Billy Lynn’s Long Half Time Walk – Ben Fountain

Read as leg 3 (Texas, USA) of the Bookpacking reading journey.

Billy Lynn and the rest of Bravo Platoon are nearing the end of their ‘victory tour’, their last engagement at Texas Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, for the Thanksgiving Day game against the Bears.

The ‘engagement’ that got them here was a short, sharp and bloody firefight in Iraq, captured on newsreel footage which, being largely successful from the US viewpoint, has become an internet sensation at home and a totem for the war effort. Their reward is a short furlough back in the US – provided they perform in the media circus and accept their due as heroes of the nation.

Billy Lynn doesn’t feel like a hero, he didn’t exactly volunteer to serve, and the adulation is starting to wear thin.

There is a lot going on at Texas Stadium, a lot for Billy to process. Bravo now have an agent who is trying to cut them a film deal, promising big bucks but so far delivering nothing; their role in the half time show is vague and while it should include meeting the fabulously attractive cheerleaders, Beyoncé led Destiny’s Child will be on stage too; and the Cowboys owner has invited the platoon into his suite for hospitality among the rich and powerful, which takes them all far from their comfort zone.

Billy has two other preoccupations. He had twenty-four hours at home, down the road at Stovall, that reintroduced him to his family’s troubles and during which his sister Kathryn tried to persuade him to dodge his return to war; and now he’s besotted with one of the cheerleaders who to his surprise seems to reciprocate. More immediately he needs a drink and some pills for his headache.

Through the blur in his head the contradictions between his current treatment as a ‘hero’ and his previous as a ‘grunt’, a nobody, lead to half-formed questions about who he is actually fighting for; whose will the victory be? But though war is hell, and victory maybe hollow, could he walk away from his platoon, his comrades, his true loyalty?

The narration places the reader firmly in Billy’s consciousness, making the language authentic and providing a lot of buy-in to his situation and mindset.

Billed as “the Catch 22 of the Iraq war”, this takes a swipe less at the military than the civilian context of the war. There is humour but the out-loud laughs are fewer and the cynicism is more bitter – Billy is only nineteen so his eyes are just opening to the self-serving and exploitation that abounds.

Billy Lynn is a book of its time and one that deserves to be read and enjoyed on its own merits.

Periodic Tales – Hugh Aldersey-Williams

In this book the author shares his fascination with the elements that go to make up the periodic table. He follows no scientific order in introducing them, preferring to group them in sections labelled Power, Fire, Craft, Beauty and Earth.

In Power we have the traditional riches of gold, silver and platinum along with the energy providing likes of carbon and plutonium. Fire includes the most reactive of elements such as sulphur, potassium, phosphorus and radium; while Craft covers the malleable metals – long discovered tin, iron and copper along with more recent additions of zinc, tungsten and aluminium. Beauty looks at the colour giving elements, both the physical tints of cadmium, chromium and cobalt and the bright light producing argon and neon. The Earth, or ‘rare earths’ elements are more recently won from the ground, the likes of scandium, strontium and yttrium, unsung but increasingly useful in modern industrial processes. These are just examples - there are of course over a hundred to go at, and he covers them all.

Although the chemical properties are covered, of more interest to the lay reader are the cultural references that have attached themselves – how they arose and are perpetuated independent of updated scientific reality.

Another interesting strand of the book is the human stories behind the discoveries made; the search to fill the gaps predicted by the periodic tabulation and the research into the chemistry and physics behind its organisation.

The trends and fashions in naming new elements is also of interest – Greek & Roman mythology (cerium, promethium), places (germanium, francium, scandium, californium), recently discovered planets (uranium, plutonium), and scientists (einsteinium, rutherfordium, mendelevium).  Geology also gets a look in (mining engineers often at the forefront of discovery) with Samarium.

Aldersey-Williams gets the balance right between science, history, biography, economics and trivia, making for a book packed with interesting information, obscure detail and memorable anecdotes.

The Favourite Game – Leonard Cohen

Read as leg 2 (Montreal Canada) of the Bookpacking reading journey.

Is this highly stylised novel just a curiosity or one only for the musician’s fans? In it we follow the early life of Laurence (Larry) Breavman, through whom Leonard Cohen paints pictures of his own time as a child and young adult in Montreal.

Despite, or because of, his middle class Jewish origins Breavman indulges himself in what the city has to offer. In short chapters, some snappy some lyrical, his boyhood, adolescence and student experiences involve girls, poetry, music and the search for novelty and meaning, often expressed through dialogue with friend and soul mate Krantz.

Relations with women feature throughout. Boyhood fascination with the tragic Bertha and first love Lisa (whose favourite game it was to be flung on to snow, to land crazily and leave bizarre impressions in the drifts) gives way to more long lasting involvement with muses Tamara “whose thighs made him a fetishist of thighs” and then Shell.

He meets and falls at first sight for Shell during an interlude in New York, her back story revealed in some detail as they spend lazy days and nights holed up in an apartment.

In love but never content, Breavman returns to Montreal to take up the offer of a summer camp job with Krantz and we get a more mature view of the City. Here the temptations of the women, still Tamara but also the red headed Patricia, persist and conflict with his enduring need for Shell.

As to be expected from Cohen, the prose is captivating as he finds characteristically unconventional but apt ways to bring to vivid life landscapes, situations and people.

More than a curiosity and more accessible than his poetry, the book is a rewarding read whether or not you are a Leonard Cohen fan.

Red Bones – Ann Cleeves

This is the third of Cleeves’ Shetland series of detective fiction featuring Jimmy Perry, native of the islands despite his Spanish sounding name, which is a relic of the shipwrecked Armada.

This time the action takes place on the island of Whalsay, home of Perez’s sidekick sergeant Sandy Wilson, where a couple of archaeology students are conducting a dig at his grandmother’s croft. Human bones are found; they seem old but their discovery is rapidly followed by a death – accident or murder?

Perez investigates and has to unravel current relationships and hidden secrets within the Wilson family history. Another death occurs; again there is uncertainty as to whether it is suicide or murder, but two bodies and some old bones on a small island look more like enemy action than coincidence.

Perez’s personal life takes a back seat in this book (girlfriend Fran is shipped off to London) but Sandy’s fills the void to maintain the usual balance between human interest and police procedure.

Cleeves is a fine writer of the genre and the story rattles along nicely with its usual sprinkling of Shetland landscape and weather to give an authentic feel to the location.

I have enjoyed all three books read so far, and the series continues, but whether I will return to Shetland for further instalments is unsure. So many books, so little time!

Skippy Dies – Paul Murray

Read as leg 1 (Dublin, Ireland) of my "Bookpacking" reading journey.

Dublin’s exclusive Seabrook College for Boys is the setting for this close examination of events in one tumultuous autumn term. The action takes place in the parallel worlds of the masters and the pupils who meet physically in class but have little notion of what is really happening in each other’s lives.

The adult thread of the story centres on Howard “the coward” Fallon, like many of teachers a Seabrook old boy, back in the fold after a failed career in finance. His issues, apart from trying to promote in his class an interest in history, include: a long held feeling of guilt arising from a tragic event from his days as a pupil; the siren attraction of newly arrived temporary teacher Miss Aurelie McIntyre; and the unwelcome attention of acting (and would-be permanent) headteacher Greg Costigan, whose mission it is to modernise the school and wrest control away from the historic grip of the Holy Paracletan fathers.

Howard’s problems pale into insignificance against those of his second year class; their issues span the chaotic spectrum of early adolescence. Skippy (aka Daniel Juster) is the quiet boarder who unwittingly binds together a diverse set of friends including: roommate Ruprecht van Doren, bookish would-be intellectual who is obsessed with the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence in a multi-dimensional universe; Dennis Hoey, the cynic; Mario Bianchi, the self-appointed expert on sex; and straight man Geoff Sproke, whose bit part role in life is defined by him playing the triangle in the Van Doren quartet.

Though quiet and inoffensive, Skippy has his problems too – at home and in the swimming team – and is most comfortable in the alternate reality provided by the ‘Hopeland’ computer game. However that takes a back seat when, through Ruprecht’s telescope, he espies and immediately falls for an unknown girl he sees playing Frisbee in the adjacent St Brigid’s School for Girls.

Lorelei Wakeham (her of the Frisbee) has her own demons. In common with most of her schoolmates she is concerned (in her case needlessly) over body image, and has been drawn into the misuse of prescription drugs as ‘slimming pills’. These are procured and peddled by two older boys at Seabrook, entrepreneur Barry and hard man Carl. Carl also has designs on Lorelei, and has the leverage to obtain sexual favours that Skippy could only dream of.

Things come to a head for both Howard and Skippy at the Halloween Ball when St Brigid’s come to play. Howard and Aurelie are to chaperone the event; Lorelei will be there; the punch will be spiked; and several die will be irrevocably cast. Skippy may die, but not quietly, and his influence continues to affect the lives of the others.

It is a sprawling six hundred page roller coaster of a book. Paul Murray takes a scatter gun to numerous themes and nails most of them. The narration switches from character to character with good effect, providing not only humour and tragedy but also no little insight into the human condition. A recommended read.

Shylock is My Name – Howard Jacobson

The setting for this modern day retelling of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is the money belt south of Manchester around Alderley Edge. Here live, in conspicuous affluence, the main protagonists: Strulovitch, a well-heeled Jew; Plurabelle, a wealthy heiress with a celebrity lifestyle; and D’Anton, friend and factotum to Plurabelle and implacable enemy to Strulovitch, based purely on a disagreement over the latter’s planned development of a local gallery to exhibit Jewish art.

Plurabelle and D’Anton are casually anti-Semitic; Strulovitch while not religiously devout is culturally mired in his faith, content to field prejudice and return it with interest. Not anti-Semitic (despite his Nazi salute style goal celebration) is Plurabelle’s and D’Anton’s friend Gratan, a big footballing fish in the small pool that is Stockport County. In fact he has a hankering for Jewish-looking girls, currently centred on Beatrice, Strulovitch’s sixteen (but going on twenty-five) year old daughter.

The scene set, enter Shylock.

Strulovitch meets him in the cemetery and, unfazed by the presence of a fictional character from a four hundred year old play, invites him back to the house for a meal and to stay a few days. For Strulovitch it is an opportunity to quiz his guest on his ‘recent’ experience and to seek advice on his own predicament. For Shylock it is a chance to reflect on and explain a point of view the bard omitted from his play.

The plot in Cheshire’s ‘Golden Triangle’ develops along Venetian lines. Barnaby (Plurabelle’s lover) wants something Strulovitch has; D’Anton seeks to get it and makes a risky bargain that includes Gratan, Beatrice and an unwise forfeit. Will it end familiarly or will there be a twist this time?

There are some wordy bits around the Jewish condition but Jacobson uses words very well, and there are plenty of mannered comedic episodes too. A familiarity with Shakespeare’s play will help to appreciate the sense of unfolding fate (I refreshed my schoolboy memory with a quick browse of Lamb’s Tales) but the story can stand alone to give a modern and more balanced, though not anodyne, picture of Jewishness in contemporary western society.

The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets – Simon Singh

From its opening episode in 1990 “The Simpsons” animated series has implanted mathematical nuggets into episodes, sometimes as part of the story but more often slyly into a background graphic or throwaway line. Mainly unnoticed by the viewer these are the private jokes of the some of the scriptwriters (who include a preponderance of maths graduates), shared with some fans who use freeze frames to capture the figures and decipher the message. In this book Simon Singh combines his love of maths and The Simpsons to bring those mathematical titbits out of the background and in entertaining fashion explain their history and significance.

Thus we are treated to mini-treatises on universal constants such as pi and e; theorems such as those of Pythagoras and Fermat (his last one that provided enough material for an earlier book from Singh); and the maths behind ideas such as six degrees of separation. He also covers some social issues such as the under-representation of women in maths (taking his cue from the “Girls Just Want to Have Sums” episode).

To give an example of how it works, one episode briefly displays three answers to a multiple choice question to fans at a baseball game, inviting them to guess the attendance. The options are 8191, 8128, 8208 and in the context of the show are meaningless. But to mathematicians they are highly distinctive: 8191 is not only a prime number but a ‘Mersenne’ prime formed by raising 2 to the power of a prime number (13 in this case) and deducting 1; 8128 is a ‘perfect number’ (the fourth) as its divisors (other than itself) also add up to the number (easier to check the second one, 28 = 1+2+4+7+14); 8208 is even more arcane as a ‘narcissistic number’ equal to the sum of its digits each raised to the power of the number of digits (again easier to see it in the smaller 153 = 1 cubed + 5 cubed + 3 cubed).

Game theory also gets an airing, explaining the strategies for winning rock-paper-scissors, as well as the superior (less prone to ties) version of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock. Fun is had with infinity (apparently there is more than one) and multi dimensions; and classic example of the pitfalls of statistics are recounted.

It is light hearted but not dumbed down, and the periodic inclusion of joke maths test papers provide such gems as: Why did 5 eat 6 (because 789); what is the volume of a pizza of radius z and thickness a (pi.z.z.a); and what are the 10 kinds of people in the world (those who understand binary numbers and those who don’t).

For anyone with an interest in maths it is a very good read, explaining the sometimes complex concepts clearly and concisely. A liking for the Simpsons (and Futurama which is also covered) is less essential but aficionados probably won’t be that surprised by the care and attention lavished on the details, inconsequential to the plotlines, included in the programmes.