Basically just housekeeping, but here it is anyway, for your reading pleasure. The longlist:

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue Room (Pan MacMillan – Picador)

Helen Dunmore The Betrayal (Penguin – Fig Tree)

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic – Atlantic Books)

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy The Long Song
(Headline Publishing Group – Headline Review)

Tom McCarthy C (Random House – Jonathan Cape)

David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet  (Hodder & Stoughton – Sceptre)

Lisa Moore February (Random House – Chatto & Windus)

Paul Murray Skippy Dies (Penguin – Hamish Hamilton)

Rose Tremain Trespass (Random House – Chatto & Windus)

Christos Tsiolkas The Slap (Grove Atlantic – Tuskar Rock)

Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky
(Random House – Jonathan Cape)

There were a couple on there that I have not heard anything about, but which look very interesting, quite a few that regularly popped up in forums and on other blogs as suggestions. The Levy, Carey, Mitchell, and Tremain books were ones that I thought might make it on to the list, but I had no idea about the rest, and I was actually quite surprised by the omission of <i>Solar</i> from the longlist. Nevertheless, I’m thrilled that Helen Dunmore’s latest is on the longlist, as she is a fabulous writer. It looks like there are quite a few chunksters on the list again, though, which raises the question, is anyone going to attempt a readathon of the longlist this year?

In preparation for the release of the Man Booker long list this year, I’ve been spending a bit of time on the Man Booker Prize website and around bookish chat rooms, just to see what some of the predictions were for the long list. What caught my attention more than the books themselves, however, was the constant mention of the “Booker Controversy”, something that seems to crop up nearly every year, whether it’s who gets on the long list, the short list, what the judges say, what the authors say; there always seems to be something. I wasn’t surprised, then, to come across this quote, from Publishing News:

“Each year’s controversy raises the odds. Just how shocking can Booker get? Topless judges? A page 3 committee?”

What did surprise me, a little bit, was the fact that this quote appeared on the Man Booker website itself.

I actually studied the Booker Prize’s beginnings earlier this year, as part of a course on 20th Century Literature. What I never knew was that the Booker Prize very nearly didn’t make it past the early 70s, as they just weren’t getting enough publicity, and so, in a way, I can understand why they make such a big deal of the controversies that have basically kept the prize going. Of course, the extra publicity also means that even the books that are longlisted get a sales boost, which must be nice for writers that are working in the “genre” of literary fiction, which isn’t really known for its fiscal rewards.

Added to this, it means that publishing houses continue to invest in at least a few literary fiction titles, meaning that we are given some respite from endless lists of Dan Brown-alikes, and the kind of shock-memoir and celebrity “confessions” that routinely fill supermarket shelves. Still, despite the positives, I can’t help feeling that there is something, well, a little bit icky in the amount of pride the Prize administrator’s seem to take in their “bad” publicity, as if they were naughty children. It’s just a little bit sick-making that a prize that claims to be looking for ‘the best book of the year’ doesn’t actually seem willing to let the books speak for themselves.

*Ahem* You’ll have to forgive me for that one, I just couldn’t resist. All abysmal jokes aside, I decided that the only way to catch up with my reviewing was to pop a couple of books into each post until I’m caught up, and the two books that immediately jumped out at me were The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, and Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger; not only do both books feature dead people as central characters, but, to me, they also had a similar kind of feeling about them, too. So, onto The Lovely Bones first.

So, I’ve always been wary of the pod-people-like effect that seems to go hand in hand with bestselling books like The Lovely Bones, where seemingly everyone on the planet is reading the same book, and praising it to the sky. I rarely find that those books live up to my expectations, and, if I do want to read a bestseller, I usually wait at least a couple of years; which brings me to Alice Sebold’s novel. In case I’m not the last person on the planet to read the book, The Lovely Bones is narrated by Susie Salmon, a girl who was raped and murdered at the age of fourteen, and tells the story of her afterlife in heaven, where she watches over her family as they slowly fall apart. It’s not a whodunnit, as you know who killed Susie almost straight away. Instead, it charts the effect of Susie’s death on those she left behind.

There probably isn’t a lot more that I can say about this book that hasn’t been said hundreds of times before, but, personally, I enjoyed the book. I will admit that, on occasion, I found Susie a little annoying, and the ending, for me, wasn’t exactly brilliant, but the writing was lovely, the characterisation was brilliant, and the book was certainly emotionally charged. I’m glad, nevertheless, that I left it a few years before I read the book, as I think I would have found the book slightly disappointing if I had read it while all of the hype was still going on. While The Lovely Bones probably won’t make it onto my ‘best reads of the year’ list, and I can’t really see myself rereading it, it was an easy summer read, despite the subject matter, which was great when I was going through a patch of literary laziness and didn’t feel like reading anything that would tax my brain.

Her Fearful Symmetry, compared with The Lovely Bones, is a much more complex book, and, I have to say, I enjoyed it more because of that. I have to confess, I haven’t read The Time Traveller’s Wife, although I have a copy knocking about somewhere, but I loved Niffenegger’s “novel in pictures”, The Three Incestuous Sisters (which isn’t about incest, just so you know), and I thought that Her Fearful Symmetry sounded like it was in a similar vein, which it is.

The novel is actually composed of interweaving narrative threads, but the central story concerns Julia and Valentina, a pair of American “mirror-twins”, who inherit a flat overlooking Highgate Cemetery from an aunt, Elspeth, whom they never knew they had, and from that point on their lives interweave with those of Robert, Elspeth’s lover, and Martin, the crossword setter who lives in the flat upstairs, confined by his severe OCD, and whose wife has left him, unable to bear living with his illness anymore. The twins see their move to London as a chance to gain their independence, and start living separate lives, but they face several problems, not least of which is that Elspeth hasn’t quite moved on, and is, in fact, spending her afterlife in the flat with the girls. Things get ever more complicated, until the novel comes to a surprising, beautiful and poignant end.

There are quite a few twists in this one, and while everyone would probably pick up on a few, I think it is fair to say that there will always be a few surprises; it is a testament to Niffenegger’s skill in handling her characters that none of these plot twists, when they come, seem out of place, no matter how surprising. Her Fearful Symmetry, then, is a deftly plotted, intricately woven piece of fiction, which is not only a highly interesting read, but is also beautifully written, perfectly paced, and incredibly moving. I loved it as soon as I finished the book, but over the next few days snippets of the book kept coming back to me, and I love it even more now, if that’s possible, than I did when I first finished the book. I can’t say for definite that I will read any more of Alice Sebold’s work, and I don’t know if I will read The Time Traveller’s Wife any time soon, but I am really looking forward to Niffenegger’s third book, which looks incredibly interesting too, and I would be happy to recommend both books to anyone who thinks they sound even remotely interesting.

Usually, I steer clear of books with any kind of “celebrity” associations, but I just couldn’t resist Shappi Khorsandi’s first literary offering. Not only did it seem like the kind of light read I was look for, considering that I think Khorsandi is a fantastic stand-up comedian, but A Beginner’s Guide to Acting English also sounded like a fascinating book in its own right. And, overall, it is. The book tells the story of the Khorsandi family’s move to London, and their eventual exile from Iran, the problems Shappi and her brother face growing up in a foreign country, whilst also interweaving snippets of stories about the childhood’s of other members of the Khorsandi family, still at home in Iran.

Khorsandi’s father was a renowned poet and satirist, and the book begins in Iran, where Shappi’s parents are preparing to leave for London, in the hopes that a stint in a foreign country will help Hadi Khorsandi’s career. Once the family arrive in London, however, Shappi recounts the trouble she had in settling into her new life, unable to speak English and yet forced to go to an English nursery, then on to school, while the revolution begins in Iran. Once the revolution in Iran is over, however, Hadi Khorsandi is exiled from his own country, and the Khorsandi family is forced to face up to the fact that they might never be able to return home.

Having read Persepolis recently, Marjane Satrapi’s memoir about growing up in revolutionary Iran, and a similar, though solitary, exile from her country, I was somewhat familiar with the politics behind Khorsandi’s memoir, but the book is more about family life than politics, and that is the real strength of the book; at heart, A Beginner’s Guide to English is simply the portrait of a close, creative, quite eccentric family, and their attempts to adjust to a new country, and a new way of life. Of course, things inevitably get more complicated than that, but I have no intention of spoiling the book for anyone.

What I actually found very satisfying when reading the book, though, was the fact that Shappi doesn’t try and write a “funny” book. Certainly, there is a lot of humour in the book, but this comes mainly from the actions of the family, such as when Shappi and her brother ‘play firemen’, and accidentally set fire to a brand-new sofa, but there are a lot of sad moments in the book, as well, and it is the balance between the two that is so satisfying. I won’t say that Shappi Khorsandi is breaking new literary ground with A Beginner’s Guide to Acting English, but the book is a moving, funny, and, above all, very satisfying read, the perfect choice for a couple of sunny days in the garden.

At the moment, I’m trying to plug some gaps in my reading. There are so many books that I’ve really wanted to read, but not got round to, or genres I’ve barely begun to explore. More particularly, I’m increasingly aware that I used to read loads of ‘classics’ when I was young, since I hit my late teens, I’ve barely touched an old-school ‘classic’. I think the last one I read was Tess of the d’Urbevilles and, let’s face it, it’s great but hardly a barrel of laughs. I think I just overdid it and went into a spell of not reading any.

So I picked up my forlorn and neglected copy of The Odyssey. What better way to get back into some classics reading than with a super-exciting adventure story, right?

Right! It was a lot of fun to read. It did, though, surprise me and that’s what prompted this post. The thing which surprised me is also something I loved about this book: everybody cries, all the time. Quite rightly! They all keep losing friends and relatives, being in awful situations, and on it goes. There’s something quite pleasant about it being explicitly okay for ‘heroic’ men to sit around weeping; it’s not something that often gets represented, I suppose. So it was a bit of a cultural shocker, but incredibly refreshing.

Not that I think representations of masculinity in The Odyssey were nothing but good, but this was a really positive aspect of the story, and I think I connected a lot more sympathetically with the characters as a result.

Have you been reading any books that surprised you lately?