January 2017 book review

BOOKS

LIFE A USER'S GUIDE, by Georges Perec.
An apartment block in central Paris, built around 1875. There are seven floors, which house an extraordinary menagerie of human specimens: an eccentric British millionaire with a very strange hobby, a judge and wife who get their kicks from shoplifting, a wealthy woman who holds dinner parties where the food is all of the same color, the list goes on and on. We are taken around these apartments and offered detailed descriptions of the interiors, and equally minute dissections of the lives of their occupants.
          What emerges is an extraordinary set of tales, quite unlike anything I have ever read, moving, beautiful and often hilarious. Perec was a founding member of the French neo-surrealist movement "OULIPO", founded in 1960, which sought to break free from the usual constraints of writing by inventing new constraints of their own. One of the most famous members was Raymond Queneau, who famously wrote Exercises in Style: 99 ways to tell a Story, in which a simple tale is re-worked in, you've guessed it, 99 different styles. In Life, Perec devised his "story making machine" in order to construct this remarkable and indeed unique piece of literature. Hard to read? Not at all. One sails through it in a kind of haullucinatory daze, as the characters weave their interconnected magic through the pages. Not to be missed.

I CAPTURE THE CASTLE, by Dodie Smith
 A writer and his family live in a medieval castle for peppercorn rent, but he has only written one book. That caused a sensation, but it was many years ago and he hasn't written a word since, and they are now as poor as a collection of highly intelligent and sophisticated church mice. Two Americans inherit the estate where the castle is situated and Cassandra and Rose, the two daughters of the household are smitten, sort of. So too are the American scions, and surely romance is just around the corner. But who will snag who, and will it all work out without too many complications? I doubt it. And will father ever write another word, or just go on reading and re-reading pulp fiction?
           Dodie Smith is best known for 101 Dalmatians, but here, in a book written while she was living in America, she writes wistfully of the land she has left behind, constructing a sometimes sad, sometimes funny, but always beautiful coming-of-age drama. My wife warned me it was a girl's book, and in some ways it is, but it is also a book which may be enjoyed by anyone with a love of impeccable style and first-rate story telling.

THE RINGS OF SATURN, by W.G. Sebald
A fiercely intelligent German emigree hikes around the Suffolk countryside and allows his mind to wander. As he traipses about between various inns and dingy hotels, he thinks about many diverse subjects:
-The 17th century polymath Thomas Browne
-the carpet bombing of Germany
-the natural history of the herring
-the relationship of Joseph Conrad and Roger Casement
-The life of Vicomte de Chateaubriand
-the history of sericulture in China and its spread to the West
And so on. What have all these things got to do with each other? Not a lot at first glance, but the real connection between them is Sebald himself. Writing with a sublime, matchless prose he takes us on a journey through his mind and its obsessions, and we find ourselves drawn in and happy to go as deep as we wish into that amazing thing: the brain of Max Sebald.
          Sebald only wrote 4 books before he was tragically killed in a car crash in 2007. At that point he was on the Nobel committee's short-list for the prize for literature, such was the impact his books made. You'd be nuts not to give it a go.

Please see next post for movies...