Fabulous reads
Friday, July 18, 2014 at 02:36AM Alice McDermott, John Williams, Elizabeth Gilbert. Mark Mulholland. Jess Walter, oh, Jess Walter!
All these are authors I have discovered in the first six months of 2014. I’ve been reading a novel a week for most of my life, and still there are thousands of brilliant writers in English out there that I will not get around to discovering, if I live to be 100.
I have a habit, these days, of perusing the book reviews in the Saturday paper and noting any authors that take my fancy. This avoids what used to frustrate me each time I visited the library: so many good books I know I want to borrow and I can’t think of one. My husband’s book group – full of scarily erudite blokes – is also a great source of authors I would not naturally gravitate to.
Now, armed with my long list of potential discoveries, I cruise the shelves of the cosy City Library, just five minutes walk from my office – perfect for a lunch time visit – like a desperate single at a bar.
Someone, by Alice McDermott, is appropriately titled; it tells the story of the mundane life of an Irish-American woman born in Brooklyn and not travelling much further in her lifetime – a life completely ordinary and yet I could not put it down. I relished it like a fine meal; I ached for the sorrows of our heroine and rejoiced at her joys as if she were my daughter. The book swoops around in different times throughout her life – childhood to old age, young woman to mature matron and back again, but I was not confused, merely intrigued and charmed and also frustrated – how does McDermott do that?
John Williams’ Stoner took me a little longer to get into but was well worth the perseverance. Written in 1965, it tells the tale of a simple man who made no waves, impressed no one in particular, had a disappointing life by modern standards, but whose sweet, incorruptible goodness renders his story riveting. Stoner, the name of the protagonist, is a man from a deprived farming community in the Midwest (US) who nonetheless makes it to university and stays there, becoming an academic until his quiet, understated death.
It’s been hard to avoid the name Elizabeth Gilbert if you are either a reader or movie-goer, but until this year I had not read the mega-seller Eat, Pray, Love. I bought it for a couple of bucks at Anglesea op shop and found, to my surprise, that it didn’t irritate me as much as most self-help books. Indeed I enjoyed it thoroughly, thought her a good writer, a sincere seeker and a brilliant capturer of contemporary yearnings.
Then I read The Signature of All Things, a work of fiction, and Eat, Pray, Love faded by comparison. Signature is a sprawling saga that tells the story of Alma Whittaker, contemporary of Charles Darwin, who becomes a world authority on moss. No, it doesn’t sound promising (I can never muster enthusiasm for anything botanical), but I lived happily in this book for a week, longing to get back into it every evening, resenting every minute I was kept away. It is meticulously researched and exquisitely written.
Unlike Marie, the protagonist in Someone, Alma travels the world in her quest for knowledge and fulfilment. The secret life of moss, sexual awakening, exotic locations, spiritual epiphanies, evolution, science, botany, history – this book has the lot. It is a hymn to life is all its abundant diversity and messy glory. Best of all, the heroine is irredeemably homely, the size of a man, blunt, uncompromising and tough, and most of the action in this remarkable story takes place when she is in advanced middle age.
Mark Mulholland’s debut novel A Mad and Wonderful Thing is not perfect, but it comes close. His hero, Johnny, lives in Dundalk, a town that is politically in the South of Ireland and geographically in the North. He grows up in these borderlands, bang in the middle of ‘The Troubles’. Johnny is everybody’s favourite – young girls and old ladies love him – he is attractive, smart, charming and just plain likeable, and the story of his first love moved me profoundly. He also happens to be a crack sniper for the IRA – a secret no one except his handler knows. Based loosely on the story of Mulholland’s own younger brother, the tale is funny, fascinating, devastating and heart-warming and left me longing for whatever comes next from Mulholland’s pen. It also gave me a new life ambition – to walk my way around the entire Irish coast.
Lastly, Jess Walter and his Beautiful Ruins. This book had me gasping from the first chapter, set in the 1940s in a tiny town in northern Italy. The story also takes place in Hollywood in the 2000s but, unlike so many novels that use this device, each of the locations and sets of characters are equally compelling. It is a whacky book, unlike anything I’ve read before. Pasquale, the Italian hotelier, is one of the most genuinely good people I’ve fallen in love with on the page – his striving for happiness, his sacrifice and integrity fill the book.
Each of these works is proof that a good writer can make a compelling page-turner out of the most ordinary of lives. Most of them are also proof that in the hands of a brilliant and loving writer even good people can be fun to read about – something we were told at writing school was not the case. No one wants to read about nice people, they said, but these stories prove them wrong.
These novels, like so many others I’ve been besotted with over a life-time of reading, are the reason that, despite resounding lack of success to date, I persevere with my dream of having a novel published. They are why I am half way through my second novel; struggling excruciatingly in a way I never do writing non-fiction. Because fiction is the love of my life, to me it is the pinnacle of writing, and I will never rest until I’ve had a red-hot go at achieving this myself.
At the same time, reading these novels make me despair. With such an abundance of writing this utterly wonderful, what is the point of my even trying?
Reader Comments (7)
Persevere, dear Clare, persevere. I know there is a novel in you... xx
I admire your willingness to keep on creating and working at it and may both your novels reach publication!
And thanks for the engaging read about these novels- your enjoyment is voracious and your delight is contagious.
The point of continuing to try is that each of these authors has accomplished something of value, something that in the first place gave them satisfaction. And so you continue to strive, because you are one with them.
Be encouraged Clare! Your dedication to your craft is so admirable, and even though there are no guarantees in your field, there are many who wish you well, many waiting with anticipation to read your work whether fiction or non fiction.
Because you are part of a choir doesn't mean that your own voice should not be heard on its own sometimes and bring that different pleasure to an audience. There is abundant evidence that your writing moves people now in much the same way as you've described these other authors. It has already happened! And if you give birth to a novel that will be just another way in which your voice is expressed.
Oh Clare, thank you for the next guide to reading. My summer and winter holidays have been blessed by book loans on your advice
Now here's to spring!
I've just read 'A Mad and Wonderful Thing' (from my local Eltham library). Thanks for the recommendation. It has stayed with me. It's a love letter to Ireland really. It's a stunning debut novel and I wonder what Mark Mulholland might produce next?