Every Last One is half Wally Lamb but uniquely Quindlen who invariably writes with compassion and care but who also writes about critical moments in people's lives (dear God, I should abandon this blog right now).
This book is just what I needed, the first half anyway. It begins thus:
This is my life....
and ends with an echo of these words, but what happens in the space between their utterance is too terrible to bear, almost.
Naturally I can't tell you what happens, but from the moment I started reading, I was.... what? captivated, entranced, engaged, utterly there, completely content to read about this woman's every day life with her every day family, hoping against hope that disaster wasn't looming but of course it was. This is Anna Quindlen and she prefaces the book with that beautiful but ominous poem by Philip Larkin:
There is an evening coming in.......
Read this book.
Jonathan Coe's book is clever and also "eminently" readable (I haven't improved my writing ability in the past half hour obviously). It's like, if we are to pursue comparisons, a not so clever JM Coetzee, certainly a less pretentious JMC, in its surprising last chapter. I thought I had the mystery of the book all wrapped up until I read the last few pages, then felt mildly cheated but grinned nevertheless. Think about Slow Man, JMC fans.
While its technique is a little too foregrounded, I enjoyed the various transitions between narrative and intervening letters, short stories, emails etc all of which our protagonist is reading during the rather strange journey he's on beginning in Australia and ending there too, again, think Slow Man.
Despite my woeful attempts at book reviewing this sunny Sunday, I can heartily recommend these two books (there she goes again, "heartily", huh!).
No comments:
Post a Comment