’s a subtle thrill that bowls you over mentally, intellectually, without requiring you jump up and down about it, though you surely will.

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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Instru, mental (health), and music.

Publisher: Canongate
Pages: 264
Type: Non-Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-782-11337-9
First Published: 28th May 2015
Date Reviewed: 20th October 2015
Rating: 5/5

On paper, James Rhodes had a privileged childhood. He went to posh prep schools and later to Harrow. In reality, his first years were marred by sexual abuse. Now a fairly successful pianist, Rhodes looks back on his past, the multiple mental illnesses he developed that stifled any happiness and success for a long while and saw him hospitalised, and at the way classical music saved him.

How much can a 38 year old say that is worthy of a memoir? In this case, a lot. Rhodes’ book is one of suffering, of healing (somewhat – this book is realistic), of music, and in many ways advice, all compiled into chapters that begin with a look at the mental health of a particular composer and a suggestion for a musical interlude.

Rhodes is modest, very humble, and what makes the book so successful is that whilst he is privileged and can name drop like the best (he went to school with Benedict Cumberbatch, for example) there is a very true feeling throughout that he believes it. This is not to say that it’s good to read about someone who had everything and is suffering – do not take my meaning the wrong way – it is to say that Rhodes’ place in the world means he’s truly in the middle, having had a lot but being right on a level with your average Joe. And he has had advantages, that’s true, but his has not been a simple journey of boom, healed, and then success.

And he writes with a particular honesty. There is the frankness in what Rhodes says; he speaks openly and harshly without going into too much detail for his own piece of mind. His prose is casual and welcoming, simple yet literary. He swears as he talks, casually, often, but sometimes because it is an effective way to explain a feeling.

Rhodes gives advice on some subjects, for example his advice on relationships (which I’ll point out is short in case it sounds like this is a self-help book – it’s not) that he has learned from the way he sees and deals with his own. He offers a lot of his opinion on how the classical music industry should change (this part is a little preachy but no less worthy). What he doesn’t advise on, however, is self-harm, drug use, suicide. Rhodes, though still falling back occasionally, has made his peace with many of the things he’s done in his life but says that people need to be careful with their support. In fact what he says is that we need to stop judging and worrying about and medicating those who self-harm and think of suicide. He shows how what others saw as support hindered him from healing. As far as the book’s importance in a general sense, this information is perhaps the most compelling reason for reading it.

Rhodes writes as much for those who haven’t had his experience as for those who have. He’s showing hope whilst remaining realistic, he shows that there are amazing ways out whilst showing that some are just average. And all through it is his self-effacing view of himself that wins you over because you can see how much good he is doing and you hope that he sees it himself.

I said above that Rhodes is preachy on the subject of music. His opinions themselves aren’t but do seem so when he speaks about music being the last art to have a strict classic genre and forgets books, and one hopes he knows of a previous attempt (successful in many cases) to bring children to classical music – The Magical Music Box magazine of the 90s. Rhodes makes a strong case that is absolutely fair – one hopes he succeeds in bridging the divide between the general populous and the elitism in the genre. Just one nitpick: he rules out contemporary classical music, stating that by all means a musician should play a new piece of music but that it won’t ever rival the old masters. The issue is that in making people, young people who don’t fit the stereotype of hoity toity classical music rah rahs, interested in it, is going to result in some of those people being inspired to create some themselves. To restrict such growth would be to come full circle and limit classical music to the old posh listeners.

Instrumental is important; it should to be read, it needs to be discussed. It needs to be read all the more so because of the ridiculous law suit raised to attempt to stop it being published which led to Rhodes being unable to talk about his abuse, just as he was unable to as a child. Writing it might just be the most important thing the pianist has ever done.

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When baring your knees would result in people thinking you were Tarzan.

Publisher: Avon (HarperCollins)
Pages: ???
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-061-24560-2
First Published: 25th November 2008
Date Reviewed: 14th October 2015
Rating: 3.5/5

…So the Duke of Cosway turned up to Lord Strange’s party and bundled Isidore away. Now he’s back, however, and looking worse for wear with his un-Georgian way of dressing and general indifference to social mores, Isidore’s not sure she wants him. Simeon agrees with her that an annulment is best, but there are things to see to in the meantime, namely the stench in his house due to his parents’ lack of care. As Isidore comes to see, Simeon’s not bad looking for his lack of wigs and hair powder, and as Simeon comes to see, Isidore may not be the docile wife he was expecting but he likes her all the same.

When The Duke Returns is the fourth book in James’ Desperate Duchesses series and continues straight on from the previous, Duchess By Night.

This is a good book, on par with the rest if not the best, pardon the rhyme, though it isn’t quite as funny. After a while of thinking I realised it’s meant to be funny, but the subplot of the sewage pipes leaking all over the house leans more on the side of icky. It’s true the start of this series saw cow pat discus, but that was simply silly and not so literally wretched.

The characters, however, are fair as I’ll be repeating later on. Isidore is a fun heroine if misguided and silly, and Simeon, whose first name I’m using regardless of the fact his society says it’s not correct, is a breath of fresh air, somewhat literally, in a world where all heroes up to now have been clad in breeches. His liking for simple clothes means he’s a bit more modern and understandable in the context of our present day. The rest of the characters, the heroes and heroines of the other books ensure we’ve something of a soap opera on our hands and round it off with a wig on top. (The secondary plot here, the lead-in for book five, is Jemma and Elijah. As such there is quite a bit of time spent on them and sidekick Villiers.) The servants also get their time, in particular butler Honeydew whose not-quite-subtle attempt to get his master and mistress sharing a bed affords a smile.

I’d like to address the views of Buddhism and the ‘exotic’ here as I expect some will wonder about what reads as offensive – James writes in context, placing the sorts of views people had in the 1700s into her fiction so the characters are racist and prejudice on occasion as befits their period.

The relationship is average but the sex scenes are well written – comparable to the previous book. The writing on the whole is excellent, a couple of info-dumps aside, and as always you can trust that most of the background context is factual with some artistic license thrown in for good comedic measure.

But the pattern established early on in the series is very noticeable here. Indeed the characters leap off the page, the sex occurs after a fair period of courting, the history is good to read and the books are hilariously funny – but all stories suffer from a lack of conflict when it comes to the conflict – a conflict-less conflict, if you will. The couples argue over… well, this is my point. They argue over nothing at all really, and it’s most pronounced here in When The Duke Returns. Isidore is angry because she wants more say, Simeon changes from being pretty free and easy to wanting some control in domestic affairs, but neither convinces. Yes, they clash a bit and get angry over things as every couple does, but the question of divorce seems more an author convenience, a ploy to keep the book going. They have sex, say it’s not working, talk of divorce, and the cycle begins again.

Ultimately the book is a good read with a pinch of ‘get to the point already’ where the previously fun Isidore becomes annoying and the previously interesting Simeon becomes insipid. The ending is fun but too silly and wrapped up as quickly as Simeon gets wrapped up in Isidore’s skirts.

When The Duke Returns is an okay addition to the series and the sex is certainly steamy, but the format is wearing.

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