Wolf Hall

I will hold up my hands and admit that I had preconceptions about Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. The Tudor period of history was not one that I had much prior knowledge of, excluding the names involved, nor one that interested me; truth be told, I expected it to be as turgid a reading experience as The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt (my thoughts on that book can be read here). Although big books don't normally faze me, I found Wolf Hall daunting; I tried to put aside my negative feelings towards the book but from the outset -and the seven pages of the cast of characters and family trees- that appeared to be a challenge. However, a few pages in and I had set my prejudices aside and was engaged in the story of Thomas Cromwell, protagonist of Wolf Hall. Cromwell is not often portrayed sympathetically but Mantel creates a compelling hero in him and conveys a loyal man and subject. The novel, although preliminarily beginning with his early life, follows his rise from Cardinal Wolsey's man to confidante of King Henry VIII; chiefly Mantel charts the years 1527-35 and Cromwell's influential hand in the annulment of the King's marriage with Katherine of Aragon and his subsequent union to Anne Boleyn as well as the early stages of the Reformation.

Wolf Hall is overly-long; I state the obvious about a heavy 650 pages tome but it does drag and lag in parts. Some of the dialogue could definitely have been cut without detracting from the plot but the minute attention to detail weaves an intricate tapestry of the time. I was fully immersed in the period and have gone from having no discernible history in the era to now seeking out The Tudors and The Other Boleyn Girl to fuel my need for more.

Set in a period where flesh burns and heads roll, Wolf Hall has an engaging plot to propel it forward although I found it lost steam during the last 150-pages or so; once Anne had been installed as (current) consort and the attention was on the imprisonment of Sir Thomas More, my attention waned. The historical events are meticulously researched and often the prose became bogged down in the sheer wealth of information presented; I preferred the less rigid factual detail and instead the insight given into life at court. The bawdy (sixty years at least before Shakespeare) was entertaining with a lot of sex and sexual gossip or innuendo; everyone was apparently sleeping with everyone else, extra-maritally or occasionally incestuously (not incest as it is considered nowadays but the morally ambiguous sleeping with the sibling of a dead -and sometimes living- spouse or the wife of your son). Many parts were humorous with jokes about everyone being named Thomas and if they are not then they are seemingly named Henry I thought that this brought out Mantel's love for the period yet also a sense of humour about the historical facts she was presenting.

I have seen across a number of reviews people's issue with Mantel using "he" continually as a pronoun and confusion over whom she was referring to; I had no problem with this and found it obvious that it was Cromwell, unless otherwise stated. I find it curious that this was not apparent to more people but perhaps I had a better understanding of her style being forewarned. As for the writing itself, the prose is not glowing but it does transport and convey. However, if unlike me, you are aware of the story being told, then the book may fail to captivate you. I seem to enjoy historical fiction when I have no -or little- knowledge of the facts unveiled; I may have enjoyed The Children's Book more if any of what Byatt had told us had been new to me. Mantel was instructive in my case and she intrigued me. My only other criticism is that the title Wolf Hall shifts focus from Anne Boleyn to Jane Seymour, but that I am sure will be taken up in the intended sequel.

The Quickening Maze

Of the 2009 Man Booker contenders, The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds was the book that I anticipated the most and I left reading it until last. The blending of fact with fiction and the literary appropriation of history excited me; although historical novels were a recurring feature on this year's Booker lists, The Quickening Maze was the one that initially appealed.

Based on real events in Epping Forest on the edge of London around 1840, The Quickening Maze centres on the first incarceration of the great nature poet John Clare. After years struggling with alcohol, critical neglect and depression, Clare finds himself in High Beach Private Asylum - an institution run on reformist principles which would later become known as occupational therapy. At the same time another poet, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and becomes entangled in the life and catastrophic schemes of the asylum's owner, the peculiar, charismatic Dr Matthew Allen. [from dust-jacket]

I knew little of Tennyson and even less of Clare before reading. This is a creative and deft exploration of madness. In nineteenth century Epping Forest, the lives of the great poets are imaginatively vividly rendered and Clare's insanity most of all. Rewriting the poems of Byron whilst in the asylum, Clare -in the novel- believed he was Byron and in his mind's decline confused his child love, Mary, whom he hallucinated, with the many Marys that Byron loved.

Foulds is a poet himself but I never found the prose overly-poetic; beautiful words, yes, but accessible, simple, and a demonstrable love-affair with language. Structured through seven seasons with short vignettes and shifting narratives, the novel is very accomplished but I was never fully engaged; I enjoyed the novel but I wasn't captivated. The characters, although interesting, didn't gel for me. The Quickening Maze is a very subtle novel that intelligently blurs the lines between fact and fiction; it is beautifully written and crafted but some of its genius and strong themes could easily be missed in its gentle style. Its power though lies in the raw and intense evocation of the peasant poet's descent into madness and the other characters movement into futility and hopelessness. For fans of Clare and Tennyson and of course those of beautiful prose then this will be a flawless and enjoyable read but for those of us who enjoy compelling narrative and characters, this is somewhat lacking.

[Tennyson upon being asked his opinion of Byron's poetry] 'I remember when he died. I was a lad. I walked out into the woods full of distress at the news. It was the thought of all he hadn't yet written, all bright inside him, being lost for ever, lowered into darkness for eternity. I was most gloomy and despondent. I scratched his name onto a rock, a sandstone rock. It must still be there, I should think.'

The wind separated into thumps, into wing beats. An angel. An angel there in front of her. Tears fell like petals from her face. It stopped in front of her. Settling, its wings made a chittering sound. It paced back and forth, a strange, soft, curving walk that was almost like dancing. It reached out with its beautiful hands to steady itself in the mortal world, touching leaves, touching branches, and left stains of brightness where it touched.

She lay in her open grave, miles down, with the sharp voices of the places like dim clouds far above. She lay as still as she could. Her heart kept up its hateful slow tread in her chest. Warm tears that gave no relief now and then rolled into her ears, stopped, started again.

The Man Booker Prize 2009

The winner for the Man Booker Prize 2009 was announced earlier tonight/last night. The winner is Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

My official statement yesterday (on other people's blogs and social networking sites) in reply to who I wanted to win was "my heart says Mawer; my head says Coetzee; either would make me happy but the former richer. I will possibly cry and throw things if Byatt wins because that was possibly the most turgid reading experience that I have had all year."

I have read 5/6 of the shortlisted novels so far. I have yet to read Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and of course the one I have yet to read is the one to win! My review of The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds will follow later this week. I read 10/13 of the longlist and, for the most part, consider it a rewarding experience. My time and interest have been invested in this year's prize and I am thankful for some of the great books that it introduced me to whilst others I had discovered myself and through fellow bloggers before the longlist was announced.

I have intensely followed this year's prize and I am grateful that my present circumstances allowed me the time to devote to it. In preparation for the award last night I watched Friday October 2nd's episode of Newsnight Revew on BBC iplayer as it was devoted to discussion of the Booker contenders; if you do have access to iplayer then try to watch it if you can as the discussion of these titles is interesting, especially in the differing impressions that they evoke in the panel and the viewer. They called Mantel or Byatt to win even though their opinion of the Byatt wasn't always favourable and quite resembled mine at times; some of the few negative comments about the Mantel could have been applied to Byatt in my mind (chunkster in need of a good edit).

It was interesting that the one from the shortlist that they thought a "page-turner" -The Glass Room- is the one they thought didn't have a chance of winning. Despite it being second popular favourite at the bookmakers and mine for the reasons that it engaged me and I actually cared about the characters and thought the narrative was propelled by plot and the language and descriptions of the house and fluid architecture were sumptuous, it didn't win the critics' vote (nor that of the Booker judges). Is it curious that the winning novel is not one that you cannot put down but one that you have to read slowly to apparently appreciate was their one of two contenders for the prize; a contender that ended up losing to the other chunkster on the list.

I have the utmost respect for the judges who read the contenders three times each and imagine that they did discover new attributes and failures in them all but if I never read The Children's Book again it will be too soon; I'm relieved it didn't win as I was very reluctant to break any of my possessions and didn't have my own copy of the novel (thankful for small mercies) to throw out of the window into upcoming traffic. I will eventually read Wolf Hall but currently I am still fifth in line at the library.

The Children's Book

I had preconceptions when I went into the challenge of reading The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. When I say challenge I am not solely referring to the challenge of reading the Man Booker 2009 longlist/shortlist but that The Children's Book was a challenge in itself. I was daunted, not by its length as 615 page books don't normally faze me but by the tome-like density of The Children's Book. It was a slog to read; at times I felt as if I was wading through waist-high snow and not progressing anywhere very quickly. My boyfriend said that he has never -in six and a half years of us being together- seen me take so long to read a book; it took me nine days to eventually finish it. The sheer epic scope of this novel and its minute attention to period detail made it, for me, a very slow read and feat of endurance. The overwhelming amount of detail provided was impressive but I found most of it superfluous and thought that Byatt required a lot more editing.

The Children's Book is certainly accomplished but I often felt that I was reading a historical account of the Victorian and Edwardian periods and not a piece of literary fiction; I was not engaged at all in the characters or the plot that was hidden amongst the detail. I did enjoy the last forty pages -the final section, "The Age of Lead", that was set during World War I- but it was not long enough nor good enough to make up for the other 575 pages of boredom. If I had not had to read this book for my Booker challenge, I honestly don't think I would have finished it as it was a chore. For the most part I did not find it enjoyable and was actually counting down the pages until it was over; at the last 150 pages stage I kept nodding off at every second paragraph, which I think is telling of something far greater than tiredness.

The premise appealed to me and literary fiction that was both about fairy tales in part and also about one of my favourite periods in history should have engrossed me but it didn't. I find Byatt dry and like Rachel of Book Snob I suspect that she was attempting to write a thesis about Victoriana and not a novel. I haven't provided a synopsis of the novel because it can easily be found on an online bookselling website or in other reviews; what I have provided is my gut reaction to the book and apologies to the Byatt fans or to those who thoroughly enjoyed the book.

As I said at the beginning, I went in with preconceptions. Reading the first glowing review of The Children's Book only served in putting me off when large, detailed quotes were used to highlight the novel's style; I know that books that contain such historical detail at the expense of storyline are not for me. Byatt has a large cast of characters that mainly belong to four families: the Wellwoods, with matriarch children's writer Olive Wellwood at their helm; their cousins; the Cains, the father Prosper Cain the alchemist of the South Kensington Museum - later to become the Victoria and Albert; and the Fludds, headed by the famous potter, Benedict, who is a volatile genius; the remainder of the cast are integrated into one or all of these families or are merely supplementary but at times I felt the need of a family tree to keep them all straight in my head especially when one of the characters begins to be referred to by another name...

Proportionately I have given you over 600 words of what I didn't like but now for what I did. I appreciated the ambition of the novel, even if it did not engage me. I was interested in the period but it was altogether too much. I enjoyed the intertextuality of the novel and the use of popular literature of the time to parallel sections of the plot; where I didn't enjoy the sections of Olive Wellwood's tales, I did enjoy Byatt's references to them and comparisons with Peter Pan. Tom Wellwood didn't want to be a grown-up and his shadow was "snipped off his feet in his cradle, by a monstrous rat." I also liked the war poetry that was written in the final section. The Bluebeard allusions were interesting as was the puppet theatre and I welcomed the cameos by Oscar Wilde and Marie Stopes and the walk-on appearances by J. M. Barrie and H. G. Wells.

Lastly, some of the writing that I liked:

Dorothy was born in the late autumn of 1884. Phyllis was born in the spring of 1886. In 1888 a girl was stillborn. In 1887 Olive wrote some stories for children, and sold them to various magazines. These were conventional tales of children suffering hardship - an orphan rescued by a nabob, miners' children fending off starvation, a sickly child restored by a talking parrot.

Hedda was born in 1890 and Florian in 1892.
In 1889 Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book appeared. Tales for children suddenly included real magic, myths, invented worlds and creatures. Olive's early tales had been grimly sweet and unassuming. The coming - or return - of the fairytale opened some trapdoor in her imagination. Her writing became compulsive, fluent and daring.

The story books were kept in a glass-faced cabinet in Olive's study. Each child had a book, and each child had his or her own story. It had began, of course, with Tom, whose story was the longest. Each story was written in its own book, hand-decorated with stuck-on scraps and coloured patterns.

Olive considered him. Reasons for his madness flickered across her mind and were rejected. The writer in her could could have imagined a scene in which the secret had 'slipped out'. The woman in her felt both threatened and enraged. The woman needed to keep calm, or the writer would be unable to work tomorrow. The woman was afraid of age and loss.

Backwards and forwards both. The Edwardians knew they came after something. The sempiternal Queen was gone, in all her manifestations, from the squat and tiny widow swathed in black crape and jet beads, to the gold-encrusted, bedizened, crowned idol who was brought out at durbars and jubilees. That pursed little mouth was silent for ever. Her long-dead mate, who had most seriously cared for the lives of working-men and for the wholesome and beautiful and proliferating arts and crafts, persisted beside her in the name of the unfinished Museum, full of gold, silver, ceramics, bricks and building dust.

The Glass Room

When the Man Booker longlist of 2009 was announced I didn't know anything at all about The Glass Room by Simon Mawer and it didn't appeal. In fact, I was deterred because the book's cover reminded me of one of my University textbooks. The Booker enabled me to read a book that I would not have read otherwise and I have been rewarded. The Glass Room is an exceptional novel and I am now championing it to win this year's prize; it is definitely in contention for my book of the year although that doesn't come with a cheque for £50,000 and international acclaim.

All of the six Booker shortlisted novels are set in the past. The Glass Room is set in the Modernist period and encompasses the lead up to WWII and its aftermath and its affect on one house, one family, and the people they love.

The Glass Room, the subject and character, is a room of glass (clever things are done with the Czech and German translations where it also means the room of tranquility), the feature room in a modernist home. Architect Rainer von Abt creates a dream-home for a newly married couple, Viktor and Liesel Landauer; the Landauer House becomes an architectural sensation, a piece of art in its own right. The novel follows the Landauer House and its exquisite glass room, an open space of light and balance, through the history of an unsettled Eastern Europe and its time as a family home; a Nazi laboratory; a shelter from war; a physiotherapy gymnasium; and a museum from private ownership into Nazi hands to Soviet ones to those of the Czechoslovak state. The passing of ownership illegally is one of the novel's central themes - who owns art? Is it the property of the artist, the commissioner, or the public, and can a building legally be considered a work of art? A curious question in light of the author's note, where Mawer states that although The Glass Room is a work of fiction, its house and setting are not (apparently the Landauer House is modelled on the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, in today's Czech Republic. It would seem from the brief entry I have linked to that Viktor and Liesel Landauer are also loosely modelled on the couple who had the house designed and built).

The writing in The Glass House is exceptional and the story deeply compelling; where you are shown the dramatic and breathtaking quality of the glass room so too do you experience a narrative that parallels it. The house is imbued with a past full of love and lust and witnesses the best and worst of Eastern European history and stands as testimony to endurance. The personal stories are engrossing but it is the story of the house that is awe-inspiring. If I can draw a crude comparison: Sarah Waters' personified Hundreds Hall, home to the Ayres family, in the Booker shortlisted The Little Stranger pales in comparison to the wonder that is the Landauer House.

Beautifully written and rendered, The Glass House sustains a leitmotif throughout of light, balance and space. I found it engrossing from the opening pages and was immersed in the lives of Viktor and Liesel, a Jew and a Gentile, and most of all of Liesel's close friend, Hana, who is a remarkabe character. I was wowed by this novel, its content and style, and thoroughly rewarded.

Some favourite passages (I didn't take note of many as I almost loved them all):

The house grew, the baby grew. The latter was a strange and rapid metamorphosis, punctuated by events of moment: the grasp of her hands, the focus of her eyes, her first smile, her recognition of Liesel and Viktor, the first time she raised herself on her hands, the first laugh. The growth of the house was more measured: the laying of steel beams, the pouring of concrete, the encapsulating of space. And ten delay, problems with materials and the workforce, argument and frustration stretching over the summer and the autumn before things were resolved.

How do you dismember a body? There are two fundamentally different approaches – that of the surgeon and that of the mad axeman. The one is cool and calculating and progressive, with the application of bone-saw, scalpel and shears. The other is a frenzy of hacking and tearing, with blood everywhere and the taste of iron in the mouth. But whichever way you do it the result is the same – dismemberment.

The Six

The Man Booker shortlist has been announced. The Booker thirteen has been whittled down to six and they are:

Byatt, AS The Children's Book

Coetzee, J M Summertime

Foulds, Adam The Quickening Maze

Mantel, Hilary Wolf Hall

Mawer, Simon The Glass Room

Waters, Sarah The Little Stranger

I am not surprised to see the big players on the list; I wanted Coetzee there and, although I haven't read the tomes yet, I expected to see the Byatt and Mantel. I am shocked to see The Little Stranger. I am most disappointed that my favourites -The Wilderness, Heliopolis, and How to Paint a Dead Man- are absent. I find this list predictable and unsatisfying.

I am looking forward to reading The Children's Book and The Glass Room and to finishing reading The Quickening Maze. I dread reading Wolf Hall and may actually give up the reading now that the shortlist unappeals. I'll read the remainder that I want to read and predict Coetzee to win or potentially Mawer, from things I've heard (I'll let you know if I disagree once I've read it.)

How to Paint a Dead Man

This is my seventh review of the thirteen longlisted titles for this year's Man Booker Prize. The shortlist is announced tomorrow and as I am only just over halfway through reviewing them (by design, intending to read them all by Awards night on October 6th) I am unable to make an informed decision as to which six titles will feature. I do, however, have favourites that I hope make the cut: The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey, Heliopolis by James Scudamore, and the latest I've read, How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall.

Divided into four distinct and apparently disparate narratives, How to Paint a Dead Man is deftly structured. It is not plot-driven, by any means, but is an exceptionally well-written and compelling meditation on art and its relation to life and death. The first narrative strain, "The Mirror Crisis", is set in present-day London and written in the second-person with the narrator, Susan, referring to herself as "you", which at once includes the reader and distances the character from dark events. Susan is an artist and a curator of art exhibitions and her twin brother, Danny, has recently died; in her grief she loses herself in a torrid affair with her married work colleague. Hall says of this narrative, "I wanted a clear perspective/sound/identifier for each of the four voices. The second person is the most unusual device to employ in novel-writing, but I really liked using it: that imperative inclusiveness asks the reader to think and respond slightly differently, and in this instance it seemed perfect for Susan's story of dislocation and intimate confession." This was the section I liked best, both in narrative structure and dark content. The raw emotion and striking literary style had me gripped from the open paragraph.

The second narrative, "Translated from the Bottle Journals", takes place in Italy in the early 1960s and is told in the first-person. Giorgio, an isolated artist, is dying and contemplates the events in his life that have distanced him from people -strangers and acquaintances- over the years.

"The Fool on the Hill" in the third-person relates the story of Peter Caldicutt, an artist in Cumbria, thirty years after Giorgio's death, who becomes trapped in the Northern terrain, ironically the subject of his art and his fame. Peter wrote to Giorgio, the Italian artist and recluse, as a younger man and is also the father of Susan.

The fourth and final alternating narrative is "The Divine Vision of Annette Tambroni", which is also told in the third-person narrative; the latter two narratives are the ones I was engrossed in least, perhaps due to that authorial distance. Annette is a blind girl and was a student of Giorgio; she is an artist in her own right, a flower arranger, and her story is the most spiritual, religious, and surreal.

There is a very thin connection between the four narratives: Giorgio is connected to Peter and Annette; Peter to Giorgio and Susan; all four characters are artists and each narrative concerns a defining moment in their existence.

Whilst reading this, my seventh of the Booker longlist, I was struck by a similarly loose connection and cohesion to the nominees. Peter Caldicutt calls to mind Jake, the architect and protagonist with Alzheimer's in The Wilderness; Hall strongly writes two male characters, and Harvey creates Jake; Scudamore also has a memorable male narrator in Heliopolis and Sarah Waters creates her first in Dr Faraday. There are also, of course, the memorable alpha Cheeta and the character John Ceotzee, J. M. Coetzee's fictioneer. Perhaps coincidental but there is apparently a common theme of maleness amongst this year's choices. Whatever their similarities, I foresee How to Paint a Dead Man making it to the shortlist tomorrow.

The funny thing is, you've been thinking so long and hard about death that you've lost sight of its fraternal twin, its obverse pole. This is the prerogative of grief you suppose. There have been times you've not realised you were crying, until you put your hand to your face and it came away wet, until you noticed that someone was looking at you curiously, the concerned stranger on the train, or the woman in the supermarket who offered you a tissue. You have been so consumed that you've almost forgotten about the other side, the affirmation, the positive stroke. Life.

In these preparatory passages there is also a section on how to paint a dead man. I have often wondered if the condition of death is perhaps less grave to the human anatomy than physical injuries. For in death there is release from suffering. Sadly, the master craftsman is unable to instruct us in the healing of wounds.

Summertime

When the Man Booker longlist was announced I was excited to see J. M. Coetzee's inclusion on it, for Summertime. Although I had only read my first book by Coetzee, Disgrace, earlier that month I was excited to read more by him, especially following the great experience that was my primary encounter with his work. I was lucky enough to obtain a copy of Summertime pre-publication (due to be published September 3rd in the UK) and could not resist reading it more or less immediately.

Summertime is a fictionalised memoir of the author himself, who appears in the third-person via memories recounted by individuals who featured during this period of his life and through his own notebooks, research gathered together by a young English biographer. It is the last in a trilogy that began with Boyhood and progressed to Youth, neither of which I have read. However, I don't think it is a requirement to read the others as Summertime works well as a stand-alone and rarely mentions Coetzee's earlier life; the only time I found myself curious about something, mentioned frequently but not elaborated upon, was in reference to his expulsion from the United States, although I'm not even sure if that features in the earlier works. This allusion to events prior to 1972-77 -the period the biographer is researching and when Coetzee was in his thirties, living in Cape Town with his widowed father, and "finding his feet as a writer"- is interesting in terms of the literary construct of the novel: Summertime is very much a fraction of the whole, a glimpse of a life, but works independently of it. It is difficult to describe how Summertime functions so completely and resembles a novel that goes from a-z when it is not complete, and it only covers l-p in the fictional Coetzee's life, but it does; I was never left feeling dissatisfied and as if I was missing the bigger picture.

That leads me to distinguishing between Coetzee, the character, and Coetzee, the novelist. I suspended belief when approaching this novel as I don't think it is an accurate memoir, nor do I think it is supposed to be, nor do I want it to be. I think that Coetzee is incredibly clever in achieving what he has, even if I am not entirely sure what that is. Like Disgrace, Summertime is an exceptionally though-provoking read, and I find myself struggling to order and convey those thoughts. Summertime is very much a meditation on being an author and whether by putting words on paper, you are thus putting yourself on paper, immortalising yourself and, consequently, belonging to the reader. I struggle with this concept. People in the public eye should be afforded privacy and those in the literary world are not part of our world, it is their words that are, but neither are our property.

I attempted to divide John Coetzee, the character, and J.M. Coetzee, the writer, in my mind to prevent discombobulation and brain explosion. I believe that J. M. Coetzee is either creating a persona for himself or thumbing his nose at the media and public who have created the persona for him, either of which I respect. I admire Coetzee's sheer ambition and scope of this work. Although Summertime spans a short period of time it engages with large literary questions regarding the relationship between author and reader and of literary biography, questions that will remain with me, whilst I attempt to figure out the answers and what I would like them to be. Summertime is not plot-driven but works in a sequence of notes and interviews, the content of which is often dramatised. The biographer never meets John Coetzee and the distant and detached, self-effacing, mysterious character that is presented is done so through the [biased] memories of others and via his own notebooks, that may have been doctored for public perception. I was also given the sense that this was a posthumous biography and that Coetzee was being immortalised post-mortem. I have even less of an idea of J.M. Coetzee as a person now than I did before reading the novel, everything is a fiction but his words, and not a sense of him, are what stay with me, and that, I think, is the point.

Favourite passages:

Immortality of a kind, a limited immortality, is not so hard to achieve after all. Why then does he persist in inscribing marks on paper, in the faint hope that people not yet born will take the trouble to decipher them?

[A]m I wrong about John Coetzee? Because to me, frankly, he was not anybody. He was not a man of substance. Maybe he could write well, maybe had a certain talent for words, I don't know, I never read his books, I was never curious to read them. I know he won a big reputation later; but was he really a great writer? Because to my mind, a talent for words is not enough of you want to be a great writer. You also have to be a great man. And he was not a great man.

It would be very, very naive to conclude that because the theme was present in his writing it had to be present in his life.

I did not read all of them. After Disgrace I lost interest. In general I would say that his work lacks ambition. The control of the elements is too tight. Nowhere do you get a feeling of a writer deforming his medium in order to say what has never been said before, which is to me the mark of great writing. Too cool, too neat, I would say. Too easy. Too lacking in passion. That's all.

Nobel Laureate Coetzee has won the Booker twice, apparently controversially, so will he be the first author to win for a third time? I think there is a very good chance and that Summertime is an attempt in "deforming his medium in order to say what has never been said before".

Heliopolis

Another contender for this year's Man Booker Prize, Heliopolis by James Scudamore was a welcome discovery, which is what's so great about the prize and challenging myself to read the longlist: it opens me up to literature and writers that otherwise I may not have encountered.

I loved this novel. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting but it surpassed whatever expectations were there. I was reminded slightly of Haruki Murakami in its surrealism but also thought there were definite aspects of magic realism, perhaps because of its South American setting, which lends itself to the genre beautifully.

Ludo, the main protagonist, is twenty-seven years old and works in São Paulo; he was born in the the largest favela (shantytown), Heliopolis, before being taken in with his cook mother by a rich family who later adopted him. Now, Ludo is sleeping with his adopted sister, Melissa, who is also the wife of his best friend, Ernesto, and is about to undergo a transformation in a week that sees him in dramatic situations whilst he, with hindsight, recounts his past and attempts to control his present.

Each chapter title refers to particular food or drink with that dish or beverage central to the narrative in that chapter; as scents and tastes often form our memories, so too do they for Ludo. I was amazed at food's centrality to the plot when there was no mention of it in the synopsis, excluding reference to Ludo's insatiable appetite; it is one of the things that makes the novel exceptional in my eyes. Food imagery pervades the text and Scudamore uses food to describe experiences and emotions.

I wanted to press my fingertip on the metal of the pan to mark the moment, make it permanent. I thought of watching it sizzle as the hot oil erased my fingerprint and coloured the skin. What would it smell like? The burnt hair smell of a car wreck? Charred and succulent, like steak? Sweet and sickly, like plum sauce?

The setting came across to me as futuristic and even dystopian, with the rich seldom on street level but always landing their helicopters on heli-pads on buildings ensuring that they never mix with people from the favelas in the poorer element of the city or engage with the tedium of everyday life.

During the day, he might hop to another high-rise to meet someone for lunch, or to attend an afternoon meeting, but he never touches the pavement. It's not just a question of safety: if he went by car he could get snared in a traffic jam lasting hours. Nobody who's anybody gets driven to work in the city these days.

I then thought that the descriptions of São Paulo could be embellished realism as it is the largest city in Brazil and the nineteenth richest city in the world. However, reading Simon's review of Heliopolis and the subsequent comments, the insight provided by The Converted One suggests that the depiction of São Paulo whilst illuminating is actually toned down. Moreover, if anyone wrote a non-diluted version of his home city, The Converted One thinks that no one would ever go. This fascinates me as I have always wanted to visit Brazil and although Scudamore's description of favela life and poverty are often grim, it doesn't deter me in any way; Scudamore lived in Brazil so I imagine his representation of the city is realistic. In comparison, I am reminded of reading The Other Hand last week and thinking that Chris Cleve did Nigeria no favours as a tourist destination; it is interesting the power that literary description has over a place and how good a job Scudamore did in transporting me there whilst presenting the city fairly.

As yet I have only read five of the thirteen longlisted titles for the Booker but so far I am championing Heliopolis; yes, it even surpasses The Wilderness, one of my favourites this year, in my esteem for its brilliance and originality.

Some favourite passages:

My mother wouldn't have dreamt of showing me how she really felt, but her sadness was as evident in the chicken stew she ladled on to my plate as if the meat had been simmered in her tears.

As the music struck up, I swept away the debris of the meal, collecting the intact steaks and pocketing them, munching on them like apples, getting the meat down even when it hurt my throat to swallow, devouring it so it wouldn't go to waste, trying to get round the tables and clear as many of them as possible so that my mother wouldn't see them coming back.

By the time it was over, so was the storm, leaving behind fresh air, dripping leaves, and roads that gushed in the evening sunlight with milky orange water. As usual, the rain brought hordes of frogs out on to the driveway, croaking and belching and slipping about in the mud. The guests' roaring cavalcade of off-road vehicles smashed them all in a euphoric blare of car horns and klaxons as it sped back to the farm. Their burst bodies lay there crisping for days afterwards.

Me Cheeta

This is my first review of a book from the Booker longlist since its announcement (links to the ones I read before their nomination can be found here) and when I embarked on reading it in full. Let me preface this post by saying that I will review each and every longlisted title that I manage to read. Reading the longlist is already opening me up to some books that I may not have read otherwise and overall I am hoping that it will be a rewarding and enriching experience. By writing down my thoughts on all the nominees I think it will make easier for me to objectively choose the title that I would like to win as well as potentially encouraging others, who aren't reading the longlist themselves, to pick up a title that they normally wouldn't read.

Me Cheeta : The Autobiography by James Lever is the inclusion on the list that surprised most people; some saw it as a novelty, others a travesty, and I saw it as an opportunity (although the cynic in me wonders if it was merely a token gesture). The fictional autobiography of Cheeta the chimpanzee, companion of Tarzan on the silver-screen, Me Cheeta (an allusion to Tarzan's catch-phrase) is a satire of the golden-age of Hollywood. I laughed out-loud from the spoof-memoir's "Note to the Reader" and for the majority of the first section when Cheeta is liberated from the African jungle and "rehabilitated" in the jungle that is Hollywood.

If you're a star, Hollywood is a playground, and if you're not, they're right, it is a jungle. It's a town of heartless bottom-lines and harsh decisions and betrayals so ugly that from time the very earth beneath it shudders in contempt, like its teeth have been set on edge.

However, the novelty wore off some and although I still found it amusing in parts and overall I enjoyed it, I did feel it was dry in places.

The concept is incredibly clever; Me Cheeta reads like a real memoir and Cheeta is a fabulous (and most importantly, a believable) narrator but I wasn't fully engaged in Thirties and Forties Hollywood, despite a few cameos from more alluring stars and a definite sense of the period. In my opinion the first half is stronger than the second but perhaps that is because it concerns a more amusing and happier time, when Cheeta was at the height of his career, but the sadness of the memories of a has-been star in the latter half is less humorous. Its strength certainly seems to be in its complete credibility as a memoir, down to its photographs, filmography and index. I greatly admire its achievement and its wit; Cheeta's perception of the human world is that of a primate as a guest in it and misunderstandings and confusion ensue:

I overheard William Powell tell Jane Russell that 'The two inevitable things in life, as Mark Twain had it, are death and taxis'. Taxis, sure: wherever there are humans there'll be cars, there's no doubting that. And those cars will doubtless always include taxis. But death?

The language is quite colourful at times and the content a little lewd, probably the sections that I found hilarious are the ones that make them cringe.

Cheeta interacts with the implied reader frequently providing it with more of an authentic feel (yes, there were even times that I could easily suspend my disbelief and believe I was being addressed by a chimpanzee). He informs, shows, tells and instructs:

In fact, unless I specifically inform you otherwise, every single action performed by an adult human male in this memoir can be thought of as an attempt to attract the attention of some sexually receptive females.

It is all very tongue-in-cheek and refreshing. Did it change my life? No. Do I think it will win the Booker? No, but chimpanzees might fly.

Next I expect a sequel to this attempt with the autobiography of Bubbles, the chimpanzee who lived with Michael Jackson in Neverland.

The Island at the End of the World

I came across The Island at the End of the World by Sam Taylor thanks to Jackie at Farm Lane Books and her predictions for this year's Man Booker Prize longlist. Regrettably it did not make the list -an omission that now baffles me- but I still borrowed it from the library as its premise fascinated me and I had high hopes for an enriching reading experience.

Synopsis (courtesy of Waterstone's): Eight-year-old Finn lives with his father, Pa, and sisters Alice and Daisy on the wreck of an ark on a remote and isolated island. The last remaining survivors of the flood, they rely on this tight-knit family unit for emotional and practical support. For Finn, the island and his relationship with Pa encompass his entire world. But Alice - a teenager growing increasingly frustrated and suspicious of the stories Pa tells of their past - begins despairingly to seek contact with the outside world. And when a boy, a stranger, is washed up on the shore, it appears they may not be alone after all. "The Island at the End of the World" is a deeply unnerving and beautifully written exploration of family, reality and fiction, and the baffling nature of the adult world through the eyes of children.

My hopes were not dashed. I loved this book and its sheer ambition. It is a biblical allegory of the Book of Genesis and covers the Ark; Paradise; and the Tree of Knowledge in a present post-apocalyptic setting. The narration in the first part of the novel alternates between Finn & and Pa and in the second between precociously adolescent Alice and Pa. Finn's narration is in his own langauge, an invented eight year old child's phonetic vernacular, and it is difficult to read and decipher at times but I highly admired it. If there is any feature of the novel that may detract readers then it is this, Finn's narration, which may appear gimmicky or even pretentious to some, but is worth persevering with. The stark contrast between the innocence of Finn's observations and the dark, brutal narration or Pa is well-realised as it is later with Alice's more perceptive but rebellious insights. A central theme of the novel is the lengths parents go to protect their children and the paradise/home they create to nurture and keep them safe; when the serpent enters and attempts to destroy that paradise, there is nothing that Pa won't do to stop him.

Alice begins to suspect Pa's dark side and the reader sees it early on but what surprised me, and what I consider Sam Taylor's greatest achievement with this work, is that by the end I sympathised with Pa and pitied his mad delusions and what they had reduced him to. There was an incongruity between the past and present, of Pa (Ben) in "Babylon" (Los Angeles) eight years prior when he envisioned Apocalypse and found God during the first earthquake that preceded "the flood". Ben worked in marketing, and was a very successful, well-off, typically middle-class husband and father until the earthquake and his subsequent devotion. Although very subtly suggested, I suspect through the timeline that these pre-flood days occurred immediately after 9/11 as allusions are made to War and a President who will bring on annihilation; there is also a passion allusion to Hurricane Katrina, and it may be what inspired the flood.

The ending is very much open to interpretation but is not frustrating, either way the "end" is still the same. It reminded me of an M. Night Shyamalan movie but besides that this novel defies categorisations or a clear-cut genre, in the way that Life of Pi by Yann Martel and Everything is Illuminated by Jonafan Safran Foer stand alone. I can't remember who it was who said that all literature is imitation but Sam Taylor manages to create something new and fresh. He draws on the Bible, Shakespeare (especially The Tempest), and the great desert island novels such as Lord of the Flies, which shares a dystopia, and Robin Crusoe; I was even reminded of Enid Blyon's island books, The Secret Island and Five on an Island in the descriptions of food and how they fed and fended for themselves. Another novel that came to mind is the post-apocalyptic novel, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, where they discover that there are other survivors. In The Island at the End of the World they only have three books from which to read:

"[O]n the walls now pears to be some thing I thought dint zist. Books. Hunerds of em by the looks of it maybe even thouzuns. But how. Ikerda sworn Pa told us hed only saved three books from the flood. The three mos portant books of all he said Tales the Bible an Shakespeare. All the other books in the world came from these he said."

The above quote also gives a helpful example of the writing style in Finn's parts as well as the suggestion that not all is as it seems. As Alice tells Finn:

"You only no wat Pa told you."

This is the crux of the novel; children believe what there parents tell them but where parents will go to any lengths to protect their children, children will go to any lengths to discover what their parents aren't telling them. The Tree of Knowledge is a dangerous place.

I enjoyed this novel immensely. I love when writers take risks with literature and I look forward to reading more of Sam Taylor's work; his debut novel, The Republic of Trees made my radar last year and promptly fell off it again but that will be remedied in the future along with his second novel.

I leave you with his re-working of the classic nursery rhyme:

Its raining its poring

The neighbors ignoring
They laft at our boar
Til we started to float
An they were all dead in the morning

Hotel du Lac

Reading a Man Booker prize winner (1994) on the day the longlist for this year's Man Booker prize was announced was coincidental but very apt. I had intended to read the book later this week instead but Simon convinced me otherwise. Another title contributed towards my personal Man Booker challenge, for which I have already read one other title this month.

I did not love Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner as I did Disgrace. Love is a strong word and I tend to overly enthuse and effuse over books and give my heart away too freely but I did enjoy it, even if I didn't hug it upon finishing it.

I appreciated Hotel du Lac, there are wonderfully accomplished passages of beautiful writing. I was at once reminded of E. M. Forster's A Room With a View and of Alfred Hitchcock's stunning and supsense-filled thrillers, perhaps connoted by the black and white photographed cover and one scene between a man and a woman set on the sea? The writing especially in the first half of the novel wowed me.

Edith Hope, a romance novelist, has removed herself to the Hotel du Lac at the end of the season for reasons at first unknown and only hinted at. Edith writes letters to her married lover, David, during her stay and engages with the other hotel residents. At first Edith observes from a distance, people watching, and then later engages with them. Interspersed with the main timeline within the hotel are flashbacks to Edith and what occurred to prompt her enforced sojourn to Hotel du Lac.

As with the other Booker winner that I read this month Hotel du Lac concerns personal disgrace and societal embarrassment; it is about the choices we make and the subsequent repercussions we face.

"She felt as if grief and terror had been unleashed by her long night of introspection and that she must be called to account whenever and wherever damage might be done and atonement might be made."

If I gave star ratings on my reviews then this would be a 4* novel.

The Man Booker longlist

As mentioned, I have challenged myself to read all Man Booker winners and enjoying them so far. I have also decided to read the Man Booker 2009 Longlist announced today. The longlist nominated novels are as follows:

Byatt, AS The Children's Book

Coetzee, J M Summertime

Foulds, Adam The Quickening Maze

Hall, Sarah How to Paint a Dead Man

Harvey, Samantha The Wilderness

Lever, James Me Cheeta

Mantel, Hilary Wolf Hall

Mawer, Simon The Glass Room

O'Loughlin, Ed Not Untrue & Not Unkind

Scudamore, James Heliopolis

Tóibín, Colm Brooklyn

Trevor, William Love and Summer

Waters, Sarah The Little Stranger

I have read three of the thirteen nominated titles: The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey, Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín, and The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (titles link to my reviews). I am delighted to see the first on the list, happy to see the second, and I expected to see the third; my redux post devoted to The Little Stranger suggested that I had missed something special on my first reading and although I am still not completely convinced, a place on the longlist supports my suspicions.

Some of the titles I hadn't heard of and another -Wolf Hall- I am not overly thrilled at having to read and not just because of its tome-like length. It is also going to take the longest to arrive in the library for me so it will be read last (I hope that the library request some more copies as otherwise I won't be able to read it in time). Neither Summertime and Love and Summer have been published yet but I have pre-ordered copies; everything else I have managed to reserve from my library and Me Cheeta, the one I am most surprised and intrigued by, I bought cheaply from Amazon. I haven't fully caught up on reading a synopsis for them all but so far the Coetzee is the one I am most looking forward to reading.

What about you? are you reading the longlist this year or wanting to read any you may be interested by? Are you excited by or happy to see some on the list?

The shortlist will be announced on September 8th and then the prize will be awarded to this year's winner on October 6th, which leaves me with ten weeks to read ten books.

At time of going to press I am also reading 1984 winner Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner so look out for a review of that in coming posts. My sincerest apologies for the Booker-orientated road this blog is taking but this year's prize will only be a brief sojourn -interrupted by Persephone Reading Week- and normal service will resume in October!

Library Loot

It's been some time since my last Library Loot post but, for the most part, I was staying true to my resolution not to request or borrow any more books from the library. However, as you can see above, I broke my resolve a little.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is the book I am reading with one of my book groups next month and it's not one that interests me (non-fiction about success) but the point of book groups I think is to read things that you normally wouldn't choose for yourself.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is a book that I could not resist any longer. So many bloggers have raved about this book, a friend posted on my facebook page that I had to read it, and I read somewhere that Collins was inspired by Shirley Jackon's "The Lottery", which I loved.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last year and will contibute to my personal challenge of reading all of the winners. The library had it in stock so I thought "why not?"

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner won the Man Booker in 1984 and I am also reading those. I was browsing online looking at books one day recently (as I do) and I read the opening pages of this via Amazon and I desperately wanted to read the remainder. However I had a friend visiting me this weekend who described it as "the most boring book" she had ever read.

Ideally I am intending to read one Pulitzer and one Man Booker winner a month and this month I have fulfilled one part of that goal. I am woefully behind in my reading - do you remember my overly ambitious summer reading list? I must make some extra time...

Disgrace

I shared earlier in the week the recent arrival of Vintage Bookers that should aid me in my personal Man Booker challenge. So far they are contributing to the challenge nicely as I immediately picked up Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee to read and finished it within two days, whilst also reading other things. I think that the main prize winners have the reputation of being dense and difficult, which is certainly not true of the ones I have read. Disgrace deals with difficult themes but it is an easy -as in straightforward, but not in subject- read; it also thought-provoking and powerful. At its essence it is a meditation on what makes a victim and what makes a perpetrator and also what is the meaning of disgrace. This is a highly intelligent novel with an uncompromising dark subject matter but it is incredibly accessible and not even the intermittent discussion of Lord Bryon is too high-brow.

The synopsis, courtesy of the Man Booker website:

Refusing to apologise after an impulsive affair with a student, David Lurie, a 52 year old professor in Cape Town, seeks refuge on his daughter’s farm where a savage and disturbing attack brings into relief the faults in their relationship. Pitching the moral code of political correctness against the values of Romantic poetry, Disgrace examines dichotomies both in personal relationships and in the unaccountability of one culture towards another.

Although David's affair is the impetus for the novel's events, it is more of a device and a foil to what happens later; it is interesting to compare what happens to Lucy, David's daughter, with what David does to Melanie, his student and "inamorata", and to deliberate on what men do and are capable of doing to women. Race is also a central theme and anti-semitism, or the subtle and clever allusions to the Holocaust, is an implicit one. It is brutal and savage at times, as are the human race, and the extended metaphor and symbolism of dogs that pervades the text is effective. It is bleak, the tension is unbearable at times and the themes are uncomfortable but in a necessary way. As I said, the book is thought-provoking and I am still thinking. If you haven't read it then do.

Recent Arrivals

Some very nice people at Vintage Books (Random House) sent me copies of their forthcoming Vintage Bookers, to be published next month. Aren't they pretty? The copies of Possession and How Late it Was, How Late are the older editions due to availability but I'm not complaining as this will make my Man Booker project all the easier. First up is Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee (I can return my library copy - hurray!) and then after that I'm not sure...

What's Another List?

After reading Karen at BookBath's post on Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout today, a novel that is on my summer reading list, I thought it was time to share a relevant ongoing personal reading challenge that I am attempting. Along with reading the Man Booker winners (and in the longterm also the nominees) and working my way through the Guardian's 1000 Novels, I am also planning to read all the winning novels of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (known as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel prior to 1948). This is the ongoing reading challenge that I have read the least for so far but I'm planning on chalking up a few in the coming months, starting with the most recent winner, Olive Kitteridge, and followed up by the winner from the previous year, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and then Interpreter of Maladies and The Color Purple, both of which I have been wanting to read for what seems like forever. March by Geraldine Brooks has also caught my eye a few times recently.

Striked through are novels read; in red are the ones I own but are unread.

2009 Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

2008 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2006 March by Geraldine Brooks
2005 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

2004 The Known World by Edward P. Jones

2003 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

2002 Empire Falls by Richard Russo

2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

2000 Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham

1998 American Pastoral by Philip Roth

1997 Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser

1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford

1995 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
1994 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
1993 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler

1992 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
1991 Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

1990 The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
1989 Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
1988 Beloved by Toni Morrison
1987 A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor

1986 Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

1985 Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie

1984 Ironweed by William Kennedy
1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
1982 Rabbit is Rich by John Updike

1981 A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

1980 The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

1979 The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

1978 Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson

1977 -

1976 Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

1975 The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

1974 -

1973 The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (read and reviewed here 03/08/09.)

1972 Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

1971 -

1970 Collected Stories by Jean Stafford

1969 House Made of Dawn by M. Scott Momaday

1968 The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

1966 Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter

1965 The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau

1964 -

1963 The Reivers by William Faulkner

1962 The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'connor
1961 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

1960 Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

1959 The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor

1958 A Death in the Family by James Agee

1957 -

1956 Andersonville by Mackinlay Kantor

1955 A Fable by William Faulkner

1954 -
1953 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

1952 The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

1951 The Town by Conrad Richter

1950 The Way West by A.B. Guthrie

1949 Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens

1948 Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener

1947 All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

1946 -

1945 A Bell for Adano by John Hersey

1944 Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin

1943 Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair

1942 In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow

1941 -

1940 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

1939 The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

1938 The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand
1937 Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

1936 Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis

1935 Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson

1934 Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller

1933 The Store by T.S. Stribling

1932 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

1931 Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes

1930 Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge

1929 Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin

1928 The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

1927 Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield

1926 Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

1925 So Big by Edna Ferber

1924 The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson

1923 One of Ours by Willa Cather

1922 Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington

1921 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

1920 -

1919 The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

1918 His Family by Ernest Poole

Having read only 7/83 of these novels, I'm thinking that this may take me some time! If I manage to read the five novels mentioned above the list, then I will be delighted. My Guardian 1000 and Man Booker projects take precedence, especially as the Man Booker is more achievable with only thirty or so novels still to read.

Moreover, I haven't even heard of some of these novels and think that prior to the 1940s, at least, they may be quite difficult to obtain. I consider myself to have read quite a lot of American Literature but I feel myself quite lacking in relation to this list. I imagine that some of these are far more well-known on the other side of the pond than they are here. Have you read any winners from this list that I haven't? What books would you recommend?

Recent Acquisitions...

Yesterday I splurged a little and bought one book I have been wanting to read for some time; another that it a previous Man Booker winner and a title that my friend raves about; and a third Pulitzer-winning novel that was marked down by 75%! Each in a different bookshop.

I visited the Persephone shop in Bloomsbury first of all and purchased Katherine Mansfield's Journal, which has been at the top of my wish-list recently. It was a fly-by visit (preventing me from splurging further) as I took the scenic route and managed to become somewhat lost; as I was late to meet a friend my visit was execution only and I found the book, looked for the Persephone bookbag and was disappointed to find a plain, beige, jute one rather than the pretty grey, paid and departed. Just as well because when it comes to Persephone books I resemble a child in a sweetshop.

Later on in the evening I popped into Foyle's on Charing Cross Road for a wander and to buy The Bone People by Keri Hulme. I had already checked that they had it in stock on the website as I am desperate to read this after discussing the Man Booker winners recently. This novel from New Zealand won the Booker in 1985 and my friend, who read it last year, really raved about it so I needed to lay my hands on it quickly (and the library doesn't have a copy).

Another friend and I then popped across the road and into Borders so that I could sneakily read the Johnny Depp feature interview in this month's US Vanity Fair (£4.50 for a magazine cannot be justified, even if it is imported and contains the luscious Mr Depp). As we entered I spied copies of Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout with huge "75 % off" red stickers on the front cover; I calculated that the book would cost £1.75 and that was an offer I couldn't refuse. This novel in stories has been appearing across the blogosphere since it won the Pulitzer and I am looking forward to reading it.

Moreover, as I am discussing recent acquisitions, I should really show off the beautiful Viragoes I have managed to acquire over the last few weeks. My Virago collection has bred and spawned since last I spoke of it, mainly through immense generosity from members of the librarything Virago group and from eagle-eye spotting out and about and on ebay. Most of my Virago collection is shown in the photographs at the bottom of the page. The titles pictured immediately below are the ones I acquired recently, all ones that I was anxiously on the look out for and I can't wait to read them, but first I have to tackle and overcome the huge pile of library books calling to me, "read me, Seymour, read me".

Man Booker

Don't you just love lists? I adore making lists of books that I want to read although I seldom stick to the rigidity of a list and often deviate from it. Stay tuned in the coming week for my summer reading list, which thus far only appears in my mind.

This year I am steadily progressing through the list of the Guardian's 1000 Books You Must Read and by year's end I should have completed one fifth of it, so that list will be taking me some time. Another list that I will probably want to embark on later this summer is the Man Booker Prize longlist, which will be announced at the end of July. So far I have dabbled with longlists and shortlists for the main literary prizes and only read ones that appealed to me but now that I am blogging I may make a conscious effort to complete the entire longlist, or at least the shortlist.

Thinking about the Man Booker prize and having requested J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace this week from the library I thought I would list the Booker winners that I have read (and those I own but have not yet read). There's a possibiility that I may try to read all of them - are there ones you have read that you particularly recommend or ones that you are wanting to read?

2008 - White Tiger by Aravind Ariga
2007 - The Gathering by Anne Enright
2006 - The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (own)
2005 - The Sea by John Banville
2004 - The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (reviewed here)
2003 - Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre (own)
2002 - Life of Pi by Yann Martel
2001 - True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
2000 - The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
1999 - Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee 15/07/09 (reviewed here)
1998 - Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (own)
1997 - The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
1996 - Last Orders by Graham Swift
1995 - The Ghost Road by Pat Barker (own)
1994 - How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman (own)
1993 - Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle (own)
1992 - The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
1992 - Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (joint winner)
1991 - The Famished Road by Ben Okri (own)
1990 - Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt (own)
1989 - The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
1988 - Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
1987 - Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
1986 - The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis
1985 - The Bone People by Keri Hulme (own)
1984 - Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner 29/07/09 (reviewed here)
1983 - Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee
1982 - Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally
1981 - Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
1980 - Rites of Passage by William Golding
1979 - Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald
1978 - The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch (own)
1977 - Staying On by Paul Scott
1976 - Saville by David Storey
1975 - Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
1974 - The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer
1974 - Holiday by Stanley Middleton (joint winner)
1973 - The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell
1972 - G. by John Berger
1971 - In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul
1970 - The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens
1969 - Something to Answer For by P.H. Newby

Nine -soon to be ten- of forty two winning novels is not great but neither is it woeful. Funnily enough I haven't read anything that won before the year I was born and wonder if this is telling at all or just coincidental? As an aside: Midnight's Children (the Booker of Bookers and the Best of Booker) is one of my favourite novels; I love its lushness and epic, grand scope, and continually discover new gems upon re-reading. Anyway, best get back to reading as I have a lifetime of reading lists ahead of me.