Anyway, in celebration of July 4 (yes, it’s July 5 here in New Zealand, but we’re future forward) I thought I’d mention some of my favourite American authors.

Now I really haven’t read a lot of the older American writers – except for Edgar Allen Poe and, let’s face it, dude was possibly a little weird and had some issues. But at his best he was creepier than a cat stalking (The Fall of the House of Usher). I’ve tried to read The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper but it turned out to be not quite so appealing without large pictures of Daniel Day-Lewis… oh, I’m a bad literary student.

However my opinions pick up when we start getting into the later 19th century. For instance – Walt Whitman. A poet whose mere existence has been the catalyst for two of the greatest moments of my generation:

1. “Oh captain, my captain” – Dead Poet’s Society. Maudlin, mawkish, crappy, watchable, love it.
2. “Damn you, Walt Whitman! I-hate-you-Walt-freaking-Whitman! “Leaves of Grass”, my ass!” – Homer Simpson. Best. Simpsons Line. Ever.

Oh, and his poetry was lyrical and blew a lot of poetical conventions out of the water.

Turning into the 20th century there’s Edith Wharton, a fantastic writer whose understated but devastating portraits of snooty Noo Yawk biarches of the early 20th century are far more enjoyable than she gets credit for. And Willa Cather who wrote similarly readable portraits of craggy inhabitants of the Midwest and Great Plains. Moving further on we get Fitzgerald – I’ve read and enjoyed The Great Gatsby, Steinbeck – have read Of Mice and Men and would really like to read The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, and Nathanael West – if you haven’t read The Day of the Locusts, why ever not?

Don’t mention Hemingway or, especially, Faulkner to me.

One of my most favourite favourites? Henry Miller. Yes, alright, he’s overblown and probably over-rated by some and he can be totally rude, but meh to that. Tropic of Cancer is brilliant. That brings us to The Beats – Ginsberg, yes. Kerouac, no. Burroughs, yes. Especially Junky, Naked Lunch and Cities of the Red Night.

More poetry – Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. I was an angsty literary teenage girl, you know. Short stories – J.D. Salinger. One of the best novels ever written anywhere – Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Yes, he’s Russian, and yes, it’s American.

Then we get into the 1970′s (and I’m almost making my appearance in the world) and one of the greatest American writers and probably the craziest. The best are the craziest, though, so perhaps that’s superfluous to say. Thomas Pynchon. He’s the most amazing writer – who’s read Mason & Dixon? I have and I understood about 50% of it (it’s written in 18th century syntax, grammar and spelling) but I loved 100% of it. It’s a wild tale, an entertainment and it’s historically accurate.

I also have to mention Richard Yates who I only started reading last year – The Easter Parade, Revolutionary Road, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness… he’s superb.

Michael Chabon, Bret Easton Ellis… wait, where are the women? Is it just me or is there a distinct lack of women in American lit? Joyce Carol Oates – prolific and who can keep up? Joan Didion, though she writes almost as much (if not more) non-fiction. Why can’t I think of more women?

Okay, so this has been a bit of a rambling opinion piece – I ‘d love to hear your suggestions? And I know I must have missed who knows how many great writers that I’m going to be terribly embarrassed about having forgotten!

The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps by Michel Faber, Text Publishing, ISBN 9781847678911

Michel Faber is what one refers to as an eclectic writer. This might sound like I’m going to be disparaging – but oh, how I’m not. Faber is the kind of writer who makes other writers seethe with envy. A writer who can tackle, and excel at any genre. Whose horror stories (Under the Skin) make Stephen King’s look like Little Golden Books. Whose historical fiction (The Crimson Petal and the White) is one of the BEST historical novels ever written (yes, ever). And whose contemporary fiction is so contemporary it makes you cry tears of tidy white surfaces.

So what has occasioned this review is that Canongate (and in New Zealand and Australia, Text Publishing) has released new editions of Under the Skin and The Hundred and Ninety-nine Steps. This book contains two novellas (well, let’s be honest, these aren’t long enough to be novellas, more like long short stories – big margins don’t fool anyone, Canongate) – the eponymous story and The Courage Consort.

Despite this minor quibble over length, both stories are excellent. The Hundred and Ninety-nine Steps is a vaguely creepy literary sleuth with a dab of historical fiction (and the use of “axe” for ask, which sent me to google and, lo, an idea for another post), and romance. We’re in Whitby – scene of several famous literary mysteries – with Sian, an archaeologist who is having some rather disturbing bad dreams and who meets a good looking young man with a mysterious manuscript in a bottle. This leads to uncovering of a long forgotten crime and lots of canoodling with a very fluffy and cute sounding dog. Which is an oddly endearing plot point.

The pacing in this story is spot-on – I just kept reading and reading and reading and then suddenly it was over! It’s the right mix of gripping and suspenseful. Which is how the whole “Faber, other writers, seething with envy” thing happens – this is a small story, almost a bagatelle, and really there isn’t a lot here. But somehow the man makes it amazing.

The second story is The Courage Consort – and Faber repeats his trick. This time we’re with Catherine – the soprano in a vocal ensemble who have travelled to a chateau in Belgium to rehearse for 10 days. Catherine is a strange character – appealing yet afflicted – she’s convinced herself she’s batty and a bit useless. She’s drifting along in a misty sort of daze until rather suddenly a tragic event brings her up a bit short and to a rather stunning life-realisation. Then – bam! – end of story and the reader is left again thinking “Lordy, how did he do that?”. There aren’t any firework-type theatrics (nothing as dazzling as in Under the Skin, anyway) but everything just comes together so perfectly that the reader feels completely satisfied.

Everyone should read Faber. If you don’t like history then read his horror, if you don’t like horror then read his history and if you don’t like either than read his short stories. If you don’t like any of that, well, then there’s no hope for you, I’m afraid.

At the beginning of The Sound of Butterflies we meet Thomas Edgar and his wife Sophie – it’s 1904 and Thomas has been on a collecting expedition to South America, ostensibly to collect butterfly specimens for selling back in England but also chasing a mythical butterfly he has read about, with one black wing and one yellow wing. But all has not gone well for Thomas and he returns a broken and mute man, a mystery to Sophie and those who knew him. And so the story begins which takes us with Thomas and his fellow expeditioners into a very dark heart indeed.

The Sound of Butterflies is what is generally referred to as a cracking good read. This is a true tale – story-telling at its most enjoyable. We swing between Thomas and his fellow expeditioners in South America, and Sophie back in England, trying to find out what has happened to her changed husband. The South American scenes are particularly evocative, you can hear the endless jungle sounds, smell the overpowering flower scents and feel the heat! King does an amazing job of conveying both laconicness and activity and the tone of gradually increasing foreboding.  The climax of Thomas’ South American story is truly creepy and scary in one – and an obvious counterpoint to the straitened, up-tight English society Thomas returns to.

Really the only criticism I have is The Sound of Butterflies lacks depth - which brings me back to where I began, as one can see this depth coming through in Magpie Hall, which is a better book, taken as a whole. King’s writing has matured greatly from The Sound of Butterflies to Magpie Hall and this can only bode extremely well for the future.

Aside from that, I would absolutely recommend The Sound of Butterflies on the enjoyable factor alone. Reading it is an experience in being transported away and caught up in the events.  True reading pleasure.

I was lucky enough to have a short email interview with the lovely writer Rachael King earlier this year – you can read the interview here.

Buy The Sound of Butterflies from The Book Depository UK and help keep BookieMonster blogging!

Because we don’t always have all our books listed at one time, these change quite often. There’s generally always a Jasper Fforde, or a Kazuo Ishiguro, and on rare occasions a Terry Pratchett (I tell you, people hold on to those little buggers), any number of New Zealand books and the odd non-fiction. Basically anything I like, I’ll designate a Recommended or Highly Recommended (I really like those!) Read.

It’s a good way too of browsing a list of a more manageable size.

P.S. The site was down for about an hour today and I originally wrote this as it was going down. And subsequently lost what was a far more original and exciting post, I’m sure. The great lost post it was… *sigh*

Yes, I do!

Give me a woot!

Woot!

So, I’m going to give away what has been my best read of 2010 so far – Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan. David Levithan is speaking at this week’s Writers and Readers Festival in Auckland, so, perfect timing, huh?

And this book is soooooo good. I’m so excited to be giving away a copy! Am I good to you, dear readers? Yes, yes I am.

There’s another reason why I’m giving this away – it’s the BookieMonster blog’s 1st birthday! Yes, I am one. Cupcakes for everybuddy! (If you make them.) And to say thank you to all you lovely readers I’m going to give away several 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th prizes. So it’s like a little lucky dip of books! Hurrah.

As per last time all you have to do to enter is leave a comment on the blog between tonight 7pm and next Wednesday 19 May at 5.30pm. I’ll announce the winners that day at 8pm.

Same rules as last time: Every comment gets you one entry into the draw, and we’ll draw a name at random. Judges decision is final, no correspondence will be entered into, yada yada yada. Oh, and sorry overseas readers, but I can only post this to New Zealand addresses, so New Zealand address holders only, please. Obvious Spam comments will be consigned to oblivion. And, uh, I reserve the right to change these rules because there may have been something I’ve forgotten.

ZOMG the excitement, she is almost too much!

Text Publishing, RRP $25, 3 May 2010

I was thinking about how I can make this review restrained and thoughtful, positive without being gushing, a meditation on the beauty of great writing, an intellectual musing with touches of subtlety…but ZOMG YOU GUYS, THIS BOOK IS FANTASTIC!!!

Oh dear. I’ve ventured into Terry Pratchett underpants-on-head three exclamation mark territory.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a tale of two Will Graysons. Both are teens who meet through some rather unusual circumstances. First Will Grayson is best friends with Tiny Cooper, “the world’s largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world’s gayest person who is really, really large.” Second Will Grayson is heavily depressed, pretty isolated from the world, and a bit unsure about his own self-acceptance.

Honestly, this is a really hard book to summarise – mainly because what happens isn’t that important. I mean, it is quite important and it’s damn fun to read and I found myself thinking “Man, I wish that happened to me when I was a teen,” but the story doesn’t hang on plot – it hangs on character and insight and some very very funny lines. The writing is just so good that you go along for the ride. And you want the ride to go on and on!

I don’t know if there’s anything more horrifying than a goth girl getting all cuddly.

So, summary aside, what makes Will Grayson, Will Grayson such a ride of a read?

1. Tiny Dancer is one of my favourite songs. And this book makes me feel like the song does – uplifted, believing in love, thrilled.
2. It reminded me of exactly what it was like being a teenager. That feeling of almost constant nervousness. The uncertainty – about yourself, about other people. Desperately loving your friends, your crush, your family… and then the person you meet that you actually think you could really love. So of course you run away from them because it’s just too, too scary. (Wait… just me?)
3. It’s hilarious. ROFLcopter hilarious.

Tiny Cooper has brought me to a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting to hook me up with a girl. Which is of course idiotic in the kind of profound and multivalent way that only an English teacher could fully elucidate.

And that brings me to what I really, really loved about this book. It’s full of teens who are just who they are and living their lives. They’re gay and straight and jocks and nerds and depressives and happy. They’re not tropes, standing for the latest issue. They feel like actual people. Oh god, is this well-written. Not a word feels out of place, not a phrase grates, at no point does the story lose the reader. It’s stunning.

Read this book. It will make you so happy and so sad and remind you of what love, in all its forms, means and feels like.

I salute you David Levithan and John Green. Thank you for bringing so much enjoyment into my life.

Text Publishing

I love Philip Pullman. I love him like I’m a 12 year old girl and he’s a purple unicorn that’s just turned up on my doorstep and blown heart shaped bubbles in my face. That much, right? I mean everyone liked the His Dark Materials series (well, almost everyone) but I even like the Sally Lockhart Mysteries and sadly, not as many people like those.

I approached The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ with some amount of trepidation, however. This is a book that tells the Jesus story and my relationship with religion and religious stories is one that alternates between being fraught and of “meh”. Fortunately though, despite the provocative title, Pullman is not coming from a perspective of “Christians done us wrong”. This is the story of stories. The story of history and the nature of truth and the way those two ideas change depending on who is doing the telling.

In Pullman’s story there are two “Jesuses” (yes, I really, really want to write “Jesi”) – two brothers, Jesus and Christ. Jesus is the beloved brother, the “good man” who doesn’t think he is a Messiah but everyone else does, and Christ is the “scoundrel”, the favourite of Mary, who thinks of himself as a secret Messiah when no-one else does. Thus begins the story that continues along a familiar route with the occasional feeling of boxes being ticked off (Magdalene, tick. Loaves and fishes, tick.)

In some ways The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is very much like the Bible Jesus story – there are periods of blah interspersed with breakthrough moments that shine. Truly shine.

Pullman has done his most spectacular work with the chapter Jesus in the Garden at Gethsamane. This is the chapter that reminded me why I love Pullman so much. Jesus is attempting a dialogue with God but he gets a monologue instead. God is quiet. God is silent. God makes no move. And in the words you can hear Jesus’ heart breaking and his faith in a god dying slowly.

The psalm says “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.” Well, I understand that fool. You treated him as you’re treating me, didn’t you? If that makes me a fool, I’m one with all the fools you made. I love that fool, even if you don’t. The poor sod whispered to you night after night, and heard nothing in response.

I suppose it will be passages such as this and Pullman’s treatment of the story of Jesus’ resurrection that will gain him the most “notoriety” amongst those who hold these things sacred and beyond change.

What I liked best here are the two ideas that I feel Pullman is exploring:

1. Character, and particularly characters in stories. In TGMJATSC Jesus is the man who talks to everyone but no-one seems to hear what he’s saying. His message becomes much bigger than his intention and you get the impression from the secondhand stories we’re hearing that he gets rather downright pissy about this. Jesus is telling a simple story about how people should live their lives. He is a man who knows he is not being heard by the people, and most of all he knows he is not being heard by his God.

Christ, on the other hand, is the man who talks to hardly anyone but one person, who he has convinced himself is an angel. And Christ thinks his words are much bigger than they really are, he thinks he’s telling the story to end all stories, the story of the coming of heaven on earth and the story to feed an entire church, and the story of his God.

2. Stories. How the story changes to fit the truth. How the truth gets changed to fit the story. How powerful stories are that millions of people are prepared to live their lives by them. How all of us are prepared to live our lives by stories. Aren’t we?

There is so much to admire and enjoy in The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ but in the end I have to be honest and say I feel about it very much like I feel about the Bible Jesus story. I don’t really know. It feels cold and distant. It doesn’t induce in me any revelations, it doesn’t lead me to think differently, or be differently, or do differently. It’s interesting but it hasn’t changed my life.

But I know it has changed the lives of millions, and so, like Jesus, I can only think:

I’ve been speaking to you all my life and all I’ve heard back is silence. Where are you? Are you out there among the stars? Is that it? Busy making another world, perhaps, because you’re sick of this one?

How to Build a Great Screenplay by David Howard ($16)

In making individual decisions about each element of the screenplay a writer builds a good story from the ground up. David Howard offers in-depth consideration of the many elements that make up a screenplay, clarifying his lessons through examples from the most successful films: Pulp Fiction, American Beauty, The Usual Suspects, Trainspotting and Chinatown among many others.

Accessible, clear and practical ‘How To Build A Great Screenplay’ is a working bible for the budding screenwriter. Recognising that story structure is the framework for a successful screenplay David Howard teaches how to incorporate the other elements so that the screenplay takes on a life of its own, creating the emotional connection, spectacle and intellectual stimulation that will impact on an audience.

JPod : A Novel by Douglas Coupland ($11)

Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers are bureaucratically marooned in JPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver video game design company.

The six jPodders wage daily battle against the demands of a bone-headed marketing staff, who daily torture employees with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan’s personal life is shaped (or twisted) by phenomena as disparate as Hollywood, marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, and the rise of China. JPod’s universe is amoral and shamelessand dizzyingly fast-paced.

I just <3 Douglas Coupland so much. He’s damn funny and damn weird. Recommended!

The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy – Barbara Vine ($11)

Bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist Gerald Candless dies suddenly, and leaves behind a wife and two doting daughters. To sort through her grief, his daughter Sarah puts aside her university studies and agrees to write a biography of her famous father. But as she begins her research and pulls back the veil of his past, her life is slowly torn apart: a terrible logic begins to unfold that explains her mother’s remoteness, her father’s need to continually reinvent himself — and sheds shocking light on a long-forgotten London murder.

Regular readers will know that I discovered the amazing writing of Barbara Vine only last year (the shame, the shame!) and this is a fantastic book – highly recommended by me.

Virginia Woolf – Hermione Lee ($10)

While Virginia Woolf–one of our century’s most brilliant and mercurial writers–has had no shortage of biographers, none has seemed as naturally suited to the task as Hermione Lee. Subscribing to Virginia Woolf’s own belief in the fluidity and elusiveness of identity, Lee comes at her subject from a multitude of perspectives, producing a richly layered portrait of the writer and the woman that leaves all of her complexities and contradictions intact. Such issues as sexual abuse, mental illness, and suicide are brought into balance with the immensity of her literary achievement, her heroic commitment to her work, her generosity and wit, and her sanity and strength.

One of the best biographies I’ve read, Lee delves so deep into Woolf’s life and character you feel like you’ve somehow known her.

Hey! It’s That Guy! : The Fametracker.com Guide to Character Actors ($8)

So you’re watching Full Metal Jacket and there he is that guy! What’s his name? You know, that guy who always plays a drill sergeant! Or you’re watching Fast Times at Ridgemont High and there’s another one that creepy science teacher! That guy always plays a creepy somebody! What’s his name?

We’re talking about R. Lee Ermey and Vincent Schiavelli, of course and you can read all about them in Hey! It’s That Guy!, a guide to identifying “famous” character actors and actresses.

From Steve Buscemi and Philip Seymour Hoffman to J. T. Walsh, Judy Greer, and Amy Aquino, they’re all here. You may not know their names, but you’ll certainly recognize their faces! 

Hilarious. And I love Steve Buscemi. Mwah, mwah, mwah.

It follows the lives of 5 airforce wives from their stationing in England in the 1950′s through various trials and tribulations and into the present day. There’s more than a whiff of The Women’s Room here but then it’s hard not to have any whiff of The Women’s Room when you have a book that follows several women over several decades. And that is by no means a bad thing.

No big intellectualising going on here – but you’ll enjoy the socks off this one!

Before I get into this, let me say that Text Publishing are releasing some damn interesting and good-looking books. Big three cheers and well done to them.

Thief follows a summer holiday in the life of Suzanne, an English teacher with some large “Issues” with a capital I. Suzanne rents a cabin by a lake for the holiday and places an ad in the personals section of the local paper – and starts a correspondence with an incarcerated rapist. The developing relationship leads Suzanne into her past and dealing with her own rape.

I have to be honest here – the premise of this book should have made for a really stunning interior narrative. There are really major ideas here that deserved a lot better. Unfortunately I rather disliked Thief. The writing was not up to the promise, the main character was not likeable, the secondary romantic/sexual plotline seemed pointless and the revelatory moment at the climax seemed motivationless and, to be honest, downright confusing.

I wanted this to be so good, it seemed to hold so much promise, but it just never delivered. Suzanne has the makings of a really likeable character – smart, sexual, self-aware and self-deceiving at the same time. But Gibbon seems almost determined to make her unlikeable, which does not a great read make.

Argh. I find it hard to be harsh about this story. But…

One note I will make though is that I think that there will be readers who like this novel, particularly those who prefer a more straightforward, unsubtle plot. Just not me.