Paper Money – Ken Follett

This is one of Ken Follett’s early works (1976), first published under the splendid pen name of Zachary Stone, and it resembles his more well-known blockbusters in neither content nor volume.  The length is a mere 300 pages and the setting is London of its day.

The action takes place over a single day in the capital, narrated from multiple points of view, the key players being a politician, a hoodlum, a social climbing entrepreneur, a businessman in trouble, and his wife who is also mistress to another.  Their activities seem unconnected, but not for long.

Their stories are pulled together by some ingenious plotting, which the reader can see better than a Fleet Street reporter and editor who try to juggle incoming fragmented reports of the same events – a curious hi-jack, a hospitalised MP, a company takeover and a potential bank failure.  At first these compete for the front page but eventually the dots start to join up into a potential major scoop.

In addition to the half dozen main movers there are as many in support – thieves, tarts, a radio ham, security guards, bankers and brokers – so many that each can only get a thumbnail sketch of character, just sufficient for their bit part roles.

It is fast and fluently written, and if the characters are stock the construction isn‘t.  Neither is the plot - that’s convoluted but clearly expounded and perfectly feasible with an unconventional ending.

For this reader an enjoyable introduction to Ken Follett and nothing here to put me off trying one of those blockbuster trilogies.

Before the Fall – Noah Hawley

Artist Scott Burroughs has been on the skids for a while but after rediscovering a boyhood obsession with long distance swimming he is on the up.  Alcoholism is on hold; the artwork is going well with a meeting due with a New York gallery to discuss an exhibition; and there’s even an offer of a lift into the city on a private jet.

The offer is from Maggie who is returning from holiday at Martha’s Vineyard with her millionaire husband David Bateman, their two young children, Rachel and JJ, and the family bodyguard.  Also getting a lift is dodgy financier Ben Kipling and his wife Sarah.

The planned flight is just a short hop. The actual flight is even shorter as the plane ditches in the Atlantic minutes after take-off.  Somehow Scott survives the impact, as does the boy, JJ.  Scott’s swimming strength is tested to the limit but somehow he manages to reach the shore with JJ on his back.

In the aftermath Scott struggles with roles of both hero and guilty survivor, questioned by crash investigators, the FBI (who were about to indict Kipling), anti-terror state authorities, and a media bully looking for dirt and someone to blame.

The unfolding story is punctuated by the backstories of those who didn’t survive – six passengers and the crew of three – that slowly piece together the events leading to the tragedy.

Noah Hawley, known for his Fargo TV scripts, puts together a good story, wordier than most of its genre, giving voice to Scott’s inner musings on the meaning of life, art and the modern media.

There is what seems to be one continuity error, but it need not spoil the enjoyment of a decent and slightly off-beat thriller.

The Road to Little Dribbling – Bill Bryson

Twenty years since ‘Notes from a Small Island’ was published Bill Bryson takes time, and a trip, to re-appraise the state of his adopted nation, and finds like many of his generation, it is slipping slowly away from his understanding.

The notional geographical peg for his wildly meandering route is a straight line that is the longest possible within mainland Britain, running from Bognor Regis on the south coast to Cape Wrath in the far north of Scotland.  Fear not those of you off this corridor for he still visits a place close to you.

His observations are inevitably shot with perspicacity, wit and laugh out loud humour.  From sitting his British citizenship test at Eastleigh to his bemused arrival at Cape Wrath lighthouse he both celebrates and pokes fun at the British way of life.

So far, so Bryson; but as is often the case the acquisition a bus pass leads to an onset of grumpiness, which surfaces often in this volume.  He rails at many changes in society – the decline of the high street, the ubiquity yet uselessness of computers, the intrusive noisiness of folk on mobile phones – that rankle, before shrugging them off and continuing his search for the positive.

As well as humour and grumpiness is a rich vein of informative storytelling as he roots out little known or under-reported facts, such as the ‘system’ for numbering roads, and sheds light on local people and places whose position in history has undeservedly been neglected.

Funny, wise, acerbic, informative, and above all entertaining.

A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan

“Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” So says Bennie Salazar to his old mate Scotty in the final chapter of the book, finally unlocking the mystifying title. By then both have them have been pushed around quite a lot, as have another dozen or so characters, who pop in and out of each other’s lives as snippets of their stories emerge in no chronological order.

Meeting them at various stages of their life from wild youth to staid middle age (though some don’t make it that far) illustrates how people change, adapt, or in some cases stay just the same in the face of events, circumstances or experience. Egan even has a dip into the near future with some astute projections that are already recognisable in 2018 some eight years since publication.

Each chapter’s narrative style reflects its main protagonist; quite a feat given their variety in age, gender and personality. And each provides an entertaining, well written piece for the reader to try to slot into the jigsaw that is the havoc wreaked by the Goon Squad.

An entertaining, invigorating and memorable read.

Review of 2017

The fortnightly reviews were successfully maintained throughout 2017, which meant 26 books reviewed, of generally high standard. Only eight authors had been previously read, and authors new to me included five encountered on the Bookpacking journey commenced in the year (South America has been reached).

From the books read seven are picked out to be particularly recommended: four good serious reads (though each contains some humour); a humorous novel (that has serious things to say); a young adult novel (of import to old adults too); and a non-fiction book for anyone interested in maths, the Simpsons or preferably both. Thumbnail sketches are given below for each (to see the full review go to the bracketed month).

Books for serious readers:

Skippy Dies – Paul Murray (Mar) – A sprawling roller-coaster of a book relating the pulsating events of one term at Seabrook College for Boys; humour, angst and tragedy affect students and staff alike and though Skippy dies, life is re-affirmed.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk – Ben Fountain (May) – Bravo Platoon’s ‘victory tour’ following its televised fire-fight in Iraq culminates at Dallas Cowboys’ thanksgiving game where contradictory forces can no longer be contained.

The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood (Jul) – Three ladies who lunch in Ottawa each try to deal, in their own way, with the return from the dead of a common friend whose funeral they had attended and each, for their own reasons, celebrated.

The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen (Sep) – A forensic examination of grown-up family relationships in which each member has a turn centre stage before their stories and viewpoints coalesce in a fine denouement.

Humour:

A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman (Oct) – A grumpy widower’s attempts to join his beloved wife initially make him a figure of fun, but as the back story emerges and his social horizons widen, there is more to Ove than meets the eye.

Nonfiction:

The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets – Simon Singh (Feb) – Many of the scriptwriters for the Simpsons TV series are maths grads and often sneak titbits of mathematical significance into the show, as explained here in entertaining fashion.

The Descent of Man – Grayson Perry

Cross-dressing artist Grayson Perry sets out in print many of the ideas he presented in his “All Man” TV series.

He challenges the accepted norms of masculinity, questioning both their validity and usefulness of what he sees as out-dated values, and placing the blame for much of mankind’s woes – violence, crime and warfare – on them.

He also sees the damage ‘manning up’ can do individual men left unable to deal with emotional issues.

It is all very persuasive but there is no blueprint to fix the problem. Indeed he seems to accept there is a difficulty defining what the exact problem is, just that there is something wrong with the society’s current model. He really just issues a plea to allow men to be people rather than men, and find their own way unhindered by past generations’ baggage. Some hope!

It is a short thought-provoking work with, perhaps inevitably, the artist’s own pithy illustrations the most impactful feature.

The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who got Trapped in an IKEA Wardrobe – Romain Puertolas

The preliminary stage of the journey made by the fakir (who is not so much a mystic as a con man) is straightforward enough, arriving at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport by a scheduled flight from India, thence by taxi to one of that city’s IKEA stores.

His mission there, to buy a new bed of nails, has a quirky if unlikely sound to it; his plan to pay for it with a photocopied (one side only) one hundred Euro note smacks of the ridiculous.  He uses the same note to temporarily pay his taxi fare, temporarily as he retrieves it from the driver’s wallet by means of an attached invisible piece of elastic.

Those readers amused by this premise and willing to suspend critical facilities may enjoy the remainder of the book, which continues in similar vein with improbable coincidences covering up a thinly worked plot otherwise full of holes.

The initial scene describing someone’s first experience of an IKEA store raises a smile but once trapped in his wardrobe and shipped of on his journey (more silly than extraordinary) the fakir’s facility for comic observation fades. Instead introspection grows as he bumps into both refugees and celebrities on his whistle stop tour of Western Europe.

On none of the potential levels - humour, satire or self-discovery – does the book really deliver. It is not laugh out loud, the satire doesn’t bite, and the morality tale fails to convince.

If, as claimed, it was a number one best seller in France then Guy De Maupassant, Emile Zola and Victor Hugo must be turning in their literary graves. Or maybe it just lost something, or quite a lot, in translation.