Ni is for Nicholas Sparks

My N is Nicholas Sparks, who seems to have a knack for writing books that are easily adapted for the silver screen. His bilbiography reads like a list of Most Tragically Romantic Movies Ever Made – “Message in a Bottle”, “A Walk to Remember”, “The Notebook” and “Nights in Rodanthe”.
I decided to read “The Notebook” for a couple of reasons. Number one – it’s really short, barely topping one hundred and fifty pages. Number two – I’ve seen the film, so I knew what the basic story was.
For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure of the book or the film, here’s what it’s about. It’s told from the point of a view of an old man in a nursing home, reading The Notebook to his wife, who has Alzheimer’s. He reads her the story ever day in the hope that she will remember him and their life together. The Notebook is the story of Noah and Allie – teenage sweethearts who are torn apart by class and time, but return to each other later in life. As the story wears on you realise that the story is about the old couple in the nursing home, a fact that isn’t immediately obvious because their names are different, explained by not wanting to upset the woman with Alzheimer’s.
I know that a lot of people love The Notebook, and have heard stories about strapping, macho men crying their eyes out at the strength of Noah and Allie’s love, pushing against their mental and physical constraints to snatch a few more minutes together.
Personally, I remain unmoved. Maybe it’s because the attempt to tug at the heart strings is blatant throughout the film and the book, or maybe it’s because there just isn’t time to get to know the characters and get involved. I think it’s more likely that it’s because I, as the reader, am told through the book that Allie and Noah love each other, when all we get are recounts of long distant memories, a few snatched days in the middle and a day at the end.
Please bear in mind, by the way, that I cry at absolutely everything. Last week, I welled up watching a portly Greek bloke and his chubby son dance around in harem trousers and blonde wigs on “Britain’s Got Talent” and the merest hint of animals in trouble (“Fido was found tied to a gate post, watching as his beloved owners drove away. All he ever wanted was to be loved back”) and I’m drowing in my own salty water. Not with The Notebook, though.
The fact that Noah’s the narrator for most of the book is a bit strange, too. It’s not that I’m against a male point of view, I just don’t think it works – I found it a bit forced, to be honest. His devotion to his wife was undoubtedly touching, but there was a part of me who wished he’d stop torturing her and leave her alone.
The good news, for people who like the story, is that there’s a sequel! It’s called The Wedding, and tells the tale of Noah and Allie’s daughter and son-in-law, as they struggle with their marriage and living up to the inexplicable love story that came before.

M is for... Marian Keyes

This week it’s the turn of Ireland’s favourite writer – Marian Keyes. I read her newest novel, “This Charming Man”. In interviews, Marian Keyes exudes a kind of mumsy warmth with just the right level of sauciness – like an auntie, I suppose. Her novels are peppered with delightful Irish oddities such as “ride” as in: “He’s a ride himself, he is”. It’s Roddy Doyle without the depressing wife beating. Except, this one has that in spades.

The story is about Paddy de Courcy getting married, and the women he’s affecting by his announcement. He’s a politician ride, with sights set firmly on the Taoseich job. There are four narrators – Lola, his current girlfriend, Alicia, his fiancée, Marnie, his ex and Grace, Marnie’s sister. The different narrators are easy to deal with as they all have quite distinct voices. However, someone must have deemed the general reader as too thick to notice when a new narrator begins (generally the beginning of a new chapter) so each one is blessed with a font of her own. Lola, the kooky stylist with purple hair, has Comic Sans. I kid you not. It made my eyes bleed, especially when Lola got far and away the most page time.
The gist of the story (and I hope I don’t give too much away here – my advice is, if you want to read it, don’t read on) is that the women are devastated when Paddy announces his engagement to the unsuspecting Alicia. However, as the book wears on nasty memories are uncovered about Paddy and his preference for kinky toys and cigarette burns, which makes all of the women realise that he’s a bit of a cad, to be perfectly honest, and we’re all better off without him. The girls get their day and Paddy (boo, hiss) gets his comeuppance. Girl Power all round. Complete with the hand sign.

The other notable thing about “This Charming Man” (apart from having the same title as The Smiths song, which I sang in my head for the whole thing) is that it’s seven hundred pages long. That’s right. Seven HUNDRED. Admittedly I got the hardback copy, but reading the thing was pretty tough. I had to prop myself up with a cushion under the book, which got a bit uncomfortable after a while. Nevertheless, I managed to read it in four evenings, which is pretty cool and perhaps says more about the writing style than is polite. Despite the subject matter, it’s quite conversational and is really easy to read. Disconcertingly, on the back of the book there’s an intonement from Marian/Marian’s publishers: “Funny. Honest. Reliable. Trust Marian”, which further cements her position as mumsy but slightly saucy, what with all the kinky sex stuff and the domestic abuse. Hard hitting, if you’ll pardon the pun.

A Marian Keyes novel is the literary equivalent of Casualty – things go wrong, your favourite characters may be in danger but ultimately, you know that they’ll be okay and you’ll end up safe and sound.

Next week it’s Nicholas Sparks' “The Notebook”. Read it and weep, because I probably will.

L is for Louis de Bernieres

I’ve been trying to read “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” by Louis de Bernieres, for years. I remember about ten years ago, when everyone was reading it. On their holidays, on the bus, train, in the car and so on. So, I tried. I got as far as the old man with the pea in his ear, and then stopped. For people who’ve read the book, you’ll know what I mean.

The tone is stuffy, smug, pretentious. There are numerous changes in narrator which leads to confusion for the reader and a lack of involvement which makes it hard to carry on. The Challenge gave me the perfect reason to read it – I wasn’t allowed to stop! So I picked up my battered copy, which I think has been read by about a million people and travelled round the globe at least a couple of times, and began again at Dr Iannis and the old man with the pea n his ear.

De Bernieres manages to conjure up the Greek island through his prose. He never points things out and the character image is built up through offhand comments and sense you get, rather than a head to toe description. I suppose this is the mark of a good writer, strictly speaking. However, the effect was slightly ruined for me by my imagination being over-ruled by Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz, who played Corelli and Pelagia in the film. Incidentally, I’ve never seen it but have heard it’s pretty awful and not at all faithful to the book.

I struggled through the first hundred pages, which took me about a week. Eventually though, I got the rhythm and got more involved with the characters as the story began to unfold. I didn’t particularly like any of them – although their voices differed they all had an underlying tone of superiority that I found offputting. My favourite character was the pet pine marten, to be honest.

On Sunday I managed to read the remaining four hundred pages. It took a lot and I nearly fell asleep in the middle, but I did it. Only to find that it wasn’t worth it. It’s a great big let down. It wasn’t that I wanted a happy ending, and the fact that the story’s based around the occupation of Greece by the Italians and Germans, I definitely wasn’t expected sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, but a bit of a reward would have been nice. For those of you who’ve read it, you’ll know what I mean. For those of you who haven’t, you can read it if you like but expect a massive anti-climax. Huge.

It did make me want to visit Cephalonia though.

K is for Kate Atkinson

My ‘K’ is Kate Atkinson and her book, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum”. I hadn’t heard about her before a friend suggested it to me after I’d told her the Book Challenge story. That’s one of the best things about the Book Challenge - people are generally interested and more than happy to provide suggestions for the tricky names. At the moment, I’m trying not to think about the surname ‘X’. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. It is nearly a year away though, so I’m not going to worry about it now.

So. “Behind the Scenes at the Museum”. It begins with Ruby Lennox’s conception, and unravels time and memory by tracing the matriarchial line through Ruby, to her mother Bunty, to her mother Nell, to her mother Alice. Surrounding them are the other women and menfolk which make up the family – vivid pictures of boys going to war (and not coming back), creepy identical twins and all the levels of relationships between unhappy and ecstatic.

I don’t want to reveal too much about the story, as usual, but if I were to describe it it would be bleak and depressing. It runs through both world wars and numerous family disasters. Ruby advises quite near the beginning that family members are prone to getting run over or blown up. I think this device keeps the story from getting too heavy – we know well in advance who will die an untimely death, and snippets of information are fed to us from Ruby all the way through the book. This keeps the shocks to a minimum while managing to maintain an, admittedly, dark comic tone.

I found “Behind the Scenes at the Museum” fascinating. For some people it may be a bit too ‘lady heavy’ as the main characters are all women. There are also plenty of men, but inevitably they’re unsuitable husbands or they get blown up/run over while doing daft things. I’m not a raving feminist at all, but the story made me proud to be female, in a weird way.

Ruby is undeniably the protaganist, but it’s amazing how her family history spirals back from itself for generations. The same mistakes are made, the same awkward situations to get into and the same personality characteristics crop up again and again. When I finished it, the first thing I wanted to do was trace my own family history – dig out genealogy charts, old photographs and keepsakes to see if history does repeat itself and what makes me, me. That sounds a bit cheesy, but I’ll bet that most people who read this feel the same way.

On another note, my friend Mrs D introduced me to the best website ever. No, not that one. It’s called Read it Swap it, and revolves around a kind of global library. You put a list on there of books that you want to get rid of, using their handy ISBN database, then other people look at your list and choose something if they like it. Then, you get notified and choose something of theirs. You send your book, they send yours and voila – you get rid of that book you were never going to read again and gain a shiny new one for the price of postage. Genius. You do have to trust people but there’s a pretty robust feedback mechanism so if you do have a problem the admins will help out. It won’t get you a book back but at least it won’t happen to you or anyone else, again. It’s especially brilliant for me as I have about fifty books I’ll never read again (“The Manny”, anyone?) and am obviously reluctant to spend £6.99 a week on a book that I will more than likely read once before relegating to a bookshelf. Also, the people on the site are lovely, lovely people. There’s an ‘Introduction for New Members’ section on the forum, so I introduced myself and talked about my Challenge. I got dozens of replies, and loads of requests to swap, in a matter of hours. Everyone’s supportive, helpful and most useful of all – book lovers!

J is for Joe Dunthorne

First off, I have an admission to do with this book. I know the author – we went to UEA at the same time and were in pretty much the same social circle. That said, I’ll try to write the review as if I don’t know the author (lovely boy that he is) so it’s as unbiased as possible. I just wanted to get that off my chest, and now I have – let’s carry on.
“Submarine” by Joe Dunthorne is a bit like Adrian Mole, but not. It’s a bit like my teenage years, but not, because mine weren’t ruled by the penis. It’s like nothing else I’ve read, in a nutshell.
Oliver Tate is a fifteen year old boy (at the beginning, at least) who’s having a few issues with his parents. They don’t understand him, but he understands them enough to know that they need reassurances that he’s okay. Unfortunately for Oliver, these reassurances have a habit of going awry. He goes to a therapist to show his parents what a grown up he is, and also so he can tell them that the therapist said that they need to talk to him more and tell him all of their secrets. Instead, the therapist turns out to be his allegedly pan-sexual neighbour whose car he vomited on after the alarm kept him awake all night. Oliver, in a fit of maturity, tells his neighbour what he did. Of course, the neighbour tells Oliver’s mum who’s obviously even more worried than she was before.

This is the interesting thing about the novel. As it’s Oliver’s diary, everything he says and does, along with everything he says happens, is subject to scrutiny because he’s acting as a natural filter. He writes like most people write diaries – by pretending someone else is reading. That means there’s another censor on his tales, along with the fact that his girlfriend, Jordana, is actually reading his diary (although he knows about this).

Oliver’s experiences reminded me of how I felt at sixteen – nearly an adult but, quite patronisingly, so very far away. It also explains a lot about the boys I knew at sixteen – how they seemed to think about things completely differently, and approach everything in a weird, underhand way. There were times when I wanted to shout at Oliver, and tell him to ring Jordana if he liked her, rather than not think of her at all. It does explain a lot though, and it helped that I’m ten years older and a different gender to the voice of the story.
His parents have problems, which is a problem for Oliver because really, he’s a child in a man’s body. It was difficult to tell whether they were as irritating as they were drawn, or if the teenage filter was tainting Oliver’s view. That didn’t really affect the story, as it’s meant to be Oliver’s tale, from his perspective and coloured with whatever opinion he has at the time.
It made me want to know Oliver as an older person – to see how he turned out and whether he retained his love of words and the keenness to fit in social situations, regardless of the consequences.
I liked that Wales was a character all on its own. Swansea and the surrounding areas were a big part of the diary, but not a conscious one. The reader can see that Oliver loves Wales and his hometown but isn’t yet aware of it. The beaches are lightly sketched with enough detail so they’re easy to visualise. I think it might have been easier for me because I spent my teenage years in Plymouth, which isn’t too far from Wales and has a pretty similar coastline, from what I’ve heard.
Apart from anything else, “Submarine” is funny. It’s the comical touches that prevent the parent/sex stuff from getting too heavy. It’s hard to describe, and my witterings won’t do the subtle nuances of Joey’s book justice, but sometimes Oliver says things or thinks things that I have thought too. Usually he says things out loud that I’ve thought, but have had the tact to keep internalised.

So. I’d recommend this for people who’re feeling a little bit nostalgic, or who want to read something a bit different.

Next week: Kate Atkinson’s “Behind the scenes at the museum”. If Amazon deliver on time. Eep.

Is for Ian Fleming

The book for ‘I’ is “From Russia with love” by Ian Fleming.
It was recommended by Mr Charming, as he loves Bond and I had never read a Bond book. Wikipedia tells me that it was the fifth Bond novel, and Mr Charming tells me that Fleming thought it’d be his last.
I’m really glad I read this book – it’s not one I would have chosen normally, partly because I can never remember the plots of the Bond films, only the title songs. I’m also not a great lover of spy/espionage/crime stories.
However, in the spirit of the book challenge (and bearing in mind that it’s only a couple of hundred pages long) I threw myself into the Russians Vs the British.
Fleming’s style is quite formal and you can tell he wrote it in the 1950s. Everything’s quite proper, with an atmosphere of change, like bated breath. The women are more vocal, the hotels he stays in are crumbling and there’s an air of decay throughout the book.
Aside from this, there are a few uncomfortable passages around slightly inappropriate views on women, races and groups of people which make it feel like your grandad’s just popped round and begun a conversation on those people who’ve just moved in down the road.
Still, you forgive him for being of a different generation, just as you forgive Bond. One of my favourite passages describes the Bond girl (who I called Thingybob Onatop for the whole thing – see, mixed up my plots again) Tatiana Romanov. Fleming describes her as a young Greta Garbo – beautiful, slim and fit through her ice dancing, but she’s done a bit too much of that so her behind is flat, like a man’s. Brilliant. I would swear that a woman had written that passage.
The story (for those of you who don’t know or, like me, can’t distinguish between Goldfinger, Goldeneye or Gold Member) is fairly simple. The Russians are annoyed that the rest of the world aren’t taking them seriously, so they decide to kill someone in an impressive way. This someone has to be suave and sophisticated and important to the English (the US was dismissed as being a bit rubbish – too much money) but not so important that they get a big, media slap on the wrist. They decide on their target as being a 007 agent called… Bond. Surprise! The chess champion and the manly matron come up with a plan to basically prostitute a girl to Bond, lure him into a false sense of security, and then someone else kills him. That way they have evidence that Bond was double agent-ing on good ol’ Blighty, which they can wave around in front of MI6.

Bond and M are frustratingly egotistical when it comes to dealing with the ruse. Tatiana Romanov pretends that she has a crush on Bond, and she wants to meet him with a stolen decoder as a kind of dowry. Instead of weighing up the options and considering that the Russians may well be up to something, Bond and M go haring off down the greed and arrogance path without even considering the tax payers’ money which will no doubt be wasted on the trip.

The interesting thing is that the story starts with the bad guys – Red Grant, SMERSH’s chief executioner, takes up a large chunk, along with Rosa Klebb. Bond doesn’t appear by name until chapter 5 (thank you, wikipedia) and the man himself follows a good few chapters later. This Bond is not the one from the films. The ladykiller charm is still there, but Bond has a scar down the left side of his face and on his shoulder which he is quite self conscious about. Herein lies the single oddity about reading a Bond book – you get to know what he’s feeling, what he thinks and what his insecurities are. It’s a little intrusive. The Bond dialogue fits with the films – there are the same witty one liners and quips – but the internal thoughts display an insecure man who dislikes getting older.

I’m not going to say any more about the story, as I’d like you to read it without the twists and turns ruined.
Fleming writes with authority and an ease which puts the reader straight into Istanbul, or on a shaky plane on Friday 13th, or in bed with a lady. Once the book challenge is over, I may well read the previous four books.

A begging note

Hello,
This is a book plea.

Does anyone have any of these books that I can borrow for one week in the next couple of months?
If anyone has any other suggestions for a first name author beginning with 'U', feel free to tell me - I don't really want to read Umberto Eco!

• Marian Keyes This Charming Man
• Nevil Shute A Town Like Alice
• Quentin Crisp The Naked Civil Servant
• Sophie Kinsella Confessions of a Shopaholic
• Umbero Eco The Name of the Rose
• Victor Hugo Les Miserables (the abridged version please - I can't read 1200 pages in a week!)
• Wilkie Collins The Woman in White

I promise I'll look after them and you'll get them back within ten days!

Thanks in anticipation.