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Invisible by Paul Auster

Published on February 5, 2010 by Margaret8 Comments

I read Invisible by Paul Auster in January and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. I feel may understand it more if I reread it, but I have little inclination to do so.

The story opens in New York City in 1967 when student Adam Walker meets a Swiss professor, Rudolf Born and his girlfriend Margot. Born is a visiting lecturer at Columbia University, where Adam is studying literature. He is drawn into their offbeat world, then caught in a triangle that soon descends into violence that shocks and disturbs Adam.

There are three different narrators and the story moves both in time and place, between 1967 and 2007, in New York, Paris and the Caribbean. It also moves between writing in the first person to the second and third person. Like other Auster books, it is multilayered containing stories within stories, which I always enjoy.

From the book jacket:

It is a book of youthful rage, unbridled sexual hunger and a relentless quest for justice. With uncompromising insight, Auster takes us into the shadowy borderland between truth and memory, between authorship and identity, to produce a work of unforgettable power that confirms his reputation as ‘one of America’s most spectacularly inventive writers’.

It’s about writers and writing, how they deal with expressing themselves, and overcoming their writer’s block. One of the narrators comments on a problem he had when writing a memoir:

By writing about myself in the first person, I had smothered myself and made myself invisible, had made it impossible for me to find the thing I was looking for. I needed to separate myself from myself, to step back and carve out some space between myself and my subject (which was myself) and therefore I returned to the beginning of Part Two and began writing it in the third person. I became He, and the distance created by that shift allowed me to finish the book. (page 89)

It started well, but as I read on it became dreary and cringe-making. But strangely I found it compelling reading and had to read on to the end. After the first part, it became harder to distiguish who was narrating. None of the characters are very likeable, some are downright unlikeable (Born for example) and the book slips between truth and fantasy so you don’t know whether to believe anything the narrators say. It’s a puzzle and a tiresome one. Overall I didn’t like it. If I hadn’t read any of Auster’s books before I wouldn’t bother reading one again after this one.

Not everyone agrees with me – both Gaskella and Reading Matters loved this book and recommend it highly.

Winter Reading – Booking Through Thursday

Published on February 4, 2010 by Margaret9 Comments

This week’s question:

The northern hemisphere, at least, is socked in by winter right now€¦ So, on a cold, wintry day, when you want nothing more than to curl up with a good book on the couch €¦ what kind of reading do you want to do?

It is cold here, but looking at what I’m currently reading it’s the same as if we were in a heatwave. In both scenarios I’d be reading indoors – today it’s too cold to sit outside reading and when it’s hot I can’t read outside either. So, the weather does not affect my choice of reading at all. If it’s cold I like to get warm and if it’s hot I look for somewhere cool to sit and read, but my choice of reading is the same.

Surprise Endings – Booking Through Thursday

Published on January 28, 2010 by Margaret16 Comments

The question this week is from Jackie:

I love books with complicated plots and unexpected endings. What is your favourite book with a fantastic twist at the end?

So, today’s question is in two parts.

Do YOU like books with complicated plots and unexpected endings

What book with a surprise ending is your favorite? Or your least favorite?

This is easy – I do like complicated plots and unexpected endings. And the book with a surprise ending that immediately came into my mind when I read this question is The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve. It’s a love story, which had me enthralled. The ending took me completely by surprise. I just hadn’t seen it coming. Sometimes I’m tempted to look at the last few pages when I’m part way into a book and I’m so glad I didn’t with this one.

As for my least favourite, that’s not so easy. There have been quite a few that I think are disappointing and a let down, but I tend to forget about them.

Library Loot

Published on January 26, 2010 by Margaret5 Comments

I had two trips to two libraries last week. As I live in England, but close to the Scottish border I can borrow books from both Scottish and English libraries. I’d joined the Scottish Borders Library Services earlier this year as it’s the nearest one and had already borrowed a few books. They were due back this week and I renewed The Music Room by William Fiennes and borrowed two more – Peter Robinson’s Not Safe After Dark, a collection of short crime stories. I wrote a bit about it here. I also borrowed Winnie and Wolf by A N Wilson. This is a novel about the relationship between Winifred Wagner, the daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner, and Adolf Hitler.

On Friday we joined the Northumberland County Library, where amazingly you can borrow 20 items at a time, that includes books, CDs, DVDs or Spoken Word material for three weeks. Even I couldn’t possibly get through that lot in three weeks! Time was limited for our visit as we only had an hour in the parking space and some of that time had gone walking to the library, so we did a quick tour round and came away with five books:

Northumberland: and the Land of the Prince Bishops by Ed Geldard, a beautiful book with photos of places along the Rivers Tees, Wear, Tyne, Coquet and Tweed. There are plenty of places for us to visit once the weather improves.
Walk Lothian The Borders & Fife by Richard Hallewell. Another book to look at preparing for our walks over the Border.
Crime on the Move: the official anthology of the Crime Writers’ Association 2005 edited by Martin Edwards. More short crime stories to enjoy. I’ve read one so far, which was excellent – On a Bicycle Made For Two – an amusing look at the tension in the build up to a bike race in the little village of Bossingham.
Raven Black by Ann Cleeves – more crime fiction, this time from an author who is best known for her Inspector Ramsay novels set in Northumberland. I haven’t read any of her books yet and perversely the one I’ve borrowed isn’t set in Northumberland, nor is it an Inspector Ramsay book. Raven Black is set in Shetland.
Northumberland Climbing Guide (this was D’s choice). I’ve read the introduction to this book which is about the history of the crags and found that there are examples of rock art on the crags near here. I shan’t be doing any climbing, but I will be looking out for the carved goats and prehistoric spirals.

Sunday Salon – Looking for Agatha Christie!

Published on January 24, 2010 by Margaret3 Comments

I’ve spent quite a few hours this week unpacking and shelving books. There are still quite a lot of boxes to deal with. So far I haven’t come across my Agatha Christie books and those are the ones I want to read right now. It was made worse this morning when I watched Country Tracks. Ben Fogle was travelling through South Devon and visited Agatha Christie’s home Greenway House on the banks of the River Dart. Now managed by the National Trust it is open to the public with only 20 people at a time being allowed entrance every ten minutes on allocated timed tickets. Nobody else was there when Ben went in (lucky Ben!) to a beautiful room, lined with white bookcases and renovated to be how it was when Agatha lived there. Now I want white bookcases – D says I’d better get painting!

I finished reading Ian Rankin’s Black and Blue and Losing You by Nicci French earlier this week and now I’m wondering what to read next. Maybe the next Rebus book – The Hanging Garden or one of the many other books from my to-be-read pile. But what I really want to find are my Agatha Christie books, so I’m off to unpack and shelve more books until I find them.

Ten Random Books Meme

Published on January 23, 2010October 28, 2018 by Margaret10 Comments

Simon T at Stuck in a book developed this meme. Other people have since done it, so I thought I’d do it too. It’s a development of the ten random things about yourself type of meme. Here’s how to do it…

1.) Go to your bookshelves…
2.) Close your eyes. If you’re feeling really committed, blindfold yourself.
3.) Select ten books at random. Use more than one bookcase, if you have them, or piles by the bed, or… basically, wherever you keep books.
4.) Use these books to tell us about yourself – where and when you got them, who got them for you, what the book says about you, etc. etc…..
5.) Have fun! Be imaginative. Doesn’t matter if you’ve read them or not – be creative. It might not seem easy to start off with, and the links might be a little tenuous, but I think this is a fun way to do this sort of meme.
6.) Feel free to cheat a bit, if you need to…

I read Annabel’s post at Gaskella and have copied her method of using a random number generator to pick books from my LibraryThing catalogue, because most of my books are still in boxes after moving house in December. Like Annabel, if I couldn’t think of anything to say about the books – I moved to the next one down the page.

1.Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I bought this about 18 months ago after reading Half of a Yellow Sun. I can’t believe I haven’t read it yet, because I thought Half of a Yellow Sun was such a great book, emotional without being sentimental and factual with being boring. These books are about Nigerian history from a personal viewpoint. I haven’t read much African literature apart from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Wole Soyinka’s play Madmen and Specialists and Jack Mapanje’s poetry. I must make time this year to read Purple Hibiscus.

2. The next book the random generator threw up is Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, an all-time favourite of mine. My copy was either a birthday or Christmas present from my Great Aunty Sally when I was I don’t know how old. I’ve read it many times since then. It has the Tenniel illustrations and it may be the book that my love of words stems from. I remember learning and reciting the Jabberwocky as I enjoyed the sounds, without understanding exactly what it means:

Twas brillig and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogroves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

3. Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in Eighteenth Century Painting by Michael Levey

I bought this book several years ago when I was visiting an art gallery (I forget which one or when it was). I haven’t read it but have just looked at the paintings. I know very little about that period in art – maybe that was why I bought the book to learn about it, or maybe I liked the paintings. When I’ve unpacked it I must look at this one to remind myself why I have it.

4. Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris

I bought this about three years ago in a 3 for 2 at Waterstones. It was the first book by Joanne Harris that I’ve read and I was bowled over by it. Set in a private school, it’s a novel of mystery and suspense, told from two characters’ point of view. There are plenty of twists and turns and although I began to guess the outcome before the end it was not disappointing. A study in obsession and revenge.

5. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics) byâ¦

I’m glad the random number threw up this book because Jane Austen is one of my favourite authors, although this is not my favourite book by her – that is Pride and Prejudice. I’ve had this copy for many years. It’s one of a box set, along with Pride and Prejudice and Emma.

6. The Penguin Atlas of World History: Volume 2: From the French Revolution to the Present

I’ve had this book for years. I bought it in a secondhand bookshop because I love history and this is a nice compact book packed with information and lots of maps.

7. Jamie’s Kitchen by Jamie Oliver

I have unpacked some of my cookery books including this one. It’s a big book with beautiful full page colour photos. I have most of Jamie Oliver’s books and have watched all of his TV programmes. Jamie’s Kitchen was a Channel 4 series about the restaurant he set up to train 15 unemployed kids. The profits from the restaurant were used to send the kids on scholarships with the best chefs around the world. The book gives different cooking methods and lots of recipes. I don’t think I’ve actually cooked any of these recipes – my favourite book of Jamie’s is Jamie At Home – I’ve cooked quite a lot from that book.

8. The Hours of the Night by Sue Gee

I bought this book because I’d read and enjoyed Sue Gee’s Mysteries of Glass. I have read it but have very little memory of it. Even reading the reviews of it on Amazon doesn’t really bring it back to me, apart from its setting on the Welsh Borders. I only gave it three stars in my LT catalogue, I think Mysteries of Glass is much better.

9. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

This is book one in Peake’s Gormanghast trilogy. Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1)

I first read this when I was a student many years ago. I knew nothing about it and had just picked it off the library shelves based on the title alone. I loved it. I suppose it’s a gothic novel, strange and wonderful, full of bizarre and grotesque characters, set in a the castle of Gormenghast, a place with its own rituals and traditions. I couldn’t wait to read on – fortunately the library had all three books and I read them avidly. Some years ago it was dramatised on TV and that is when I bought my own copies of the books.

10. Ripley Under Water by Patricia Highsmith

I bought this for 10p in a secondhand bookshop about two years ago. I Ripley Under Water haven’t read it yet. It’s number 5 in the Ripley crime fiction series and I thought I’d read the earlier novels first and I keep meaning to look out for the first one – The Talented Mr Ripley. I listened to a dramatisation of the first book last year on BBC Radio 4’s The Saturday Play and then missed the following episodes.