The Plague by Albert Camus

Written during World War Two in occupied France the story is set in 1940’s Oran, French colonial Algeria. The city is quarantined during the progress of bubonic plague. Events are described by an initially unnamed narrator and are centered around Dr Rieux and a small group of colleagues and friends. The book is usually regarded as a significant existentialist work. Also, it has particular relevance since COVID.

The narration presented as a personal journal, is anthropologically detailed on the emergence of plague in the city and the effect on people, medically, socially and emotionally. The tone and tempo of the story rise from bemused disbelief and wishful thinking to restrained social terror and individual horror.

Plague is discussed as an act of God, a moral judgment, social judgment, evil, accident and wrong by different voices. The setting in a sun-baked coastal city trapped by the advancing, deepening plague, first witnessed as rats dying in the streets is contrasted with the seeming helplessness of humanity faced with a determined fate. It has been said that Camus is illustrating the absurdity, even uselessness, of life in this allegory.

It is true that the main characters come to a range of fates, among others, themes of religion, sanity and language are discussed. However, there seems to be a strong thread of humanity in the reactions, sooner or later, of these characters, despite the challenges of horror, inevitability, selfishness, death and loss of hope. Do you do nothing, up the denial, or does something deep inside us actually try to act humanly? What triggers this? If the death of a little boy (despite the well meaning intervention) doesn’t, nothing will, Camus seems to be saying.

Construction of the language is tight, intense, paced, ambiguity and meaning are intertwined, merge, it’s as if Camus wants close readers to hear the resonance and dilemmas of his view of life. Brutality tests the limits to cast off a sort of case hardened outlook.

In a wider context the characters are not helped by a God, they are not themselves Gods, but they, we, all have a surprisingly wide range of individual choices, we can make social choices if we want. God might be absent, but rationality and humanity can be what remains as well as absurdity, which is the omnipresent.

Vivid, unsentimental philosophy, brilliant story and writing.

Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

What has not already been said about this work? It’s a book it’s famously an epic David Lean film. Reading it for the first time the films images and music constantly draw comparisons. This is a 1960 edition and the first English translation, which makes some of the text seem a bit awkward. The “Dr Zhivago” poems are in a section at the end.

The story follows Yuri Zhivago, Lara and others through the exceptionally traumatic history of twentieth century Russia from Tsarist times, through revolutions, war and civil war to the Stalinist era. The narrator is his half-brother.

The text offers much more description of life and events, more characters and plot diversions than the streamlined film. This textual density is reflected in the tone and spiritual implications of the film. The nature writing particularly is loaded with irrepressible life force, individuality and spiritual/religious significance. Human feelings and emotions are contrasted with the brutal forces of political doctrine and desperation. Idealism, creativity and love are Yuri’s resort and inner life. Lara seems to embody these values for him. She maintains her personal integrity through succeeding challenges, when many for overwhelming reasons do not. Their connection, possibly to be taken for granted in peaceful times and places is only allowed to flourish for a short time. Doomed love.

A first novel written by a poet under circumstances of heavy censorship and penalty. Some of the explanations of events are couched in a wrenched political jargon that must have tried to pay lip service to political requirements, whilst clearly exasperated with them and is now stepping on and over those limits wilfully. Dr Zhivago was a Samizdat, or clandestine novel after being banned inside the USSR/Russia, Pasternak was awarded a Nobel prize. The writer and his family suffered as a result. Then the west pounced on the propaganda value of the novel, which has acquired its own history.

Despite the surrounding noise and compromises the story is a remarkable testimony of a human response to chaos and terror. It exposes the charades and essential unreality of total politics. Above all it asserts a faith in human joy, love and being. Pasternak wrote staring at the face of terror and dared to suggest freedom. The provocations and the need to continually renew the response continue. Anyone who values freedom can identify with Yuri’s plight and those he represents. Read it as it is handing you a gift.

Slough House by Mick Herron

This is the seventh in the Slow Horses/Jackson Lamb series, which probably needs no introduction. The 309 pages continue the downbeat, yet lethal, espionage world of the marginalised Secret Service employees located in London’s fictional Slough House.

Thrown together as Service almost rejects the inmates of Slough House suffer a living purgatory, grotty conditions and their own mixture of dangerous delusions, flaws and addictions. They are united only in cowering under the tyranny of their older boss ex-cold war veteran and spectacularly gross anti-hero Jackson Lamb-unvarnished inter-generational friction. The urban settings and relationships depicted must owe something to Hogarth.

Novichok poisonings, Brexit and insidious populist politics all combine to propel a suitably toxic plot to a partial resolution. The characters are careened along by a mad situation and cope by making desperate decisions. Can Jackson Lamb right his ship?

Dark humour and dry satire are fused, sparking, into the writing.

Politician, entitled (thinks he is a) fixer and “ITS ALL ABOUT ME” character Peter Judd plays a prominent part, which Herron presents as a prolonged satirical performance. No prizes for guessing which UK politician Judd must have been based on!

Immediate uninhibited dialogue, description and narration keep the story racing along as another metaphorical earthquake hits the slow horses in Slough House. Slow horses being the term for the marginal Secret Service no hopers, the series has developed its own idiom.

This book is set pre-Covid as is book eight “Bad Actors”. The stories are an antidote to the suave fantasy of James Bond. Herron presents a cracking spy thriller and a wicked political satire for the price of one. Go and slouch about in Slough House, just watch where you step!

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

A 2022 Booker shortlisted work, apparently the shortest ever nominated, at 110 pages. This flags quality over quantity.

The third person narrator entirely follows the protagonist, Bill as he goes about an Irish country town in the run up to Christmas 1985. He is a family man part of a close knit community. The old and new Ireland are uneasily meeting, but tradition and the power of the church are still strong. Stigma still attaches to unmarried mothers, contraception and abortion. Economic insecurity haunts the town.

The plot unveils as Bill is accidentally faced with realities about the local convent laundry in a first hand way. Does he intervene to stop abuse to a girl, or remain silent? As Christmas nears the internal moral pressure on him builds. What was half known and veiled is now real to him. He has to be grateful for an intervention in his own early life. A moral dilemma builds quietly. Will he act, or settle for the complicity all around him?

Keegan references “A Christmas Carol”, this is about good and bad, acting or not acting, though without the extravagance and theatricality of Dickens. Rather, the writing is precise, focused and very human. No scene is wasted. The circumstances of the wider issues are clear and brought down to the individual, small actions are large for the person, individual actions make change. The locality and characters are skilfully drawn, dialect is present lyrically. The psychology of mental preoccupation in a time of seeming happiness and the weight of the unsaid are palpable. There is a town bridge, a Rubicon, to cross, will Bill cross it, will his country?

The cover of this edition depicts a snowy Bruegel landscape with hunched black figures, which reflects the real dark issues addressed in this book of fiction. Keegan shows us, as good writers do that the best fiction is never “only” fiction.

Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy

A novella which like the later “Proleterka” casts a literary spell. The writer evokes teenage life in a Swiss girls school through the eyes of Eve the narrator, with a strong suggestion of charged memoir.

Eve’s inner reflections and thoughts are centred on the seemingly perfect, to Eve, Frederika, who is on a pedestal, “a tall marbly figure”. This takes place in a setting of pristine alpine scenery and spartan school life, which manages Eve and makes her conform. The outer person is controlled, mannered, presented. Like many things Eve feels ambivalent about this, which fires her observations, feelings and reactions.

The language is spare, precise, dreamy and unflinching, embodying longing, regret and resignation. The narrator reveals and conceals, the reader is both enthralled and addressed indirectly. On page one the Appenzell setting is referred to as, “It’s an Arcadia of sickness.”

The potential for mental illness is present. Is Frederika an alter ego, or even part of Eve?

The northern alpine culture is contrasted at one point with a fantasy of Frederika strolling barefoot along a Spanish shore, only once and never realised. Reality is as fleeting as the fantasy, but imperfect. Later scenes follow the adult characters and explain why the days of discipline were sweet. Everything is incisively written.

Beautiful prose poetry from Jaeggy. The only way to appreciate it its to read it.

Mountains of the Mind by Robert Macfarlane

This is the first book published by Macfarlane, in 2003, marking fifty years since the ascent of Everest. He has subsequently written several books on climbing, walking and the natural landscape. The 306 pages give a contemporary and individual slant on the history and issues from this academic, campaigner and climber.

“O the mind, mind has mountains” Gerard Manley Hopkins 1880, is the books epigraph indicating the contribution to the history of imagination made by the high places. He traces the development of attitudes to places of altitude from horror and rejection to being imbued with sublimity and spiritual purity by the romantic artists and writers. From places to be dominated, conquered in the high Victorian era to a changing more empathetic appreciation in more recent times-though this is contradicted by our own mass tourism and continuing exploitation.

The text steps forward with thematic discussions on subjects such as the development of geology, glaciers and ice, mapping and perceptions to altitude. As well as many references and quotes from significant writers Macfarlane also intersperses the text with personal experiences from his climbing life: the realities of extreme weather and rock forms. This is critical as it gives the book added dimension. The incidents are creatively developed in the light of common experience. He considers questions, such as why are we drawn to the high places? Why do we take on personal risk? What is the role of perception and imagination, do they make reality, are they shaped by it, or are they phantoms?

The book culminates with a retelling of the ill-fated Mallory/Irvine ascent of Everest in 1924. Mallory who was lured from a young family to return to Everest for a third time, as Macfarlane says, “Posthumously, Mallory has perpetuated the very feelings which killed him-he has made even more glorious the mountains of the mind.”

For most of us, beauty, breathing space and a kind of freedom are the attractions of the high places, as Macfarlane examples in a particular fleeting encounter with a Snow Hare. This is an intimate book with a wide ambition. Some of the ground is familiar, but here the writer is marking out a starting point for his own subsequent books and continuing encounters. Interestingly, he particularly acknowledges Simon Scharma’s “Landscape and Memory”. This is someone taking up a baton and running impressively with it.

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

This book is the first in a quartet of novels and a set of short stories collectively known as the “Cemetery of Forgotten Books” series. It was translated from Spanish by Lucia Graves, Robert Graves’s daughter, and runs to 403 pages.

The main plot and many sub-plots are set in a gothic, mist shrouded, Barcelona in the post-war Franco era. The principle parallel plot witnesses the pre-war world and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. The story follows the protagonist, Daniel Sempere, as he grows from a ten year old to the beginnings of maturity, via a great deal of action and impulsive initiative. His life is increasingly gripped by the influence of a book, by shadowy author Julian Carex, he selected from the seemingly magical Cemetery of Forgotten Books, during a visit with his bookseller father.

A quest is at the centre of the story, which is dominated by action and description. The author clearly had a passion for his home city and here he produces a mainly nocturnal Barcelona which oozes dark atmosphere and lurking threat worthy of Edgar Allen Poe and Wilkie Collins. There are a central core of characters and many supporting ones, overall there is more than a faint Dickensian resonance, as Daniel encounters a world of mystery, suspense and a web of intrigue with innocence, impetuosity and an innate thirst for the truth. Contrast is depicted during the daytime scenes when the city and local communities cast off the dark and come alive with their own energy.

There is a significant metafictional element present with the role of literature in society and individual lives being discussed, via many aphorisms and implication. This is especially pertinent in the context of characters living in a creaking authoritarian society, where power disdains and is afraid of free writing and living.

Zafon spent some time as a Hollywood screenwriter, which clearly aided his confidence. Some of the dialogue, however, can be glib and characterisation stretched, especially between Daniel and his sidekick and wise-cracking protector Fermin, who seems to have at least nine lives! Though I suppose there is so much story to develop, so much darkness (and violence) to be counter-balanced, the wheels have to be oiled and balance maintained. Also, it is, I admit it, entertaining.

A world and a publishing phenomenon has been created by Zafon, who wrote with an eye for the reader and a respect for literature in its wider role. Despite, or because of, the intricate story an immersive read, ideal for lazy days or long evenings.

Snow Country by Sebastian Foulks

Whilst this book is the second in a planned trilogy, it can be read as a stand alone: it runs to 351 pages and was published in 2021. The first book Human Traces (2005) is set in the pre-first world war world, this one deals with a subsequent generation of characters and covers just pre-war to just pre world war two. The central setting is the enlightened Austrian sanatorium Schloss Seeblick, run by Martha, daughter of a previous owner.

The action runs through time in five parts. The centre of the narrative is the story of Lena a girl from a deprived background, in rural Austria, who grows and develops and older journalist Anton who is traumatised by the war and the unexplained loss of his partner, Delphine, at home in Vienna. They both gravitate towards each other and Schloss Seeblick, which reveals itself as a sanctuary for them and others.

Action is too strong a word for most of the story. One to one dialogue and a gentle third person narrator dominate between the disruption of the few action scenes. This is really a study in incremental development and quiet reflection following loss and pain, physical and mental, in an increasingly mad world, where the Schloss (asylum by a lake) can seem as an island of normality.

Themes of duality, consciousness and fate are dealt through relationships, like that of Martha and her twin sister and the increasingly parallel spiral of Lena and Anton’s lives, supported by detailed descriptions of scenes and thought.

To quibble, one or two developments seem to stretch coincidence. Also, Anton is a journalist, shouldn’t he have tried harder to find Delphine immediately after the war, why settle for the dead fly? These things though don’t compromise the fiction, which reads very easily and has cinematic qualities.

Overall, it must be that Faulks developed this novel in the sixteen years since the publication of part one. It is crafted in way that is literary and popular at the same time, carrying the readers attention with a calmly assured technique and serious empathetic thought about the nature of reality, life and living. Equally, as a third part is anticipated (not another sixteen years!) the ending, in the context of Austria in the thirties, feels provisional. As is speculated, maybe all endings are episodes in a repeating cycle of life and learning.

Making History by Richard Cohen

A doorstop book, at 753 pages including notes and index, with an equally imposing title, published in 2022. The author has an impressive record in leading London publishing houses, as well as writing and lecturing. He is also five times UK national sabre champion!

So this is a book of historiography by someone who is not a standard academic: the subtitle, “The Storytellers Who Shaped The Past”, indicates the approach is not strictly traditional scholarly, the role of fiction and fictional methods in historical representation is given scope.

There are twenty-two chapters which follow a generally chronological scheme, with thematic diversions, e.g. a chapter on Macaulay to von Ranke, followed by one on “Novelists as Past Masters”. Also the individuals discussed are not just professional historians: from Julius Ceasar through journalists like the legendary William Howard Russell to contemporary T.V. history presenters, e.g. Simon Schama, who is a professional, but with a popular storytelling literary approach. The selection of individuals whilst broad is personal to Cohen, who is an assertive writer.

The emphasis is on the biographical detail of each historian, or storyteller. Essentially the book is a long string of potted biographies. The detail is fascinating and comes at the reader in a cascade, associated biographies melding with each other. It is rather like being shown around an interesting art gallery by a guide in a hurry who keeps looking at their watch.

As I understand it, the book was not initially released in the USA as the publisher there wanted more coverage of black history and historians. This led to an extra 18,000 words being added, including a separate chapter covering historians George W. Williams to Ibram X. Kendi. There is also a separate chapter on key women historians clumsily called “Herstory”, covering Ban Zhao to Mary Beard. In contrast many of the professional spats of the likes of A.J.P. Taylor (controversialist), Hugh Trevor-Roper (hubris and humiliation) and David Starkey (cancelled) seem like entitled pillow fighting and comic relief.

This book is full of anecdotes and quotes, there are forty-five pages of index. Work by Hilary Mantel is representative of the current meeting of historical research and fiction, she says, “history is not the past-it is the method we’ve evolved of organising our ignorance of the past…it’s what left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it.”

A notable ramble around people who wrote history and in doing so made it. A good reference source and read.

Proleterka by Fleur Jaeggy

A daughter goes on a Mediterranean cruise with her father to spend rare time together. From this memory other memories are strung by the narrator to produce a powerful novella of eighty-nine pages.

The narrator is not specifically named, other than as “Johannes’s daughter” and she uses a mixture of first and third person and tenses to give a shifting and constantly partially focusing revelation of herself, more internal than addressing a reader. Flick through the book and you will notice there is sparse dialogue, though social situations and family life are the subjects. The viewpoint is the detached observer.

The narrators childhood and surroundings are evoked as a world of stifling and repressed bourgeois convention and relative materiality. Into this the narrator suffers the separation of her parents and the brittle care of Orsola her grandmother and subsequent deaths.

Emotional detachment and apathy marks all the family. Their indifference seems bolstered by a determination never to engage and to be frank about death and suicide. Yet Jaeggy uses the atmosphere of ennui to spin the tale with a sense of place, the past, mystery and suspense, which engages.

Also, there is a whole other element to the writing, it uses imagery, metaphor and gem like passages which rise to prose poetry, p13, “The heart incorruptible crystal”. Paragraphs on p34-35 use the metaphor of the piano and music to describe relationships. The deathbed scene p41, with its “green nightlight”, as an image, could compare with Owen’s “thick green light”, in “Dulce et Decorum est”. Maybe history and misfortune has blighted this middle European family, which walks on the edge with insouciance.

The narrator uses the voyage to acquire sexual experience, perfunctory and mercenary, which seems to suit, a tiny expectation of emotional engagement is quickly lost. Apparently, Proleterka, the name of the ship, can translate as proletarian lass, which is the last thing the narrator is. Her coming of age on the ship only confirms her as becoming like her ancestors.

Jaeggy’s poetry in this book is intriguing. Some paragraphs could stand alone on a page like poems, love is hidden and space speaks. It is probably worth a second reading. I suspect I have missed deeper things said by this skilled and careful writer.