2010s

Croc Attack – Assaf Gavron

StuckinaBook All , 6 Comments

A name you might well recognise from the blog comments here, and across the blogosphere, is ‘Dark Puss’ or ‘Peter the Flautist’ – well, Peter took me up on a challenge a while ago to write a review of Croc Attack by Assaf Gavron. I’m always delighted to post regular readers’ views on books, and since I thought there’d be people better qualified than me to comment on this novel, I was very pleased when Peter offered to review it for Stuck-in-a-Book. Without further ado…

Croc Attack by Assaf Gavron
Simon very kindly sent this book to me to review and I will try my best to write something that won’t let down too much the high standards he has set with his reviews.

The internal battles of the near Middle East, particularly between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, are so horrible, Byzantine and yet sadly so much part of our culture that I am somewhat ashamed to say that I have not read any novels that relate to them. Croc Attack changes all this. The story is straightforward, perhaps even a little cartoonish. The protagonist of the title, Eitan Enoch, narrowly misses being killed in a suicide bomb attack on one of the little buses in Tel Aviv. Further bloody bombings and their inevitable reprisals follow and Croc begins, against his wishes, to become something of a celebrity as the man who cannot be killed. Ultimately this exposure makes him the explicit target of a suicide bomber, Fahmi, who co-narrates the story while lying badly injured and in a coma in hospital. The two stories are neatly entwined with both musing on the inevitability of conflict, the lack of any possible resolution and indeed the almost familial need to go on killing and being killed.

So far so bleak but, despite the gravity of its subject matter, this book isn’t. Indeed it has several moments of, admittedly dark, humour. It also fails to take any obvious sides, empathy and sympathy being shown for all who are caught up in this ghastly conflict. The alternating story telling mostly works, though Fahmi’s is the weaker and there are some implausible coincidences at work in the plot but overall I think the structure works pretty well. There is some interesting commentary on high-tech commerce, Croc works for a company dedicated to the reduction of time wasting in call centres, directory enquiries etc., and on the bear baiting of low grade chat shows. Perhaps the female characters are a little weaker but the thing that did strike me as well described is the strange feeling you get when travelling on public transport in the aftermath of an attack. I live in Central London and travel daily by tube. I can remember vividly the feeling in my mind the day after the 7th of July attacks, the suspicious looks of fellow passengers, and the alarm at sitting next to someone with a rucksack and the complete futility of those concerns since I really had no sane alternatives. Gavron captures this very well and the long term after effect is of course the terrorists’ primary weapon in destabilising society. I haven’t, thankfully, been on the other end of a military reprisal but I am sure that living with the threat that you and your family might be wiped out with no warning by a laser-guided missile must be a very similar experience.

It’s not all death and despair, there are some episodes in which characters are allowed, for a few hours, to escape from their daily fear and profess love and/or lust. Simon usually puts at least one quotation into his reviews and I’ll end with one too.

‘What was the message you wanted to give me?’

A second passed before I realised what she was talking about.

‘I don’t know’ I said. ‘He didn’t get to say it. He was thinking. But I’m pretty sure that he wanted to let you know that he loved you. Something like that.’

She looked at me.

‘His look had that kind of meaning. It wasn’t a “tell her to feed the cats” kind of look.’ I said, staring at the gearstick. ‘And I can understand him.’

‘He didn’t have any cats. He couldn’t stand them.’

‘I can understand him on that one too.’

She smiled. So I wiped her smile with a kiss. Her lips were soft as feathers, as deep and salty as the sea.
I found it a great read, essentially it is a thriller with some genuine political and human insights into the Middle East conflict, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

The Unspoken Truth

StuckinaBook All , 5 Comments

You know that disclaimer often put at the beginning of films or novels, ‘The plot and characters in this work are fictional, and any relation to actual people alive or dead is coincidental’? (I saw it the other day at the beginning of a Bollywood film about a camera which can see the future, where I thought it was perhaps superfluous… but if you are at a loose end, check out Aa Dekhen Zara, it’s good fun). Well, perhaps wisely, Chatto & Windus haven’t used that at the beginning of Angelica Garnett’s new book The Unspoken Truth: A Quartet of Bloomsbury Stories. You might recognise her name from her autobiography Deceived with Kindness, over there on my 50 Books You Must Read – as Vanessa Bell’s daughter (and consequently Virginia Woolf’s niece) she has a unique and invaluable viewpoint on the Bloomsbury group – one which sees them all as people as well as icons. 26 years after publishing that autobiography, and over ninety years old, Garnett is back with a book marketed as fiction, but just as clearly based in her experiences growing up.

Which, of course, is no bad thing – Garnett had such a fascinating childhood. We get unexpected glances on the legacy of her parents, throughout all the stories – ‘It may seem strange that, brought up in an eminently intellectual atmosphere, I learned only how to feel and not to think.’ These stories are roughly chronological, covering different sections of Garnett’s life. The first is called ‘When All The Leaves Were Green…’ has Bettina as the heroine, and looks at growing up in a bohemian, artistic household, without any companion of Bettina’s own age. It’s a great depiction of Charleston, through the lens of fiction. I love this first excerpt, which brings across the vivid quality of living amongst those who sought beauty so avidly, and lived so vibrantly. It also shows how this feeling for beauty has found its way into Garnett’s writing style. The second excerpt shows more the confusion and isolation which a young child can feel amongst bohemian adults.

In those years the house and the whole of life was bathed in colour: it mottled or streaked the walls and furniture and sang silent but powerful songs from room to room, space to space. In the morning, the pink and yellow curtains drawn across the window mendaciously promising a fine day even when the sky was water-filled, blowing inwards as the breeze explored the room, momentarily filling it with air, and the colours she knew so well answered each other like a game of ping-pong – they glowed and sizzled and almost shrieked with the pleasure – the black, the Indian red, the peacock blue or yellow ochre. She could never think of the house without them: it was as though they had grown there and when, later, she returned year after year, though imperceptibly faded, they rose again and struck their strange chords like a forgotten musical instrument.

When Nan said something, Bettina knew she meant what she said, and nothing else. It was dull, but there was at least no need to worry that she hadn’t understood. In the world of the drawing room or the studio, however, every word meant at least two things, and the uppermost meaning was the least important. Most things were said as jokes, but there was always a lick at the end like a cat’s tongue, which ruffled the petals inside her, and sometimes jerked something out of her which she wished she hadn’t said.The second story, and easily my favourite, is really a novella, at around 150pp. It is the only one where the story never feels dutifully paced, but flows – again, surely autobiographical, but feels more free than the others. It tells of a shy girl who goes to stay with friends of her parents in France, Gilles and Juliana, in order to perfect her French. We feel her discomfort at joining a family and society she does not know, but also the first flourishes of independence, and a portrait if an outsider’s view of a marriage: Gilles returned from London and our life resumed its previous pattern. I began to note the difference between Gilles and Juliana, his rapier-like decisiveness, her slow deliberation. Both witty and cultured, it was Juliana who occupied the centre of the scene, Gilles the wings. When Juliana was talking seriously she disliked interruption, but Gilles always broke in, fired into disagreement or wishing to qualify her statements. His manner was the opposite of hers – quick and concentrated, intense but rather as though, with each sentence completed, he had finished with it. Juliana, on the contrary, talked as though she were building a tangible structure, and when she paused, you could almost see it sitting on the table. I was going to talk about all four stories, but I’m going on a bit… the third is very short, and the fourth is about a friendship that went a bit sour. That will have to do! I think that ‘Aurore’ is the best reason to buy The Unspoken Truth, to be honest, and the other stories – good though they be – are bonuses to me. The long short-story is perhaps the most difficult length to do well, and the most difficult to find the right concentration for, but ‘Aurore’ is successful. It doesn’t feel like an abridged novel or an extended story, but rather the right content for its length.

As I said at the beginning, The Unspoken Truth is clearly heavily autobiographical – but it isn’t clear where the line is drawn. Anybody reading this book, even if they hadn’t heard of the Bloomsbury Group, would realise it is autobiographical, because the structure so clearly cries it out. So linear, and chronological, with arbitrary incidents introduced and never mentioned again; characters who come in for a paragraph or two, and fade away – all the sort of anecdotes which make sense in an autobiography, but not really in fiction. But somehow this isn’t just another autobiography – given the label ‘fiction’, Garnett flies in a different direction from Deceived with Kindness. Not compelled to give an overview of the famous names she mentions, The Unspoken Truth has richer writing, more introspection, a greater use of imagery. It’s not always wholly successful, and where it lags it doesn’t have the excuse that an autobiography does, its chronicling responsibility – but for the most part, these stories are quietly beautiful, and add another new dimension to an understanding of Garnett’s extraordinary family.