Dooneen

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There have been several times in my reading life when the well worn refrain “fiction is dead” has been a popular and critically fashionable point of view. It’s heard a lot less these days, partly because sales of fiction are very high, driven at least in part by the popularity of genres like fantasy and romance, but also because of the number of new and distinctive writers stretching the boundaries of what fiction can be. Coming across for the first time a novelist experimenting with the form and approaching the art of storytelling in a fresh and challenging way remains one of the great joys of reading.

I was in a bookshop in Kent, CT recently and spotted a newly published paperback called Dooneen by an Irish writer I had never heard of, Keith Ridgway. The unusual cover art caught my eye and, turning to the back, I discovered that Ridgway had won several prestigious awards for some of his previous novels. I bought it, along with Colson Whitehead’s latest (Cool Machine), intending to add it to my summer reading pile.

Bartholomew Port, known to everyone as Mew, steps into bushes in a London park and emerges, dirtier and more disheveled, from bushes in a park in Dublin. Mew is back in a city he knows well to speak at a festival, but finds Dublin to be old and new, familiar and strange, all at the same time. Cars and all motorized vehicles are no longer permitted, and have been replaced by carts. “Clickers” (moving sidewalks) are the norm, though some are not working. It’s a place in turmoil. Popular insurrection is brewing. Revolution is in the air. Protestors and conspirators are everywhere, meeting in secret and in small groups, fearful of state-sponsored crackdowns and violence. Mew finds himself drawn into their mysterious underground world and led around a sinister and ominous city.

Those who love Irish literature will hear, as Mew makes his way around Dublin, echoes of Leopold Bloom in Ulysses and will find the playfulness of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett on almost every page. But there’s darkness in Dooneen and in its portrayal of a city on the edge of popular revolt. There’s also tenderness as Mew attempts to reconnect with his great love, Mootie. This is a quirky, unclassifiable novel. Part homage to a much loved city, part love story, part political satire, and part fantastical odyssey; Dooneen is a reminder of how provocative and engaging fiction can be, and how relevant it remains.

The Ghostwriter

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I didn’t enjoy reading The Ghostwriter, a mystery novel written by Julie Clark. I cared nothing for the protagonist (a ghostwriter commissioned by her estranged father, a celebrated novelist, to write a memoir about the infamous murders of his brother and sister decades earlier). The plot felt contrived and unbelievable, the prose flat, and the disjointed structure irritating. All of this was apparent quite early, so why did I persevere? Because the novel was a gift from a family member. Not reading it or abandoning it half-read would have been unconscionably rude. Those near and dear to me know what books mean to me and the outsized role they play in my life. An act of such kindness and thoughtfulness – someone walking into a bookstore and taking the time to choose a title they think I would enjoy (even if on this occasion they got it wrong) – means a lot to me.

The Art of Dying

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When I used to subscribe to The New Yorker I would look forward to Peter Schjeldahl’s articles about the art world. More often than not, the artists he wrote about were unfamiliar to me, but that never seemed to matter because he wrote with such energy, color, and humor, and because he was always so opinionated and entertaining. He died in 2020, having been diagnosed with lung cancer some time earlier. Between diagnosis and death, he published more than forty articles and these have been collected in The Art of Dying. The first of them is the celebrated and deeply moving autobiographical piece he published in The New Yorker. “Lung cancer, rampant. No surprise. I’ve smoked since I was sixteen, behind the high school football bleachers in Northfield, Minnesota”. Buy the book for this essay alone.

There are pieces in this collection about artists I don’t know. Charles Ray and Faith Ringgold, for example. I read first the articles about artists and places I know well such as Morandi, Holbein, and Storm King, seeing and appreciating them in slightly new ways thanks to Schjeldahl’s intelligence, perceptiveness and humor. He was a one-off, as Steve Martin’s tribute at the beginning of the book recalls; contrary, funny, and brilliant. I read The Art of Dying while dipping into Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, a collection of his writings from 1988 to 2018. I receommend them both.

London Falling

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London Falling. What’s the meaning of that title? The tragic fall to his death from a luxury apartment block of a young man? The sinister decline in London’s reputation as it welcomed without question or scrutiny the influx of Russian oligarchs, their dubious money, and even more dubious morals? Or just a nod to the apocalyptic warnings in The Clash’s famous song, London Calling?

The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in
Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
‘Cause London is drowning, and I, I live by the river.

And what type of book is this? A story about the agonies and frustrations of parenting? An investigation into police incompetence? A warning about the dangers facing young men growing up surrounded by false promises, lies, unattainable aspirations, and charlatans? A critique of the politicians and financiers in awe of money and careless about where it comes from? In truth, Patrick Radden Keefe’s new book is all of these things and much more. What happened to Zac Brettler that night in November 2019 was a chilling and heartbreaking human tragedy for his parents, brother, and friends. For all of us it ought to be a warning and an alarm call.

Anyone who read Say Nothing will know how good a reporter Patrick Radden Keefe is. London Falling certainly matches and perhaps exceeds that achievement, and that’s saying something. He has a genuine interest in and compassion for his subjects, matched by the appetite for detail and the relentlessness that are the hallmarks of great investigative journalists. He also writes very well, pacing and shaping the story with meticulous care and skill.

I suppose it could be argued that he “overcooks” the account, setting up for the reader a mystery that will never be solved. Perhaps, but it is such a great story and told with a lot of compassion and just enough anger. We all need to know what happened to Zac even though we may never understand it. And we all need to be told just how wicked, greedy, and corrupt some people can be.

Andalusian Musings

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The seed was sown more than a year ago. A colleague based in Seville (and a native Andalusian) suggested a rough itinerary for me after I mentioned my interest in traveling in the region. In early June I used it to guide me on a 10-day tour of some of Andalusia’s highlights.

We chose Cadiz as our base for the first part of the trip. It’s the favorite city in Spain of a friend of mine who lives in Madrid, so I could depend on local recommendations of what to see, where to eat and drink, and so on. Our apartment overlooked Plaza San Antonio in the heart of the old city and gave us a great view (below) of its imposing 17th century church. Cadiz is an elegant, unpretentious city. I’m told it attracts plenty of visitors in the summer months, but in early June it still had a slightly sleepy air and was following the usual routines of the locals, not the tourists. It is famous for its windy conditions, and sure enough throughout our stay there was a constant and welcome breeze coming off the Atlantic and Bay of Cadiz. For me the joy of Cadiz was strolling around its streets, sitting in pretty squares, watching the locals, and trying out a few of the bars and cafes. There are for sure plenty of sights to see (the Torre Tavira, the cathedral, the remains of a Roman theater, and the Castillo de San Sebastian to mention just a few) and I recommend them all, but if time is tight use it instead to walk, sit, and watch. My favorite places there? The Barrio de la Vina for its nightlife and people watching. Taberna Casa Manteca and Taberna del Veedor for tapas and a cold beer. Two gorgeous squares, Mina and Candelaria. And for an unforgettable dinner, there’s nowhere better than Restaurante Codgo de Barra in the heart of the old town.

Setting to one side the intrinsic charms of Cadiz, it is also a very convenient base from which to explore many of the pueblos blancos for which this part of Spain is famous. The picturesque “white towns” are a must for anyone interested in history and architecture. The towns often performed a defensive function, so many of them perch on hills and cliffs overlooking the countryside and feature fortifications and towers, many with strong Moorish influences. We visited Arcos de la Frontera, Sanlucar de Barrameda and, most beautiful of all, Vejer de la Frontera. Sanlucar is unmissable for wine aficionados because it’s the production center for manzanilla, the famous dry fino sherry exclusively from this area. Take a tour at one of the town’s bodegas or, even better, sit in the pretty town square and have a chilled glass with some tapas. All the villages I visited seemed to have two distinct parts, one for locals and one for visitors. Vejer is the one most focused on visitors. Its pretty, narrow streets are filled with art galleries, shops, and cafes. I imagine these get pretty congested at the height of the season, so it’s important for those who hate crowds to time their visits carefully.

The next part of my short tour of Andalusia was a few days in two coastal towns, Tarifa and Zahara de Los Atunes. The former, the most southerly town in continental Europe, is a magnet for kite surfers and wind surfers who flock to Tarifa’s beaches. It is a pretty town with a medieval gate and some remnants of ancient walls. Zahara is smaller and its main attraction are the beautiful, sandy beaches nearby. Roughly 25 kilometers from the town stands Baelo Claudia, the unmissable and impressive ruins of a Roman city from the 2nd century BC.

We wound up our stay in Andalusia with a day in Jerez, a place steeped in the region’s culture (think sherry, great food, and flamenco). A fitting end to ten delightful days in an unforgettable part of Spain.

The Palm House

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What did I miss? The author is highly regarded. The reviews were very positive, sometimes effusive. Even Sarah Jessica Parker praised it! So why, turning the final page, did I wonder what all the fuss was about? Thinking back on The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley, I could find nothing especially noteworthy or engaging about it. And I’m the sort of reader who likes and tends to gravitate towards quiet, mannered, minimalist novels, the sorts of novels by the likes of Tessa Hadley that never normally fail to delight and impress me. And while I’m feeling puzzled, can someone please explain the relevance of the cover image and the title?

The Last Movement

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Gustav Mahler was only fifty years old when he died in 1911. His may have been a relatively short life but it was one filled with extraordinary creativity and accomplishments and no small measure of personal tragedy, ill health, and sadness. Robert Seethaler’s short novel, The Last Movement, sees the great composer in the last phase of his life and making his final voyage from New York to Vienna. The plot, such as it is, finds Mahler on the deck of the ocean liner, reflecting on his life, accompanied only by a cabin boy. His memories are mostly sad ones. The tragic loss of one of his children, the stormy marriage to his beloved Alma, and the frustrations of his professional life all feature prominently as he looks back and tries to make sense of his existence. What discovery persists? The deep and inescapable solitariness of of every human life, the fundamental aloneness that cannot be avoided regardless of the successes and companions accumulated along the way.

The Last Movement is another delightful, thoughtful miniature from Seethaler, but for me it never reached the heights of beauty he achieved with A Whole Life. Worth reading? Certainly.

Perfection

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Vincenzo Latronico’s short novel, Perfection, is an unsettling social satire. It follows the lives of Anna and Tom, two young “digital creatives” who move to Berlin in the 2010s from an unnamed country in southern Europe. Well-paid freelance work is plentiful and Berlin is still affordable, so Anna and Tom live an enviable life comprising hard work, easy friendships, and a vibrant social scene. It’s a time of abundance and apparently endless possibility. But as the years pass, things change. Berlin starts to be very expensive and their fellow “digital nomads” wander home or elsewhere. Work gets a little harder to find and clients look for a younger and cheaper workforce. The perfect life, the lovely home filled with just the right possessions, the social routine of nightclubs, restaurants, and gallery openings – it all seems to be slipping away and unsatisfying. Disillusionment creeps in.

How could they ever have chosen to spend their days like that, hunched over a computer screen in their living room? They will be tempted to search elsewhere for what they found all those years ago in Berlin. But it will prove impossible because that abundance was the result of a specific overlap between the city’s history and theirs.

What Anna and Tom discover may not be revelatory to everyone. A life filled with little more than work becomes stale and purposeless, especially when that work produces little of substance and lasting value. Life lived in the bubbles and echo chambers of social media ends up being hollow and unmoored. No amount of fashionable furniture and artisanal coffee can compensate. Obvious? Perhaps, but not to those searching for the illusion of a perfect life in places it will never be found.

Perfection isn’t a perfect novel. Anna and Tom are indistinguishable from one another and sometimes seem little more than empty cyphers. Everything here is a little heavy-handed and didactic. Nevertheless, the novel captures very well a spirit, a moment in time, and a way of living that we may all look back on with astonishment and disbelief.

Henry Moore: Monumental Nature

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Henry Moore preferred his large sculptures to be displayed outdoors. He would, I expect, be delighted by the decision to place thirty of them in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. The pieces here vary greatly. Some are representational, others purely abstract. Some are made of bronze, some of fibreglass. Most are huge and imposing and somehow seem even more so set amongst Kew’s magnificent trees and glass houses. Being able to walk around them, to see them close up, to see their markings and their variations in color and texture provides an opportunity to appreciate Moore in a new way. His extraordinary ability to infuse these massive, heavy pieces with such movement and gracefulness and the wonderful delicacy and gentleness when sculpting the human form are appreciable here in a way they could never be inside a gallery or museum.

Departure(s)

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Memories, and especially their unreliability, seem to be one of the favorite concerns of literary novelists. Time and again I read novels in which the author reminds the reader that memory is a creative act, that memories are often inventions and fabrications, that the past is a slippery thing to retrieve, that our motives for recalling and retelling stories from our past are rarely pure, and so on and so on. It’s the center of Julian Barnes’s latest and possibly final book, Departure(s).

Is Departure(s) a novel or a memoir? Its narrator is someone called Julian Barnes. We’re told by this narrator that he is a Booker Prize-winning novelist who lives in London, a widower who learns at the start of the COVID pandemic that he has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer. Google Julian Barnes and you will find all of this true, so what makes Departure(s) a novel? I’m not sure but it’s an interesting conceit which the author uses to confront the purpose of storytelling, fiction versus fact, the differences (and similarities) between remembering and re-telling, and much more. If this sounds a little dry, it isn’t. Barnes is having great fun here. Departure(s) is in my view one of the most approachable and endearing novels he has written. If it really is his last, I for one will be sorry.