The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers

This is a real classic, a dazzling work in both the tradition and the class of John Steinbeck.

The focus of the story is John Singer, a deaf mute who lives in a town in the southern states in the late 1930s. Around him are four diverse characters, all of whom confide in Singer and view him as a kind of savant, although there's really no reason to think so. The terrible irony is that each of the quartet believes themselves to have found a true soulmate, but they are in fact confiding in a tabula rasa of their own construction.

The characters are utterly convincing and their stories are moving and sad, though not without humour. The writing is elegant and insightful, the mood is beautifully maintained and the pacing is spot on. Magnificent.

Alice's Masque - Lindsay Clarke

This was a somewhat random purchase in a booksale, a strategy that occasionally yields riches but sadly not this time. Clarke's novel is aiming for a king of D.H. Lawrence English mysticism drawing on Arthurian legend, but the allegory is dull while the "real world" sections are plain daft, especially some of the ludicrous dialogue. I also found the books underlying assumption of a fundamentally antagonistic relationship between the sexes, with an inevitable aspect of violence from the male "side", both absurd and offensive.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid

A short and brilliant monologue spoken by a Pakistani stranger to an American tourist in a Lahore marketplace. As the local man's story unfolds, the tension increases almost imperceptibly and what seems like a cross-cultural character study gradually morphs into a cracking thriller. A late reference to Heart of Darkness made me realise what the author had been up to, and the final realisation is both chilling and utterly believable.

The Millstone - Margaret Drabble

My first Drabble, oddly enough, and an interesting read. The story is about a young, single scholar who falls pregnant and decides to keep the baby, with mixed feelings as the title suggests. It's very much of its time (think Larkin) and some of the details are startling. Apparently, patient beds in maternity wards back then were marked M or U for "married" or "unmarried". Outrageous!

The prose is not thrilling but there are some lovely turns of phrase and sly wit, making for an intriguing book.

The Riders - Tim Winton

My goodness, what a long-winded telling of a simple tale. The first 100 pages involve a main decorating a house in Ireland while waiting for his wife and daughter to arrive from Australia. When only the daughter shows up, the father and child start a rambling tour of Europe in search of the mother. The central characters are strongly realised but minor characters flit by inconsequentially and the plot really doesn't justify the 400 page length.

The Rip - Robert Drewe

This highly accomplished and very Australian set of short stories revolves around the uniting theme of water, usually, though not solely, shown as an element of rejuvenation. The author shows a particular flair for the gripping opening sentence, though the conclusions were generally less impressive. I'll probably check out more of his stuff when I get the chance.

Esther

No mention of God and a good story make this a real step up from the narrative sludge of the preceding few books. Sex and violence are prominent, but in a much more interesting way than in earlier gorefests. It's also intriguing that this contains the first appearance of the word "Jew" (as opposed to Israelite or Hebrew) and clear evidence of historical antisemitism.

Nehemiah

A dull book, really only notable for the confusion over authorship. Half the time Nehemiah is referred to in the first person, half the time in the third. Postmodern sensibility or cock-up?

Carter Beats the Devil - Glen David Gold

A few weeks ago I was chatting about books with some well-read and erudite chums, and this was the moment when everybody expressed amazement and pity at my ignorance of a great favourite. I duly picked up a copy at the next opportunity.

It is, indeed, a very fine and enjoyable novel, in much the same vein as the masterpiece that is Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Instead of comic books, though, the hook is classic magician acts of the 1920s. Gold weaves together history and fiction into an incident-packed story which keeps the reader guessing. The characters are endearing and, barring a bit of a tangle of subplots in the middle section, it makes for a really fun read.

Bone; ghost circles - Jeff Smith

In this episode Smith seems very taken with his idea of "ghost circles", kind of illusory dead spaces that will hurt you if you stumble into them, but they are an extremely dull device both narratively and visually. The series is building up to a climax now, I hope its worth getting through the periods of tedium for.

Ezra

Not much of interest in this one, although I liked the author’s amazement at events being expressed as “I sat down astonied”. Astonied is great, I’ll have to use that sometime.

Shakespeare – Bill Bryson

I quite enjoyed this quick run-through of everything we know about Will’s life which, as Bryson happily and repeatedly acknowledges, is very little. Instead we get an overview of life in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, and some interesting discussion of the playwright’s known associates. There’s also fun to be had in the final chapter in which the various “Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare” conspiracy theories are amusingly demolished.

I suspect that it’s a boon that we know so little of Shakespeare’s life, as any biographical information (he was gay! / Catholic! /lame!) would surely have a reductive effect on the work itself.

2 Chronicles

A bit of a trudge over previously covered ground, this one, with internal contradictions aplenty and occasional startling moments. I like the bit where somebody gruesomely slaughters 10 thousand prisoners of war without comment, but then gets in all sorts of bother for praying to the wrong God. The massacre of a million Ethiopians by the all-merciful Father was also pretty spectacular, even by OT standards.

Bone; Old Man’s Cave – Jeff Smith

I was rather worried during the first half of this, a rather clumsy series of expositions that had me drifting. Happily, though, the climax picks up interest dramatically, and there is a tremendously audacious gag that resolves one of the story’s big mysteries at the end.

Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins – Rupert Everett

What fun!

I’ll open my comments on this uproarious movie memoir with a representative paragraph. Here is Everett on the night of Charles & Di’s wedding:

It is not in the queer DNA to take part in public events and national celebrations so we decided instead to visit a louche club in Leicester Square called the Subway. It had once been famous for the Four Hundred, immortalised by Evelyn Waugh and Noel Coward, the smartest nightclub in London for thirty years between the wars. It was christened in the twenties by the Bright Young Things, who manically danced there before ‘sitting the next one out’ at the surrounding tables to watch the slow collapse of the Empire, the destruction of the great aristocratic mansions and finally the Blitz, all playing out in front of them on the dance floor. From a tender romantic kiss as the band played ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ to the desperate embrace of ‘We’ll Meet Again!’ those walls held it all. Now men fucked each other as Gloria Gaynor sang ‘I Will Survive’. Many of them wouldn’t.

It’s a good example; the flamboyant queerness, the veneration for showbiz history, the fast-and-loose chronology and the melancholy undercurrent all suffuse the text. As well as being unfeasibly handsome, privileged, successful and over-sexed, it turns out Everett is a genuinely fine writer too, the bastard. He’s also happy to dish the dirt in a highly enjoyable way.

It occurred to me that his career has been more like that of an A-list actress rather than a C-list actor. Small roles, often set against bigger names (Julia Roberts, Madonna etc) and a life based as much around image as around acting. That’s just the Hollywood stuff – he’s more passionate about the theatrical work, it seems.

He spends a paragraph on an affair with Susan Sarandon and a sentence on witnessing a decapitation. Maybe I’ve lived a quiet life, but I think that if these events had happened to me, they would assume a greater prominence in my memoirs.