Number 78 - Talk - Kathe Koja

Non-supernatural teen drama is not my thing. High school arguments and who wants to go out with who are sub plots.  Not the lead story.

That's my normal thoughts on the genre.  Then along comes Kathe Koja again and writes a compelling and utterly absorbing little book like this where the most out there thing that happens is a fight at a town rally.

Lindsay is the school's queen bitch. She's used to  getting what she wants.  Kit is a quiet kid hiding a secret about his sexuality.  He's persuaded to try out for the school play - Talk - and finds himself cast in the male lead opposite Lindsay.

Lindsay has just recently dumped her jock boyfriend and finds herself attracted to Kit. Things are not going to go well. As you might guess from that cleverly designed cover, the play attracts a fair amount of controversy. 

The chapters are told in almost stream of consciousness narration from the POV of Kit and Lindsay alternately.  There are also inserts of script from the play.

The voices telling us the story are clearly delineated, you can tell them apart easily from the rhythms and word choices.  The story races along at a great pace and the more Lindsay fixates on Kit, the more tense things become.  

The ending happily doesn't shut down all the storylines.  Life rarely does this so it's nice to see this reflected. I wondered if the ex boyfriend had a more accurate gaydar than a straight guy would normally have. of course we only have his actions to judge him by as told through the two narrators and there's no way to  know if there's more to my pondering on that.

We feel real sympathy for the two leads. Despite Lindsay being the queen of the school, we know her thought process and why she does and says the things she does. We know she's heading for a big fall and the inevitability of that is the lead source of tension in the book, even ahead of the "will the play go ahead" storyline.

As YA dramas about school life and regular normal people doing regular normal things go, this is really very good indeed. It left me wanting to know what happens next.  That's always a good thing.

Number 10 - Carol - Patricia Highsmith

 

I keep saying I don't like romance novels.  And I genuinely don't.  There are only two endings to a will they/won't they scenario and I've always contended that that's ok for a subplot but not for the whole central drive of the story.

However, this is by Patricia Highsmith and this is one of three of her books that I hadn't read yet. I've been reading her books since I was in my teens and I've not found one I disliked yet.

Originally published as The Price of Salt, under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, this is Highsmith's second novel. It was released in 1953 and is very much a product of it's time. 

By today's standards the plot is unremarkable. But back when it first came out it was quite revolutionary.  It's credited as being the first lesbian romance novel with a happy ending (although the sacrifices one of the characters has had to make somewhat undermine that score)

The plot is fairly basic. Therese is working part time in a department store when she serves Carol and is immediately fixated with her. This being New York in the early 50s, she tries to keep her feelings under wraps even while a relationship develops between them and they start spending lots of time together.

Highsmith's greatest talent was always her ability to drop you in the heads of her protagonists. This book is no exception. The whole book is told in close third person from her point of view.  We know every thought in Therese's head from the first stirrings of love to her full acceptance of the way she feels.

Guilt is always a primary motivator in Highsmith's novels, and again, this is no different. Only this time it's not guilt over some act of violence, it's over her feelings for Carol.  Again, this is 50's America.  Lesbians were something "other", a love that dared not show its face.

The prose is dry in places. I'm not sure Highsmith was at the height of her talent with this book, but it's still fairly compulsive reading. 

In the afterword in this edition, Highsmith describes Therese as a bit of a wet blanket and I pretty much agree with that.  But, as Highsmith also points out, it's a result of the time and place and her upbringing.  Despite her wet blanket qualities, she never comes across as a whiner or annoyingly self-centred. 

An interesting thing to note is that Highsmith recounts her inspiration for the story being when she herself worked in the dolls department of a large store and found herself transfixed by a customer - a scene we read in chapter two of the novel.  When Highsmith calls Therese a bit of a wet blanket, how much self-deprecation is going on there?

This isn't the novel to convert me to romance reading.  It is however still a damned good read. From a historical viewpoint it's a great portrait of a moment in time and the attitudes that were prevalent. And, being written contemporaneously, we can be assured there's no looking back through any tinted goggles. We also know it made a huge impact at the time.  The two leads didn't have to die for their sins and were allowed to love each other.  That makes this a hugely influential book.

Since the film was released a few years back, this is easily available again in any reasonably good bookstore. If you want a copy of The Price Of Salt with the original pen name on it, you'll be looking in the region of £300-£500. You're probably better off going with a modern copy.

Number 25 - The Only story - Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes is one of the most famous writers that I've never read.  Up until now.  I've heard the name for many many years.  I've heard about the awards he's won and how great he is. I've seen his books on the bestseller lists and the must-buy piles in Waterstones.

And still never got round to reading him.

This month's book group book forced me to take the leap.

The reviews of this book tell us that it's devastating, profoundly beautiful sad and powerful.

Personally, I think it's the single most middle-class and safe book I've ever read.

The prose is good.  I'll give Mr Barnes that much.  He can write. This book was never less than readable.  There were moments of droll humour which did make me laugh.

But the story is almost non-existent. Nineteen year old boy falls for a 48 year old woman at the tennis club (how very middle class). They start an affair and yadah yadah yadah.

It actually starts off pretty well. Paul is an engaging narrator to begin with, telling us the story of his youth from the point of view of his much older self, with some nice observations about memory. The problems kick in in part two of the book.  Part two also begins well.  Part one is entirely the happy nature of his relationship with Susan. Part two takes us back and looks more deeply, revealing the less pleasant aspects of their early life together.

At some point, the narrative switches from a first person past tense narration to  a second person present tense narrative voice. You watch as she does this, you watch as she does that... etc. It flicks back and forth randomly.   In this section, Paul switches from an engaging young man to a dithering and quite annoying character, you wish he'd grow up and make a decision for himself.

By part three the book has completely lost it for me.  Part three starts talking about Paul in the third person. At first I thought that maybe we were getting Susan's side of the story and my interest peaked, but it quickly became obvious that this was either some unknown person or Paul talking about himself in the third person.  Is this meant to demonstrate his distancing from his feelings because of the rather predictable events of part two?  I don't know.

Part three follows him into senior adulthood and his life after Susan.  It's extremely random and is more full of allegedly wise observations on life and love than any actual story. Susan's eventual fate is an illness that was dealt with more movingly in one of the segments of Joe Hill's Strange Weather.

He's done a good job in part two of robbing all sympathy from the reader for both central characters, so the final part of the books fails entirely to engage the emotions.  I'm not sure he was aiming for that when he wrote it.

It's all well written but ultimately it's very ordinary middle class people doing very ordinary middle class things and it all seems rather pointless.    

The title is quite prophetic, as it's probably the only story I'll ever read by Julian Barnes.