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Thursday 14 April 2011

Review: Lolita

Title: Lolita
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Nationality: Russian
Year: 1955
Publisher: Odyssey Editions
Length: 300+ pages
Rating: 9/10
Summary: The inner workings of the criminal mind

The outline

One of a rare group of books in world literature which is famous (or infamous) enough to need no introduction.

Sample

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

The verdict

Everyone knows that Lolita takes the reader inside the mind of a paedophile, the psyche of a criminal who kidnaps a young girl and takes her on a debauched road trip across the United States. But the novel itself is about so much more than that.

Humbert Humbert’s witty and lyrical, yet snobbish and evasive, narrative forces the reader to reconsider the nature of evil. Humbert is both likeable and monstrous creating a more complex and probably more realistic portrait of a depraved mind than you will find in most works of fiction. This is a difficult book, not only in terms of content but also in style. Humbert’s intellectual flourishes give a crucial insight into his character, but there will be few readers who can pick up on more than a fraction of his cross-references, puns, in-jokes and verbal gymnastics.

Humbert is the archetypal unreliable narrator and the reader is never sure when he is lying, deluding himself or succumbing to the madness that has plagued him for most of his life. This is most crucial in the depiction of Lolita, a poor Dolly who we only ever see through Humbert’s eyes and who never gets to speak for herself. Readers are left to decide for themselves how much Humbert says about her is true. This is not a love story as some people have claimed. This is a story about possession.

The subject matter means that Lolita is not a book for the squeamish or easily offended reader, or anyone who will take Humbert’s narration at face value. But for the more mature reader who can cope with the incongruity between Humbert’s wit and his crimes it is an undoubted classic.

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Review: Replica

Title: Replica
Author: Lexi Revellian
Nationality: British
Year: 2011
Publisher: Hoxton Press
Length: 200+ pages
Rating: 8/10
Summary: Lexi Revellian does it again

The outline

Unassertive secretary Beth is persuaded to become a guinea pig in an experiment at the government lab where she works. But when things go wrong and she is accidentally duplicated, both Beths find that their lives are in danger.

Sample

"I'm not going to do it, Professor." She picked up her handbag.
He saw she meant what she said, and the spark seemed to go out of him; he sighed deeply. With a visible effort, he squared his shoulders, smiled and patted her arm. "Quite understood, Beth, I hope I haven't pressured you unduly. You toddle off home. It'll keep till tomorrow afternoon when the Fubars come back."
His hand went to the on/off switch and hovered reluctantly over it. As he stooped, she saw with a pang the lines in his middle-aged face, obvious now the animation had left it, worse after a week of late nights working in the lab.
She felt mean.
"I guess an hour wouldn't really make any difference."
She took out her ear studs, removed her watch and lay down inside the machine.

The verdict

A second novel is always a tricky prospect. It’s difficult for an author to find the right balance between creating something familiar enough to appeal to readers of the first novel, while making it original enough that it gives readers something fresh and new.

Thankfully, with Replica Lexi Revellian has achieved just that. Replica retains all the fun and excitement of Remix while swapping rockstars and rocking horses for MI5 and sci-fi technology. Like Remix, it’s in a genre all of its own – a quirky fast-paced adventure story with a likeable, realistic female lead and a bad boy love interest, that never tries to take itself too seriously. It’s a kind of Bridget Jones meets The Bourne Identity.

It’s a real pageturner that you won’t want to put down. In my opinion, it wasn’t quite as good as Remix, but is still one of the best books of the year so far.

Saturday 2 April 2011

Review: The Girl with the Bomb Inside

Title: The Girl with the Bomb Inside
Author: Andy Conway
Nationality: British
Year: 2010
Publisher: Self-published
Length: Novella
Rating: 5/10
Summary: Lacking that special something

The outline

It’s 1981 and on a run-down council estate 15-year-old Tony is trying to come to terms with life, death and the news that his girlfriend is pregnant.

Sample

There's some good books in the school library, actually. No one reads them. I never look at them either, that'd be dead stupid. I just nick a few now and then. No one notices. The worst thing about nicking books from the school library is you have to take something really shite when your mates are there, otherwise they think you're a spastic. So, if you want a decent book you have to wait till there's no teacher and no kids either. This doesn't happen much, so you just have to risk it sometimes. It's safer when there's a teacher but no kids, to be honest. I've nicked a few like that. I could just borrow them like normal, but I don't want anyone to find out I think.

The verdict

There’s a very good concept at the heart of The Girl with the Bomb Inside, a novella that takes the form of the literary ramblings of a 15-year-old who plans suicide when he discovers his short-term girlfriend is pregnant. His quest to make sense of life, the false starts of his ‘novel’ and his attempts to separate fact and fiction are the perfect canvas for an author to really explore this unfortunate character. However, for me there was something missing, a spark, a flash of genius, something that would have made this story stand out from the crowd.

Swearing alone doesn’t make a story gritty. Neither do references to punk music. What it really needed more was more edge, more danger. I never cared too much what happened next and although the experimental idea at the centre of the novella was good, it wasn’t enough on its own to carry the story for me.

Review: House of Skin

Title: House of Skin
Author: Kiana Davenport
Nationality: American
Year: 2010
Publisher: Kiana Davenport
Length: 200+ pages
Rating: 8/10
Summary: Wonderfully evocative short fiction

The outline

Kiana Davenport’s award-winning short stories about life on the Pacific islands are brought together in a single volume for the first time.

Sample

They ran silently in single file, the bush so thick they moved by intuition. By morning they would be missed in their village, and by noon they would dwell in the mouths of elders as curses. Darkness hid a wall of matted spider webs that flung them backwards to the ground, and Kona wept because she was young and terrified. Eva comforted her as they lay watching flying-foxes like rags in brief ellipses through the trees.
"We are going to die," Kona said.
Eva shook her gently. "No! We are going to be famous." What she meant was that they were going to be remembered and hated.

The verdict

This is a wonderful collection of elegant literary short stories that seamlessly transported me to places I have never been. Davenport is Hawaiian and her stories focus on women’s searches for identity across the Pacific, revealing life stories that are exotic in their setting and customs while remaining familiar in their emotional resonance.

I enjoyed all the stories but my favourite was The Lipstick Tree, about a young woman’s quest to break away from her tribe in the forests of Papua New Guinea and become part of the westernised world. I would also strongly recommend, War Doll Hotel, about a Hawaiian woman’s battle with her past in New York, and Her Walking Stick, about a Vanuatuan woman’s revenge on her lazy daughter-in-law.

This is a very good introduction to Davenport’s work and I am keen to now read one of her novels.

Friday 1 April 2011

Review: Coombe’s Wood

Title: Coombe’s Wood
Author: Lisa C. Hinsley
Nationality: British
Year: 2009
Publisher: Darkling Press
Length: 200+ pages
Rating: 6/10
Summary: Decent horror story, spoilt by silly elves

The outline

Izzy is a newcomer to the village of Cedham and quickly realises that everything is not what it seems. Faced with bleak warnings about the local woods and the possibility of her violent ex tracking her down, how long will it be before her life starts to fall apart all over again?

Sample

The glue behind the wallpaper was old, brittle, and the paper fell away with little effort. Their initial playfulness evaporated, as they found more scribbled pictures, of animals, humans and violent deaths, like modern cave drawings. Eyes were a theme; they were everywhere, sometimes as a frame to other sketches. Under the last strip, they found a tally that counted to nineteen.

The verdict

Coombe’s Wood is a highly readable and well-paced novel. Hinsley builds up a powerfully creepy atmosphere which makes the novel a real page turner as one scene moves effortlessly to the next.

However, this was also a book which failed to reach its full potential. The later stages in particular read like an early draft of a better novel. The main problem for me was the silly and unnecessary subplot about elves which took the sharp and dangerous edge off the story and brought a clumsy element into the ending. Without this and with a bit more attention paid to the more sinister elements, Coombe’s Wood could have been seriously disturbing horror thriller. However, the elves element made it difficult to take seriously, just as it was reaching its climax.

Adding to draft-like quality of much of the novel was a proliferation of typos. It really did need at least one more proof-reading session before it was publishing. It’s a shame as there really is a very good novel in here if only Hinsley had focussed her writing talent.