Books - December/January/February 2007 - Part 2
Mitchell’s first novel feels a lot like a warm up to him writing Cloud Atlas. It’s got approximately the same format of a series of globe-spanning short stories, each linked through some connection of the characters involved, but it doesn’t have quite the same impossibly-intricate, Russian-dolls structure of the subsequent book.
It’s a very accomplished attempt at portraying such a range of different cultures and character types, but I had one weird moment of dislocation when reading the tale set during the Tokyo subway gas attack. Having just read Murakami’s Underground a few months before, it was remarkable how that book’s true-to-life version of events seemed so much more intense and alien than the slightly hyperbolic fictional version described here. Real life will mess you up, kids.
Despite the slightly disjointed feel, I still enjoyed the book. But I enjoyed Cloud Atlas more.
Hmm. I don’t really know how to write about this at all; a black and white photography book about a city known for its batshit-insane assault of colour. There’s less of a focus on the sheer mass of humanity in the city than I expected and some nice contrasting pieces presented together, but at the same time there are quite a lot of shots that would definitely have been left out of a gallery exhibit due to covering the same ground or reusing the “motion blur around a stationary figure” trope. Quite fun, but I suspect there are better collections on the subject.
On a random note of warning: If you ever buy any kind of photography collection or photography tips book from Amazon, expect your recommendations page to be filled with porn-disguised-as-high-art until the end of time. Exercise care, if you care.
There’s a certain type of person who reads Ian Rankin books purely for the loving descriptions of Edinburgh and surrounding environs. I would be that type of person. I’ve read a few of his Rebus books, generally at random points in the series’ timeline, and while I enjoy the whodunit capers well enough, I could read him write about Edinburgh forever. Novel reading as homesickness cure.
This instalment has him working on a group of different cases in parallel - a friend’s missing son, the suspicious death of a colleague, the murder of a convicted pedophile - but the book’s raison detre seems to be to set up a Moriarty for Rebus to deal with in future books (again, since I haven’t read much of the series, this has probably already been dealt with in later books, and fans will scorn my ignorance of Rebus-lore.)
Fun enough, but might not feel the same to read if you’ve never found yourself staggering home along St. Leonards at 4 o’ clock on a Sunday morning.
Running With Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
Augusten Burroughs had an “interesting” childhood, and his early memoirs will tell you all about it.
“Interesting” in this case is more or less a synonym for “horrific”, involving being abandoned by his wholly-self-absorbed-and-steadily-going-insane mother into the care of her psychiatrist’s equally-insane family, falling in love at age 13 with a 34-year-old man who all but raped him, and living in abject squalor with essentially no adult supervision.
It’s almost impossible to tell to what extent the events in the book are leaning on artistic license, especially when his tone throughout is so nonchalant. Nothing he experienced seems to faze him at all, and he reports all of these outlandish experiences with a detached, news reporter voice which makes picking out any exaggerations a meaningless exercise. He obviously survived well enough to be functional in the present day, and his tone doesn’t make it seem like he particularly regrets any of it.
Some parts are hysterically funny, while other sections will have you trying to read with your hand clamped over your eyes. I’m not sure how much you can “enjoy” books like this, but it was definitely an experience.