Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian novelist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010.  I have to assume his powers have waned since those heady days because The Neighborhood, his most recently published novel, is a minor work of little significance.  It’s a story composed of several strands tied together to make up what was clearly intended to be an angry and cutting indictment of Peru under the control of Alberto Fujimori.  Sadly, the plot is trite and its handling clumsy and clichéd.  There’s little or nothing to recommend the novel and it can only detract from a distinguished writer’s legacy.

Visitors landing at the airport in Basel, once they complete the immigration and customs formalities, need to make a decision at the exit: turn left for France and Germany or right for Switzerland.  I can’t immediately think of another airport that offers you a choice of three countries when you arrive.  On the two occasions I’ve been to Basel, commitments forced me to turn right and head to Switzerland and the city center, but I’ve often wondered about that other door …

The center of Basel is a pretty, refined place with medieval buildings, small shops and cafés.  The vibe, as in so much of Switzerland, is unhurried, affluent, conservative, and downright civilized.  Rushing feels vulgar. Immediately after checking in at my hotel, I took the tram (free to visitors!) to Fondation Beyeler to see what I think was one of the most impressive exhibitions I can remember of two of my favorite artists: Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti.

A great exhibition makes you think about art, artists, and experience in a new way.  I hadn’t previously thought about connections between the two artists and wasn’t aware how closely each followed the career of the other.  Their shared interest in exploring extremes of abstraction as they represented the human form came across so clearly in the hundred or so masterpieces displayed here.  And have any 20th century artists spoken so powerfully about the painful solitude of humanity and the strange dignity it confers?

The relentless pushy commercialism of Hong Kong gets irritating after a while. (How many luxury watches can people really want?).  An Irish friend who used to live there recommended I head to Lamma Island, so on a sunny, very humid Saturday morning, I found myself stepping onto the dock at Yung Shue Wan, thirty minutes but a world away from Kowloon craziness.

Lamma is a quiet, intensely green place.  A place to walk, to sit on a pretty, sandy beach, to eat excellent seafood in one of the restaurants by the harbor, and most of all to separate yourself for a while from the uglier sides of Hong Kong life.  I walked to Lo So Shing beach, meeting no one except a few workmen repairing the trail.  The only sounds?  Chirping tree frogs and someone practicing scales and chords on a piano.

I’ve written here before about novelists who seem unable to find a story worthy of their skills. Alan Hollinghurst is a good example.  Bags of style and all the tricks but as yet no compelling tale to tell.  Perhaps that’s the definition of a great novelist (or, at least, my favorite novelists, which I think is the same thing): telling a tale I want to read in ways that make it feel new and alive and with a voice that is unmistakable and inimitable.

Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more, or love the less, and suffer the less?  That is, I think, finally, the only real question.  You may point out – correctly – that it isn’t a real question.  Because we don’t have the choice.  If we had the choice, then there would be a question.  But we don’t, so there isn’t.  Who can control how much they love?  If you can control it, then it isn’t love.  I don’t know what you call it instead, but it isn’t love.  Most of us have only one story to tell.  I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories.  But there’s only one that matter, only one finally worth telling.  This is mine.

Isn’t that a wonderful opening to a story?  I could read those lines over and over.  In fact, I have, and so far I’ve discovered something new every time.  Who wouldn’t want to carry on reading after such a teasing, provocative, and confident tee-up?

The story that matters for Paul, the not entirely reliable narrator of The Only Story, is a story about love.  Falling in love at the age of nineteen with a much older, married woman, Paul’s life starts down a path he could not have foreseen. Narrated at different times in the first, second, and third persons, it’s a slippery tale about youth and maturity, shifting perspectives and, most of all, about how, what, and why we remember.  The Only Story is a beautiful and important novel from a brilliant writer who seems to get better with every book.  If I read this year another novel as good as this, I will consider myself very fortunate.

The unmade gravel road wound for several miles through dairy and sheep farms, gentle rolling countryside reminiscent of England. At its end, incongruous and mysterious, stood Puketi Forest, a remnant of the vast, thousand year-old woodland that once covered northern New Zealand.  Puketi is home to one of the grandest species of tree, the kauri.  Topping out at more than fifty meters, some kauri live for more than 2,000 years and are sacred to the Maori people.  I parked my car and strolled for an hour among these ancient giants, getting thoroughly soaked by the mid-morning rain.

A few hours and thirty miles later the sun was shining as I strolled on the beach at Matauri Bay.   A few hardy surfers were in the water but I had the stunning strand to myself.  The contrasts are striking in what New Zealanders call Far North.  Pristine beaches, subtropical forests, pretty farmland, towering cliffs, and stunning coastline – all within the space of a few miles.  And if, as I did, you visit at the end of autumn, you get to see it all without the crowds.  The weather might be a little unpredictable – four seasons in a single day is typical – but it’s a tiny price to pay to have this paradise to oneself.

In the late afternoon I was the sole passenger on the ferry from Paihia to Russell, docking there in warm sunshine with lots of time before dinner to explore the small town.  It boasts the oldest church in New Zealand with a gravestone marking the burial place of Hannah Letheridge, “the first white woman born in New Zealand”.  Having fun can be hungry work, so I settled down at The Gables for delicious fish and chips overlooking the dock.  My reward?  The most perfect sunset to end my day in Far North.

The steady rhythm of the boat and the drone of its engine were just about to lull me to sleep when they appeared.  A school of dolphins, eight in total, their dorsal fins breaking through the surface of the water, followed us as we made our way around Tapeka Point and headed towards Motuarohia.  This was what we had come for but feared we might not see, this and a close-up look at Motukokako, the Hole in the Rock.  I willed the beautiful creatures to continue their journey with us but after a few minutes they circled the boat and headed back to the quiet bay from which they came, leaving us delighted and disappointed.

We continued around Cape Brett Peninsula, the boat idling so we could admire the lighthouse and the keeper’s abandoned cottage, and from there headed directly to the Hole.  It was obvious immediately that the churning of the Pacific waters was too strong to allow us safe passage, so the engines were cut and we bobbed for a few minutes to enjoy the extraordinary cliffs of the place that Captain Cook called Pierce Island.

An hour or so later, the boat arrived at Russell.  Now a quiet, slightly genteel place, it’s  hard to imagine how it might have earned the name by which it was known in the 1830s, the hellhole of the Pacific.  Not a bad place in which to end a wonderful day, but what could ever compete with those dolphins?

Whoever came up with the expression “it’s a small world” never traveled from New York to Auckland via Hong Kong.  After twenty seven hours on the plane and a few more spent waiting around, I landed in Auckland on an autumn afternoon desperate for fresh air, exercise, and sunshine.  A walk to the waterfront and specifically to Wynyard Quarter seemed like the right idea.  The neighborhood, close to Auckland’s downtown, still has a strong industrial character with its many storage tanks for petrol and liquid chemicals dominating that part of the harbor.  But transformation is underway with dozens of restaurants, bars, and apartment complexes starting to sprout.

It’s entirely right that city governments should want to re-vitalize former industrial neighborhoods, especially when they fall into decline.  Waterfront property is always desirable to developers, of course, and city authorities benefit from the taxes that re-development brings.  Is it too idealistic to hope that Auckland’s leaders might choose a different path from others around the world and ensure that at least some of Wynyard Quarter be set aside for affordable homes for local people?  Is there any chance Auckland might set an example and avoid yet another of those cookie-cutter waterfront developments aimed exclusively at the very affluent and tourists looking for pretty bars and restaurants?  Having seen the homeless on Auckland’s city streets, I hope so.

Although I knew of their long and close friendship, it was only recently I learned that some of my favorite painters – Freud, Bacon, and Auerbach – were part of a movement called The School of London.   The term, coined by one of its other members, R.B. Kitaj,  was intended to apply to a group of British artists who championed figurative painting at a time when abstraction dominated the art scene.  Michael Andrews, Leon Kossoff, and David Hockney complete the group.

Ordovas, a commercial gallery in London, recently put together a very small show (twelve pictures in all) that celebrated not only the group’s brilliance, but its unwavering commitment to the human figure and to the cityscape at a time when abstraction prevailed elsewhere.  Every painting featured is a gem and a handful of them masterpieces.  At the center stand two extraordinary paintings of the same sitter: Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of George Dyer (1966) and Lucien Freud’s Man in a Blue Shirt (1965).

The paintings have never before been exhibited together.

Having been recently to several “blockbuster” exhibitions (for example the Picasso 1932 and Modigliani shows, both at Tate Modern), with hordes of visitors and scores of paintings, the Ordovas show was the perfect miniature counterpoint.  Alone in the gallery, I had time and space to look closely at each and every picture and marvel not just at the extraordinary talent of The School of London but also at the art of curation.