I’m back! In fact, I’ve been back for a while, but took a bit of an extended break so I could pretend that I was still by the seaside. And life is a bit busier than usual at the moment, so I might not be springing back into full flow just yet (can one spring into flow??)…
BUT I wanted to give people the opportunity to read all about Guy Fraser-Sampson’s Death in Profile (2016) over at Vulpes Libris. Here you areeeeeeee.
I wonder how many of my readers expect me to write a review – and a positive review, no less – of a sci-fi novel-cum-parable? Full disclosure: the author is a friend of the family, but I had resolved not to write about it at all if I didn’t like I, Messiah (2011). Luckily, and rather to my surprise given my allergy to sci-fi, I thought it a really good book.
Even before we get to the title page, we know this is about robots. Indeed, from the title alone you might have spotted the reference to I, Robot and on the first page (and essential to know before going any further) is a paraphrase of Isaac Asimov’s famous laws of robotics, as follows:
First Law: a robot shall never cause any harm to a human being; nor, by his inaction, endanger or allow harm to come to a human being.
Second Law: subject to the First Law, a robot shall obey every direct command of a human being; firstly of his master, then of any other human.
Third Law: subject to the First and Second Laws, a robot shall always endeavour to preserve his own safety and that of other robots.
I, Messiah is set in a world where robots are fairly common as aids, but their development is still very much a matter of scientific research and subject to change. The narrator, John Smith, has recently gone through a divorce and decides to get a Self Instructing Decision Making Intelligent Cyber Servant, version 3 (SIDMICS-3), known as Sid. A scientist, ‘Davy’ Jones, is in charge of customising robots for buyers, and he is the main contact for John throughout.
From the outset, Sid is immaculately helpful and companionable. He not only follows all Three Laws of Robots, but is something of a friend too. John quickly has him charge himself in comfort in the house, rather than isolated outside, and they have conversations rather than simple command/obey exchanges. Lest you’re thinking this is like the film Her, they don’t fall in love – but things do start to develop bizarrely.
Sid starts to see things in his sleep; they realise he can dream. But it is not this which brings him to John’s side several times in the night…
That night, there was another soft knocking at my door.
“Sid, is that you?”
“Yes, John, you called me.”
“Look, Sid, I did not call you. Go back to your room and don’t disturb me again. OK?”
If you know your Bible, you’ll probably recognise an intentional parallel to the account of Samuel and Eli in 1 Samuel, where the boy Samuel thinks that he is being repeatedly called by Eli. Each time Eli denies having called him, and eventually realises that it is God calling Samuel. The same thing is happening here; it is God (or ‘the voice’) who is calling Sid.
Sid takes this in his stride; he is well aware of his human creators, and it isn’t much of a leap for him to accept God as creator. John Smith finds it much more of a struggle, as an avowed atheist. From here (because I don’t want to give away all the plot) things develop in the direction of tragedy, but with a few twists and turns. It’s not precisely a parable of the account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection – because it is a world where Jesus exists and where Sid could be considered a representation of Jesus – but it works well without falling neatly in either direction. And it’s quite a poignant and moving story, even without a comparison to the Gospel.
So, I’m as surprised as anybody that I enjoyed this – if you can get me on board with a novel about robots, then you’ve done extremely well. You may not think this sounds like your cup of tea (let’s face it; we’re most of us more at home with novels about 1930s housewives gossiping over tea) (I instantly want to read that hypothetical novel) but, if you fancy dipping a toe into new territory, I very much encourage you to give I, Messiah a go. You can find out more about the book here, and buy it there too, if you’d like.
When I was asked if I wanted to read a book about the house where the Sitwells live, I leapt at the chance. It took me a while to get around to it, but… well, now I have and it was fab, and I’m over at Vulpes Libris talking about it!
The first of my reviews from Shiny New Books that I’ll be pointing you towards is… a little book called Gratitude by Oliver Sacks, and the final book that will ever be published under his name. Read the whole review here, or be enticed by the opening of it…
I’ve had the privilege of reviewing three different books by Oliver Sacks for Shiny New Books now, but this is the first since his sad death last year. By the time his autobiography On The Move was published, we already knew that Sacks had fatal cancer – though he didn’t know it when the manuscript was handed in. So the difference between his autobiography and three of the four essays here is precisely that: these are written with an awareness of mortality and this, indeed, is often their theme.
It’s the spinning blurry woman again! I’m over at Vulpes Libris talking about Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which I wasn’t super stoked to read, but which I actually ended up loving (spoilers!)
I usually choose to review books there that don’t necessarily feel like perfect fits for StuckinaBook – i.e. you’ll never find me reviewing a witty novel about spinsters opening a cafe over there – but this is a novel that I think everyone will value. And, let’s face it, I’m probably last to the party on this one anyway.
What’s the opposite of a time-traveller? I suppose it’s somebody who is stuck in one time – and that’s precisely the predicament of the Hyde family at the beginning of S.E. Lister’s novel The Immortals (published a few months ago – and indeed read a few months ago; I’ve been intending to review it for so long, but… Christmas got in the way). They have been living and re-living 1945 for many years, moving at the end of every year, and judging passing time by location rather than world events. This has been the decision of Rosa Hyde’s father, who – for some reason she doesn’t really understand – can’t bare the idea of leaving the year, or the ‘main event’ of going up to London for the declaration of peace.
I say ‘at the beginning’ of the novel, but in fact the novel opens with Rosa’s return – from where (or, more importantly, when) is not immediately clear. (And what an opening line it is! I love its intrigue.)
Rosa came home after seven years, in the same year she had left. It was the beginning of the wet spring she knew so well. She found their cottage on the edge of a village, the latest Hyde home in a string of many, tucked out of the way behind a disused cattle barn. There were sandbags stacked against the steps, blackout curtains in every window. Bindweed framed the doorway. Beyond the fields a church spire rose into the dusky sky, lashed by rain, its chimes silenced.
Lister has a knack for portraying a time and place quickly and effectively. This is an example, but there are plenty in the novel – because we then see all the times and places that Rosa has travelled. Once away from the 1945-dwelling of her father, she is able to travel much more widely. We rush through a maelstrom of places and periods, with local colour thrown in at just the right amount – on one page, afraid in a busy Victorian street; shortly after, made a near-deity in a bygone era. That section was rather lovely – seeing Rosa elevated in that way, after her years of 1945 tedium – but things become more complex when she meets Tommy Rust. He is a fellow Immortal (and believes in this immortality with his whole heart), and something of a suave, risky gent of the sort that is rather dashing in literature and might not be so much outside of it.
And then there is the soldier Harding, who makes things even more complicated – though I thing I was more affected by the brothers who travelled together as much as possible, and were distraught at the possibility of being separated. But, y’know, brothers always get me.
I’m not much of a one for time-travel novels in general, but I certainly am for novels about family dynamics – so I liked The Immortals best when Rosa was dealing with abandoning her family, and coping with missing many years of her younger sister’s life, and that sort of thing – all of which was handled nicely. The climax of the day peace was declared in 1945 – a day on which Rosa’s father always goes to London to join in the celebrations, trying to avoid other iterations of himself in the crowd – was very moving, and an excellent peak. Indeed, it seems rather as though the non-sci-fi sections of The Immortals were my favourites… and perhaps that was inevitable. But more skill is required to make quotidian events and relationships captivating than is needed to pick a selection of intriguing years and write about them – so kudos for Lister there, and it will be intriguing to see what she could turn her hand to in a more earth-bound genre, if she ever chooses to give that a whirl.
Thanks, Sophie, for sending me a copy of this book.
You may be getting tired of me reviewing books about books – well, there are more to come, and I can’t get enough of them! Recommendations always heartily welcomed. I can’t remember where I first heard of Where I’m Reading From (2014) by Tim Parks, but I have an inkling that it might have been in the ‘You May Also Be Interested In’ section on Amazon. I do know how I got it – it was a birthday present from my friends Sarah and Paul, along with Michael Dirda’s Browsings which I’ll also be writing about soon.
Tim Parks (a name I did not know before, once I realised that I’d been getting him mixed up with Tim Pears) is a British novelist, translator, and professor who lives in Milan. As such, he is well placed to write about all manner of literary topics, from the nuances of copyright to the different ways to translate isolated sentences from D.H. Lawrence. His pieces, which previously all appeared in the New York Review of Books, are certainly engaging and thought-provoking. They are also maddeningly repetitive.
The same points come up over and over and over again – that writers outside of English aim for an international style rather than one linked to their own particular contexts; that translators have to choose between content and tone; that academic criticism is too engaged with the text and not with the author’s life. This last suggests Park hasn’t read any English Literature academic writing for about forty years, but the other two would be extremely interesting points if they didn’t each come up a dozen times. And it did begin to feel, at one point, as though D.H. Lawrence were the only novelist Parks had ever read. True, these articles/essays came out at intervals over a four year period, but he could still have gone in for a bit more variety. Michael Dirda did; that’s all I’m sayin’.
BUT I should add that, those recurrences forgiven, Where I’m Reading From is fascinating and offers much food for thought. Even acknowledging how much repetition is in the book (and now, it seems, in my blog post about it), the topics covered are many and various, and often unusually interesting. To pick one, ‘Why Readers Disagree’:
Enthusiasm or disappointment may be confirmed or attenuated, but only exceptionally reversed [by criticism]. We say: James Wood/Colm Toibin/Michiko Kakutani admires the book and has given convincing reasons for doing so, but I still feel it is the worst kind of crowd-pleaser.
Let me offer a possible explanation that has been developing in my mind for a decade and more. It’s a central tenet of systemic psychology that each personality develops in the force field of a community of origin, usually a family, seeking his or her own position in a pre-existing group, or ‘system’, most likely made up of mother, father, brothers and sisters, then aunts, uncles, grandparents, and so on. The leading Italian psychologist, Valeria Ugazio further suggests that this family ‘system’ also has ‘semantic content’; that is, as conversations in the family establish criteria for praise and criticism of family members and non-members, one particular theme or issue will dominate.
These might be bravery vs cowardice, moral vs immoral, success vs failure etc. – and these are, he argues, reflected in the qualities we look for in novels or characters. I.e. we may judge books on entirely different scales from one another. At one point Parks makes what he considers an exhaustive list, which is bizarrely brief, but it’s a very intriguing notion nonetheless.
I could either write thousands of words about the different angles and authors considered or end here – and I think it will have to be the latter. Parks doesn’t write with the eager enthusiasm of the avid reader, but rather the mildly detached intellect of the professional man of books – yet those of us who are avid readers first and foremost will find much to interest. This he certainly did – most so in articles on translation, where he resisted quoting examples that only the polylingual would understand, for which I am grateful. Perhaps one does not warm to Parks as a friendly voice (and his treatment of his parents in these articles does little to enamour me, I will confess) but he is not setting out to be a chatty companion so much as a muser. As that, he is very admirable. But he is not Dirda. More on him anon…
I love Katherine Mansfield, and I love Notting Hill Editions, so I ran towards the chance to read My Katherine Mansfield Project (2015) by Kirsty Gunn when it came up for grabs over at Shiny New Books. And it was very much a pleasure. You can read the full review over at SNB, and – as is becoming usual – below is the beginning of my review, to tempt you:
The premise for My Katherine Mansfield Project is admittedly rather niche. If one is not already a fan of Kirsty Gunn, then one had better be a fan of Katherine Mansfield (so one might think). This long essay is in essence an homage to Mansfield and her homeland and her legacy – yet, at the same time, it can be enjoyed simply as one author admiring and experiencing communion with another, while admiring and experiencing communion with a beautiful place.
I’ve been very remiss with pointing you in the direction of reviews I wrote for Shiny New Books Issue 7 – and there are some truly brilliant books there that I would very much encourage you to read. While you’re flicking through the issue, I hope you noticed Shirley Jackson’s exceptional Let Me Tell You – a sort of ‘B-sides’ collection of her stories, essays, and memoirs. It’s wonderful. Read the whole review over at SNB, but here’s the beginning to whet your appetite…
This is the third Shiny New Books issue in which I’ve had the privilege of writing about Shirley Jackson’s works – and, indeed, I’ve bolstered out those two previous reviews with five books. It’s fair to say that I’m a fan, and love her dark, surreal books and her cosy domestic memoirs more or less equally. Well, here is a massive treat for Jackson aficionados (and also those who have yet to make her acquaintance): a bumper book of stories, essays, and other writings, many of which have never been available in any format before. Cue balloons, streamers, and much celebration!
One thing and another means I haven’t highlighted my reviews in the latest issue of Shiny New Books, so I’ll kick off with one. I’m on a bit of a spate of hunting out books about reading, since that’s more or less my favourite genre. They are not all that plentiful, but Clive James’ Latest Readings adds to that number – and I reviewed it for Issue 7. You can read the whole review at Shiny New Books, but this intro might entice you further…
I have to confess that when I picked up Latest Readings, I knew very little about Clive James’ life and work. And, indeed, when I put it down I wasn’t much the wiser – but I knew a lot more about his reading tastes. That was why I bought the book: I will run towards books about reading, and was not disappointed in this thoughtful and engaging collection of musings.