Book Review: ELIZABETH COSTELLO, by J.M. Coetzee

I wasn't aware that one author could win the Booker Prize twice, but apparently it can be done, because J.M. Coetzee's done it. If you couple that with a Nobel Prize in Literature, I'd say you've got some pretty impressive credentials. At what point does award-winning become excessive, I wonder?

ELIZABETH COSTELLO is one of Coetzee's more recent novels and it is a complicated book, structured in a series of formal addresses given by various characters on various subjects--each of the eight chapters is complete in itself, bracketed by narrative, but centered around an issue like animal rights, "the problem of evil", and so on.

This format is interesting for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that it leaves the reader to make her own decisions about each topic, as each lecture is received dubiously by its audience and critique is offered on each subject, by the characters speaking or by their audience, so that the author's bias and opinion are not readily divined. This gives the book an unsettling murkiness, and made me think a bit more than I cared to, in all honesty. I cannot even pretend that I understood half of what was being discussed.

Coetzee's writing is deliberate and powerful, and for this I loved the first two chapters, and the second to last, "The Gate," all of which relied more heavily on story than on lecture. As much as I loved the rhthym of Coetzee's voice, and however fascinating the ideas being presented, I found myself tempted to skip ahead through many pages of discussion to where the narrative thread picked up again.

Another dubiously good Coetzee book? Disgrace. Both are worth reading, though I could sum each one up in a single word: for Disgrace, I choose "depressing." For ELIZABETH COSTELLO, "intimidating." But don't let that scare you away.

RATING: 3

Book Review: LOST SOULS, by Michael Collins

Ordinarily, I'm not big on murder-mysteries, but LOST SOULS is a bit different. Though the book doesn't vary much on the mysterious plot (small girl found dead on Halloween--small Midwestern town wonders Who? and Why?), the murder is pretty much solved by the second chapter, leaving Collins with plenty of time to examine the downfall of a failing town and then draw certain parallels between this town and the fall of industry in America--which is interesting, but it's also an awful lot like what he did in his last two books, The Resurrectionists and The Keepers of Truth.

So, it's satire in disguise as mystery, which I'm all for, but I worry when I see three books by the same author attack essentially the same subject--especially when the author has already done it quite successfully in The Resurrectionists. It pains me to see this happen, because Collins is very good--his details create an almost overbearing atmosphere, and he's excellent at capturing gestures and quirky mannerisms. He tends toward melancholy characters and depressing stories, but he says a lot with a little bit of material. I just think it might be time to try a fresh angle.

I know Keepers was short-listed for the Booker Prize and all, but I liked The Resurrectionists best, and if you're ready for a dose of gloomy Midwestern mystery-satire, I'd recommend you start with that one.

RATING: 3

Book Review: POSSESSION, by A.S. Byatt

Somebody asked me once if I'd read this book, and when I said no, they said it seemed like something I would read. I cannot for the life of me remember who said this. If it was you, please put my mind at ease and tell me.

I'm a complete sucker for recommendations, at any rate, so at the recommendation of this Mystery Person, I bought POSSESSION and I read it. And I enjoyed it, very much.

It's no wonder that Byatt won a Booker Prize for POSSESSION: part suspense, part romance (not that kind of romance), and two or three parts literature, Byatt's novel follows young Roland Michel, a scholar on the fictional late nineteenth century poet, Randolph Henry Ash, as he accidentally discovers two as yet unseen letters of Ash's in a library book. The letters set Michel on the trail of the unknown woman to whom Ash was writing and, with the help of another scholar, Maud Bailey, he uncovers a story that blah blah blah.

I'm sorry. My summary is so terribly insufficient.

When written up like that, POSSESSION sounds like nothing more than a stock thriller plot, with a little history and poetry mixed in. Forgive me. It is so much more.

Byatt's writing is incredible--whether you like them or not, her sentences are impressive, long and lovely, the words and images she chooses wildly beautiful--and her sense of structure is magnificent. This is the sort of book that begs to be examined in college literature classes--I couldn't help but notice certain themes running through the story (the word "possession", in every possible sense, being one of them), and the way Byatt wove in bits of poetry by her fictional poets, or entire journals written by various characters, and yet kept the voices of each character, whether writing or speaking, perfectly clear, added many, many more layers to a story that was already rich and glowing.

I liked it. I really did. For you Victorian literature buffs, this is a great mix of contemporary and classic literature, complete with epic poems and scenes set in Victorian England. Postively lovely.

RATING: 4

Book Review: OFFSHORE, by Penelope Fitzgerald

OFFSHORE is a very pretty little book about houseboats on the Thames River, but it's pretty in a gray, slightly British way. The characters are quirky and intriguing. A lot happens in not very many pages, which I appreciate, and it happens in an artful, subtle fashion. Fitzgerald's got some skills, that much I'll say. And with them, she won the Booker Prize.

I've been intrigued with her for awhile, having only heard of her simply because her skinny, brightly-colored books have half a shelf to themselves at my favorite bookstore--and I came across them often while looking up F. Scott Fitzgerald. Finally, in a fit of whimsey (if there is such a thing), I bought one. And I liked it.

I might even go buy another.

RATING: 3

Book Review: AMSTERDAM, by Ian McEwan

Having read a couple of McEwan's other novels (Atonement and Enduring Love) and, having absolutely loved them, Booker-prize-winning AMSTERDAM came as a bit of a disappointment. Forty-pages into it, I still hadn't quite determined the relationship between the two main characters, Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday. Clive, a successful composer who is finishing a commissioned symphony to mark the end of the millenium, and Vernon, editor of the Judge, both loved Molly Lane, and meet in the very first scene at Molly's funeral.

Sounds promising, yes?

What I've noticed about McEwan is his tendency to take characters you love and put them in terrible situations where, in a very real, very heartbreaking way, they tend to make bad choices (sort of "What happens if he doesn't save the small drowning child?" scenarios). He never misses an opportunity to let a character behave as a biased and self-preserving person (i.e. most people) would. Misunderstanding and wrong-doings abound, and in that sense, McEwan's novels are hard to read--challenging--but the writing is flawless, the characters incredibly rich, and the actions, the reasoning and the justifications of his characters all too believable.

But AMSTERDAM was lacking that intrigue somehow. The characters weren't terribly interesting--perhaps they were a little too true to real life--and by the end of the book I was rather disheartened. I kept holding out for a twist ending, something to tie it all together in a wholly unexpected way, but nothing came. The story fell out exactly like I'd thought it would--and hoped it wouldn't. There were some nice moments when McEwan described Linley's symphony--the rigors of composing, the delicate hum of notes before Clive put them on paper...

It's possible that I missed something in AMSTERDAM--McEwan does sometimes have sneaky endings--but he has many other novels to read. I recommend them.

RATING: 2