The Children Act, Ian McEwan

(As I write this entry, and as far as I know, this book hasn't been translated to Spanish, so my review comes in English. It's not an easy book to read if you have an low-intermediate level, but it's perfect if your reading comprehension in English is very good or you need to practice to get your C1 or C2.)

Sometimes you can't tell a book is good (or, simply, that you like it) until a few pages in, when the story grips you and won't let you go, and you have to steal hours to the night so you can keep reading it. Other times, the book shows its quality from the very first page and you fall in love with it right from the beginning. The Children Act belongs to the latter. I was completely hooked on its prose with the first few sentences, even though it starts with a description and that's supposed to be a big no-no (of course, if you are Ian McEwan you can do whatever you want because you know how to do it right): 

London. Trinity term one week old. Implacable June weather. Fiona Maye, a High Court judge, at home on Sunday evening, supine on a chaise longue, staring past her stockinged feet towards the end of the room, towards a partial view of recessed bookshelves by the fireplace and, to one side, by a tall window, a tiny Renoir lithograph of a bather, bought by her thirty years ago for fifty pounds. Probably a fake. (...)

Look at those first three sentences. Not a single verb in them, nine words in all, and we already have the setting. Masterful. 

This was my first contact with the book, because I bought it on a whim and I didn't even know what it was about. McEwan is one of my favorite writers, so I try to get my hands on everything he publishes. (I do the same with Zadie Smith, Jeffrey Eugenides and J.K. Rowling, with mixed results so far.) In this case it was a story of ethics, morals, the tough job of being a judge (and a female one, at that), and what it really means to decide the fate of the people to come to her for help. All dressed up in a package that looks like a love story (or, more correctly, a break-up story) that turns out to be nothing more (and nothing less) than a beautiful shroud with which to tie everything up. 

Jack, Fiona Maye's husband, sixty years old and a university professor, asks his wife for permission to have an affair with a much younger woman. Fiona cannot believe what he is proposing (he just wants to have a fling, not break the marriage) and refuses, but he goes on with it nonetheless. And just when the reader expects to find yet another story of a woman abandoned by a mean, hateful husband, McEwan turns the story around and concentrates on one of the cases she has: a doctor asks for her help to save a seventeen-year-old Jehovah witness who is refusing treatment on religious reasons. In little more than 200 pages, the author writes about morals, the strength of religion and community, personal believes versus human rights, and yes, a little bit about love and what it means to have your husband cheat on you when you are entering old age. Everything from the perspective of a female character so well constructed that is hard to believe it wasn't written by a woman. 

Needless to say, this book gets my highest praise, as does everything I've read by this man (not much, I admit: Nutshell and Atonement, which are both masterpieces). If your English is not good enough, I advise you to keep an eye out for the translation, because this book is worth reading. My copy is going straight to the pile of "must re-read" that is already taking up more space than the "new to read" one. 

The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes

(This one comes in English again because it's not translated yet.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Julian Barnes is one of my favorite authors and he deserves the Nobel Prize more than any living writer (or singer) I know. The way he uses language should be taught in all schools in the UK (which it probably is, but if it's not, it should). Everyone should have the ability to sew a story like Barnes does, seamlessly, flawlessly, taking you to one place to the other without realizing you have moved at all, and most often than not make you smile on the way (not the case in this book, but it usually is).

The Noise of Time is half novel, half biography. It tells the story of Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich,  the most important Soviet composer who lived most of his adult life under the iron rule of Stalin. Judging by what Barnes tells us, his work was unfairly criticized by none other than Stalin because he didn't comply with the demands of the Party, which asked for music for the people, for the masses, for the working class. Stalin, apparently, thought his work too advanced, too formal, "muddle instead of music", and forbade his opera to be performed. Shostakovich lived in fear not only of not being able to work as a composer, but also of being killed by Power. You don't mess with a man like Stalin, and he was so close to him that he even had him on the phone (always according to Barnes, of course).

I knew nothing about Shostakovich, hadn't even heard his name until I started reading the book, but that's not very strange as I know nothing about classical music. The thing that makes this book wonderful is not so much the way Barnes talks about the composer's life, but how he shows us the way people lived in the USSR under Stalin. Shostakovich had one rule: he would never join a party which kills, and was able to maintain that rule until very late in his life (I won't get into details, because you must find out by reading the book). He was a prosecuted man, as were many others, and Barnes is able to put us inside the oppressing atmosphere of a country where the wrong words (even the wrong musical notes) could put you in mortal danger.

Julian Barnes is a comedy genius, as he has demonstrated more than once in his works, but when he puts on a serious face he is even better. There is a longing in his words, as if a spark has gone off, and I'm sure it has to do with the death of his wife, which pushed into a deep depression. But even from the greatest despair he can create magic with his words, and, even though the book is a real "downer" at times, it is worth to swim in this pain if only to share it with Barnes. I really hope he stays with us much, much longer and can present us with more of his works.

The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

(Today's entry is in English because this book hasn't been translated yet. You need a good level of English to read it, but it's worth the effort.)

I had never heard of Colson Whitehead until a few months ago. I follow several American literary magazines on Twitter and his name kept coming up in all of them when talking about new and expected releases. The Underground Railroad was an Oprah Book Club choice even before it came out for the general public; it was in all the lists, in all the magazines, in all the articles; it was all the hype. Usually this means I wait a little before I buy it, to see if it's really worth it or is just another best-seller that I'm going to shun once I've read it, but then I started reading about Whitehead, following him on Twitter, seeing what he was interested in. I liked him so much that it became one of those cases in which the author inadvertently speaks loudly in favor of his book, so I finally bought it.

It took about two months for me to get the book, because yes, globalization means you can buy any book printed just about anywhere, but they still get lost, or are out of stock, or who knows what happens; I just know I had to order it twice and waited forever to get it, but it was worth it. The Underground Railroad is a slave narrative; more precisely, it is the story of Cora, who runs away from the plantation where she is enslaved when her owner dies and his brother, much more cruel than him (and that is saying something), takes over. She escapes with Caesar, another slave who takes her along as a symbol of good luck because her mother is the only slave who was able to fly from the Randall plantation without ever being caught again. They use the underground railroad, which Whitehead has reimagined as an actual railroad that crosses the south of the United States below the surface, a huge tunnel that signifies freedom. White station masters help Cora and Caesar and they are able to leave Georgia. Their first stop is North Carolina, where they have a brief taste of what it means to be free, although they are not. Slaves here are still slaves, but are the property of the state. Even though her living conditions have improved tremendously, they can't forget that they are owned. Sterilization experiments are being carried out with the men and women of color, where the subjects either have no idea they are being used or they are forced to do it. Cora and Caesar, who have found a rhythm of life that works for them and would rather stay, start thinking that they have to leave. But that choice is taken away from them: they are being hunted, they are wanted. A slave who runs is never free.

The Underground Railroad is written in a very unsentimental way. Whitehead doesn't linger in the gory details of the punishments the slaves received, he doesn't describe the screams of the people who are being burned alive, or the pain of a beating. He just places in front of us a picture and tells it like it is, as a journalist would. He shows us the white guests drinking tea and enjoying the weather while next to them the smell of burning flesh scared the rest of the slaves. His language is crude, full of racially charged words (I would be curious to see how they translate some of the terms to Spanish, if there is ever a translation), just like it would have been if this book had been written a hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago. The main characters never catch a break, except for that brief period of time in North Carolina and another one almost at the end of the book (no spoilers, don't worry). Cora herself is the shadow of a character, we never see inside her; we know she is going through all types of hell, but she doesn't let out much, we're not able to know her, because she learned from a very young age that people let you down and you can't trust anyone, so why bother.

This is a very uncomfortable book to read, mostly because you know from the beginning that is based on real facts. Outside the USA we've grown up with pictures of the Old South in which we think all the slaves lived like the ones in Gone with the Wind, although that has been changing lately. Black adults singing while they picked cotton almost at their leisure, with little black children running and playing among them; white women in big dresses seating on the porch while perfectly dressed and happy slaves served them lemonade and fanned them. We have absolutely no idea of what the reality was like; I found myself looking for a white person in the book who wasn't evil, but boy was it hard! White people were afraid of the slaves because there were too many of them. What would happen if they revolt? What will happen when they revolt? I've read this book while the American election was going on, and a strange feeling of déjà vu kept crawling into my reading. Low income whites against blacks? Rich white men trying to control the lives and reproductive rights of black women? It sounded too familiar to be fiction.

All in all, a great read. It won't be the last slave narrative I read (I think this time I'm going to try real slave accounts), but I need some time to recover. I think the next book I read will be something light and funny, like, I don't know, a Stephen King horror story. It will be less scary than this one.

England, England, Julian Barnes

Let me say this upfront first, because I'm very biased: Julian Barnes is one of my favorite writers. Ever since I read A History of the World in 10 1/2 chapters I've tried to read everything he has written. England, England was in my list, but I'm not sure why it kept being pushed to the bottom. Now I've finally read it. And it might be my favorite Barnes book yet.

I find that, when you read a book, the context that surrounds you in that moment gives shape to your reading. I've read England, England while traveling in, well, England, which adds to the fun, and, even more importantly, I've read it after Brexit. The satire multiplies itself when you realize how accurate Barnes was when we wrote the book almost twenty years ago.

Sir Jack Pitman is a millionaire who wants to leave behind something the world will remember him by. He decides to build a replica of England in the Isle of Wight. It's not just the monuments he wants to duplicate, but the history itself. As the experts through the book emphasize, tourist will much rather see the copy than the original, especially if it's easier to get to. They have meetings to decide if Robin Hood should have women and gays in his band, if Nell Gwyn should be fourteen or eighteen years old, if the actors that will play the part of peasants should talk to the visitors in the pub, recreating a romantic vision of England. They poll people all over the world to find out what they think of when they think of England (I was very surprised that "fish and chips" wasn't on the list, but but "hypocrisy" and "gardening" were, couldn't help but laugh), and they manage to bring everything of some importance to the new England, even the King and Queen (and Manchester United, ha!). Problems begin to arise when the actors start losing it and acting like their characters. Smugglers begin to smuggle; Robin Hood rebels; Dr Johnson is depressed; the king wants to sleep with every woman on the island and he won't follow his contract. Meanwhile, the real England (Old England) is bankrupt. The EU has taken away the right of free movement through Europe to its people, and the English Euro is worthless (this book was written in 1998, before the UK decided to keep the pound). They have gone back to a very simple economy, a rural country side, pollution-free skies. People don't lock their doors at night, they don't care about the world outside their little towns, they go back to fêtes and gardening and walking in the woods. They have to rewrite their history, which they have lost. And, without history, a country doesn't really exist.

I read this book in two days (granted, I was on vacation with a lot of time in my hands, but still, it's a fast read). I was on a train while reading the best part of the book, a description of Sir Jack's most perverse sexual dealings; the people surrounding me probably thought I was crazy, because I was crying from laughing so hard. There is not a page in this book that is not worth at least a smile and at best a loud cackle. All the characters have something that makes them unique, but at the same time they are quintessentially English (as the signs around the countryside I visited kept reminding me). Only a British person can laugh like this at British (in this case English) people. Only Julian Barnes can write a satire like this and still not be kicked out of his country. A must read. It should be compulsory for anyone wanting to visit England.

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

I must have read this book at least four times, and every time I do I find something new, or I remember some feeling or thought that came to me the previous time. When I first read it I thought it would simply be the story of a high society woman going about her day, but nothing is further from the truth in this beautiful representation of an ordinary day in London.

On the warm June day in which the novel is set, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party, and everything needs to be perfect. She decides to buy the flowers herself; she leaves her house and walks around London, a city that is recovering from a war while still maint
aining an empire that controls half the world. She meets people, she sees things, she remembers other parties and other days; and meanwhile, in the street, Septimus Smith battles with shell-shock, and his wife wonders what she's done wrong, why she's not happy, why she doesn't have what she dreamt of back in Italy. Later we will see Richard, who is in love but hasn't completely forgotten how much he loved her, and we will read about Sally Seaton and the kiss she shared with Clarissa. We will meet Mr. Dalloway, and the Dalloways' daughter, who is not quite what her mother dreamed her to be. And with every page we will go deeper and deeper into the minds of Septimus, of Clarissa, of Richard, and we will find out things that have been hiding in them for years, stories that they only dare remember, situations that have shaped who they are today. Everything in the course of one single day, until Clarissa gives her party and all is alright with the world. Or not.

This novel is such a complex composition of different characters and their thoughts that it would be very difficult to summarize, apart from ruining the pleasure one can get from reading the novel themselves. This is one of Woolf most accessible works, in the sense that, even though her style would have been considered experimental at the time it was published, it's perfectly easy to read for the modern reader. The characters are well formed, the actions are explained, and the only thing left to do is to figure out if we like Clarissa or not, which will vary enormously from one reader to the other.

Anyone familiar with Virginia Woolf's life will have no trouble making connections between the characters in the book and her real life. She was the seventh child of high middle class family where education was the most important thing. Even though she was a woman, she had access to her father's library and her brothers' conversations with the brighter minds of the city, which helped her become the writer we all know. She suffered from mental illness and she committed suicide because of this when she was 59. Her writings, of course, survived her, and so did her husband, who dedicated his life to publish and cherish his wife's work. For me, humble reader that I am, Mrs Dalloway is her best work, and I'm sure I'm not the only one stating this. Anyone who has read it feels that it is a masterpiece.

The Brooklyn Follies, Paul Auster

I started reading this book last summer in mid July, but I had to put it down when the seventh book of the Harry Potter saga came out. After reading J.K. Rowling's last, my mind was not ready to go back to The Brooklyn Follies, so I left it on the shelf -even though I had read more than two thirds of it- for a time when I would enjoy it more.
Three or four days ago I picked it up again and I started reading it all over, from the beginning. Great idea, no doubt, because I didn't remember what the story was about and I had also forgotten how much I had laugh with several pieces of it. I said in the previous post that the first thing I ask myself when I finish a book is "did I like it?", and in this case I have to say, simply, that I loved every bit of it.
Nathan is a sixty-year-old cancer survivor that has recently divorced his wife and decides to go to Brooklyn because "he was looking for a nice place to die, and someone recomended Brooklyn". There he reencounters his nephew, the brilliant studen who was supposed to become a doctor in English literature but has ended up as a book seller after being a taxi-driver; he meets his nephew's boss, a wonderful man with too soft a heart and a terrible destiny; and a number of other people, long lost family members or new acquaintances, that end up forming a beautiful tableau that could be expected in any of Woody Allen's movies. Reading Auster's book is, actually, like listen to Woody Allen talk, and we are constantly reminded that we are in Brooklyn, with a certain type of people, a different accent, a different way of living. It almost feels like being there.
I love this book from cover to cover. It is amazing how simply Auster manages to talk about love, death, pain, suffering, happinnes and family ties without breaking a stride, without us knowing what is going to come next, a teary-eyed moment or a laugh-out-loud one. Good summer read -or spring, or fall, if it comes to that-, a book that should be in everybody's library and in everybody's mind.