Books: Lively, Chabon, Isherwood

Coming back for more... Thoughts on three novels, each by an author to whom I was returning for a second taste. All are fast becoming favourites.

According to Mark – Penelope Lively
Eighteen months ago, I read Penelope Lively's masterful Moon Tiger, which I adored. Wanting more, I turned to this earlier book, in which married literary biographer Mark Lamming is researching writer Gilbert Strong, and soon becomes infatuated with Strong's granddaughter. Some of the most interesting aspects of According to Mark are its pre-echoes of Moon Tiger. A central chapter adopts a distinctive feature of that book's structure, retelling one vignette from separate viewpoints. The theme of historical perspective is also key, contemplating how one can consider from a distance the multiple stages of one person's life simultaneously. Mark reflects how "Strong he knew over a lifetime and all of him at once".

In Moon Tiger, this is developed even further, as the imperious Claudia Hampton writes a "history of the world as selected by Claudia". Mark struggles with his biography's subject, knowing information is missing ("lies and silences") and his perspective cannot always fit. The title provides a big clue. Penelope Lively's art is in framing all of these complex ideas within a modern, funny love story, the characters vividly etched. Perhaps According to Mark does not match Moon Tiger's perfect balance, its sensual world and elegiac romance. But it is another enjoyable, insightful novel from a completely undervalued author.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union – Michael Chabon

I next decided to revisit Michael Chabon, having read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay some time ago. This later novel inhabits the world of Chandler and Hammett, complete with spiky dialogue and epigrams. Hard-drinking detective Meyer Landsman attempts to solve a pleasingly complex murder plot, taking in his family's past, Jewish lore and chess. Chabon's wild spin is to place the story in an alternative reality, in which the setting is the Jewish homeland, but that homeland is Sitka, Alaska. The realization of this reality is mostly convincing, sometimes contrived; the wondrous writing is riveting.

What Chabon brings to the genre is a sympathetic and complete human story. The characters struggle as much against their past sorrows as against the present criminal underworld of Alaska. The series of conversations between Landsman and his boss/ex-wife Bina are electric and absorbing. Both bantering and mournful, the relationship forms the book's core. Meanwhile, familiar from Kavalier & Clay is Chabon's irresistible technique of separating key lines of dialogue with profound, aching prose. "Sweet God, aren't you ashamed of yourself?" asks Bina. Not until after a rumination on divine intention, chromosomes and faith do we get Landsman's reply: "Only every time I see your face." The writing may be pared down, hard-boiled, but the novel is rich.

Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood

A companion novel to Mr Norris Changes Trains, Goodbye to Berlin is also based on Isherwood's real-life experiences in Berlin during the early 1930s. As before, the city backdrop is remarkable and vibrant, from underground clubs to squalid tenements. Hidden within this backdrop, deathly poverty, neighbourly suspicion and the rise of Nazism all hum, as Isherwood presents a sequence of indelible character sketches. As the hum grows louder, so the fractured world of Christopher's circle of misfits seems set to dangerously unravel. That we know what happens next makes this possibly the darkest light read that I have ever come across.

It seems light because Isherwood's smart style is infectious and a joy to read. The portraits are funny and the relationships warm. Squabbles abound in his cramped accommodation, which he shares with his wittering landlady, a prostitute and a barman, among others. The most wonderful character of all is struggling actress Sally Bowles (on whom Cabaret is based), gleaming with make-up but vulnerably waifish. She uses gentleman friends for money and necks a never-ending series of Prairie Oysters (a concoction of raw egg and Worcester sauce – "They're about all I can afford"). Smiling on top of her sadness, Sally is flippant and careless. Painfully, we know that Berlin's smile back is fading.

Reading in 2011

At the start of 2008, I resolved to remedy my woeful reading habits by reading twelve books in twelve months. I failed – three years in a row. Last year, I actually achieved the goal and celebrations were held throughout my flat. Here are the books I read.

The books (sans Harry Potter)

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

A year after finishing Sense and Sensibility (my first taste of Austen), I went in for the kill. Jane Austen is renowned for her wit, yet I was still surprised by how much she was making me laugh. Not always entirely to my taste, but undeniably elegant, and the social commentary has just the right level of bite. Subsequent viewing of the Joe Wright film and 1995 BBC series completed an enjoyable immersion.

2. American Pastoral – Philip Roth

This is an obliterating book, and I loved reading it. Exploring recent American history with unforgiving emotional force, Roth often rants. But this is also funny and fiercely passionate. The extended finale set piece, a dinner party from hell, is astonishing. I happily remember reading this in a lovely Seattle coffee shop, where I picked up my bookmark.

3. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

And in Seattle is where I bought this African American classic, whereupon the shopkeeper sang at me. At first, I was not sure if I could take to the rich style of Hurston's prose. But I was drawn in, mostly by its sharp observation ("She knew because she looked"). The world of this book is sultry; the magnificent hurricane scenes stick with me.

4. My Word Is My Bond – Roger Moore

An anecdotal deluge. Roger Moore is warm and self-effacing, almost to a fault. Little depth is offered, but many of the stories work well. Yes, some of them raise suspicion, and there are definitely some dodgy facts, but pictures of Roger in knitwear and so on make up for all that.

5. Flashman – George MacDonald Fraser

This was a joy, and Harry Paget Flashman is a brilliant hero: funny, rude, caddish, cowardly. Crucially, the whole adventure gets its teeth from the accurate historical detail. Set amid the First Anglo-Afghan War, the characters are real and vivid and the action is exciting. It is magical that the mixture of romp and realism works so well. I intend to become a devotee and work my way through the series.

6. Darkmans – Nicola Barker

A mammoth, sprawling, ridiculous book. Set among the estates and motorways of Ashford, and taking 800-plus pages, the action is minimal; instead we have a patchwork of impish wordplay and irrepressibly dark urges. It is a puzzle with clues wherever you look for them: for instance, the precocious child inhabited by the spirit of Edward IV's jester. The past is literally haunting the present, perhaps the key to the farce. For me, it worked (despite the exhaustion) mainly because of its sense of mischief.

7. The Voice That Thunders – Alan Garner

Seattle bookmark

A collection of essays and lectures. Garner is formidably intelligent, but unfortunately he knows it. The spare writing style is admirable and informed points are made on our place within landscape and history. However, arrogance muddies the depth, and I became ever frustrated by Garner's rigid lack of sympathy. The almost nonsensical passages on mental health also jar. In all, less appealing and thunderous than it ought to be.

8. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone – J. K. Rowling

I was almost completely uninitiated into the Potter universe before taking on this first instalment. I hope to explore further, having been entertained, if never gripped. I hear the other books are also popular.

9. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett

Sam Spade steps back off the screen, but he still gleams, snarling and wonderful. The style is exciting, sometimes hilarious; the mean streets of San Francisco are a backdrop for such sentences as "His eyes burned yellowly". I love the John Huston film, and I am so familiar with it, that I was struck by how faithful an adaptation it was. Hammett's book speaks just like Bogart, Greenstreet and Lorre. It is brilliant.

10. The Dain Curse – Dashiell Hammett

I went for the Dashiell Double. This was less engaging than The Maltese Falcon, and much more episodic. Too many characters were piled in by the finale, but there was still plenty of hard-boiled joy at hand.

11. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

My second Dickens. A wonderful gallery of characters (down to each supporting role) give life to an unexpectedly dark story of redemption through humility. Dickens' genius is to enable us to sympathize with Pip throughout, despite his actions and his pride. Meanwhile, Miss Havisham is a genuinely marvellous creation. Great Christmastime reading.

12. An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro

Ishiguro is one of my favourite authors, and this is a mini-masterpiece. As with The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, we have a defensive narrator who reveals more than they intend, through their natural, chatty delivery. This time it is an artist who worked in Japan between the wars, and again we are looking back, piecing together a dark past almost without realising. It is elegiac and perfectly paced – a beautiful book.