GuestReview

The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder (guest review)

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My RSI has come back so my one-handed typing is being restricted as much as possible – perfect timing for my housemate Melissa to write a review I can use over here – this time of a much-loved classic. As always, do make her welcome! Over to you, Melissa…

thefirstfouryearsIn my family home, the Little House on the Prairie books are a massive deal. They’re legendary. They’re practically Scripture. (Not actually Scripture though. In my family we take actual Scripture very seriously indeed, and it most definitely does not get confused with other stuff.) From the time I could first read to when I left home, I must have read the entire series every couple of years at least, which adds up to an impressive number of times.

The Little House books take the reader on a journey through the challenges of a little pioneering family venturing into the uncharted American West in the late 1800s. They’re told through the eyes of little Laura, for the most part based on the author’s life, and the books grow with her. Not only does her perspective change, but the language becomes more complex, the number of pictures gradually reduces, and even the font gets smaller from one book to the next. What I love about these books is the delicious level of detail. If I could handle an axe, I could quite happily build my own log cabin based purely on the description of Pa building one. Alternatively, I could make hats from loose straw, or cure venison, or sew a rag rug (that last one is actually on my list of projects this winter).

The First Four Years, though, is a bit of an oddity. Look up the box set of Little House books online, and you’ll see it tacked on the end, less than half the size of any of the others in the series. Unlike the rest, it was not published in Laura’s lifetime, nor even finished; although it has a beginning, middle and end, it’s really just an early draft of a book that was never completed. As a child who had loved the earlier books, I read it and disliked it. It reads clumsily, spoils scenes from the previous book by repeating them less well, inexplicably uses a different name for one of the main characters. As for the story, which picks up where the last one left off with Laura’s marriage to Almanzo Wilder, it feels just like a long list of disasters. The neat closure of the previous book is destroyed and all in all it leaves a bit of a bad taste.

But I’m not here to diss the book. In fact, quite the opposite. Over the last week I’ve reread the entire series, and thoroughly enjoyed the who thing, but this last book stood out as by far the most interesting read, for the very same reasons I didn’t enjoy it as a child.

Like I just said, the book reads like a long list of disasters. The fact is, however, that the other books also tell of many hardships. The entire plot line of The Long Winter, for instance, is simply one blizzard following another while the whole town gradually runs out of coal and then food – not exactly cheery. The difference is mainly that the other books are more detailed; a higher proportion of the pages are given up to descriptions of the wild prairies, family gatherings round a cosy fire, and how to make a fish trap. There’s also a much thicker coat of perspective. Laura’s approach to life, learnt from her parents, is built around simple faith, strict codes of behaviour and a solid work ethic. There is no time for questioning the way things are, no option but to work hard and trust that all will come well in the end. This may sound harsh to modern ears, but it is the only way to survive in an untamed world. And within this clear-cut structure there is room for love and happiness to flourish; there is joy to be found in hard work and accomplishment, in good food and beautiful surroundings, in music and laughter, in the harmony of a caring family where each one is valued and needed by each of the others.

In The First Four Years, much of this veneer is stripped away, leaving the bare bones of the story obvious. It’s a reminder that life was simply very hard and what we would now see as abject poverty was the norm. To me, it was a humbling reminder of how little most of us have to contend with these days, with our indoor plumbing and central heating and effective healthcare; and, quite frankly, what a bad job we often make of it. I know it takes considerably less than a grasshopper plague destroying my year’s work to reduce me to a shivering wreck of anxiety.

I have a feeling that the difference is something to do with how solid our worldviews are; in a pluralistic world, my generation has learnt to question everything and to build our own truth, which can make the simplest things in life incredibly complicated and exhausting. It makes me question the value of questioning things. It almost makes me jealous, although I don’t fancy the food insecurity. Finally, it’s yet another reminder that difficult circumstances absolutely do not have to define your life, if you believe in something that runs deeper.

The other thing that made this read interesting was the insight into how Laura wrote. The story may be complete, but the book is unfinished. Descriptions and reflections are present, but they don’t flow. The characters aren’t really developed; we know Laura well, and Almanzo less well, from the rest of the series, but we don’t get the chance to really meet anyone else. It seems that Laura’s approach was simply to get the story down on paper first, then add the flourishes later. I think I could learn from her here – my first attempt at the NaNoWriMo challenge has yielded a paltry 1,866 words, partly because I spend so long fussing over getting each sentence right rather than getting on with the story.

As a wannabee writer (like literally every other arts graduate I know), I also found it encouraging that the book was, frankly, not great. In case you didn’t catch this at the beginning, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote some of my very favourite books, and the rest of the world seems to rather like them too, but it seems her drafts didn’t cut it. If even the best have to start by producing something unimpressive, then I needn’t balk at my own poor attempts. This leaves me with no excuse not to try. I like that.

Maybe I’ll see if I can hit that 2000 word mark tomorrow.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier #1938Club Guest Review

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When I told family and friends that I was co-leading the 1938 Club, I encouraged anybody who was interested to contribute their own review. A few of my IRL friends have indeed been doing 1938 reading along with us, and my friend Sarah has written this fantastic review of one of my faves, Rebecca. Do make her welcome!

RebeccaI have strong memories of watching Hitchcock’s film adaptation of Rebecca as a kid – the atmosphere, all in black and white, Maxim driving the heroine around in Monte Carlo, and the fancy dress party at Manderley. A few years ago I read du Maurier’s collection of short stories including The Birds – she has clearly made several strong contributions to the public consciousness.

So I came to Rebecca with some expectation, and also a sense that I knew the story. Neither mattered (and my feeling that I knew what happened was wrong, in any case!) as I was instantly drawn in. I love it when a book is so easy to get into, and you feel like you’ve been reading it for much longer than the first few pages. At various points along the way the book would bring back elements of the story that I remembered, but this didn’t bother me and I happily followed it, expecting some things and being surprised by others.

While the nameless protagonist and narrator is in many ways annoying, I found her very easy to empathise with in the first half – perhaps because I can remember being an awkward, shy girl, but also I think du Maurier does a fantastic job of bringing her character to life and making her inner monologue realistic and relatable. She goes off on involved fantasy daydreams at the drop of a hat, thinks (tamely) bitchy thoughts about her obnoxious employer Mrs Van Hopper, and for me is just the right mix of awkward, hopeful, embarrassed, daydreamy, and sullen, with bouts of confidence that then get shot down. I’ve made her sound awful! She’s not, she’s really quite endearing. And her first love/obsession for Maxim de Winter, the handsome stranger who shows her kindness and attention and entertains her in the absence of any friends at all, is really understandable and well drawn. Of course as readers, you feel that something’s not quite adding up, but it’s how du Maurier wants you to feel. You buy it; you’re along for the ride and eagerly waiting to see what will happen when they get back to Manderley.

The not-quite-right feeling that you get from the start of the relationship between Maxim and the narrator is continued and built upon once we get to Manderley, with the creepy staff, the disused wing of the house, the ‘blood red’ rhododendrons, and the obsessive references to Rebecca – for a good portion of the book it feels like she is mentioned on every page, which is obviously a device to make you feel like our narrator – to feel the oppressive, overwhelming force of Rebecca everywhere and in all the characters you meet. Here, I started to feel slightly frustrated by the spinelessness of our narrator, and the crappy attitude of Maxim (I don’t care if you’re Troubled and Brooding, you can pull yourself out of it enough to know you’re being horrible), but it didn’t really matter as I was invested in the story. I found myself trying to second guess the plot developments and the truth about Rebecca – but in an enjoyable way; trying to pick up on clues and events to work out what they meant. That sustained suspense is what du Maurier has done really effectively in this novel.

There are some lovely observations that stand out as being very much of their time – like when a dead body is discovered and an investigation must take place – and part of the ensuing chaos is that the lady of the house misses lunch, and decides they won’t change for dinner that evening. Similarly, when her husband comes under suspicion of murder, and our narrator frets that his scone is going cold. The party they host, too, sounds fabulous – if you had servants to run it for you in your stately mansion – hundreds of people in fancy dress dancing to the live band in the ballroom, with food and drink laid out, games rooms, fairy lights throughout the extensive grounds, and a fireworks display; all cleared away by the staff first thing in the morning.

In the end, the characters are not completely believable (although maybe they were more so in 1938; but I’m still genuinely puzzled by facts such as that Maxim and the second Mrs de Winter actually seem to love each other), and much of the plot is a little thin (why did Maxim marry Rebecca in the first place? Are we to believe that the sole reason why Rebecca was so despicable, so wicked, was simply that she was sleeping around and threatening to bring shame upon Manderley?! Why doesn’t Frank, Maxim’s confidante who shows the most kindness to our narrator, tell her the truth about Rebecca?).

The writing isn’t brilliant or outstanding, but it’s really good – solid, clean writing with enough description and atmosphere but that doesn’t get bogged down, and feels more modern and fresh than a book that’s nearly 80 years old.

It’s not the scariest or thrilleriest thriller that you’ll read, but despite all of the misgivings above I found it really enjoyable – a well written, compelling, interesting story that has left a fresh impression on me. I think it will continue to stand out as leaving a lasting memory, even if it’s just a sense of the suspense created, the atmosphere of Manderley, or some of the characters, like I had from watching the film around 20 years ago. I’ll definitely look forward to reading my next du Maurier.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

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When I heard that Colin (my bro) was reading Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, I  asked – in an effort to be all zeitgeisty – whether he’d be willing to write a review of it for me, especially since I don’t think I’m going to be reading it for a while. So, thanks Col, you’ve written a blinder! Make him feel welcome and enjoy his review – but, be warned, it is a bit spoilery. No more than most reviews, but… well, you’re warned!

Go Set a WatchmanIn years to come, I am confident that the phrase “Go Set a Watchman” will only ever be used when prefaced with the words: “Actually, she also wrote…”. Harper Lee’s unexpected follow-up to To Kill a Mockingbird, written in the 1950s but only published last week, has great value as a curio but not much more.

That is not to say that Watchman is a bad book, but I am confident that it would not have been published in its current state if it were not for its links to Mockingbird: the reason I can say this with confidence is that it’s already true. For those who haven’t been following the history, this text is (apparently) exactly as it was when submitted sixty-odd years ago to a publisher, who suggested that the most interesting bits were the flashbacks to Jean Louise Finch’s childhood, and that perhaps Harper Lee could write some more about that. The result was Mockingbird, and thus Watchman is – despite being set 20 years later – really a first draft rather than a sequel.

I knew all of this before starting the book, but was surprised to discover on the first page that, unlike Mockingbird, it wasn’t written in the first person, and although it predominantly followed Jean Louise (a.k.a. ‘Scout’), we would later also get the points of view of Atticus Finch, Aunt Alexandria and Uncle Jack among others. Nothing wrong with that, but the contrast with Mockingbird was immediate, and this is of course the key problem with the book: by inviting constant comparison with one of the greatest novels of the 20th century (and, unimaginatively, one of my favourite books), it never really stood a chance. Not only can it not justify the comparison on merit, but given that the likes of Scout, Alexandria, and Jack are already familiar to the reader, it jars when they act ‘out of character’. And then, of course, there’s Atticus…  more on him later.

Before I get carried away, I should cover off the plot. Whereas Mockingbird was set over several years of Scout’s childhood, Watchman takes place over just a few days, following Jean Louise – at the age of 26, she is rarely called Scout – on her return from New York to Maycomb county to visit her ageing father, Atticus. While there she thinks back, in extended flashbacks, to her childhood in Maycomb with her late brother Jem, housekeeper Calpurnia, and sometime neighbour Dill. So far, so Mockingbird. But, as well as remembrances of childhood games, we also get recollections of Jean Louise’s first period, her first kiss, and her off-and-on romance with Hank Clifton, an apparent lifelong friend whose total absence from Mockingbird is the first sign that attempts weren’t necessarily made to keep the books consistent. Hank, in fact, is still living in Maycomb, learning the law under Atticus, and apparently eager for Jean Louise to marry him and settle down. Jean Louise’s attitude to Hank is curious throughout, as she occasionally confirms vaguely that she will marry him, only to recant a few pages later without either party seeming particularly concerned.

If Hank is thinly drawn, he is not alone. Jean Louise is well fleshed out – perhaps this should not be surprising, given that Harper Lee’s writing was heavily autobiographical – as a young woman torn between loyalty to her native Alabama and an affinity with the more progressive views of New York. Other than her, though, characters are either underwritten (Dill, Alexandria, and Calpurnia were better served in Mockingbird) or, in the case of Jack Finch, rather overwritten. Indeed, while Jack’s only purpose in Mockingbird was to serve as a example of an adult who – unlike Atticus – doesn’t understand children, in Watchman he is a sage counsel for Jean Louise, as well as being an idiosyncratic aficionado of Victorian esoterica. I imagine he was fun to write, but I can also understand why he was significantly toned down for Mockingbird.

I should reiterate that this book is a first draft, so it should be no surprise that we don’t get characters of the richness of Mockingbird. In fact, Watchman is very readable – I finished it in a couple of evenings – and though sparse, I can certainly see the spark that led the publisher to ask for more. Sometimes this would have very literally been a case of expanding on what was already there – Watchman includes passing reference to Mrs. Dubose, an irascible old lady who shouted at Scout in her youth; this was developed in Mockingbird to become one of the most moving and poignant subplots – but much of the invention of Mockingbird is entirely missing in Watchman. Whereas the former gave us the complex and intriguing Boo Radley, for example, the latter’s most interesting minor character is a preacher who expounds on grammar. I’m in danger of reviewing Mockingbird here, I know, but this draft just drives home what an imaginative creation the finished novel was, too often reduced (in schools and elsewhere) to being simply a book about racism.

Ah, racism. If you have been paying attention to the news you might have spotted that Atticus, having been the hero of Mockingbird and possibly literature’s most fondly-regarded lawyer, is now ‘racist’. Before starting the book I took this with more than a pinch of salt, being aware that many mainstream views in the 1950s would be regarded as racist now (and also keeping in mind that there are aspects of Mockingbird that would probably not be published now), but in truth this is not merely the distortion of a 21st century lens. Atticus is, in Watchman, a segregationist, and while his views are reasoned and calm, they are enough to horrify Jean Louise (“You deny that they’re human”) as well as today’s readers. For those of us who have a great affection for Atticus – and I have long ranked him as my second favourite literary character, after only Bertie Wooster – this is difficult to take.

To Kill a Mockingbird

I should be clear that Atticus is not drawn as a monster. When Jean Louise describes him as a “n***** hater” (the book’s publishers might be confident enough to print that word without asterisks, but I’m not) she is firmly slapped down by Jack, and in the book’s climactic chapter – by far the most strongly written – where Jean Louise and Atticus finally thrash out their differences, he is described as “compassionate, almost pleading”. His reasoning is based not on hatred or contempt, but apparently on concern: “Would you want your state governments run by people who don’t know how to run ‘em?” Harper Lee makes no attempt to persuade the reader that Atticus is right, but we are encouraged to see – as Jean Louise eventually does – that it is possible to hold the wrong views without being a pariah. Arguably, in the age of ‘Twitterstorms’ and instant outrage, this message is needed more today than ever before. Sorry, that got a bit philosophical, there, but it is a product of the age that the headlines greeting this book were all about Atticus being a racist, with no thought given to nuance.

If Mockingbird’s fans have seen the tarnishing of their icon, then Jean Louise’s position in Watchman is much the same: on the day following their argument she realises (or, rather, Jack explains to her) that she had previously tied her moral outlook entirely to her father’s, and that, having treated him as a god all her life, it was vital for her to develop her own independent conscience. In the heat of the moment this means describing him as being ‘worse than Hitler’, but by the end of the book she tells him: “I think I love you very much”. It is an absolution of sorts, but still leaves readers struggling to reconcile the Atticus of Mockingbird with the one of Watchman, and perhaps the answer to that is that, despite being based on Harper Lee’s father, they’re not really the same character.

In fact, there are several indications that the world of Watchman is subtly different to the one we’ve seen in Mockingbird. While many characters are the same, and indeed some passages of prose are identical (a description of Alexandria once having had an hour glass figure; an anecdote about Conninghams and Cunninghams appearing before Judge Taylor), the clearest distinction comes in the description of Tom Robinson’s trial. Though not mentioned by name, this is clearly the same case that became the centrepiece of Mockingbird: a black boy with only one arm accused or raping a white girl; one key difference is that in the world of Watchman, Atticus won an acquittal for the defendant. Another is that he did so with an ‘instinctive distaste’ and afterwards immediately went home to take a hot bath.

While it is evident that Watchman was not edited to bring it in line with Mockingbird, it is not clear how extensive any editing process was: it reads too well to believe that it is actually an untouched first draft, despite the publisher’s claims, but on the other hand it has obviously not been amended to make it more understandable for an international 21st century audience. For example, when Atticus says “You slang the Supreme Court within an inch of its life, then you turn around and talk like the NAACP” the reader is clearly supposed to be familiar not only with what these are, but also with what any particular person’s views on them are likely to be. I must admit that I am not, nor am I familiar with the text of the tenth amendment, which is referred to without further explanation.

Overall I am glad that Watchman was published, as it provides a valuable insight into the writing process and just how much a story can develop over time, but – despite its strengths – it should not be mistaken for a valuable piece of literature in its own right. I have read Mockingbird five times already and expect to read it many more; I don’t expect I will ever read this one again.

Apricots at Midnight by Adèle Geras

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My housemate Melissa (not to be confused with a different housemate Melissa, who has also written the odd book review for SIAB) wanted to borrow a book, and ended up with one I was given but have yet to read – Apricots at Midnight (1977) by Adèle Geras. As always, I encourage my friends to write reviews for SIAB. This is seldom taken up, but thankfully Melissa said yes, and wrote this fab review! Do (as always) make my guests feel welcome in the comments section… and enjoy the review:

Small pleasures. I picked this book off Simon’s shelf at his
first words of description, without waiting for the rest: ‘That one is a
children’s book.’ I love books written for children; the unpredictable-but-safe
plotlines, the freshness of the detail, the firing of the imagination; and this
one did not disappoint.

Actually, this is the sort of book that as a child I didn’t
really appreciate. It’s one of those books which describes someone’s childhood
memories, and why, I would wonder, should I read about another person’s
everyday life when my own was so interesting and there were plenty of books
about daredevil escapades, fantastic worlds, or true-to-life explorations? It’s
only through growing up (a little bit) that I’ve come to appreciate the beauty
of the everyday and of simple, happy memories.
This book is built around a quilt; a quilt sewn together,
patch by patch, by the narrator’s elderly relative Aunt Pinny, from fabrics
picked up throughout her life. Each patch is tied to a story, the cue to a
memory of long ago. The apricots of the title relate to the first ball Pinny
attended, a little girl sneaking down to join her working mother for a midnight
snack.
A child’s perspective is so different: everything is
fascinating, but nothing is truly surprising. For Pinny, the line between
make-believe and reality is not particularly important; there’s no
disappointment when the adventurer Major Variana admits his limp was gained by
dropping a crate of oranges on his foot rather than being bitten by a
crocodile, and no questioning of his reassurance ‘That was the only made-up
story, I promise you’. In her old age, Pinny retains this childlike ability to
take her experiences at face value, so that the tone of the book hinges
slightly on the fantastic.
The individual salient events, people and places slowly
build a picture of the beauty of Pinny’s daily life. The emergent character in
the backdrop is her mother: thrown from prosperity at the death of her husband,
and fighting to build a life for herself and her daughter on the strength of
her dressmaking skills. She is the constant in Pinny’s life, tying the book
together, providing stability and a structure. It is she who first suggests the
quilt and teaches a tiny Pinny to hold a needle and make her first stitches.
Like a fairy godmother, she can always produce something from whatever nothing
is to hand: a garden for a convalescent Pinny from scraps of flowered fabric;
an extra sixpence when Pinny’s allowance isn’t quite enough for the music box
she wants to buy; an overnight job at Mrs Triptree’s ball so that Pinny can see
the ladies in their beautiful costumes.
There is a chance for Pinny to be involved in everything she
does – sitting in on meetings with unusual and exotic guests, contributing a
not-so-successful stuffed zebra to the soft toy stall at the church fair,
cutting out the jam tarts for a picnic. Her tears and remorse on the day she is
delayed picking Pinny up from school, and gratitude to the teachers who took
the child home for tea and entertained her, is a moment of revelation for
Pinny:

It occurred to me then that I had not once, even in the
worst depths of my misery, thought what it must have been like for her, knowing
she would not be at the school gates, knowing that she was making me more and
more unhappy every minute she was not there.

Her selfless love and care for Pinny comes out at every
turn. On one occasion, she covers for her daughter, losing a rich client in the
process, when the little girl recovers a roll of cloth that she believes
belongs to the future king and queen of Borneo but was actually the client’s
curtains. I fell in love with her at the point when she stretches a tiny budget
to provide Pinny with bulbs for her garden:

I do not remember that we had trouble finding the money. I
was too excited at the prospect of my own garden. But now I can see that my
mother must have gone without something she needed or wanted, in order to save
what was necessary.

Her generosity is not reserved for her daughter alone: when
Pinny asks a visiting gentleman at a loose end to stay, she hesitantly but not
unwillingly opens her home to him until he is able to find his feet again.
To my delight, one of the stories turns out to take place in
Oxford. This is Pinny’s first taste of what she calls ‘the country’. ‘”It’s not
the proper country, Pinny,” my mother warned me. “Oxford is a large town, and
quite near.”’ Unperturbed, Pinny’s imagination runs wild: ‘Milkmaids in mob
caps and farmers in knee-breeches, small houses with roses growing round the
doors, stiles, carthorses, shepherds coming down from the hills at sunset,
wooden bridges curving over brooks.’
The reality is quite different, of course, but turns out to
be no less exciting. Not least, St Giles’ Fair, ‘the most splendid, exciting,
glorious fair in the whole world’, as Pinny’s Oxfordian friends, Miles and
Kate, delightedly inform her. The description is priceless, a snapshot of the
fair a century before I experienced it. Some things are quite different – the
long-banned prizes of live goldfish, the penny charge for each game, the steam
powering the organs. The exhilaration of the fair, however,
is unchanged over generations, and the bright colours of the rides which draw
the children’s attention, the reckless spending on hopeless attempts at
skewering a prize, the loud music and bustle of the crowd, sound tantalisingly
familiar.

Ten patches, ten stories; yet a quilt is so much bigger than
that. I’m left wondering what else is in there; the stories that Pinny would
not tell till her listener was older, the ones she perhaps would never tell at
all? 

The Red House – Mark Haddon

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What with reader’s block, moving house, and not having internet for a bit, it’s been a while since you had a proper review from me.  And today is no different, because I’m handing over to somebody else to write about The Red House by Mark Haddon, which I was sent as a review copy.  Tom (who recently married my best friend) spotted it on my shelves, and commented on it, so I decided it would find a better home with him.  Whether or not he ended up agreeing, you can discover below… Tom, by the by, can also be found at the blog Food, Music, God.  Over to you, Tom!
I promised Simon a while back that I’d read Mark Haddon’s The Red House and review it for him, and have sincerely been reiterating that promise to him ever since whilst getting distracted by other tasks like getting married or trying to qualify as a teacher. However, the other day my mother rang me up and told me that my father had recently read The Red House and she had just started it, and so it occurred to me that now might be the time to take action and stop anyone else having to read it ever again. That way, we can pretend that it didn’t happen, that Mark Haddon can still write novels with razor-sharp characters and compelling narrative, and that this clichéd series of adolescent writing exercises is the work of someone else.
The novel is about two families united by estranged siblings who are trying to reconnect with one another after the death of their ferocious mother. There’s Richard, the hospital consultant who remarried recently but doesn’t really know how to talk to his new wife Louisa, and may have A DARK SECRET. His estranged sister, Angela, who’s haunted by the ghost of her stillborn daughter, but of course she can’t tell anyone about that, and married to Dominic, who seems reasonably normal but may also have A DARK SECRET. Richard’s kids – Alex, a sex-obsessed teenager; Daisy, a buttoned-up Christian who also thinks rather more about sex than she’d like; Benjy, who is eight (I think) and I can’t remember much more about. Angela’s daughter Melissa, who is a self-obsessed cow who’s kind of hot and whom Alex fancies, of course. Then there’s the house itself, allegedly the conduit for all of these stories for some reason, although that’s arguably just an excuse for the fact that Mark Haddon couldn’t decide which character to focus on. The house seems to know quite a lot of poetry, and it talks like a travel guide written by James Joyce.
If you think that sounds like a lot going on, you’d be right, and that’s part of the problem. It’s a shame, as there are some good ideas here, especially with the teenagers in the cast – Daisy’s struggle with her sexuality and where it fits with her faith is clearly aiming for some wider significance, for example. Alex and Melissa’s teenage angst is sharply drawn, if rather aimless, and the differences in Angela and Richard’s approach to their upbringing and the effect on their families could have been channeled into something effective in the manner of Jonathan Franzen. However, it just doesn’t feel like it’s been edited into any kind of coherent shape. It’s this huge splurge of styles and influences and this, rather than seeming ambitious, comes across as amateurish instead. It doesn’t build, it doesn’t have much of a climax to speak of, and the central narrative just isn’t strong enough to provide any real mooring.
It’s also overwritten and laden with unnecessary detail. What is one supposed to make of a passage like this:
Louisa works for Mann Digital in Leith. They do flatbed scanning, big photographic prints, light boxes, Giclée editions, some editing and restoration. She loves the cleanness and precision of it, the ozone in the air, the buzz and shunt of the big Epsons, the guillotine, the hot roller, the papers, Folex, Somerset, Hahnemühle. Mann is Ian Mann who hung on to her during what they called her difficult period because she’d manned the bridge during his considerably more difficult period the previous year.
It’s like Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”, that, only about photocopying. And that’s not even the worst linguistic crime in the book – reading about Angela reading modern poetry, with snippets of Robert Browning woven through the text, is pretty painful, as is Richard’s attempt at reading ancient Greek poetry, not to mention the inexplicable quoting of something that seems to be an encyclopaedia about lorries.
Or what about this:
Richard slots the tiny Christmas tree of the interdental brush into its white handle and cleans out the gaps between his front teeth, top and bottom, incisors, canines. He likes the tightness, the push and tug, getting the cavity really clean, though only at the back between the molars and pre-molars do you get the satisfying smell of rot from all that sugar-fed bacteria. Judy Hecker at work. Awful breath. Ridiculous that it should be a greater offence to point it out. Arnica on the shelf above his shaver. Which fool did that belong to? Homeopathy on the NHS now. Prince Charles twisting some civil servant’s arm no doubt. Ridiculous man.
If you can find another novel in which you can find a narrative reason to justify spending this much time on one of the characters brushing his teeth, I’d be interested to hear about it. It’s a testament to the way that The Red House is written that the author thought that this belonged, but it is apparently a novel about the mundane and the ordinary (or so the blurb says), and so there’s plenty of that. Again, perhaps it’s an attempt at being clever; to impart some wonder into the everyday processes of how peoples’ minds work. If you feel a sense of wonder at the above, I’d be interested to hear about that too.

You should not read The Red House. Tell your friends not to read it. If people suggest taking it on holiday, don’t. If you find it in your holiday home, leave it there. It’s not a good holiday book. It’s not good literary fiction. No, it’s not lightweight, and yet it also doesn’t seem to mean anything. It’s shockingly dark in places (and shockingly dull in others) and it doesn’t seem to known what to do with that darkness. Curious Incident was (and still is) magnificent, thanks to an exceptionally strong narrative voice. A Spot of Bother was flawed, but still gripping and surprisingly visceral in places – and the characterisation was second to none. In The Red House, despite a couple of strong passages such as Richard’s disastrous run out on the moors, there’s nothing to make this stand out. It’s an ambitious experiment, and perhaps an admirable one; to his credit, at least Mark Haddon is still pushing his craft and trying new things. However, it’s a huge disappointment that in doing so he has moved so far away from his strengths.