I’ve been reading some ‘new voices’ lately. Rather than space out my brief reviews, why not group them into one bumper post?
This was apparently a TV Book Club choice. I don’t watch it, so I had no idea but for the sticker. I must say that the sticker did add a sense of trepidation, in that it might be shite. There was also that marketing gumpf about being like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which is a novel I really enjoyed.
So. Pat Peoples has just got out of the ‘bad place’, and is working towards being kind, not right, as he wants to end ‘apart time’ with his wife Nikki. The blurb on the back makes it sound like David Nicholls-style chick-lit with temporary insanity thrown in, but it isn’t, really. While I loved One Day for its ability to twang the heart-strings, The Silver Linings Playbook is that and so much more.
Spending time in Pat Peoples’ mind gave me quite an interesting perspective, and a renewed appreciation / confirmation of the truth about love (i.e. a constant compromise). And how supposedly sane and normal people really aren’t.
Next up is Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists, a story about a failing English language newspaper in Rome, as seen through the eyes of the people who work for it. If you’ve been reading the site for a while, you’ll know I used to work for an international weekly newspaper, so I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for this particular section of the industry. I was entertained by the author’s stories of the weird and wonderful people who work there. I was surprised that the story that has stuck with me most is Ruby Zaga’s — ultimately, I felt she was the one to be most pitied.
I thought it was funny. And sad. I’ve read some reviews condemning it for not being about the business, but all that stuff is reported in the news anyway. I rather enjoyed the fact that it was about the types of people in the business and how it thoroughly invades their personal lives.
This novel gets the same score as The Imperfectionists, but only just. The Registrar’s Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages jumps backwards and forwards in time, interweaving the stories of Selim, a Kurdish illegal immigrant, and our narrator, a German woman who now works in France, assisting in marrying people at the local town hall. When she feels compelled to look into a possible forced marriage, she starts to remember Selim and her less-than-illustrious past.
It was an easy read — I managed it in an afternoon. But it just didn’t do it for me, I simply couldn’t feel as strongly about it as, say, The Tortilla Curtain, another novel about illegal immigration, but told with much more feeling.
Protect New Mothers: Say No to Cuts in Maternity Pay — this seems far too black and white to me. I’d rather it was about making sure new mothers had adequate support from the community if they choose to go back to work after 18 weeks, so it isn’t just about cash.
“Your client is someone in their 50s who runs a restaurant but is not very in tune with technology. What’s going to impress them more: Something with music and moving images, something that looks very fancy to someone who doesn’t know about optimizing the Web for consumer use, or if you show them a bare-bones site that just lists all the information? I bet it would be the former—they would think it’s great and money well spent.”
It isn’t just restaurateurs in their fifties. You get this with people in their thirties who think they’re ‘with it’. It’s been driving me mad for years, and I’m not even a web developer.
He’s a tacky wee fucker, isn’t he? Trump opposes plan for windfarm: first he dazzles the government into severely damaging a Site of Special Scientific Interest, now he claims others will be “destroying and distorting the magnificent coastline”. Hello Kettle, this is Pot.
Charlie Gordon has an IQ of under 70 and has started writing progress reports because he’s been given the chance to become smart. This is down to an earlier test subject, a mouse named Algernon, that has become really smart — and stayed that way.
And that’s the premise of Flowers for Algernon, a book I saw reviewed favourably some time ago. And I’m reviewing it favourably here.
Right from the word go, when we started with the first progress report / journal entry, I knew what was going to happen to Charlie Gordon, but knowing where the story was going to take me didn’t lessen its impact. That’s what’s most impressive about Flowers for Algernon — by the time I got to the end, I was definitely about to sniffle in sympathy.
I’m sure the people who looted the Bang and Olufsen in Manchester were genuinely aggrieved at the rich getting richer / poor getting poorer, and not because they fancied some high-end consumer electronics.
It does seem as though enough people no longer care about their society and the embrace of all-out individualism and material wealth has reached a point where the government really has to worry. It might be a good time to mention Graeme’s book, The End of Progress. Ahem.
This was apparently a TV Book Club choice. I don’t watch it, so I had no idea but for the sticker. I must say that the sticker did add a sense of trepidation, in that it might be shite. There was also that marketing gumpf about being like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which is a novel I really enjoyed.
Next up is Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists, a story about a failing English language newspaper in Rome, as seen through the eyes of the people who work for it. If you’ve been reading the site for a while, you’ll know I used to work for an international weekly newspaper, so I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for this particular section of the industry. I was entertained by the author’s stories of the weird and wonderful people who work there. I was surprised that the story that has stuck with me most is Ruby Zaga’s — ultimately, I felt she was the one to be most pitied.
This novel gets the same score as The Imperfectionists, but only just. The Registrar’s Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages jumps backwards and forwards in time, interweaving the stories of Selim, a Kurdish illegal immigrant, and our narrator, a German woman who now works in France, assisting in marrying people at the local town hall. When she feels compelled to look into a possible forced marriage, she starts to remember Selim and her less-than-illustrious past.