Past Imperfect - Julian Fellowes

Last week I saw a review of this book by Anne Brooke over on Vulpes Libris and could not resist buying it immediately - which meant I had an excuse to buy other books and therefore bought far too many but that's another story...

Damian Baxter is very, very rich. But he has one concern, which is becoming more urgent as the weeks go by: who should inherit his fortune. A letter from an ex-girlfriend suggests that, as a young man, Damian may have fathered a child, but the letter is anonymous. Finding the truth will not be easy – and the only man who knows where to look is Damian’s sworn enemy.

I shall begin by mentioning the black and white image that graces the cover of Past Imperfect. I think that it's an absolutely stunning choice - just look at the intensity - for a book that describes the collapse of the old British aristocratic way of life. The book is narrated by an man who was part of the London scene 1960s and chronicles the end of The Season as a crop of débutantes (often heavily guided by their parents) scramble for suitable husbands as the social upheaval of the Sixties takes its toll and their way of life changes forever.

Whilst the light Fellowes shines on most of the characters is an unflattering one it was almost impossible not to feel compassion as the social order utterly changed almost overnight and left a generation floundering and struggling to adapt. For an excellent and thorough review do go and read Anne's one and I absolutely agree with her observations about what lets down an otherwise excellent book.

Clearly this is a book that divides opinions though and I trot out Exhibit A from Kate Kellaway writing for the Observer in October last year "Reading Past Imperfect is like being stuck at a party with a bore and being forced to do that unpardonably rude thing - look over his shoulder in the hope of spotting someone, anyone - more interesting on the horizon." Ouch.

The author, Julian Fellowes, is the same Julian Fellowes who wrote Gosforth Park (I suspect that the clue was in the name but I really didn't connect it) and by complete coincidence on the day I started reading this book I listened to a recent Simon Mayo/Mark Kermode film podcast where he was a guest and they mentioned this book. Apparently it's been optioned and, if made well, this could be a really interesting film and I would love to see who they cast!

September Reading List

I am really not sure what is going on with my reading/blogging this month. In September I read just five books and wrote only ONE post. This must be a record low for me and I honestly feel guilty that Book Aid International will only get £5 from me this time around. I have however just had a slightly naughty splurge at Amazon so I now have a toppling stack of books waiting to be read and hopefully that will mean that I have a slightly faster turnaround in November. I say "slightly naughty" as I have enough books to read on my shelves for the next year and a half and really didn't "need" any more...

Challenges Update:
Twelve Step Poetry - This month I re-visited a favourite poet from my teens, Wendy Cope, but I've not written about that experience yet. Ignoring the huge selection available on my shelf for reading, and telling myself I needed extra poetry books in preparation for future months, I've bought Christina Rossetti's The Goblin Market and Carole Anne Duffy's The World's Wife and I'm really looking forward to reading those.

Graphic Novel Challenge - a pathetic zero books read this month to contribute to this challenge but part of the above mentioned Amazon order was Fables and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which both count. Although it doesn't count as a book read, I should mention that Mr B and I watched Waltz with Bashir this month. It's a film based on the autobiographical graphic novel of the same title by Ari Folman and it was absolutely wonderful.

R.I.P. IV - The wonderful The Thirteenth Tale was the only book that I read this month that "counted" towards this challenge. Again, I've not managed to write a review of it but it was such a good book that I really should and hopefully I'll get time to do so this weekend.

September Reading List:
Un Lun Dun - China Miéville
Court of the Air - Stephen Hunt
The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro
One Day - David Nicholls

Un Lun Dun - China Miéville

This is China Miéville's first book for children and he both wrote and illustrated it. I should also mention that it won the 2008 Locus Award for Young Adult Book. I've read, and enjoyed, all of his books written for adults and could not resist giving in to temptation when I saw this on offer. Perhaps that's why my TBR pile is so large...

The blurb from amazon: "UnLondon is at war. We're under attack. And it's been written, for centuries, that you you will come and save us.' Stumbling through a secret entrance, Zanna and Deeba emerge in the strange wonderland of UnLondon. Here all the lost and broken things of London end up, and some of its people, too including Brokkenbroll, boss of the broken umbrellas and Hemi the half-ghost boy.

UnLondon is a place where Routemaster buses have legs, where Librarians are 'bookaneers', intrepid adventurers dedicated to hunting down lost books, and postmen spend years tracking the mobile addresses of the ever changing Puzzleborough. But the girls have arrived at a dangerous time UnLondon is under siege by the sinister Smog; it's a city awaiting its hero."

Un Lun Dun is set in a parallel London, his surreal version called UnLondon contains components that would be familiar to Londoners but with a twist. For starters, the double-decker buses float in the sky or walk around on feet...
Looking at the cover, you can also get an idea for the slightly different housing standards in the alternative version of the city! I really thought that the illustrations were great - some of them in particular have a very disturbing quality that should appeal to gruesome youngsters and I really enjoyed the part they played in building up an image of UnLondon.

Miéville excels at taking the ordinary and subverting it into something new. Characters introduced included the awesome "Binja"'s (as featured leaping on the cover) which are guard dustbins with arms and legs and kick-ass martial arts skills. Other notable mentions for me include the roaming packs of feral flesh-eating giraffes who feed on the unwary and the Black Windows who live in Webminster Abbey.

Amongst others, Deeba's sidekicks include a bus conductor, a book of prophecy that is trying to come to terms with the discover that it's inaccurate, and a small, empty milk carton called Curdle. Together they adventure around the districts that make up UnLondon and battle against the mysterious cloud of smoke, the Smog, which it turns out has been banished from London by the Klinneract (the Clean Air Act).

He has a fantastic imagination and is not afraid to kill off characters which means that this story was enormous fun to read even as an adult. You could see where it was going but you were never quite sure how it would get there. Perhaps my only criticism would be that there were so many inventive characters and concepts that they sometimes distracted me from the main story. It's an odd thing to say but I found at times that there were too many really interesting ideas in the book and I wanted to explore tangents rather than follow the fight for freedom.

Thankfully, the book is left with plenty scope for a sequel and I'd love to see what he could do with some of the other cities alluded to like No York, Lost Angeles, Hong Gone, Sans Francisco, Helsunki or Romeless. Or just to go back to UnLondon and explore more of it!

For the interested, Del Ray have made a great Un Lun Dun sub-site for the book with an excerpt, teachers notes, more illustrations and an interesting China Miéville interview.

August Reading List

I have been a VBB (Very Bad Blogger) recently and am waaaaay behind on book (and alphabet weekend) posts which makes it rather difficult to link my reading list this month to them! I'm not quite sure how this happened but I think it might have a lot to do with having an iPod Touch. I used to log in to my PC when I got in from work to check emails and have a general pootle but now I use my iPod to check mail when at home I don't bother. This means that I only log in before I go to work to read feeds and update my blog which has had a serious impact on my posting rate.

I'm currently taking part in four challenges, which I think has to be a record for me, and here's a very general update on my progress:

Non-Fiction Five - Technically complete as I've read six non-fiction books, but there's always scope for another cheeky addition before the end of September as I used it as an excuse to buy a couple of books so I feel as if I should justify that indiscretion! I've enjoyed taking part in this challenge more than I thought I would and might make a "rule" for myself that I should try to include at least one non-fiction book in my reading pile each month.

Graphic Novel Challenge - I've got a few more books to read before I hit even the 6 target but I have a Plan. My local library has had a big increase of it's Teen section (which is, of course, where they house graphic novels) and I plan to raid it in a couple of weeks. There are a few novels that I want to buy as well (I should never have bought the 500 Essential Graphic Novels book!) but I might have to leave those for the Christmas list as can't really justify it to myself. If only I could afford the Absolute Sandman collections... *drool*

12 Step Poetry Programme - This one kicks off this month and I'm looking forward to reading my first book of poetry this weekend. I have not decided who to choose just yet but luckily I have plenty to select from on my shelf and I'm really looking forward to seeing what other participants read too.

R.I.P. IV - Another one that started this week and I've yet to even choose my short-list of books to read over the next two months to take me up to Halloween! I've been saving up some Poe and James audiobooks for months in preparation and I am tempted to re-read The Woman in White too. I'm planning to have a look through other blogger's short-lists this weekend so should have plenty of options to choose from when I've done that!

Whilst I'm talking about challenges, I'll wrap up my Year of Readers progress too... In September I read only 8 books, which was less than I thought I'd manage a week or so ago when I finished Tigana in just a few days, so that's a donation of £8 to Book Aid International taking my total to £87 but £111 when you include the tax rebate. Which I will because it looks better! When I get around to writing more reviews I will update my September reading list links below. Promise...

Darkest Hour & Always Forever - Mark Chadbourne
The Sugar Queen - Sarah Addison Allen
Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
Best Served Cold - Joe Abercrombie
A Touch of Love - Jonathan Coe
Tigana - Guy Gavriel Kay

RIP IV Challenge

Yay! It's R.eaders I.bibing P.eril time again. Hosted by the lovely Carl from Stainless Steel Droppings, R.I.P IV officially runs from September 1st through October 31st. Covering the genres of "Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. Dark Fantasy. Gothic. Horror. & Supernatural", I'm aiming to complete Peril the First - which is to read four books of any length, from any subgenre of scary stories by the end of October.

It honestly does not feel like a year since I took part in R.I.P. III and I see, slightly to my horror,
that I managed seven books last year! I'm not committing to read that many this time around but I am definitely aiming to read four and I have a few things in mind. Some of which I planned to read in R.I.P. III but didn't quite get around to. Those were:

The Quincunx - Charles Palliser
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Ghost Stories - MR James
The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
The Ghost-Feeler - Edith Wharton

I've also saved listening to some audiobooks of the short stories of MR James, Edgar Allan Poe & HP Lovecraft for this challenge and last year, when I read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I said I would read more of Shirley Jackson's work so I will be hunting out a copy of The Haunting of Hill House too. I'd also really like to get hold of a copy of The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski but at £20 it's probably going to stay on my wishlist instead :(

Most of all though, I'm looking forward to seeing what other participants read and getting inspiration from them!

The Twelve Step Poetry Program

Jodie from Book Gazing (who is also the instigator of the Year of Readers) has launched a new challenge called The Twelve Step Poetry Program.

The Rules:
Challenge runs: 1st Sept 2009 – 30th Aug 2010
Option 1: 12 books of poetry, each by a different author
Option 2: 12 books of poetry, each by a different author, with two books chosen from female poets, translated poets, dead white male poets, poets who have held an official poetry post, black/ hispanic/ asian poets, GLBT poets or Great War poets.
Option 3: Option 2 + a poem a day from Poetry Daily until the end of the challenge

I think this challenge ticks so many boxes for me and I am really looking forward to starting. I used to read a lot of poetry and although I do still dip in, and out, of the genre I really don't read as much as I used to and I am not really sure why. In the last few months, I have (finally!) been able to get all my books from the attic and arrange them around the house so for me this is a great excuse to visit, and expand, my poetry shelf.

I'm going to go for Option 1 and read at least one book of poetry each month by a different author. I will do my best to try to make this a diverse selection so that I can tick off some of the categories in Option 2 as well. Now - who to select as my September poet. Decisions, decisions!

The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

Winner of the 2008 Man Booker prize, The White Tiger was Aravind Adiga's debut novel. I meant to read it months ago, after hearing the very eloquent author talk on a BBC radio show however somehow it ended up in the toppling TBR pile for several months instead...

The blurb (from amazon): "Meet Balram Halwai, the 'White Tiger': servant, philosopher, entrepreneur and murderer. Balram, the White Tiger, was born in a backwater village on the River Ganges, the son of a rickshaw-puller. He works in a teashop, crushing coal and wiping tables, but nurses a dream of escape. When he learns that a rich village landlord needs a chauffeur, he takes his opportunity, and is soon on his way to Delhi behind the wheel of a Honda. Amid the cockroaches and call-centres, the 36,000,004 gods, the slums, the shopping malls, and the crippling traffic jams, Balram learns of a new morality at the heart of a new India. Driven by desire to better himself, he comes to see how the Tiger might escape his cage..."

The novel takes the form of a series of letters written late at night by Balram to Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier, who is about to visit Bangalore to learn more about the city's embracement of the entrepreneurial spirit and experience as a centre for outsourcing industry. Balram explains in these letters how he's managed to crawl his way up from crushing village poverty to becoming a successful entrepreneur and, in doing so, share some of his insights into the challenges that he's experienced getting there that he feels the Chinese could learn from.

"Apparently, sir, you Chinese are far ahead of us (Indians) in every respect, except that you don't have entrepreneurs. And our nation (India), though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, does have entrepreneurs."

Balram is a very interesting central character. He's amoral, selfish, greedy, opportunistic, lacking in family loyalty (although to be fair I don't entirely blame him!) and acts without compunction if he can see the chance to better himself. In many of the stories he is telling Wen Jiaboa, he's bitter about his place in life, he demonstrates that he bears grudges and he's angry at the world for not being able to recognise his intellect and allow him to succeed as he should. This book gives, to my eyes, an unflattering view of modern India and clearly demonstrates the deep divides in Indian society drawn along lines of wealth and caste as well as giving an insight into human nature at its worst.

"To sum up-in the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with big bellies, and men with small bellies. And only two destinies: eat or get eaten up."

I should mention that I was not entirely convinced by the device of using letters to Wen Jiabao to tell Balram's story - it felt as if slightly too convenient confessions were being made that would probably be very unwise to commit to paper if you were someone who had an interest in staying off the radar. I do concede though that the format does allow the reader in to experience Balram's reactions to events in his life that may not have been possible in other ways.

This book is well paced, easy to read (the very large font in my edition helped with that!) and Balram makes several very well written observations about those with money's attitudes to the poor and disenfranchised. In itself it's an interesting read that serves as a good introduction to "seedier" Indian literature if you've not really read much before.

Overall though, this was not quite as "good" as I was expecting. If it hadn't won the Booker last year I would, no doubt, be far less critical as I'd be viewing it on its own merits as a debut novel and perhaps that's what I should do rather than inspect it closely for some kind of stamp of literary quality! If I'd just picked it up and read it then I would probably say that it makes some interesting, and pretty damning, observations about India in the 21st century and that the central character is a repulsive but ultimately fascinating one whose circumstances certainly made me think about how I'd react to being in his situation.