Death at Intervals

Title: Death at Intervals

Author: Jose Saramago

Number of pages: 196

Started: 12 November 2009

Finished: 16 November 2009

Opening words:

The following day, no one died. This fact, being absolutely contrary to life’s rules, provoked enormous and, in the circumstances, perfectly justifiable anxiety in people’s minds, for we have only to consider that in the entire forty volumes of universal history there is no mention, not even one exemplary case, of such phenomenon ever having occurred, for a whole day to go by, with its generous allowance of twenty-four hours, diurnal and nocturnal, without one death from an illness, a fatal fall, or a successful suicide, not one, not a single one.

Plot summary:

On the first day of the New Year, no one dies. This understandably causes great consternation amongst religious leaders - if there's no death, there can be no resurrection and therefore no reason for religion - and what will be the effect on pensions, the social services, hospitals? Funeral directors are reduced to arranging funerals for dogs, cats, hamsters and parrots. Life insurance policies become meaningless. Amid the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration: flags are hung out on balconies and people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity - eternal life. But will death's disappearance benefit the human race, or will this sudden abeyance backfire? How long can families cope with malingering elderly relatives who scratch at death's door while the portal remains firmly shut? Then, seven months later, death returns, heralded by purple envelopes informing the recipients that their time is up. Death herself is now writing personal notes giving one week's notice. However, when an envelope is unexpectedly returned to her, death begins to experience strange, almost human emotions. In his new novel, Jose Saramago again turns the world on its head - an everyday event is snatched away, and humankind is left to make of it what it will.

What I thought:

This was a good read. This is the second book by Jose Saramago that I have read, so I was rather more prepared for his complete unwillingness to follow most grammatical rules (which can be very inconvenient if you are travelling on the tube and desperately hoping for a full stop to appear, as you will be at your stop imminently). I like his choice of topics, this time that death stops – and then recommences some time letter with death herself sending letters to people telling them that they have one week left to live.

I like that Saramago questions his own plots and either offers an explanation for things that are perhaps stretching credibility a bit too much or just says the equivalent of “you’ll just have to trust me on that one”. You can almost hear the author thinking and putting together the plot and playing about with the ethical dilemmas and plot devices. His book are bizarre but satisfying reads.

Go Tell it on the Mountain

Title: Go Tell it on the Mountain

Author: James Baldwin

Number of pages: 256

Started: 5 November 2009

Finished: 11 November 2009

Opening words:

Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. It had been said so often that John, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself.

Plot summary:

"Nothing but the darkness, and all around them destruction, and before them nothing but the fire--a bastard people, far from God, singing and crying in the wilderness!" First published in 1953, Baldwin's first novel is a short but intense, semi-autobiographical exploration of the troubled life of the Grimes family in Harlem during the Depression.

What I thought:

This was a good book, not quite in the same league as Baldwin’s book I have read (Giovanni’s Room), but good nonetheless. It is a semi-autobiographical work of fiction and is quite a bitter read, but also very engaging. There were passages in it that were rather mesmerising and beautifully written, even if the subject itself was filled with anger and other negative emotions at times.

Baldwin wrote this book to make peace with himself about his father and given the events of the book, it is clear why he needed to do that. A powerful book, if a little uncomfortable to read at times.

The Death of Grass

Title: The Death of Grass

Author: John Christopher

Number of pages: 208

Started: 1 November 2009

Finished: 4 November 2009

Opening words:

As sometimes happens, death healed a family rift.

When Hilda Custance was widowed in the early summer of 1939, she wrote, for the first time since her marriage thirteen years before, to her father. Their moos touched – hers longing for the hills of Westmorland after the grim seasons of London, and his of loneliness and the desire to see his only daughter again, and his unknown grandsons, before he died. The boys, who were away at school, had not been brought back for the funeral, and at the end of the summer term they returned to the small house at Richmond only for a night, before, with their mother, they travelled north. In the train, John, the younger boy, said “But why do we never have anything to do with Grandfather Beverley?” His mother looked out of the window at the tarnished grimy environs of London, wavering, as though with fatigue, in the heat of the day.
She said vaguely “It’s hard to now how these things happen. Quarrels begin, and neither person stops them, and they become silences, and nobody breaks them.”

Read the book here.

Plot summary:

At first the virus wiping out grass and crops is of little concern to John Custance. It has decimated Asia, causing mass starvation and riots, but Europe is safe and a counter-virus is expected any day. Except, it turns out, the governments have been lying to their people. When the deadly disease hits Britain they are left alone, and society starts to descend into barbarism. As John and his family try to make it across country to the safety of his brothers farm in a hidden valley, their humanity is tested to its very limits.

What I thought:

I enjoyed this book. I took a bit of time to warm to it, but by the end I thought it was really good. Then I re-read the beginning of the book and liked the beginning much more second time around.

The book tells the tale of a virus that wipes out all of the world’s grass, including any grass based crops, and focuses on a family’s flight from London and the government’s dastardly plans, and all the people they meet, or join up with them, along the way.

I wouldn’t rate it as highly as The Day of the Triffids, but it is still a good read and one that actually made me wonder how much we take for granted and what we would do if those things were taken away.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Title: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Author: Muriel Spark

Number of pages: 128

Started: 27 October 2009

Finished: 28 October 2009

Opening words:

The boys, as they talked to the girls from Marcia Blaine School, stood on the far side of their bicycles holding the handlebars, which established a protective fence of bicycle between the sexes, and the impression that at any moment the boys were likely to be away.

The girls could not take off their panama hats because this was not far from the school gates and hatlessness was an offence. Certain departures from the proper set of the hat on the head were overlooked in the case of fourth-form girls and upwards so long as nobody wore their hat at an angle. But there were other subtle variants from the ordinary rule of wearing the brim turned up at the back and down at the front. The five girls, standing very close to each other because of the boys, wore their hats each with a definite difference.

Plot summary:

She was a schoolmistress with a difference. Proud, cultured, romantic, her ideas were progressive, even shocking. And when she decided to transform a group of young girls under her tutelage into the "creme de la creme" of Marcia Blaine school, no one could have predicted the outcome.

What I thought:

This was a good read. I have read one Muriel Spark before, which I think I was a bit ambivalent about, and I liked this one a lot more. It was a tale of a teacher’s attempt to shape the lives of some of her pupils – and the consequences of doing so. The book made it clear early on that it would not end well, and it was a carefully woven story that fed you bit by bit the downfall that was to come. An enjoyable, if somewhat spiteful read and worth a look.

The Pursuit of Love

Title: The Pursuit of Love

Author: Nancy Mitford

Number of pages: 192

Started: 23 October 2009

Finished: 26 October 2009

Opening words:

"There is a photograph in existence of Aunt Sadie and her six children sitting round the tea-table at Alconleigh. The table is situated, as it was, is now, and ever shall be, in the hall, in front of a huge open fire of logs. Over the chimney-piece plainly visible in the photograph, hangs an entrenching tool, with which, in 1915, Uncle Matthew had whacked to death eight Germans one by one as they crawled out of a dug-out. It is still covered with blood and hairs, an object of fascination to us as children."

Plot summary:

Childhood at Alconleigh is scanty preparation for the realities of the outside world and Linda, sweetest and most aimless of the young Radletts, falls prey to a stuffy banker and a rabid communist before she finds her ideal in a Frenchman . . .

What I thought:

I enjoyed this book. Nancy Mitford’s writing has been compared to Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh and Aldous Huxley (books like Crome Yellow rather than Brave New World), but having read books by each of those authors, I have to say I preferred this book. It tells the tale of a slightly mad aristocratic family and their many adventures – and is the forerunner to the better known book ‘Love in a Cold Climate’. It was quite an amusing read and is actually semi-autobiographical. It’s certainly worth a look and is the sort of book you could curl up with on a wet Sunday afternoon.

Mr Vertigo

Title: Mr Vertigo

Author: Paul Auster

Number of pages: 288

Started: 16 October 2009

Finished: 22 October 2009

Opening words:

I was twelve years old the first time I walked on water. The man in the black clothes taught me how to do it, and I’m not going to pretend I learned that trick overnight. Master Yehudi found me when I was nine, an orphan boy begging nickels on the streets of Saint Louis, and he worked with me steadily for three years before he let me show my stuff in public. That was in 1927, the year of Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh, the precise year when night began to fall on the world forever. I kept it up until a few days before the October crash, and what I did was greater than anything those two gents could have dreamed of. I did what no American had done before me, what no one has ever done since.

Plot summary:

The story of Walt, an irrepressible orphan from the Mid-West. Under the tutelage of the mesmerising Master Yehudi, Walt is taken back to the mysterious house on the plains to prepare not only for the ability to fly, but also for the stardom that will accompany it.

What I thought:

It is no secret that I am a big fan of Paul Auster. I find his books incredibly engaging and I love the darkness that underpins them. They are not stories that come together in some neat Hollywood happy ending. Having said that, I don’t think book was one of his best. I didn’t find the plot quite so engaging and it lacked one of my favourite things about Auster – his ability to weave a story within a story.

It was a decent read and it is a book that I would like to read again because I don’t feel I gave it my full concentration, but in my view he has written better. I would still suggest giving it a go, but if it doesn’t ‘do it for you’ then try one of his others because he is a fantastic author.

Waterland

Title: Waterland

Author: Graham Swift

Number of pages: 368

Started: 5 October 2009

Finished: 15 October 2009

Opening words:

"'And don't forget,' my father would say, as if he expected me at any moment to up and leave to seek my fortune in the wide world, 'whatever you learn about people, however bad they turn out, each one of them has a heart, and each one of them was once a tiny baby sucking his mother's milk...'"

Plot summary:

First published in 1983, Graham Swift's multilayered chronicle set in the Cambridgeshire Fens is widely regarded as one of the finest British novels of the 1980s. Tom Crick is a history teacher, but the history that absorbs him is his own and his family's. The past, with its secrets and oddities, hangs heavy on him, pushing him towards a heartbreaking new crisis in his life. Swift's powerful psychological drama takes in life and death, betrayal and compassion; his setting, the brooding landscape of the marshy Fens, is utterly compelling.

What I thought:

I had mixed feelings about this book. Overall I enjoyed it, but I found the parts set in the present more compelling than the parts looking back over the history of the fens and his ancestors. I liked the narrator talking about his own life and telling the tales of his ultimate downfall, but other parts I found dragged a bit and whilst I am sure they had great meaning in them, it mainly passed me by. A decent read, but not wholly satisfying.