• Wednesday, 26 Mar 2025 8:20 pm

  How to be Perfect

  by Michael Schur

  Published 2022 304 pages

  Interesting but kind of toothless. As far as a book about pop ethics goes, I think it does the job. If you’ve watched The Good Place, which is the latest TV show that Schur is known for (along with Parks and Recreation and writing credits on The Office), you’ve already got the gist.

  Schur’s approach to being a good person boils down to not overthinking things, eschewing adherence to rigour, self-forgiveness, and continual improvement. Rather than prescribing Right Actions, Schur’s concerned with the personal pursuit of Rightness. If you’re moving in the Right direction, that’s enough. Which, alright!

• ---

  Sunday, 9 Mar 2025 4:33 pm

  Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

  by Susanna Clarke

  Published 2004 782 pages

  

  Falls flatly into that category of 2000s fantasy of which Neil Gaiman is basically the undisputed leader. Terrific atmosphere, if a little light on plot. The prose makes me wish I was re-reading Mason & Dixon.

  The basic premise is: Regency-era England, magic was rife during the middle ages but has retreated from the country and is studied more or less as history. But lo: by dint of hard study, one man (Norrell) begins to do practical magic in England again. He takes on a pupil (Strange), who goes a little bit off the rails (but in a good way). In the process, magic begins to return in earnest to England.

  (No evidence that magic exists or ever existed in other countries, which must be very frustrating for them.)

  There’s a bit of conflict that builds very, very slowly and then is resolved hastily at the end, but I think that the major appeal of the book is textural more than narrative. The world of magic feels dangerous and alien; the borders between worlds blur in just the right way. The mechanics of magic are beyond the scope of the work; while there’s some diegetic scholarship to the working of magic, as far as the reader is concerned magic just happens—maybe with a bit of effort but never really with any limits. Nevertheless I didn’t find myself questioning why don’t they just resolve this problem in such and such a way with magic? but maybe that’s because I’m not a very critical reader.

  Where I found the book fell flat was in its pacing. We spend long stretches building and building narrative tension but it doesn’t make any move towards resolution or climax until like 100 pages from the end (of an 800-page book). For the whole first half is scene-setting; things don’t get going until Strange goes away to Spain.

  There’s a curious duplication of plot elements as well: Strange goes to war twice; two women are abducted into Faerie; Norrell is advised by two ne’er-do-wells. I think that at least some of these are on purpose—things happening in pair seems to be a theme here—but others just feel like rehashing the same scenes over again.

• ---

  Monday, 9 Dec 2024 11:21 am

  Perfume

  by Patrick Süskind

  Published 1985 263 pages

  

  When I read Crash last year, I wasn’t prepared for a book grounded in monomania and a lot of what makes it good sailed over my head. No so with Perfume.

  Perfume is the story of a little smell goblin called Grenouille born with a preternaturally sensitive nose and his quest to create perfumes so exquisite that they transcend smell and start to verge on mind control. To this end he sinks to some pretty shocking levels of depravity.

  Perfume is fun. It’s not particularly deep, but it’s immensely sensual and plot bounces along at a quick clip, Grenouille moving from one master to another as he learns and grows and slowly works towards his plan of using smells to control people.

  But Baldini was not content with these products of classic beauty care. It was his ambition to assemble in his shop everything that had a scent or in some fashion contributed to the production of scent. And so in addition to incense pastilles, incense candles, and cords, there were also sundry spices, from anise seeds to zapota seeds, syrups, cordials, and fruit brandies, wines from Cyprus, Málaga, and Corinth, honeys, coffees, teas, candied and dried fruits, figs, bonbons, chocolates, chestnuts, and even pickled capers, cucumbers, and onions, and marinated tuna. Plus perfumed sealing waxes, stationery, lover’s ink scented with attar of roses, writing kits of Spanish leather, penholders of white sandalwood, caskets and chests of cedarwood, potpourris and bowls for flower petals, brass incense holders, crystal flacons and cruses with stoppers of cut amber, scented gloves, handkerchiefs, sewing cushions filled with mace, and musk-sprinkled wallpaper that could fill a room with scent for more than a century.

  The whole book is like this.

  Eventually Grenouille abandons humanity and achieves godlike powers via the perfume he's created—but finds this brings him no joy, no satisfaction, only utmost despair. Like I said: fun!

• ---

  Sunday, 1 Dec 2024 10:22 pm

  My Brilliant Friend

  by Elena Ferrante

  Published 2011 331 pages

  

  I read My Brilliant Friend on the strength of the no. 1 spot on the New York Times’s Best Books of the 21st Century. I’d heard it mentioned on their podcast, and read later about the mania for Ferrante’s books that emerged from the first English editions of the Neapolitan quartet in the early 2010s.

  The book follows two girls as they grow up in a poor neighbourhood in the suburbs of Naples in the 1950s and 60s. Elena, the narrator, is diligent if uninspired; Lila is fiery and full of insight. Elena gets the opportunity to continue her schooling into adolescence, and thrives in the structured environment; Lila leaves school but (at least for a time) pursues an informal education by proxy, often mastering Elena’s subjects before Elena can. The two girls grow apart as they age—Elena investing more in studies and writing, while Lila attracts the (perhaps unwanted) attentions of the neighbourhood boys. By the end of the novel she’s cornered into a marriage she has serious misgivings about.

  It’s good—it’s heartbreaking in slow motion. Like in life, there’s no way to look forward to predict the end; but in retrospect the events of a life seem to unfold inevitably to produce the people that Elena and Lila become. Does that make sense? I’m trying to get at something here. Lila ends up worse off than Elena—and that’s not because Lila makes bad decisions or anything—but the things that happen to Elena, and the things that happen to Lila, add up to what their lives become.

  Some of the tension of the book—the tension of the friendship between Elena and Lila—comes from their underlying competitiveness, and from Elena’s implicit belief that Lila is somehow better than she is. For much of the book we believe that the eponymous Brilliant Friend is Lila—but late in the book (almost right on queue) we learn that to Lila, the roles are reversed:

  She was silent for a while, staring at the water that sparkled in the tub, then [Lila] said, “Whatever happens, you’ll go on studying.”

  “Two more years: then I’ll get my diploma and I’m done.”

  “No, don’t ever stop: I’ll give you the money, you should keep studying.”

  I gave a nervous laugh, then said, “Thanks, but at a certain point school is over.”

  “Not for you: you’re my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls.”

  What else? The prose is very comma-heavy, though whether that’s an artefact of the translation or of the original work I’m not sure as I don’t speak Italian.

  I had the impression, from the way she used me, from the way she handled Stefano, that she was struggling to find, from inside the cage in which she was enclosed, a way of being, all her own, that was still obscure to her.

  I enjoyed my time with the book, though at no point did I ever really feel compelled by it. Sometimes I struggle to put a book down and read to distraction. Here, I didn't.

• ---

  Friday, 11 Oct 2024 11:34 pm

  The Bright Sword

  by Lev Grossman

  Published 2024 670 pages

  

  There’s a lot to like in this tale-telling from post-Roman Britain! Collum is an aspiring knight from the Hebrides who makes the long journey down to Camelot (maybe somewhere around Gloucester?) only to find that Arthur is already dead and the Knights of the Round Table are dead and scattered (mostly dead) in the wake of the Lancelot-Grail cycle. Undeterred, Collum rallies the benchwarmers for a last adventure across the porous boundaries dividing our world from the world of fairies and gods.

  This world has much to recommend it! The magical world feels at once erratic but internally consistent, with such a distinct British twang to it that I struggle to believe that Grossman hasn’t spent time here. In the book (as in reality), the past remains eternally present: not something that happened and then got written down—but something that you can walk up to and touch. Standing stones, Roman roads, ruined churches, ancient oaks: these are high fantasy tropes but they’re also common features of dog walks within 25 minutes of our front door. The Bright Sword whisks me away to a dream of Britain, but it also plants me back where I am and reminds me that the place I live has been around for a long, long time.

  A handful of nitpicks:

  • Much like the world of fairy in which much of this book takes place, things get a little disorganised around the middle. The adventure sort of sputters and reignites, knights are picked off individually, characters swoop in on wings of magic and then dematerialise.
  • There are frequent digressions to pad out backstories—at times, it feels, only to underscore someone’s death.
  • The role of the Christian God waffles: He shows favour only intermittently and at one point declares that He is forsaking Britain entirely (the consequences of which continue to be felt among its people to this very day).
  • Grossman also falls into the trap of belabouring the attractiveness of the main love interest, sometimes to the point of distraction. I’m personally not a fan of that, but maybe some people need to be reminded when a woman is attractive.
  • I don’t know. What else?
  • There are maybe one too many “twists”. Most of them don’t pay off, like Collum’s fairy heritage; I wish I’d have just been told up front.
  • Finally, there were a number of moments in the book where it felt like there was a narrative pause to allow the audience to applaud, which doesn’t make sense because this is a book. They usually do it in superhero movies when a cameo happens. The narrative will work it's way up to a badass manoeuvre and then we'll get a one-line paragraph with a bit of ensuing filler.

  The battles are hard-won, though, which I appreciated. Collum is good at fighting but he’s not Chosen One-good.

  Overall: a romp. On the strength of the world of this book I wandered into a bookshop made out of a converted Methodist chapel and purchased a 60-year-old copy of The Once and Future King.

Archive

Posts Stream Books Walks • Clear filters