Albert Camus // Penguin Modern Classics // 128 pages
(Originally published in French as L’Étranger)

L’Etranger can be translated variously as (most obviously and most commonly) ‘The Stranger’, ‘The Outsider’, or even ‘The Foreigner’. Questions over naming are indicative of the book itself: three distinct translations exist, differing substantially in tone. This Penguin Modern Classics edition from 2000 opts for The Outsider as a title and reprints Joseph Laredo’s 1982 translation of the text, generally seen as striking a balance between the formality of earlier translations and the perhaps overly casual approach of an American translation made at around the same time as Laredo’s. Such variations aside, the basics are well-known: the ‘black foot’ Mersault kills an Arab man in a sudden and unexpected act of violence after a long, hot day on the beach and thereafter mulls his fate in prison.

The Outsider is usually described as an Existentialist novel while Camus himself was regarded (and identified) as an Absurdist. I think that’s debatable – Mersault and the novel are more than a little Nihilistic (Camus, though, most certainly was not).

Continue Reading »

Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart

Tim Butcher // Vintage // 272 Pages // Non-fiction

Blood River is the story of journalist Tim Butcher’s attempt to travel the Congo river, following in the footsteps of his hero – and fellow Daily Telegraph journalist – Stanley (of ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume’ fame). As well a recounting Butcher’s own journey, Blood River takes the reader briskly through the Congo’s complex and bloody history.

In actual fact, Stanley’s trip features only in passing – it dominates an introduction wherein it is hailed as inspiration from the trip, but largely recedes from view otherwise, resurfacing occasionally thanks largely to the fact that Stanley’s Through the Dark Continent was the only book Butcher chose to take with him. Even the route Butcher chooses to pursue – following the course of the Congo river, making huge swathes of the journey by boat along the waterway itself – is such an obvious one as to oblige almost any would-be explorer, past or present, to follow it. Really, this is Butcher’s journey, and not at all an attempt to recreate or investigate Stanley’s.

Continue Reading »

David Almond, illustrated by Dave McKean // Walker Books // 80 pages
Note: This is a book for both younger readers, and adults.

In a Nutshell: Grieving Blue Baker confronts his feelings through stories born of his own imagination – until they turn out to be true. Or do they? A novel (sort of) and graphic novel (sort of) from famed children’s author David Almond and Sandman artist, Dave McKean.

Review: The Savage of the title is a creation framed within not only the author’s own work, but that also of his youthful protagonist, Blue Baker. Mourning the loss of his father, Blue finds comfort in penning stories of an imagined Savage, a little boy like him, but living feral and wild in nearby woods. This, however, is no childish caveman – the wild-child of Blue’s imagining is a genuine savage, a cannibal free of moral constraints; an axe and knife-wielding brute for whom violence comes easily, and with little regret.

Continue Reading »

Patrick Süskind // Penguin // 272 Pages

Perfume was published in German in 1985, published in English a year later, and soon after hailed as a classic. It remains well known, though how many people have actually read it and how many mention having heard of it, recently in large part thanks to Tom Tykwer’s 2006 film, is an open question.

Perfume is not, as its title might suggest, the story of a murder or murders (well, it is, but they’re essentially irrelevant). It is a story and a book almost entirely concerned with the murderer himself – Grenouille, a boy born without any natural odour of his own and yet with a sense of smell far beyond that possessed by any other creature. He is also reviled by all other living things and seemingly possessed by the devil (though the book’s closing lines seem to suggest a rather more mundane cause for his evil). He is orphaned almost at birth, when his neglectful – and perhaps herself murderous – mother is executed for his cruel abandonment. (He is also, by the way, the ‘Scentless Apprentice’ of Nirvana’s In Utero.)

Continue Reading »

Christopher Hitchens // Atlantic Books // 320 pages // Non-fiction

When this book was published in the US, it was subtitled How Religion Poisons Everything (a phrase which appears repeatedly throughout the text of this version, too). That, if anything, is the more accurate title – a few occasional side-swipes at the Creator’s paradoxical inconsistency aside, this is the case against religion more than it is the case against god (though Hitchens clearly relies upon that argument having already been made by many of his contemporaries, most notably Richard Dawkins).

Hitchens’ approach is essentially a threefold one: First he recounts many of the most well-known religiously-inspired (or religiously-sanctioned) atrocities, such as the Srebrenica massacre, the Rwandan genocide, suicide bombings across the Middle East and beyond, and religion’s staunch opposition to contraception. Secondly he points to many lesser known harms attributable to religion (as with the outbreak of herpes amongst young Jewish boys in New York, responsible for at least one death, stemming from the traditional practice of orally removing the circumcised prepuce; or Chapter Seventeen’s suggestion of regimes from Stalin’s Soviet Union to the Kims of North Korea as stemming from religious thinking). Thirdly he attacks religious beliefs themselves as irrational and therefore inherently erring towards harm, based partly upon the origin of most modern religions as little more than the parochial desert squabbles of long-ago tribes, and partly upon their demonstrable scientific and philosophical unsoundness.

Continue Reading »

Philip Hoare // Fourth Estate // 448 Pages

When Herman Melville published his sixth novel, in London, in 1851, it bore the title The Whale, this later being relegated to mere subtitle upon the book’s publication in New York a month later. Thus Leviathan shares its sub-title (and, at least partly, its eccentric punctuation) with the book we now know as Moby-Dick; or, the Whale. The similarity is both intentional and telling – on first reading, it’s difficult to tell which Leviathan’s real subject is: the humble flesh-and-blood whales of the world’s oceans or the gargantuan effort (for reader and writer alike) that is Moby-Dick.

In truth, it’s both. Part natural history, part biography, part literary critique, this is a mammoth book. In short Leviathan is a history of man’s relationship with the whale – the largest animal with which we share our planet – but it’s much more besides and to call it a book ‘about’ whales doesn’t really do justice to the impressive range of Hoare’s reference.

Continue Reading »

I must blog more often. I must blog more often. I must blog more often…

Yes, yes, it’s the way blogs always go. Anyway, in an effort (yet again) to correct this, I’m going to start posting reviews directly to the blog section - but not just any old reviews, brand new ones; reviews of books I’ve read purely for my own pleasure or research and which I haven’t reviewed in print elsewhere. It’ll give me chance to cover a slightly broader range of books than the reviews on the site presently do, in particular it will allow me to review more non-fiction, and hopefully it will make posting a little more of a regular exercise. The first will be following shortly…

Matt

I’ve just seen The Dark Knight, so have compiled my thoughts for this blog. This is more of a critique than a review, so if you haven’t seen the film yet, you might like to wait until you have before reading the entirety of this article. As far as the typical ‘review’ part of this post goes, suffice to say I largely agree with a very good review I heard on Radio 5Live last week, from Mark Kermode, which you can listen to here. The remainder of this post is, as I’ve said, more a critique than a review, so it might contain information you’d rather not read before seeing the film (though I’ve endeavoured not to include any obvious ’spoilers’). You’ve been warned, so click ‘more’ and read on at your own peril.

Continue Reading »

Online now (and somewhat later than promised - sorry!) is my interview with author, Stephen Donaldson.

I interviewed Stephen shortly before the release of Fatal Revenant, the latest book in his Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series, and the interview touches on both this and his many other works, as well as writing and literature in general. The interview originally appeared in issue 10 of Death Ray magazine, but the version now online contains some material not included in the magazine due to space constraints. The complete interview, as well as an overview of Stephen’s work, and a fact file on the author are online now in the Articles section of this website.

Matt

Following on from the recent frenzy of blog-ranting on the subject of narrative styles, I thought I’d post a few examples of some novels which I think demonstrate clever use of the omniscient narrator. Note that I’m focusing specifically on books about the legendary/historical characters that my earlier blog posts centred on - I think we’ve covered that plenty enough already, and besides which I think there’s an interesting discussion to be had about the use of narrative mode more generally. These then, are simply three books which spring to mind as good examples of narrative modes other than the most common third-person limited narrator. All three also employ other noteworthy techniques as we shall see…

You can use the comments thread below to leave your own recommendations, and read on to see mine…

Continue Reading »