March 2019 book review

FLIGHTS, by Olga Tokarczuk
A man is on holiday with his family on a Mediterranean island. One day his wife and child leave their apartment on a shopping trip, but do not return. A search is mounted, but there is no trace of either of them. The man stays on the island well after his departure date, understandably obsessed with solving the mystery of their disappearance.
          But this is only one vignette in a book with no less than 116 of them, some only a sentence or two long, others (like the one that opens the book) a lot longer, and all on what we might call ‘the philosophy of travel’. All narrated by the same unidentified female traveller, some offer new perspectives into that activity we all undergo, most of us wishing to get the process over as quickly and with as little hassle as possible. But the now acclaimed Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk lingers inside the metaphysical, fundamental nature of getting from A to B, in ways that are both surprising and deeply insightful. A hard book to pin down in a few words - better try it for yourself.

ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION, by W.G. Sebald
Sebald was an emigrant from Germany just before WW2 broke out, and therefore did not witness at first hand the terrible assaults launched upon his homeland between 1943 and 1945. City after city was laid waste, hundreds of thousands of people were killed and injured, millions rendered homeless. Yet, oddly, when Sebald tried to collect reminiscences of that awful time from survivors, he came upon a curious collective amnesia, or to describe it more accurately, a decision not to remember, or if they did, not to talk about it. Consequently, Sebald had to arrive at his conclusions about what really happened on the ground as much from the destroyers, the RAF reconnaissance teams and so on, than from the people who knew best, those who were there. It seems that in the construction of the economic miracle that Germany became after their defeat, it was thought better to ‘put all that behind them’.
          Sebald reviews some of the very few books written by Germans on the subject in the post-war years, only to find they were badly received at the time in their own country, for the reasons already given above. Such a sharp contrast, I thought, with us, the British, who celebrated the war and everything about it for decades afterwards - see the success of films like The Great Escape, Reach for the Sky and Sink the Bismarck! If you need any examples. But then, we won...

WITH NAILS, by Richard E. Grant
Being the movie diaries of one of Britain’s best loved actors, from Withnail and I, which launched his career, on through a succession of Hollywood productions including Henry and June, The Player and Hudson Hawk, this last a multi-million dollar blockbuster starring Bruce Willis and notable for making almost no money at all and being labelled as one of the worst films ever made. This film, and a few others he was involved in may have been terrible, but Mr. Grant’s writing is not. He expounds on the dog-eat-dog world of Hollywood in a laconic, easy style which is highly engaging. And he can name-drop with the best of ‘em. From Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman, through Francis Ford Coppola and Bob Altman, to Winona Ryder and Barbra Streisand, he seems to have met them all. That’s entertainment, baby...

IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELLER, by Italy Calvino
A man is reading a promising book about some sort of espionage business, when he finds himself transplanted into another novel altogether. What has happened? He makes enquiries with the publisher, and finds two books have been inadvertently conflated. Apologies are offered, and the original version is provided. Or is it? because this book seems very odd, containing elements of yet another story. Meanwhile he comes across a woman who has encountered the same problem. They make friends, become lovers, then other books are inserted somehow, then still more.
          By the end of this hallucinatory ride on which Calvino takes us, nearly 20 separate plots are interwoven in a confusing, but extraordinary tableau. I’ve never read anything like this book, and all I can say is that while reading it you sense you are in the presence of greatness. This is not a quick, or easy book, but well worth the effort. But you need to concentrate...