The Death of Grass - John Christopher

 I am puzzled why I have never heard of this shocking 1950's novel before. The threat of nuclear oblivion inevitably had a strong impact on writers in this country, producing a whole crop (ironically, in this context) of post-Apocalyptic novels. Obvious examples are "The Day of the Triffids" and "Lord of the Flies", the two novels most commonly referenced in commentary on "The Death of Grass". Although it had previously been out of print for some time before being brought back by Penguin for this edition, it does not suffer from these comparisons. I can however understand why it is not a school text book (as with Lord of the Flies) - there are some shocking, brutal scenes of murder and rape, described dispassionately. 

The re-issue of this novel is timely, because the crisis that precipitates the flight across the country of the band of middle class survivors is not nuclear nor alien, but ecological. A virus arises in Asia that wipes out all forms of grass and remains resistant to any form of treatment. The famines that follow rapidly lead to a breakdown in social order. While grasses may not form the central part of our diet that the novel suggests, this is really not relevant - our food supply chains are stretched, vulnerable and fragile. Equally we may not resort to the lawlessness that engulfs the characters in this novel quite as quickly as appears here - but we might. It is on this issue that the comparisons with Golding are most interesting, because Golding's cast of characters - schoolboys, albeit mostly middle class, privately educated ones, - has led many to argue that the primitive instincts they give free rein to are only found in little boys, rather than all people. Christopher leaves us here with no such comforting evasions - even the best of us can quickly resort to murder and brutality to defend our families. The veneer of civilisation is frighteningly thin. The men in this novel go from comfortable middle class lives to people who murder innocent families for some breakfast, with hardly a pause for reflection. These are not isolated monsters - around them society fragments with frightening pace, and even the Government contemplates/resorts to (it is not completely clear which) using nuclear weapons on their own people.

The economy of Christopher's writing is striking, and the pace of the action is a strength of the novel - no time for pauses for breath are allowed. Despite my slow reading in recent months I read this in a sitting. There are some caveats of course - the brutality of the treatment of women in the novel is hard to stomach, even thought they are not all the 1950's stock characters you might expect, with some of them showing resilience and strength in the face of appallingly difficult circumstances. The digressions on leadership and its role in feudal societies are a little over done, although again at less than 200 pages there is not much time to find this irritating. This is definitely a period novel - post war behaviours, language and attitudes anchor the events of the novel in the 1950s. Class is still a powerful factor in the way people defer to their betters, the war is a very recent memory, and people are self reliant and practical in ways we would struggle with today. But the novel transcends this datedness.

We like to scare ourselves with stories of "What if...?", and cling to the comforting thought that we would face whatever is thrown at us with a stiff upper lip. That's the mythology that we used and fostered to help us survive the Blitz and the threat of German invasion in the 1940s. Christopher refuses to offer any comforting conclusion to his disaster novel - the ravaging disease isn't contained, the army doesn't arrive at the death to reimpose order. All we have left is family and, if we lucky, a gun.

Competitive Reading Lists

Every now and again lists circulate purporting to show the 50 best this or the 101 best that, inviting the reader to assess their worth by deciding how many of the books shown they have read.

I say "deciding" how many they have read, because this is rarely a binary decision. Have you read "A Christmas Carol"? You almost certainly know the tale from numerous film adaptations, but have you actually read the book? What if you have read some of the book but weren't able to finish? (An example in this category for me is Don Quixote - many years ago I made a genuine and sustained effort to read this, but failed miserably). The Bible, The Canterbury tales, and Moby Dick are other examples of "books" that often appear on these lists, but for most readers the prospect of genuinely reading them from start to finish is remote.

But these are just quibbles, because there are no rules in this game, and if the "reader" decides that owning the book, having seen the film, or read a summary on Wikipedia is sufficient to merit a "read it" tick, then no-one is really to know. My real concern is that these lists are designed to make you feel bad about your reading habits. No-one with a family and job will have ever read all of the meritorious heavyweight volumes of "A Remembrance of Things Past", "The Barchester Chronicles", or "A Dance to the Music of Time" ("God, no!", "partially", and surprisingly, "yes, but a long time ago", would be my answers). But should I really feel bad about all those Russian classics glowering at me from my bookshelves while I indulge in yet another Pratchett?

From previous entries in this blog it will be clear that I have made a concerted effort to fill some obvious gaps in my reading record - Frankenstein, Dracula, The Great Gatsby, etc - but despite this I still find myself admitting "not read" as I run through each list more often than I would have expected. The other trick played in this game is to include less popular works by popular authors - for example by listing "The Quiet American" instead of "Brighton Rock", or "Men Without Women" (which is a collection of short stories) instead of "For Whom the Bell Tolls".  

I know I am taking this way too seriously, but there is a point underneath all this - if people read these lists on FaceBook or wherever and think "I must be really dim because I haven't read any of these" they will be put off even trying them, rather than filling in the gaps. So let's start writing "These are really fantastic books that you should read if you like romance/thrillers/historical novels/etc" lists, which would be a much more constructive approach to list making wouldn't it?

The Jefferson Key - Steve Berry

I have had a really bad run in recent weeks - some sub-par McEwan and the execrable Amis - so what led me to pick this one up I am not quite sure. Certainly the cover told me pretty much all I needed to know - US flag on fire, presidential seal, White House with lone figure in background - this is going to be a derivative thriller. Interestingly the cover art for the US version had a much more prominent picture of the White House - I am guessing that American reader won't need the Jefferson link spelling out so clearly.

No surprises there then. This book is a lazy cash-in on Dan Brown's success with "The Da Vinci Code". Many of the components are copied without any attempt at disguise, from the supposedly impenetrable code (tick) to the reinterpretation of historical events (tick) and the secret society hiding in our midst, controlling historical events (tick). The narrative style - many very short scenes cutting from one location to another quickly - and the attempt to compress the events of the novel into as short a time period as possible, (forgetting people's need to nap, eat, etc,) to give a sense of pace and speed is also copied directly from Brown. And then there is the simple fact of the novel's name itself, following the formula "The (Name of figure from history) + (synonym for mystery). Expect the Michelangelo Conundrum, the Caravaggio Puzzle and the Newton Sudoku to follow.

For what it matters, the plot revolves around an American pirating community which had its origins in the American War of Independence, when privateers were encouraged to attach English shipping. These pirates were allegedly given Presidential authority - letters of marque - to operate with impunity as long as the work against enemis of the state. Successive Presidential attempts to rein them in had been countered with assassinations. This novel focusses on attempts by a President Daniels to curb the powers of the "Commonwealth" and the pirates attempts to fight back. The cast of leading characters includes Cotton Malone, who has appeared in six previous and I guess highly similar novels (from their titles) although the characters are not distinguished from one another in any marked way.

While the plot is a huge predictable disappointment, the writing is equally dire. The author seems to have been paid by the word, because the plot is ground out to its far foreseen conclusion without a hint of suspense or interest. For example, some characters die in a building ruin which floods todally - this is flagged as likely early  on, returned to many times, and finally claims the expected victims, almost in passing. Techniques such as having a character shot, followed by a switch of focus to another scene, then returning to the shooting scene only for the character to have amazingly survived through a misfire, bullet proof vest, blank shot etc happens at least three times. As the novel is seventh in the series the reader is in doubt that the principal character will survive. The writing is as turgid and cliche ridden as one would expect, although some phrases still jump out with their awkwardness - for example a stairway is said to "rightangle". I have no problem with using nouns as verbs, but this one is a step to far for me.

Novels of this kind - written for the "if you like this writer why not try this writer" Amazon recommendation algorithm - really shouldn't apear here - but I did promise to try not to censor myself, and to review my reading good bad or otherwise. Gosh I have even written about books I have read and not written about! So I return to the question I began with - what possessed me to read this? In part it was because this was a gift, and I didn't want to show disrespect to the giver. Also, I was hoping that this might be one of those "so bad it is good" novels, or even something that was unoriginal but had its merits notwithstanding the genre. Sadly, not - trust the cover.

P.S. One other quibble. One character uses the phrase "a sticky wicket" which as far as I know is not American vernacular. This is a clumsy attempt to give "colour" to a character with a Spanish background - and the text refers to her father funding several Spanish national cricket teams. Now they do play cricket in Spain, Google tells me, but it's not the traditional home of the sport. Another example of clumsiness which really jarred.

Lionel Asbo - Martin Amis

A few years ago Ben Elton, he of 1980's stand up fame, wrote a series of zeitgeist novels, each focussing on a different aspect of popular culture - Big Brother, (the TV programme, not the character in 1984), Friends Reunited, the effect of Internet porn and violence on people's behaviour, etc. These were all fairly lightweight and disposable, and the social/political commentary was mainly intended to provide humour rather than change minds.

"Lionel Asbo" is the novel about the poverty of working class culture that Elton wisely never dared to write. There isn't a cliche about working class life that Amis doesn't wildly embrace. His characters avoid any hint of subtlety. Cardboard cutouts would be giving them depth and nuance they don't ever approach. I was reminded of "Only Fools and Horses" rewritten as torture porn.

Amis's obsessive dislike of working class people is given full and free range here - this is a shout of hatred at the underclass of which Amis is clearly afraid. Lionel Asbo is indeed a psychopathically scary figure, capable of extremes of brutality. But his world is equally brutal and atavistic, devoid of any redeeming feature or figure, save the single exception of the pathetic Desmond, who responds to every racist barb thrown his way with a shrug.

I am struggling to find a single positive thing about this novel. Yes, I suppose some of the writing is not bad, but that is a bit like commenting on the lighting in a video nasty. The laziness of the plotting and characterisation is such that if this novel had not been written by Martin Amis I can't imagine it would have ever been considered for publication. Some critics have kindly assumed Amis is aiming for over the top satire of our celebrity, money obsessed culture. While that may have been the original intention, comparisons with any other form of satire quickly expose this as clumsy and ineffective. I did read to the end, partly out of some kind of morbid fascination. I wanted to know if Amis would have the guts to follow through on the plot lines he had been signalling wildly for most of the second half of the novel - he didn't, which is probably just as well, but by then I was long past caring. I am not going to spend any more time listing the many things that are wrong with this novel, when I really can't get past the class hatred.

If you think working class people are disgusting pigs with no feeling, no limits, no taste, no redeeming features whatsoever, this is the novel for you. I need a shower.

Enduring Love - Ian McEwan

The third of my recent McEwan catch up exercise, prompted by a Waterstones promotion - who says marketing schemes don't work?

The review I roughed out in my mind mid way through this novel is a very different beast from what I am now about to write. Let me explain.
The principal narrator of the novel, Joe Rose (there are other voices but the bulk of the novel is described from his point of view) is involved in a tragic ballooning accident in which a man dies. A fellow participant in this accident develops an obsessive delusion - that he is in love with Rose - and begins to stalk him.

There are consistent hints throughout the novel that Rose's account of the accident is flawed. Sometimes these hints are more heavy handed than others The accident victim's widow is torn apart at the thought that her husband was having an affair, and wouldn't have been at the site of the accident if he was not having a clandestine meeting with his lover. She sees the accident as a judgment on his fidelity, showing off to his young mistress. We later learn he was not having an affair, and the circumstantial evidence to that effect is explained away innocently. Later in the novel a shooting in a restaurant is shown through Rose's eyes, but the deconstruction of this incident by a police officer makes it clear that none of the witnesses saw the same thing, even down to what flavour ice cream they ate. There are many more subtle hints that perception is flawed, and that what Rose describes during and after the accident may not be the whole story - in fact, that he may be the delusional one. Even his partner struggles to believe his account of his being stalked, pointing out that the writing on the letters sent to him by his stalker, Jed Parry, looks remarkably similar to his own - one of many such strange coincidences.

I patiently waited for the reveal, the moment at which we learn what "really" happened, the extent of Rose's self delusion. Rose is a writer on popular science, and digresses at length about the mind's ability to deceive itself. Surely that is what is going on here - the accident didn't happen in a way in which he is completely blameless, and has excised any possible suggestion of responsibility from his account.

But it's not. In a classic double bluff, everything Rose tells us is true. The big reveal is that there is nothing behind the curtain. Everyone else in the novel is deluded or mistaken to some extent or another, including the police, his partner, the widow, his stalker, you name it. The police assume that an attempt on his life, in which a fellow diner is shot in error, was correctly targeted because the victim was the subject of a failed assassination attempt the previous year. Now there's a coincidence - a contract killing misses its target and instead falls upon a diner at the next table who only months before had been the target of an earlier murder attempt.

Is this McEwan messing with us, setting up expectations only to kick them out from under our feet? I have become so used to the sudden changes of focus in McEwan's novels, "Sweet Tooth" being a fantastically effective example of this, that to be deprived of one felt wrong.

The novel is not without merit of course. The relationship between Rose and Clarissa seemed genuine. I thought the "going to buy a gun from some hippies" scene was bizarre and out of character with the realism of previous scenes. The digressions on Romantic poetry, popular science, etc were undemanding and integrated well into the overall narrative.

Does love endure? Or is it one big delusion? The only love that lasts in this novel is the product of a psychiatric illness, a delusion that has no foundation in reality. Rose's relationship with his partner, Clarissa, the portrait of which is one of the principal strengths of the novel, is strong and loving, but does not survive the stress of the stalking and its denouncement. But this novel isn't an essay on love, more on big game of hide and seek between the author and the reader, with "reality" out there in plain sight all along.

Black Dogs - Ian McEwan

On a walking holiday (and honeymoon) in early post-war southern France, a young idealistic woman, June Tremaine, is terrified by an encounter with two menacing attack dogs. This incident leads in turn to a spiritual experience and changes her life. Surprisingly she decides on an apparent whim to live in France (very near to the scene of the attacK), in the process effectively separating from her new husband, Bernard.

This incident is the kernel around which McEwan winds this novel. Ostensibly a memoir written by June and Bernard's son-in law, written shortly after June's death, this novel has a complex narrative structure in which the telling of the tale is delayed time after time. The dogs themselves carry a heavy symbolic burden that they couldn't quite bear - we know from the early pages that however scary they may be they do not carry out their attack (or at least that June survives to go on and have a family). And in fact it is not the encounter with the dogs which is the turning point in June's life, but the spiritual epiphany which follows. While we can be gripped and menaced by the dogs, June's quasi-religious response is not one the reader can easily follow or identify with.

If you have been scared out of your wits, and feel that your survival is a result of divine intervention, and that you need to rethink your life choices as a result - fine - but June's response, essentially settling in a farmhouse in rural France and having a very nice, fundamentally selfish and not particularly spiritual life for the rest of your days, doesn't seem to be a coherent response.

The scenes in Berlin as the Wall is coming down, something that obviously has an especial resonance for McEwan, contrast strikingly with the views of France. If a point is being made here - other than the mundane "war is brutalising and nasty" I couldn't spot it. War has ravaged and damaged France, but the area the couple visit on their walking holiday seems largely untouched, even though the spectral presence of the black dogs is a reminder of the damage the war has done. But other than providing "colour" I didn't understand why the scenes in Berlin in which the narrator hears a different version of the story of June and Bernard's marriage needs to have the backdrop of the fall of the Wall.

McEwan can be forgiven some misses among the many hits. This isn't his worst novel - I still struggle to accept just how silly "Amsterdam" was and is - but others are far more coherent and interesting. I don't normally do this but one comment from an Amazon reviewer jumped off the screen as spot on - "there is also the idea that McEwan perhaps had a deeper vision he has failed to communicate."

The Innocent - Ian McEwan

McEwan is always strong when it comes to evoking a particular time and place, whether it be early 1960's in "On Chesil Beach", the Dunkirk evacuation (amongst others) in "Atonement", or early 1970's MI5 in "Sweet Tooth", just to mention a few. The thing that jumps out from that short list for me is how precise this timing is - it is not a decade, or a generation which is invoked, but a very exact point in time and place. In "The Innocent" the setting is Berlin, 1955. Berlin is an occupied city, still literally shell-shocked, reconstruction is barely underway although the Wall has yet to go up - again giving us a very exact moment in time, a turning point in the way "On Chesil Beach" is timed between the Lady Chatterley trial and the Beatles first EP. The city is a microcosm of the Cold War and into this volatile environment Leonard Marnham, the eponymous innocent, a British telephone engineer, is dropped. Leonard is an everyman figure, innocent in many ways - sexually, politically, socially - and although he is quickly absorbed into an American plan to tap Russian telephone messages out of Berlin, he makes a terrible, indiscreet spy.

As a standard Cold War spy story in the Le Carre model, the introduction of a femme fatale, Maria, who approaches Leonard in a night club, comes on cue. Maria seduces Leonard by the book, and very soon he is under her spell. Leonard is too young to have fought in the war, but 30 year old, divorced Maria, survivor of the brutalities of the occupation of Berlin, is a wiser, more mature character who quickly becomes the senior figure in the relationship. Leonard develops a fairly sick fantasy in which he is an occupying soldier who forces himself on the helpless, vulnerable Maria. When he tries to act this out in a disturbing scene she is unsurprisingly repelled, and their relationship only survives by the intervention of Leonard's American senior officer, Bob Glass.

The (protracted) climax of the novel comes with the return of Maria's brutish ex-husband, Otto, a bit of a Teutonic caricature. Leonard and Maria are the only ones surprised by his return, and the denouncement is equally predictable, albeit the brutality of the episode is detailed and relentless. There then follows a scene when Leonard tries to dispose of the body (sorry, spoilers) and ends up leaving it in two suitcases in the tunnel dug to intercept the Russian telephone lines, on the Russian side of the border. When he then passes on the secret of the tunnel to the Russians, in a desperate attempt to avoid the body being found by the Americans, his fall from grace is complete, his last innocence lost.

The post-script "30 years later" chapter, when Leonard returns to Berlin just before the Wall comes down, is probably unnecessary, but does give Maria a voice, finally.

Although this is relatively early McEwan, a little derivative in its setting and characterisation, his potential as a mature novelist shines through. if you want to explore early McEwan start here rather than the award winning but badly flawed "Amsterdam".