Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

‘Wolf Hall’ became 2009’s Booker Prize Winner last night, justifying its status as bookmakers’ favourite. I haven’t read Hilary Mantel’s historical novel, based on Thomas Cromwell’s assent from tradesman’s son in Putney to chief minister of Henry VIII. I have, however, just finished ‘The Glass room’, one of the beaten shortlistees, written by Simon Mawer. Clearly historical fiction, often regarded rather sniffily by critics, is currently fashionable. Mawer’s tale falls into the category too. It examines the tides of twentieth century European history which lapped around the location of its eponymous ‘Glasraum’ in Mittel Europe. A wealthy Jewish industrialist and his new Aryan wife (the Landauers) commission a precocious architect to design their futuristic home in Czechoslovakia. It is finished in the 1930s just in time to form the backdrop for a lot of sex, Nazi invasion, genetic experiments, communism and a tearful reunion. Mawer writes well and he has chosen a clever settin...

I wrote a short piece back in December 2007 about the novelistic qualities of some of the year’s news stories. The ‘canoe man’, now hitting the bulletins once more as he attempts to find a publisher for his memoirs, and the ‘polonium murder’ are two prominent examples. Now, in 2009, we have the ‘Arctic Sea mystery’ in which a four thousand ton ship vanished for three weeks and then reappeared in puzzling circumstances. Russia claims to have apprehended eight hijackers whom it alleges stole the vessel. But intriguingly it appears that they did not use force and nor were the fifteen crew members ‘under armed control’. The Russian navy’s recovery of the ‘Arctic Sea’ has, in the short term, added to the mystery, rather than solving it. However, the authorities have undertaken to provide a full explanation, once they have concluded their investigation. What is certain is that few fiction writers have dreamt up a plot so pregnant with suspenseful possibility.

'Owww-ow-ow-ow! Oh, look at me, I'm dying. There's a snowstorm moaning a requiem for me in this doorway and I'm howling with it. I'm finished. Some bastard in a dirty white cap - the cook in the office canteen at the National Economic Council - spilled some boiling water and scalded my left side. Filthy swine - and a proletarian too.' The voice of Sharik, canine hero of 'Heart of a Dog', opens Bulgakov's masterful novel. Subsequently, equipped by a Moscow professor with a dead man's testicles and pituitary gland, the stray becomes worryingly human, causing enough heartache that the experimenter reverses his procedure. Alfie is another dog given literary voice, through his eponymous diary blog, transcribed by Rosemary J kind. He would doubtless sympathise with Sharik's plight and admonish his tormentors, albeit that Alfie's rights based patter might be incompatible with sneering at proletarians.

Iain Dale has highlighted the release of a political thriller with the rather instructive title 'Rogue Nation' which takes as its premise Scotland's secession from the United Kingdom. To be perfectly honest it sounds like a crock of the proverbial (although I'd happily take receipt of a review copy if the publisher wishes to prove me wrong). According to Scotland on Sunday's review the novel's 'ultra unionist hard man' (thank you FD) is called Sammy Wilson. Given the 'ourselves alone' predilections of the character's DUP namesake, I'd venture that 'ultra nationalist' would have been more appropriate.

The power of great literature to animate debate decades and even centuries after its inception is currently being demonstrated in Russia and Ukraine. A lavish production of Nikolai Gogol’s ‘Taras Bulba’ (which could be considered either a short novel or a rather long short story) has reinvigorated a national ‘tug of war’ over ownership of the work and its author. VV Bortko’s film is purportedly infused with Russian patriotism, which he interprets as the spirit behind Gogol’s story. Certainly the accepted text which we read today has a strong slant of romantic nationalism which it tethers to Slavophile notions of the ‘Russian Soul’. There is room for controversy, however, as ‘Bulba’ was rewritten by its author from an original version which emphasised the Ukrainian roots of its Cossack protagonist. Of course, any attempt to project current political preoccupations unto nineteenth century literature is anachronistic. Gogol moved from rural Ukraine to urban St Petersburg and wrote a...

I enjoyed David Peace’s novel ‘The Damned United’ tremendously. Indeed I was so enthusiastic that I indulged in wild hyperbole on this weblog , likening it to Hamlet, with Brian Clough cast as the prince and Elland Road substituted for Elsinore. Naturally I’ve been looking forward to the release of a film, based on the novel. But today, after searching local cinema websites for a showing this evening, I learned that in Northern Ireland the movie is not yet available . The rest of the UK can watch the film, but its distributors have decided to deny us the pleasure. Now, I understand fully that demand to watch Michael Sheen play Clough has exceeded expectation. However with 200 prints available you might expect that one could have found its way to Belfast, given that it is a regional capital. Perhaps Monica McWilliams could graft something for poor deprived cinema goers on to the recommendations for a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights.

Recently my girlfriend went through a rather extensive charade before handing back an unread novel which a colleague had insisted upon lending to her. After pronouncing the prose so overwrought as to be unreadable, she nevertheless spent the best part of an hour and a half reading synopses of the book’s plot and readers’ commentaries on various websites. Last I heard, she’d returned the volume to its owner, only after declaring her extreme surprise at one of its purportedly unlikely plot twists. Fair to say that the novel in question is not considered part of literature’s canon. And the embarrassment at abandoning its reading was not the humiliation of intellectual defeat. However, several newspapers this morning (possibly prompted by World Book Day ) comment on a survey which suggests many people lie and claim to have finished books which they have not actually read at all. ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ came top, with 42% of respondents admitting that they had in the past 'misspoke...

As a reader of fiction I am immediately suspicious of clever narrative devices. When it became obvious that Aravind Adiga’s Booker Prize winning novel, ‘The White Tiger’ , comprised correspondence between a Bangalore businessman and the Chinese premier, my cynicism immediately heightened. It is testimony to Adiga’s deft touch that Balram Halwai, his narrator, unfolds a tale of ambition and murder which dispelled all doubt and held me enthralled to its conclusion. Halwai is an ambitious, able village boy who manages to bridge the gap between two symbiotic but diametrically different Indias. One is an emerging economic powerhouse, fuelled by American outsourcing and represented by gleaming cinemas and shopping malls. Its counterpoint is the rural ’darkness’, squalid, impoverished, filthy; teeming with the homeless and sick. In the gridlocked streets of Delhi these two countries merge and it is the cleavage between them that provides the motor for Adiga’s novel. The narrator escapes...

I’ve been reading Glenn Patterson’s ‘Number 5’ recently. It is a book which examines social and political changes in Belfast through the eyes of successive inhabitants of a house built during the 1950s housing boom. ‘Number 5’ is written in unfussy fashion, it is frequently funny and it provides a convincing portrait of Belfast and its inhabitants. Patterson has chosen a cunning device through which to exhibit his skills and examine compelling themes. It is exactly this clever narrative structure, though, that irks me slightly about the novel and it is indicative of something which, in my eyes, prevents Patterson from quite making the top rank of novelists. Don’t get me wrong, I like this book, and I like Patterson as a writer. But there is something just a little self-conscious, a little invasive about his writing. Reading ‘Number 5’, or ‘The International’ , I keep thinking, ‘oh that’s clever’, ‘that’s a nice idea’. I cannot forget that I’m reading a novel. Patterson builds...

It is not just in Britain that governments like to indulge in a spot of identity navel gazing. In Russia a Kremlin sponsored competition has been taking place in order to establish the ‘Eemya Rossiya’ or ‘Name of Russia’. The premise was that one name, popularly chosen, should emerge which peculiarly embodies Russia’s culture and history. It is the type of initiative which you might expect Liam Byrne to endorse as part of ‘Britain Day’. The Russian competition has been attended by controversy. Stalin was included in the initial long list of 500 names , suggested by the organisers. Indeed the Soviet dictator would have finished second in the poll, had he not been stripped of one million votes due to alleged vote rigging on the internet. Whether this can be ascribed to genuine vigilance on the part of the pollsters, or an attempt to sanitise an embarrassing verdict by the Russian people, the Georgian eventually finished twelfth, which in itself exposes Russia’s ambivalent attitude...

The Counter Terrorism Bill, which includes plans for 42 day pre charge detention, is due for its third reading in the House of Lords next month. It is likely to face a robust challenge and could well be voted down in parliament's second chamber. John le Carré, the novelist and former spy, has picked a particularly timely moment, therefore, to register his disgust at the proposed legislation. “I'm angry that there is so little anger around me at what is being done to our society, supposedly in order to protect it. We have been taken to war under false pretences, and stripped of our civil rights in an atmosphere of panic.” The author’s comments reflect widespread disillusionment, amongst those of liberal sensibility, with Labour’s systematic destruction of basic liberties. Arguments against erosion of freedom have married increasingly harmoniously with Conservative calls to preserve rights, fundamental to the UK’s constitution. David Davis MP enjoyed backing from both camp...

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has died age 89 . The writer spent time in Stalin’s gulag and in exile in Kazakhstan. His experiences informed novels such as ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ and the epic ‘Gulag Archipelago’. Solzhenitsyn’s work and his stance against censorship saw him expelled from Russia in the 1970s. He remained a critic of the Soviet regime whilst simultaneously rejecting the western model of democracy.

I have been reading Joseph Conrad ’s attempt at a 19th century revolutionary Russian novel, Under Western Eyes. The book is considered Conrad’s riposte to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and many of the devices and conclusions of that great novel are inverted and even satirised. Despite Conrad’s supposed detestation of Dostoevsky, however, I can’t help feeling that the two novelists perhaps had more in common than the Pole might acknowledged and their treatment of common themes in their novels may not have diverged as radically as he believed. Joseph Conrad was born in what is currently modern Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire) into a passionately nationalist family of Polish aristocrats. Indeed his father was arrested by the Tsarist authorities for his involvement in the movement which would foment the 1863 January Uprising by citizens of the Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth. His father’s arrest and exile, coupled with the subsequent premature deaths of both his parent...

The row over victims’ commission legislation which has broken out in the Northern Ireland Assembly lends particular pertinence to novelist Glenn Patterson’s sardonic piece, on Comment is Free today, accusing the twin nationalisms axis of “a consensus of crowing” . DUP / SF have of course achieved remarkably little since forming a government, despite their indulgence in constant self-congratulation. And in the unravelling of a deal which the carve-up were attempting to impose, we gain a startling insight into the high-handed fashion by which business is conducted by these two parties. In January it was announced that rather than appoint one victims’ commissioner (which would have cost the public purse approximately £250,000 annually) a victims’ commission comprising 4 commissioners would instead be appointed (at the cost of approximately £750,000 per annum). The ludicrous pretence used to justify this decision being that the First and Deputy First Ministers had been so overwhelme...

In Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace the character Pierre Bezukhov joins the Russian Freemasons. Bezukhov is seeking in masonry a mystical connection that can reconcile two prevailing Russian currents of thought, that of the Westernisers and that of the Slavophiles. The character naively expects the secrets of the craft to deliver some manner of revelatory self-knowledge. This expectation inevitably leads to disillusion as Pierre finds something which simply reflects the structures of Russian society in which he is already an unwilling participant. “Under the Masonic aprons and insignia he saw the uniforms and decorations at which they aimed in ordinary life.” Pierre’s disappointment is brought to mind by the Moscow Times’ article exploring freemasonry in Russia. During Soviet times freemasonry ceased to exist. It was one of the many independent organisations opposed by the Communist authorities. More recently Democratic Party presidential candidate Andrei Bogdanov provided a whiff ...

Recently I happened to be in Belfast’s WH Smith searching for a card to give to my mother for Mother’s Day. In such shops the calendar year is punctuated almost weekly by festivals of consumerism for which it is absolutely imperative to expend one’s money on the tat suggested by appropriate displays (if you do not you are being both churlish and negligent). Mother’s Day is just such an event, sandwiched between Christmas and St Patrick’s Day, and Smith’s were punting, amongst other wonderful items, cards which would speak to your mother in the dulcet tones of Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, Donnie Osmond or indeed Daniel O’Donnell. Classy. With a card sorted out the intrepid shopper needs a gift to go alongside and with its roots primarily as a book-seller, Smith’s were offering a range of appropriate titles. Alongside the displays of romances and celebrity biographies, outfitted in saccharine Mother’s Day lavender and bedecked with images of fluffy puppies, sat a large – nae a burst...

Before ‘The Damned United’ the last football novel I read may have been Martin Waddell’s ‘Napper Goes for Goal’ when I was 6 years old. Therefore the jacket quotes boasting that David Peace’s book is the “best football novel of all time” did not excite me greatly. However I must admit that having read the novel, I do believe that not only is the boast almost certainly justified (lack of competition not withstanding), but that it is also a considerable novel in its own right. Another comment on the dust jacket employs the hyperbolic adjective “Shakespearean” and for once its use is almost appropriate. Peace’s novel has Elland Road as Elsinore and Brian Clough plays Hamlet, admittedly with a moderately less gruesome finale. The book unfolds the story of Clough’s 44 day reign as Leeds United manager in the mid-70s through the internal monologue of old Big ‘Ead himself. Peace’s Clough is a compellingly paradoxical mixture of arrogance and self-doubt. He is fluently verbose, foul-m...

Some time ago I confessed to finding Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ one of the most over-hyped novels that I had read for some time. Having watched No Country for Old Men on Friday evening, I’m bound to say that the adaptation of a McCarthy novel now becomes one of the most over-hyped films I have seen for a very long time. The film basically unfolds a great deal of violence centring on 3 men which ensues from a botched drug deal. A Vietnam vet played by Josh Brolin stumbles upon the aftermath of a shoot-out between border drug-smugglers and makes off with a bag full of money. A big man with strange hair and an undecipherable name has been dispatched to recover the money and the final member of the triumvirate is Tommy Lee Jones’ sheriff. The film alludes to a symbiosis between the harsh Texan landscape and violence. It hints at being concerned with fate and compulsion. Ultimately however the film comprises a great deal of extremely stylised, artfully filmed violence, a few wise c...

On Friday night I went to see the film of Kite Runner with a degree of scepticism. I had not, you see, bought into the universal acclaim accorded Hosseini’s 2003 novel. My opinion was that the depiction of an Afghan childhood was strong and that the book evoked late 1970s Afghanistan with a great deal of atmosphere, that the American section of the novel was somewhat weaker and that the crowd-pleasing orphan recovering thriller tacked unto the end was unnecessary, rather silly and cheapened the whole. The Kite Runner could have formed a good novella, but then it wouldn’t have sold millions of copies. In actual fact the elements which I objected to most strongly in the book, make an odd type of sense on the big screen. The story retained the same problems, but the format of Holywood blockbuster somehow sustains unlikely and contrived occurrences much more readily than a novel which in its opening sections had aspired to literary fiction. Whether it was because I knew what to expec...

Will Self’s fiction often lingers in urban hinterlands. He is a laureate of the strangeness of the functional. His prose describes hospital buildings, underpasses, flyovers. Anywhere indeed where there is a pervading sense of dislocation. It is hardly surprising to learn therefore that the author likes to walk in such environments. And being Will Self, he has a rather long and prohibitive word for these danders – “ psychogeography ”. I stand to be corrected, but I believe what he may be trying to say is that many urban environments are not designed with the pedestrian in mind and that therefore walking in them is a strange experience which reclaims that geography as something experienceable on an immediate human level. In undertaking these walks Self is re-establishing a sense of place which can easily be lost in the hustle and bustle of merely living our lives in functional topographies. If you need justification for drunkenly wandering up the hard shoulder of a motorway, if you...