I feel really bad about writing this because I’ve just met a really nice girl online and she loves Atonement. But I just can’t think of anything nice to say about it.
But I’ll try. Ian McEwan’s writing is very flowery, almost poetic, and he handles some challenging subjects. The middle section, about Robbie’s life as a soldier, is very interesting and shocking. His characters are all real individuals and I’ve never read another book like it.
But I hate this book. I really do. McEwan almost seems to be sneering at his characters from a distance. I can’t blame him for that, as I got quite sneery about them too, but there’s not much point in writing about characters if you don’t have the slightest bit of affection for them. It’s probably worse than writers that insist on telling you their characters are wonderful. I suppose it is possible to write about villains you dislike, but the best books are those where you even like the villains in a way. Hating a character isn’t that much fun really, but loving to hate a character is great. I don’t love to hate the characters in Atonement. I’d rather not think about them at all.
Some of the incidents in the book just didn’t ring true. Like there’s a bit where Robbie writes a horny letter to weird Cecelia, then writes a more decent one. He asks freaky Briony to deliver the letter, even though he’s going to see Cecelia himself, but mixes the letters up. I have read a different story with an incident like this, and it worked brilliantly, but that story had a strong element of comedy, and I really wanted the two characters to get it together. Atonement seems deathly serious, and I couldn’t stand Robbie or Cecelia. Robbie’s okay, I suppose, but Cecelia’s scary.
As for that stripping off by the fountain incident – as if! I accept that Cecelia doesn’t want to bother the kitchen staff by using the kitchen taps, but are there really no other taps in the house? I’m sure the house has bathrooms. Even if they don’t have running water, is there no garden tap Cecelia could use? And even if the fountain really is the only source of water, you don’t take all your clothes off and jump in. You’d have to be seriously deranged to do that. Any normal person would just lean over the fountain and hold the vase she wants to fill underneath the water. Actually, forget normal people, even I wouldn’t throw myself in. Not even if I wanted to impress some guy. If I want to impress someone, I don’t usually try to pretend to be even madder than I am. Even if I was in the mood for doing something silly, I’d go in with my clothes on. Much more fun that way.
Briony is the little bitch who causes all the trouble, and one positive thing I can say is that McEwan almost manages to make her crime reasonable. It’s still incredibly stupid, but the little brat obviously suffers from severe immaturity, and anyone a bit stupid with a mental age of 5 might make the mistake she did. She’s actually 13, so she really should have known not to be so evil. Or maybe the character could have been written in a more sympathetic manner. Briony is supposed to be very upset and hurt when she commits her crime, and a lot of readers will have been in a similar position, so it should be possible to understand her feelings. But she’s such a horrible little brat, and McEwan’s habit of distancing himself from his characters doesn’t help.
It’s not all Briony’s fault though. Anyone with parents like Leon and Emily probably didn’t have much chance of becoming reasonable human beings. Neither of them is very sane or very likeable. Some of the characters who feature in the Robbie section are interesting, but they’re hardly in it really,
Another really annoying thing about this book (which is apparently also true of at least one of his others) is that the story isn’t original. He stole it from an autobiography from the time where the book is set (he has denied this, but it looks a bit suspicious to me). Moral issues aside, I just find this a bit of a cheat. It’s okay to find outside inspiration. All writers do it. But you need to bring something to the book to make it your own, and writing a bizarre story that is half-copied, half-nonsensical, isn’t really enough for me.
But Atonement does seem to have made a lot of people really happy. And that is good.
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Friday, 19 September 2008
The Hitman (Ricky Hatton)****
Some autobiographies are great to read whether you’re interested in the subject or not. My whole family loved Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, even though only two of us are interested in football. The Hitman unfortunately might not be so universally appealing – although boxing fans will surely enjoy it. Even those that aren’t particular fans of Ricky should enjoy the boxing descriptions and the humour.
Ricky Hatton – or, more accurately, his ghost writer, Niall Hickman (although he has captured Ricky’s ‘voice’ really well) tells some great stories, from Ricky’s life in and out of the ring. Describing what happens in a boxing match isn’t easy, but Hatton/Hickman brings every fight to life. He also treats his opponents with extraordinary respect, whatever the result. So many celebrities see a biography as an opportunity to bad mouth pretty much anyone they can. Hatton is nice about everyone. Even when he doesn’t get on with someone, he is as tactful as he can be, and never ignores their positive points. It’s very refreshing.
Ricky also has a great sense of humour. Some of his stories are hilarious, all of them extremely well told. It’s easy to imagine this is exactly how Ricky would describe it, word for word. The style is chatty but readable. He’s very honest, and, although confident in his abilities, he’s surprisingly modest. He seems like a really lovely man who really appreciates his fans, enjoying their company at least as much as their support.
The chapters in the book are called ‘Rounds’, which is appropriate in theory, but the thing about rounds is that they imply chronological order. Although Hatton clearly does have chronology in mind, he has a remarkable tendency to get sidetracked. He’ll start talking about a fight he’s preparing for, but then he’ll start talking about something that happened to him when he was a child that starts off being relevant, but then you get further and further from the subject in hand. Then he might go on to talk about his life as an amateur boxer… it’s all very interesting, but it’s sometimes frustrating when you’re looking forward to hearing about a fight, and Hatton will give you one really tantalising detail – and then you have to wait for ages to find out the rest.
Hatton does tend to assume that the people reading his book will know what’s going to happen before they read the book. It was probably reasonable for him to make the assumption that his book is not that likely to be read by people who don’t know who he is. His fight history includes just one defeat, and I should think all his fans will remember who beat Ricky, and when.
But I read the same books over and over again, and even though I know exactly what’s going to happen, I still get really excited and worried about what might happen. I get all caught up in the moment, and start hoping and dreading that something will/won’t happen. It’s the same with Ricky’s boxing matches. Each one is so thrillingly described – but, every so often, he will remind you (although not in a conceited way) of the fact he won it, and that brings the excitement levels down.
But in the end, Hatton seems to worked this out: the latest update, which includes Hatton’s fight against Floyd Merryweather in December last year, is wonderfully-written. I knew the result very well: I’d seen the reports, and would have watched the match if I’d had Setanta Sports. But it’s so vividly written, I kind of forgot all that and just got caught up in what Hatton was describing. It’s a shame Hatton didn’t write the whole of the book like this. But that doesn’t stop The Hitman from being a very good book.
Ricky Hatton – or, more accurately, his ghost writer, Niall Hickman (although he has captured Ricky’s ‘voice’ really well) tells some great stories, from Ricky’s life in and out of the ring. Describing what happens in a boxing match isn’t easy, but Hatton/Hickman brings every fight to life. He also treats his opponents with extraordinary respect, whatever the result. So many celebrities see a biography as an opportunity to bad mouth pretty much anyone they can. Hatton is nice about everyone. Even when he doesn’t get on with someone, he is as tactful as he can be, and never ignores their positive points. It’s very refreshing.
Ricky also has a great sense of humour. Some of his stories are hilarious, all of them extremely well told. It’s easy to imagine this is exactly how Ricky would describe it, word for word. The style is chatty but readable. He’s very honest, and, although confident in his abilities, he’s surprisingly modest. He seems like a really lovely man who really appreciates his fans, enjoying their company at least as much as their support.
The chapters in the book are called ‘Rounds’, which is appropriate in theory, but the thing about rounds is that they imply chronological order. Although Hatton clearly does have chronology in mind, he has a remarkable tendency to get sidetracked. He’ll start talking about a fight he’s preparing for, but then he’ll start talking about something that happened to him when he was a child that starts off being relevant, but then you get further and further from the subject in hand. Then he might go on to talk about his life as an amateur boxer… it’s all very interesting, but it’s sometimes frustrating when you’re looking forward to hearing about a fight, and Hatton will give you one really tantalising detail – and then you have to wait for ages to find out the rest.
Hatton does tend to assume that the people reading his book will know what’s going to happen before they read the book. It was probably reasonable for him to make the assumption that his book is not that likely to be read by people who don’t know who he is. His fight history includes just one defeat, and I should think all his fans will remember who beat Ricky, and when.
But I read the same books over and over again, and even though I know exactly what’s going to happen, I still get really excited and worried about what might happen. I get all caught up in the moment, and start hoping and dreading that something will/won’t happen. It’s the same with Ricky’s boxing matches. Each one is so thrillingly described – but, every so often, he will remind you (although not in a conceited way) of the fact he won it, and that brings the excitement levels down.
But in the end, Hatton seems to worked this out: the latest update, which includes Hatton’s fight against Floyd Merryweather in December last year, is wonderfully-written. I knew the result very well: I’d seen the reports, and would have watched the match if I’d had Setanta Sports. But it’s so vividly written, I kind of forgot all that and just got caught up in what Hatton was describing. It’s a shame Hatton didn’t write the whole of the book like this. But that doesn’t stop The Hitman from being a very good book.
Sunday, 14 September 2008
Angels (Marian Keyes)***
After reading Marian Keyes’ wonderful Anybody Out There, I was really excited to find out there were other books about Anna’s sisters. There are actually four in all, and reviews for Watermelon and Rachel’s Holiday will be posted when I get round to writing them. Angels tells the story of Maggie, the second of the five sisters. Maggie has grown up being the good girl, but she suddenly starts questioning whether this is something she really wants. So she leaves her husband Garv, and heads off to Los Angeles where her best friend Emily is trying to be a Hollywood scriptwriter.
It’s not a bad book at all, but a disappointment in comparison with the others. Maggie is, at least for me, by far the least likeable and the least amusing of the sisters. While it does sometimes take a while to learn to like Keyes’ characters, Maggie is someone I never really liked.
She’s just not a very nice person. She spends most of her time in Los Angeles getting drunk and sleeping with various people, and it never seems anything other than desperate and embarrassing. She’s self-obsessed, thoughtless, and a total slut. Or that’s the way it seems. Okay, yes, she thinks her husband’s having an affair, and she has just lost her job, and that’s enough to make anyone go a bit mad, but Maggie seems so neurotic and selfish all the way through the book, it’s much too easy to believe the affair is in her imagination and the sacking was deserved.
It has to be said, she gets into the bad girl lifestyle with no trouble at all, and maybe she seems happier and more alive when she’s being bad, but not really in an attractive way. And you just think: great, she’s found her true calling. She’s happier now. Let’s just leave her there and read another book.
Once we start getting flashbacks to Maggie’s life before she left Garv, her behaviour starts to make a bit more sense, and I wasn’t totally unsympathetic to her after that. But instead of her history seeming like a reason for her to go to Los Angeles, it seemed more like a reason for her to go home. As soon as possible. Ideally before she does something else stupid. She’s not going to solve the problem by sleeping around. She really isn’t.
Keyes is usually magnificent at characterisation, and her books are usually full of wonderful people, but there aren’t really any here. Maggie’s friend Emily is amazingly saintly, considering the crap she puts up with from Maggie – surely the last thing she wanted was Maggie moving into her flat and making demands on her time when she has a script to write. Maggie somehow gets involved in all aspects of Emily’s life, muscling in on her work and her social life, and ends up monopolising them completely. The friendship between Maggie and Emily never quite rings true for me. They don’t really have much of a rapport, and they barely seem to share any common interests besides getting drunk. Emily is a workaholic and Maggie is a sexaholic, and it’s difficult to see why they’re friends.
The flashbacks provide a bit of plot, but the main story seems more like a series of adventures. All Keyes’ books are full of adventures, but there’s usually a sense of heading towards something. But not here. The best parts are when Maggie’s bonkers family gets in touch.
But the rest of the series really is great.
It’s not a bad book at all, but a disappointment in comparison with the others. Maggie is, at least for me, by far the least likeable and the least amusing of the sisters. While it does sometimes take a while to learn to like Keyes’ characters, Maggie is someone I never really liked.
She’s just not a very nice person. She spends most of her time in Los Angeles getting drunk and sleeping with various people, and it never seems anything other than desperate and embarrassing. She’s self-obsessed, thoughtless, and a total slut. Or that’s the way it seems. Okay, yes, she thinks her husband’s having an affair, and she has just lost her job, and that’s enough to make anyone go a bit mad, but Maggie seems so neurotic and selfish all the way through the book, it’s much too easy to believe the affair is in her imagination and the sacking was deserved.
It has to be said, she gets into the bad girl lifestyle with no trouble at all, and maybe she seems happier and more alive when she’s being bad, but not really in an attractive way. And you just think: great, she’s found her true calling. She’s happier now. Let’s just leave her there and read another book.
Once we start getting flashbacks to Maggie’s life before she left Garv, her behaviour starts to make a bit more sense, and I wasn’t totally unsympathetic to her after that. But instead of her history seeming like a reason for her to go to Los Angeles, it seemed more like a reason for her to go home. As soon as possible. Ideally before she does something else stupid. She’s not going to solve the problem by sleeping around. She really isn’t.
Keyes is usually magnificent at characterisation, and her books are usually full of wonderful people, but there aren’t really any here. Maggie’s friend Emily is amazingly saintly, considering the crap she puts up with from Maggie – surely the last thing she wanted was Maggie moving into her flat and making demands on her time when she has a script to write. Maggie somehow gets involved in all aspects of Emily’s life, muscling in on her work and her social life, and ends up monopolising them completely. The friendship between Maggie and Emily never quite rings true for me. They don’t really have much of a rapport, and they barely seem to share any common interests besides getting drunk. Emily is a workaholic and Maggie is a sexaholic, and it’s difficult to see why they’re friends.
The flashbacks provide a bit of plot, but the main story seems more like a series of adventures. All Keyes’ books are full of adventures, but there’s usually a sense of heading towards something. But not here. The best parts are when Maggie’s bonkers family gets in touch.
But the rest of the series really is great.
Monday, 8 September 2008
A Hidden Life (Adele Geras)****
Adele Geras is a brilliant writer. Her style is both poetic and very gripping; she can be very funny, and A Hidden Life, like a lot of her stories, has some really great twists: the type that could fall flat but never do. Her characters are really lovely, and even some of the dodgy ones are quite appealing.
A Hidden Life also manages to get away with something I usually really don’t like writers to do. One of the characters is a writer, and A Hidden Life includes a number of excerpts from the character’s book. I usually don’t like this because my brain would rather not be keeping an eye on two such completely different storylines at the same time, and the fact that the second storyline is in a book immediately makes it seem unreal. And, as it is unreal, I’d usually prefer not to waste my time with it.
But Geras has a reason for doing this, and it’s a reason that works because she does manage to make it real. The book sections tell you something important about the character who wrote them, and they therefore become an important part of the book. Still, I don’t think it’s something authors should try too often.
All the main characters seemed a lot older than me, including the one who was supposed to be about my age. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I am quite immature anyway, so most characters would seem older than me, but I didn’t identify with the characters as much as I usually like to. The person my age, Lou, is a very nice girl, and her story is very interesting, but even though we have quite a lot in common, I don’t really identify with her. I love her name, though.
My favourite character is Vanessa – she seems fun, and I really like the way her relationship with Mickey (a girl) is described very simply without any fuss. Kissing girls is really no different from kissing boys except girls are better kissers, so there’s no need to make a big drama about it. Coming-out books are fine, and they probably are important and encouraging for people who are thinking of coming out themselves, but you can often learn more about same-sex relationships when they’re not part of the main story - because, most of the time, the fact you’re gay isn’t the most important factor in your life. Life is about how you relate to each other and to outside events, and A Hidden Life is mostly about outside events. While Vanessa is concerned about coming out to her family, her relationship is something for her to enjoy, and to derive comfort from – but not something for her to worry about especially. The main theme of any book is what the characters are most worried about.
It was disappointing in a way that Vanessa’s girlfriend had a male name because it does tend to make the girl-on-girl thing less obvious (NOT that I was getting turned on by it), but maybe it helps readers who might feel uncomfortable reading about lesbians if they can half-pretend she’s a man. They really did have a lovely relationship.
The men were a bit annoying, though. There was only about one man in the whole book who wasn’t unfaithful, and he never really got the chance to be because he only showed up about halfway through, and only got into a relationship later on. Still, in a way it kinds of makes you feel, no wonder Vanessa became a lesbian if that’s what all the men she knows are like. And I’d really prefer to think she is with her girlfriend because she really likes her rather than because there aren’t any decent men around.
But, as usual, Geras has created lots of really good characters, and it’s very easy to remember who’s who. I think I liked just about every character by the end. Phyl can be annoyingly pathetic, but I couldn’t help admiring her for not being even worse. Harry is absolutely adorable, a proper romantic-novel hero, and the fact he does have his imperfections makes him a lot more human than most romantic heroes. Even the people who aren’t actually alive when the book takes place are very powerful characters. A Hidden Life really is an intelligent and intriguing novel.
A Hidden Life also manages to get away with something I usually really don’t like writers to do. One of the characters is a writer, and A Hidden Life includes a number of excerpts from the character’s book. I usually don’t like this because my brain would rather not be keeping an eye on two such completely different storylines at the same time, and the fact that the second storyline is in a book immediately makes it seem unreal. And, as it is unreal, I’d usually prefer not to waste my time with it.
But Geras has a reason for doing this, and it’s a reason that works because she does manage to make it real. The book sections tell you something important about the character who wrote them, and they therefore become an important part of the book. Still, I don’t think it’s something authors should try too often.
All the main characters seemed a lot older than me, including the one who was supposed to be about my age. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I am quite immature anyway, so most characters would seem older than me, but I didn’t identify with the characters as much as I usually like to. The person my age, Lou, is a very nice girl, and her story is very interesting, but even though we have quite a lot in common, I don’t really identify with her. I love her name, though.
My favourite character is Vanessa – she seems fun, and I really like the way her relationship with Mickey (a girl) is described very simply without any fuss. Kissing girls is really no different from kissing boys except girls are better kissers, so there’s no need to make a big drama about it. Coming-out books are fine, and they probably are important and encouraging for people who are thinking of coming out themselves, but you can often learn more about same-sex relationships when they’re not part of the main story - because, most of the time, the fact you’re gay isn’t the most important factor in your life. Life is about how you relate to each other and to outside events, and A Hidden Life is mostly about outside events. While Vanessa is concerned about coming out to her family, her relationship is something for her to enjoy, and to derive comfort from – but not something for her to worry about especially. The main theme of any book is what the characters are most worried about.
It was disappointing in a way that Vanessa’s girlfriend had a male name because it does tend to make the girl-on-girl thing less obvious (NOT that I was getting turned on by it), but maybe it helps readers who might feel uncomfortable reading about lesbians if they can half-pretend she’s a man. They really did have a lovely relationship.
The men were a bit annoying, though. There was only about one man in the whole book who wasn’t unfaithful, and he never really got the chance to be because he only showed up about halfway through, and only got into a relationship later on. Still, in a way it kinds of makes you feel, no wonder Vanessa became a lesbian if that’s what all the men she knows are like. And I’d really prefer to think she is with her girlfriend because she really likes her rather than because there aren’t any decent men around.
But, as usual, Geras has created lots of really good characters, and it’s very easy to remember who’s who. I think I liked just about every character by the end. Phyl can be annoyingly pathetic, but I couldn’t help admiring her for not being even worse. Harry is absolutely adorable, a proper romantic-novel hero, and the fact he does have his imperfections makes him a lot more human than most romantic heroes. Even the people who aren’t actually alive when the book takes place are very powerful characters. A Hidden Life really is an intelligent and intriguing novel.
Saturday, 23 August 2008
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (Maggie O'Farrell)***
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is a fascinating book. It’s beautifully and rather poetically written, which seems to be quite unusual for books written in the present tense. These tend to be witty and snappy rather than poetic – although there are exceptions, such as Sophie Hannah’s Hurting Distance.
I wouldn’t call The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox chick lit. It’s probably aimed at an older audience, and there isn’t a lot of romance or humour in it. It’s not an easy book to classify. Perhaps it could be called a mystery story, but it’s certainly not a detective story. It’s frightening and horrific in places, but it probably doesn’t count as horror. There are some sad bits, but you guess quite early on that there is, at the very least, potential for a happy ending. In many ways, The Vanishing Act of Esmé Lennox is a historical novel, but I’ve always found that genre a bit too all-encompassing. Just about any story set in the past counts as historical, whether it is set fifty or fifty thousand years ago; whether it is a happy story or a sad one.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is strange, but compelling. True, parts of the book are quite boring, mostly the parts of the story about Esme’s great-niece Iris, but most of it was intriguing, and I wanted to know what had happened in the past, and how things were going to work out in the future.
But the book doesn’t quite seem finished. A lot of books stop at a really interesting point, leaving you wondering what’s going to happen next, and wishing it wasn’t the end, but so much of the story in this book seems to be missing. It’s quite frustrating to get to the end of the book with so many questions unanswered.
And it’s not just that the book ends prematurely – a lot of the middle of the story seems to be missing too. Although the book spans many years – we see Esme both as a child and as a very old lady – very little of the story is actually told directly. A lot of the time, Iris is listening to Esme telling her story. It’s all very interesting, but it might have been even more gripping if Maggie O’Farrell had shown more from Esme’s point of view and gone into more detail about what happened. There is so much she just touches on that I’d have liked to hear a lot more about. It’s not as though it would make the book too long: it’s actually rather short. There are only 244 pages, and not many words on a page.
Another thing that might have helped would be if Iris had had more of a story. I know the book only covers a very small part of her life, but it would have been good to get to know her as well as we know Esme. There is lots of room in the book for another storyline. All we really get to know about Iris is that she’s dating married Luke, and she once slept with her stepbrother Alex. It’s all very controversial stuff, but it actually makes a bit of an odd contrast with Esme’s story, and there’s no real feeling that the stories are intertwined. There’s no sense that the Esme problem and the boyfriend problem are in any way connected, or that one helps Iris to deal with the other.
But there is a lot I like about this book, and one of them is that, even though there are horrible things happening all over the place. O’Farrell has still created some very lovely characters. Esme, in particular, is very sweet, and her naughtiness is very easy to identify with. Iris is also lovely. Even some of the characters who cause horrible things to happen aren’t so much villains as badly mistaken, and the people who genuinely are nasty still seem like real people, rather than being exaggeratedly villains.
I wouldn’t call The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox chick lit. It’s probably aimed at an older audience, and there isn’t a lot of romance or humour in it. It’s not an easy book to classify. Perhaps it could be called a mystery story, but it’s certainly not a detective story. It’s frightening and horrific in places, but it probably doesn’t count as horror. There are some sad bits, but you guess quite early on that there is, at the very least, potential for a happy ending. In many ways, The Vanishing Act of Esmé Lennox is a historical novel, but I’ve always found that genre a bit too all-encompassing. Just about any story set in the past counts as historical, whether it is set fifty or fifty thousand years ago; whether it is a happy story or a sad one.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is strange, but compelling. True, parts of the book are quite boring, mostly the parts of the story about Esme’s great-niece Iris, but most of it was intriguing, and I wanted to know what had happened in the past, and how things were going to work out in the future.
But the book doesn’t quite seem finished. A lot of books stop at a really interesting point, leaving you wondering what’s going to happen next, and wishing it wasn’t the end, but so much of the story in this book seems to be missing. It’s quite frustrating to get to the end of the book with so many questions unanswered.
And it’s not just that the book ends prematurely – a lot of the middle of the story seems to be missing too. Although the book spans many years – we see Esme both as a child and as a very old lady – very little of the story is actually told directly. A lot of the time, Iris is listening to Esme telling her story. It’s all very interesting, but it might have been even more gripping if Maggie O’Farrell had shown more from Esme’s point of view and gone into more detail about what happened. There is so much she just touches on that I’d have liked to hear a lot more about. It’s not as though it would make the book too long: it’s actually rather short. There are only 244 pages, and not many words on a page.
Another thing that might have helped would be if Iris had had more of a story. I know the book only covers a very small part of her life, but it would have been good to get to know her as well as we know Esme. There is lots of room in the book for another storyline. All we really get to know about Iris is that she’s dating married Luke, and she once slept with her stepbrother Alex. It’s all very controversial stuff, but it actually makes a bit of an odd contrast with Esme’s story, and there’s no real feeling that the stories are intertwined. There’s no sense that the Esme problem and the boyfriend problem are in any way connected, or that one helps Iris to deal with the other.
But there is a lot I like about this book, and one of them is that, even though there are horrible things happening all over the place. O’Farrell has still created some very lovely characters. Esme, in particular, is very sweet, and her naughtiness is very easy to identify with. Iris is also lovely. Even some of the characters who cause horrible things to happen aren’t so much villains as badly mistaken, and the people who genuinely are nasty still seem like real people, rather than being exaggeratedly villains.
Sunday, 13 July 2008
The Nanny**
Jo is depressed and wants a new life. Vanessa and Dick need a nanny for their children. The rest of the book is mostly about how wonderful Jo is, but I don’t actually like her very much.
Jo is supposed to be a very kind person, yet she spends a lot of time looking down on Vanessa and Dick and pitying them for having such a bad relationship. I actually think Vanessa and Dick are a wonderful couple who have a great relationship. It’s true that their relationship isn’t all that strong when Jo comes into their lives, but their scenes together still have a lot of warmth and humour, and I felt from the start that they would work out their problems with or without Jo’s help.
Jo is whiny and miserable, and a total hypocrite. Melissa Nathan clearly believes she’s a lovely girl who’s had a terrible life and deserves a bit of love and sympathy. And she probably does, but it’s very difficult to like a character when the author is trying to ram it down your throat how wonderful and special she is and how much everybody loves her. I kind of feel like I don’t want to waste my sympathy on her. She gets plenty from everyone else, and I was far more worried about Vanessa and Dick, who are having a much more difficult time than Jo, and their insecure but very intelligent daughter Cassandra, who is being bullied at school.
Jo isn’t even particularly good at her job. Okay, she is very depressed, which would account for some of it, but I still think she was very lucky not to get sacked. If Vanessa and Dick hadn’t had so much trouble finding a nanny; if every man Jo laid eyes on didn’t have a habit of falling in love with her on the spot (why?), she could have got herself into serious trouble. The main reason she doesn’t is because policemen Gerry and Nick are even worse at their job than she is at hers.
Jo does have a horrible shock towards the end, and you do feel for her – but there’s just one problem. Jo’s own behaviour is very similar to the behaviour of the person who hurt her. Maybe she hasn’t been behaving that way for as long, or in so serious a manner, but she is far from an innocent victim. The only other characters I don’t like are Josh, Dick’s son and one of Jo’s love interests, and her best friend Sheila. I can’t stand Jo, but the way Josh treats her at first is still really awful. The only time his treatment of Jo seemed reasonable was when he mentioned hearing her having sex with her boyfriend Shaun. Josh didn’t put it in the most tactful way, but I couldn’t get over the fact she’d do it in her employer’s house. And I don’t even remember her asking if he could stay the night. I think that’s really disrespectful.
The Nanny does have some great moments. Nathan has created some wonderful characters, and many of her scenes are original and funny. Without Jo, I’m sure I’d have loved the book. There is quite enough going on for Vanessa, Dick and their children without some snobby, incompetent Mary Poppins wannabe showing up. There are a lot of fart and poo jokes, which I really enjoyed (although I don’t know what real grown-ups would think), and all the characters except one (I think you know which one) are interesting and believable. I really enjoyed the all the subplots, particularly Cassandra’s and Vanessa‘s/Dick’s, and the way they all fitted together. It was good to read a book that focused on the whole family, not just the adults, and Nathan gave the children humour and intelligence, and made sure they weren’t nauseatingly cute.
Jo is supposed to be a very kind person, yet she spends a lot of time looking down on Vanessa and Dick and pitying them for having such a bad relationship. I actually think Vanessa and Dick are a wonderful couple who have a great relationship. It’s true that their relationship isn’t all that strong when Jo comes into their lives, but their scenes together still have a lot of warmth and humour, and I felt from the start that they would work out their problems with or without Jo’s help.
Jo is whiny and miserable, and a total hypocrite. Melissa Nathan clearly believes she’s a lovely girl who’s had a terrible life and deserves a bit of love and sympathy. And she probably does, but it’s very difficult to like a character when the author is trying to ram it down your throat how wonderful and special she is and how much everybody loves her. I kind of feel like I don’t want to waste my sympathy on her. She gets plenty from everyone else, and I was far more worried about Vanessa and Dick, who are having a much more difficult time than Jo, and their insecure but very intelligent daughter Cassandra, who is being bullied at school.
Jo isn’t even particularly good at her job. Okay, she is very depressed, which would account for some of it, but I still think she was very lucky not to get sacked. If Vanessa and Dick hadn’t had so much trouble finding a nanny; if every man Jo laid eyes on didn’t have a habit of falling in love with her on the spot (why?), she could have got herself into serious trouble. The main reason she doesn’t is because policemen Gerry and Nick are even worse at their job than she is at hers.
Jo does have a horrible shock towards the end, and you do feel for her – but there’s just one problem. Jo’s own behaviour is very similar to the behaviour of the person who hurt her. Maybe she hasn’t been behaving that way for as long, or in so serious a manner, but she is far from an innocent victim. The only other characters I don’t like are Josh, Dick’s son and one of Jo’s love interests, and her best friend Sheila. I can’t stand Jo, but the way Josh treats her at first is still really awful. The only time his treatment of Jo seemed reasonable was when he mentioned hearing her having sex with her boyfriend Shaun. Josh didn’t put it in the most tactful way, but I couldn’t get over the fact she’d do it in her employer’s house. And I don’t even remember her asking if he could stay the night. I think that’s really disrespectful.
The Nanny does have some great moments. Nathan has created some wonderful characters, and many of her scenes are original and funny. Without Jo, I’m sure I’d have loved the book. There is quite enough going on for Vanessa, Dick and their children without some snobby, incompetent Mary Poppins wannabe showing up. There are a lot of fart and poo jokes, which I really enjoyed (although I don’t know what real grown-ups would think), and all the characters except one (I think you know which one) are interesting and believable. I really enjoyed the all the subplots, particularly Cassandra’s and Vanessa‘s/Dick’s, and the way they all fitted together. It was good to read a book that focused on the whole family, not just the adults, and Nathan gave the children humour and intelligence, and made sure they weren’t nauseatingly cute.
Saturday, 5 July 2008
Dead Famous (Ben Elton)*****
It was bound to happen sooner or later. Fourteen people enter a house so small that a family of four would probably be crowded. They are stirred up to the point where they have trouble controlling themselves, yet still they try to control those around them. Sooner or later, someone was going to get murdered.
Dead Famous opens with a detective at work, trawling through the hundreds of hours of footage of Peeping Tom, a fictional Big Brother. He watches the housemates and despises the housemates, and tries to work out who is the murderer.
As for the readers, we’re probably more concerned about who is the victim. You’re going to be a very long way into the book before you find out!
But this book isn’t slow. There’s so much going on, the murder can wait. Ben Elton has created a group of characters who could easily be interesting members of a real Big Brother household. It doesn’t have the a-laugh-a-paragraph quality of Elton’s X Factor satire, Chart Throb, but the much smaller cast of characters does allow Elton to go into a bit more depth with their personalities. The Big Brother phenomenon was fairly new when the book was published, but Elton has an instinctive understanding of what sort of people might be put into the house.
Dead Famous is a comedy, and a very good one, but the scenes with the detective are much more serious, and not unlike a detective in a more typical crime novel. As I love the comedy genre but am less keen on serious crime fiction, I was more interested in the Big Brother side than in the detective side, and that could be a problem for a lot of readers who are interested in the comedy side. And, while it is certainly an ingenious idea for a murder mystery, there is probably too much Big Brother-style inanity going on to keep a typical crime fan interested. But Elton nevertheless does an excellent job of merging the two genres – it would be difficult to imagine how it could be done better.
Although the earlier series of Big Brother did not have a particular predilection for unusual names and nicknames (well, apart from Bubble), Elton has provided us with plenty – Woggle, Dervla, Moon and Hamish are among the inmates I think the only names that have also been used by a real-life Big Brother housemate are David, who made a very brief appearance during Big Brother 8, and Jason from Big Brother 5, although is the fictional Jason is known as Jazz. (He’s nothing like Jazz in How to Kill Your Husband. He is a much nicer person, although I suppose that’s not much of a compliment.) Then we have Gazzer the Geezer – could he be the inspiration for the real-life Sezer the Geezer? They both say some adorably stupid things, although in Gazzer’s case this is because he actually is stupid - Sezer’s got a faulty connection between his brain and his mouth, but his brain is in there somewhere.
One thing that really bothered me was the way the housemates are viewed by the public. Elton only acknowledges the housemates in the first two series of Big Brother, and series 1 and 2 were quite different from the more recent shows. So Elton can’t really be blamed for not knowing the current trends But, in order for the book to work, you do have to accept that it is possible for thick, tarty Kelly to be not the subject of ‘get her out’ chants but the second favourite to win. You have to believe that isolated older gay female Sally could escape nomination for several weeks in a house where everyone gets on well for the most part. Even if friendly Layla’s controlling streak was recognised as early as Week One (I thought she was lovely), you’d be more likely to go for the older and quieter people. Peeping Tom is technically not Big Brother, so there’s no reason why things shouldn’t be a little bit different, and the producers can probably turn the housemates into anything they want to with a bit of ingenuity in the editing. But it wasn’t always easy to put aside my expectations.
Dead Famous opens with a detective at work, trawling through the hundreds of hours of footage of Peeping Tom, a fictional Big Brother. He watches the housemates and despises the housemates, and tries to work out who is the murderer.
As for the readers, we’re probably more concerned about who is the victim. You’re going to be a very long way into the book before you find out!
But this book isn’t slow. There’s so much going on, the murder can wait. Ben Elton has created a group of characters who could easily be interesting members of a real Big Brother household. It doesn’t have the a-laugh-a-paragraph quality of Elton’s X Factor satire, Chart Throb, but the much smaller cast of characters does allow Elton to go into a bit more depth with their personalities. The Big Brother phenomenon was fairly new when the book was published, but Elton has an instinctive understanding of what sort of people might be put into the house.
Dead Famous is a comedy, and a very good one, but the scenes with the detective are much more serious, and not unlike a detective in a more typical crime novel. As I love the comedy genre but am less keen on serious crime fiction, I was more interested in the Big Brother side than in the detective side, and that could be a problem for a lot of readers who are interested in the comedy side. And, while it is certainly an ingenious idea for a murder mystery, there is probably too much Big Brother-style inanity going on to keep a typical crime fan interested. But Elton nevertheless does an excellent job of merging the two genres – it would be difficult to imagine how it could be done better.
Although the earlier series of Big Brother did not have a particular predilection for unusual names and nicknames (well, apart from Bubble), Elton has provided us with plenty – Woggle, Dervla, Moon and Hamish are among the inmates I think the only names that have also been used by a real-life Big Brother housemate are David, who made a very brief appearance during Big Brother 8, and Jason from Big Brother 5, although is the fictional Jason is known as Jazz. (He’s nothing like Jazz in How to Kill Your Husband. He is a much nicer person, although I suppose that’s not much of a compliment.) Then we have Gazzer the Geezer – could he be the inspiration for the real-life Sezer the Geezer? They both say some adorably stupid things, although in Gazzer’s case this is because he actually is stupid - Sezer’s got a faulty connection between his brain and his mouth, but his brain is in there somewhere.
One thing that really bothered me was the way the housemates are viewed by the public. Elton only acknowledges the housemates in the first two series of Big Brother, and series 1 and 2 were quite different from the more recent shows. So Elton can’t really be blamed for not knowing the current trends But, in order for the book to work, you do have to accept that it is possible for thick, tarty Kelly to be not the subject of ‘get her out’ chants but the second favourite to win. You have to believe that isolated older gay female Sally could escape nomination for several weeks in a house where everyone gets on well for the most part. Even if friendly Layla’s controlling streak was recognised as early as Week One (I thought she was lovely), you’d be more likely to go for the older and quieter people. Peeping Tom is technically not Big Brother, so there’s no reason why things shouldn’t be a little bit different, and the producers can probably turn the housemates into anything they want to with a bit of ingenuity in the editing. But it wasn’t always easy to put aside my expectations.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
