Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig

After reaching to finishing line of Wolf Hall and recently completing The Luminaries, I wanted a break. I wanted to read a classic, perhaps something of its time rather than a pastiche of a much-loved era.

Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig with its ill-fated Austrian author and its historical context seemed like the perfect book for me - plus I had watched Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel earlier in the week.

The foreword by Nicholas Lezard in this particular edition was the perfect introduction to the book and supplied much hype to the story - which by the way is encased by a frame narration (one of the things Wes Andersson borrowed for his film). 

The story itself is a tale of emotional blackmail and provides so much ammo for a Freud/Nietzsche workshop I could hear the literary theory critics jumping with glee.

Hofmiller, a young cavalry officer, makes a social faux-pas when he is invited to the mansion of a rich estate-owner. He upsets the disabled daughter of his host by asking her to dance and a series of events unfold which ‘ties’ the young man to the family.

The book is a story of agency, military indoctrination and a satire on the social protocols of the time. There are some farcical treats in Stefan Zweig writing which had me laughing and pointed to why Wes Andersson was attracted to the author’s work.

However, I must say I found the character of Edith, the “crippled”* daughter, very annoying.

One of the things I detest in any literature from a bygone era is hysterical female characters – you know the type who faint, cry, shriek or tremble and can’t pull themselves out of their emotional dilemma and basically get a grip.

Unfortunately Edith in her melodramatic ways did quite a lot of this which promoted me to commit the cardinal sin of skipping some pages until she had left the scene.

The Translater’s Afterword although was very interesting and provided an interesting reflection on Beware of Pity’s historical relevance. 

*I also don’t like the use of the word “crippled” to describe characters who are in some way handicapped.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

When I turned page 797 of this Man Booker Prize winner a feeling of pure relief washed over me. The end was in sight. It had only taken me three months.

“Oh you’re reading The Luminaries, what do you think of it?” I have been asked this question quite a few times over the summer and I was never really sure what to say, except to describe to the plot in simplistic terms, hoping that this would suggest something positive.

Eleanor Catton’s doorstopper of a novel is set 1866 at the time of the New Zealand gold rush. In the township of Hokitka, a key gold mining settlement, a set of scandals have occurred and since been reported in The West Coast Times. 

Alongside his dead body, an enormous fortune has been discovered in the cottage of drunken hermit, while a “lady of the night” has tried to end her life by overdosing on opium and a known wealthy young man has mysteriously disappeared.

A group of twelve local men, all connected in some way to the events, congregate in the smoking room of The Crown Hotel in order to solve the puzzle.

The plot has all the inviting elements of a murder mystery game and Eleanor Catton provides the traditional characters and their detailed backstories.

There’s Dick Manning, the fat gold magnate with “mutton-chop whiskers”, Walter Moody, the curly-haired boyish newcomer who has come to seek his fortune and Harald Nilssen, the merchant famous for his wardrobe of grey bow ties and “cashmere striped morning trousers”. 

On paper it sounds promising but at 832 pages it's a bit of a slog. 

Unfortunately Catton’s enthusiasm for Victorian sensation becomes long-winded and tedious at times (and I love anything wordy or Victorian).

The problem is the narration becomes so convoluted and repetitious that it loses the feeling it is trying to convey. This means the décor of the parlour rooms and attire of the flamboyant cast end up lost in the frustrations of the recitation. 

If you do find yourself lost, there some cheat sheets available, I found this one quite useful. 

There are some glimmers of excitement though, look out for a staged séance and the Chinese stowaway with a vengeance to kill.

You cannot ignore levels Catton went to in order to research the novel; in her Acknowledgements she quotes the National Zealand newspaper archives, astrologers and some interesting non-fiction works as sources (Diggers, Hatters and Whores by Stevan Edlred-Grigg has now been added to my reading wishlist).

Read if you want to add to your Victorian pastiche library collection...and if you can find the time.

1Q84 Book 1 by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 has been sitting on my “to-read” list for quite a while.

Google “books set in Japan” or “Japanese novelists” and 1Q84 comes up on the top spots. When it was first published in 2011 the trilogy smashed the best-sellers list and it continues to be a feature in every Waterstones’ offer table in the country.

Given its ambiguous front cover and cryptic blurb, it’s hard to find out what 1Q84 is actually about without uncovering any spoilers. 

The internet has come to a unanimous vote though:
Haruki Murakami is a writer who is obsessed with cats and boobies.

I brought Books One and Two together, a hefty whooper numbering at 805 pages.

Book One is split into two character viewpoints: Aomame (pronounced Ah-oh-mah-meh) and Tengo. 

Aomame and Tengo live their seemingly separate lives; one an unmerciful assassin with a peculiar fetish for bald men and the other a struggling writer who has been given a risky literary task. At one point I found myself thinking that apart these stories would have made great novels.

Eventually by page p231 connections start to form, but there’s no sign of any cats.

Asking why Haruki Murarkami has such a preoccupation with a particular part of the female anatomy may be posing a wider question to straight men across the ages.  However as the novel progressed the fixation became so bizarre I could hear his female creations screaming out “Hey Murakami, I’m up here!”

The plot reads like an Orwellian misogynistic mesh set in 1980s Japan. The slow reveal of character’s private tales lure you into completion and I am hoping Book Two will answer the reason for the mammary obsession… either that or it will supply long compensating descriptions of the female character’s eyes.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

I received Olive Kitteridge as a Christmas present after watching the Sky Atlantic mini-series last year. I’ve always been an advocate for the book that comes before any screen adaptation and I always will be. I think even Olive Kitteridge would criticise my roundabout way of initially encountering her story. 

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout is a telling of the lives of characters that inhabit a coastal town in Maine. Each of the thirteen chapters exists as separate short stories, and can be considered all together as one form, or individually within their own contained shell. 

If the plot was to centre on a main character, it would be the title name. 

Olive Kitteridge is retired Maths teacher who lives with her quiet-mannered husband Henry and her angst-ridden son.

You may met Olive first-hand through Elizabeth Strout painfully beautifully verse or you have seen the Sky Atlantic television adaptation. Either way you must agree Mrs Kitteridge is one of fiction’s complex entities. 

Hardened, bitter, set in her ways and snappy, Olive is the ignored relative and feared schoolteacher. “I don’t know how he can stand her” comments Bob Houlton in the Winter Concert chapter, after Henry Kitteridge and his wife arrive at Church.

Despite that I couldn’t help warming to Mrs Kitteridge and her firm way of thinking. At times she shows a tender loving side which is out of sight from the prattles of town gossip and I felt protective over her and angry about any criticisms she endures.

What Elizabeth Strout has created is an interesting set of townspeople, each with their own sorrows and idiosyncrasies. Alongside any chapter where Olive Kitteridge appears my favourites also include The Piano Player which tells the life of an alcoholic lounge singer, and Ship in a Bottle, the story of a jilted teenage bride.

Appetite by Philip Kazan

If a book can make a recipe for tripe sound appetising then that is a testament to the author’s skill as a writer. 

To my knowledge I’ve never eaten tripe. However I’ve found a compelling argument that it tastes wonderful, especially, according to Philip Kazan, if you scrub it “diligently”, cook it with “a handful of fresh sage leaves” and finally add secret intangible Florentine ingredient…

I decided to try Appetite upon the strength of many reviews declaring it is like Patrick Süskind’s Perfume.

I loved Patrick Sukind’s sensory and descriptive delve into the world of scent, and as I love food it seemed Appetite and me would be the perfect match. 

Unfortunately the comparison to Perfume lost all meaning as the book went on.

In Appetite Philip Kazan has created a novel with little gems to add to your cookbook, but the plot gets tangled up in a drawn-out love story, and on occasion loses its taste.

Nino Latini, a young butcher’s son, has a talent in the kitchen and his ambition/idiocy in the pursuit of love takes him far and wide across the Italian landscape.

Appetite would be the perfect companion if you are visiting Florence or Rome. It has all the elements of a historical-fiction novel; real-life characters, plenty of Piazza’s, Churches and rioting in the cobbled streets. However if you are looking out for a follow up to Perfume, dismiss all of earlier comparisons to it as well… a load of tripe.

Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell

It’s the 90s. In Richmond Virginia people switch on their VCRs, turn over their cassettes, insert floppy discs into their PCs and listen to the dulcet tone of a modern dial up. All the while a serial killer, a ‘Mr Nobody’, is breaking into the homes of women late at night.

Now that the fourth victim has been discovered Dr Kay Scarpetta, the town's chief medical examiner, is running out of time…

I was lent Patricia Cornwell’s first book after completing The Axeman’s Jazz.

Post-Mortem, was published in 1990, and was a groundbreaker in its focus on forensic evidence within the crime-fiction genre. 

Nowadays whenever you are channel-hopping you cannot escape the slab-gore reruns of CSI: Crime Investigation, CSI: Miami or CSI: NY. 

The morgue table has become an obligatory feature in any crime thriller, and it is usually during that scene when I turn the telly on mute, leave the room to make a cup of tea or cover my eyes and repeatedly shout “Ewww!” until it ends.

Post-Mortem, evidently given its title, exposes the subject intently and talks about things that I don’t feel like typing about at the moment because I’m about to eat my dinner.

What’s more PG friendly is Cornwell’s mention of DNA samples, microscopic analysis of fabric fibres and dust which have moulded into the modern-day crime fiction vocabulary.

Plus the strong female lead, Dr Kay Scarpetta, who clashes with her male counterparts in her fight against violence to women, and probably goes out drinking with Agent Clarice Starling after work. 

Despite that the technology is a bit dated, and since I’m used to reading about the hacking exploits of Lisbeth Salander, I still enjoyed Post-Mortem.

It was a breezy read that I completed in a week and was the perfect companion to the January sniffles. 

No one can ignore the significance this book has had to the crime-fiction genre, and if you are wondering when the film based on Dr Kay Scarpetta is going to emerge it seems so is Patricia Cornwell… read here.