What happened when Tolkien went to the Hay Festival?

Title: The Buried Giant

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

Tags: #fantasy #ghibli #kingArthur

Discovered: The Oxford Literary Festival 2015

Where read: (In part) On the way to Dover Castle

The Word's Shortlist view:

Fans of Kazuo Ishiguro, and let's face it who isn't, have waited a considerably long time for a new novel. Admittedly we've had a number of short stories and the film adaptation of Never Let Me Go but its been 10 years wait for a new novel. Wait no more.

The Buried Giant is something of a departure for Ishiguro, delving as it apparently does into the genre of fantasy fiction (or mythical realism if you take the Studio Ghibli line). That said, dig a little deeper and you'll find the unique storytelling that Kazuo Ishiguro is so celebrated for.

The novel is set in the early mediaeval (perhaps Arthurian?) period in British history, after the Romans have retreated. Landscapes of wild and rocky vistas are home to small tribes and communities living underground in rabbit warren villages. This is a land of superstition and a time when the mythology of giants, ogres, pixies and, yes, dragons are rife but this is less A Game of Thrones, and more Tolkien at the Hay Festival.

Like The Hobitt, The Buried Giant is an episodic fable based around the journey elderly couple Axl and Beatrice must make to find their estranged son. "There's a journey we must go on , and no more delay". Although the couple meet an array of characters on their journey its the collective loss of memory, understood to be dragon's breath, that is most memorable part of the story. What horrors have led to such mass social dementia?

Whilst the book's fantasy elements are beautiful written there is something missing when it comes to the human characters of Axl and Beatrice themselves. Its incredibly difficult to empathise with either character which ultimately makes this read enjoyable but unfulfilling. 

Can Ishiguro produce a novel that delivers as a fantasy genre piece AND a work of literary fiction? Yes of course, but is this his best work? Im afraid not.

Find a link to the book's trailer here http://theburiedgiant.co.uk

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THE perfect brew between literary fiction and fantasy

Title: The Bone Clocks

Author: David Mitchell

Tags: #time #murakami #drwho

Discovered: The Man Booker shortlist 2014

Where read: (In part) Craft Coffee Greenwich Peninsular

The Word's Shortlist view:

The Bone Clocks is a remarkable and ambitious journey through time and place via numerous first person narrators. The intricate plot is bursting with original ideas and themes that bend realism and fantasy over its 608 pages. For me, this is David Mitchell's best work yet - and after Cloud Atlas that's a stunning achievement!

The journey begins in the familiar surroundings of suburban Kent in the 1980s with an inauspicious family, a head strong teenage girl, Holly Sykes, and her younger brother Jacko. What follows is a story in six parts each based around Holly at different stages of her life from teenage runaway to adult and parent.

It must be said, the novel is a complex and challenging character driven piece that moves backwards and forwards through generations. Its genius lies in the way the lives of each of the disparate characters are connected in some way to Holly but a certain amount of perseverance is required.  

The environments that Mitchell creates are imaginative and broad - from Cambridge in the 90s to Iraq in 2004 before moving to the future and ending in Ireland in 2043 with the European economy in free-fall.  

Throughout the first two thirds of the novel a fantasy sic-fi plot bubbles away but this isn't fully explored until the later parts of the book when we come face with the Horologists - a band of immortals with an almost vampiric view on succession planning. The way this section is linked to the realism of the other sections is a remarkable feat and pure Mitchell.

Many will read the novel purely as its David Mitchell, others as it was Man Booker shortlisted but for me this novel is the perfect brew between literary fiction and fantasy, a place which The Word's Shortlist has often celebrated in Murakami novels such as The Wind up Bird Chronicle.

Still need convincing? Check out David Mitchell's own playlist 'Music for a lost Horologist' to accompany the book. Where else would you find Shostakovich and Maria Callas next to The KLF, Yoko Ono and Talking Heads?

Listen to the full playlist here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1yRBByypyFczSNnS2Jqymt1/music-for-a-lost-horologist-a-bone-clocks-playlist

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#amreading this month..


The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell

The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro

The Tinderbox - Hans Christian Anderson

@wordsshortlist

No curtain call for me, I almost left during the interval

Title: Curtain Call

Author: Anthony Quinn 

Tags: #westend #theatre #crime

Discovered: Radio 4 Book at Bedtime

Where read: (In part) Covent Garden

The Word's Shortlist view:

Curtain Call is a novel that defies genre. Its ingredients include murder mystery, romantic comedy and historical fiction but the trouble is that I’m not sure Quinn got the recipe right.

The most compelling parts of the novel feature the theatre land murders and the hunt for the ‘tie-pin killer’. This fear is brilliantly played out in the dark and foggy streets of Soho where ingénues slip between the lamp lit streets in the grimy reality of the 'glittering' West End. The problem is that this crime thriller plot fades far too deeply into the background. 

Some characters are convincingly well drawn; Nina Land the star of the West End and witness to a violent murder and Jimmy Erskine the ageing theatre critic and raconteur are interesting and believable but others in the camp ensemble are more hackneyed.  The depiction of the crowd at the drag ball for example, whilst probably historically accurate, read like comic relief rather than a depiction of the louche theatre land culture that I’m sure Quinn intended to portray.

The most compelling parts of the novel feature the theatre land murders and the hunt for the ‘tie-pin killer’. This fear is brilliantly played out in the dark and foggy streets of Soho where ingénues slip between the lamp lit streets in the grimy reality of the 'glittering' West End. The problem is that this crime thriller plot fades far too deeply into the background.

Witticisms aside, the novel lacks the humour that the cover reviews rave about but worse still the story lacks tension. Had the ‘tie-pin killer’ story have been given the space to breath this wouldn’t have been an issue but in switching between genre and plot points the actual story falls between the Soho pavement cracks. At times the curtain needed to come down on one story and come up again on another. No curtain call from me, I almost left at the interval.

I picked this book up after reading some rave reviews in the media, notably Peter Stanford’s 5 star review in the Daily Telegraph and Viv Groskop in The Observer. Both reviews praised Quinn’s novel, “It had me on the edge of my seat” claims Stanford whilst Groskop revealed “I can’t recommend this book highly enough”. Powerful praise indeed. The reality is that in Curtain Call there is a brilliant story that gets lost in a book that doesn’t know what it is.

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How many short stories are being played out by your neighbours right now?

Title: Stay up with Me

Author: Tom Barbash

Tags: #Folioprize #shortstories #NYC

Discovered: Shortlist for the Folio Prize

Where read: (In part) Marylebone train station

The Word's Shortlist view:

Tom Barbash's new collection of stories is a brilliant way to get into the short story genre. Through 13 different character driven tales Barbash manages to capture myriad human emotions that leave you both humoured and touched at the same time.

Through the eyes of 13 different protagonists the chances are you'll come face to face with someone you know, if not possibly with yourself. From the mother interfering in her son's love life to the hit-and-run driver facing her victim or the husband papering over the groaning cracks of separation these stories are raw and incredibly visceral.   

The great thing about short stories is that, though you might not connect with each and every one of the characters, there's a good chance that within the collection there is a plot, character or scenario that feels startlingly real. Perhaps this is what short stories are really about? Our lives are lived like a series of short stories rather than one epic and sweeping novel after all.

So what's the collection all about? My monies on the simple idea that Tom Barbash wanted to present a simple slice of life. Less self-consciously zeitgeisty and more domestic reality - as borne out in the cover of the UK edition. How many short stories are being played out by your neighbours right now?

Read this work from a brilliant storyteller and enjoy a provocative insight into the lives around you.

Watch Tom Barbash discuss the novel here: http://youtu.be/lLetkHPGUJI 

Twitter: @wordsshortlist

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A brilliant premise but lacking in character and plot....

Title: Station Eleven

Author: Emily St John Mandel

Tags: #virus #canada #station11

Discovered: New York Times

Where read: (In part) The 08:46 from London Bridge to Hastings

The Word's Shortlist view:

"Hell is the absence of the people you long for"

This novel has a cracking premise, an explosive virus known as the Georgia Flu wipes out 99% of the World's population leaving only pockets of humans surviving as nomadic tribes and micro communities.  Compelling stuff to a contemporary public more than fearful of the media saturation surrounding the ebola pandemic.

The only trouble is that this is a theme that has been so well considered by brilliant writers including Margaret Atwood that the inevitable question arises, does Emily St John Mandel have anything new to offer such as well worn literary genre?

The short answer is no however, there are some note-worthy elements in this novel which incidentally has been in the New York Times and amazon bestseller list. The action begins in a brilliant opening scene during a performance of King Lear in a Toronto theatre. Lear himself, famous Hollywood actor Arthur Leander, dies mid-performance on the very day that the killer virus strikes and changes life in Canada and the USA forever.

The story moves 20 years into the future as a band known as the 'Travelling Symphony', with their own links to the dead actor, survive through music, literature and their own performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Now, the idea that civilisation prevails through literature should work but unfortunately in this case falls down due to a cumbersome cast of players and a light weight plot. 

The story deserves to be tighter! Fewer characters and more intimate dialogue would have been much more rewarding to readers. Station Eleven demonstrates just how hard a genre this is to crack. Book lovers are a divisive, and hard to please, bunch when it comes to their post apocalyptic near future thrillers. I'll stick to Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy.

Watch the Station Eleven youtube clip here: http://youtu.be/osXRdUeXCHE 

Twitter: @wordsshortlist

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How do we measure the benefit of a good local library in the community?

We're now at a point when our libraries need a radical repositioning in the minds of the public. Events organised to celebrate National Libraries Day yesterday demonstrate that there ARE pockets of innovation and creativity at some independently minded libraries across the country but how can the success of one annual awareness day drive real change?

Libraries must leverage their role at the heart of the community to fill a huge gap being created by the decline of the traditional high street and cost saving in public services.

So, to that end here is the Word's Shortlist guide to the future for the neighbourhood library.....

1. Extended opening hours, at least on selected days, would open up library services to workers who struggle to leave their desks on tightly squeezed lunch breaks. Opening on Sundays would provide an alternative destination for families and couples during their leisure time. Demand will differ by location but libraries must be open when people want to use them.

2. Our local libraries should offer a programme of regular book clubs, gallery events, music recitals, film screenings and talks that bring like-minded people together. Events need not be managed by library staff but by collaboration with independant bookshops, special interest groups and a network of enthusiastic volunteers.

3. Pubs and cafes have long understood the benefit of providing groups and social clubs with a warm and friendly meeting place. Many libraries have unique and flexible spaces that could be put to similar benefit if they thought of themselves as 'destinations'.

4. Every town has a growing community of home workers and freelancers. Libraries should offer a place for them to meet, share and collaborate in a comfortable and connected environment. Who knows what future partnerships could be forged amongst the book-shelves. Free wifi is a start but communal hot desks would be even better.

5. Our local libraries should be our knowledge hubs offering advice through courses, briefings, oh and yes books. Working closely with local schools and colleges could lead to reciprocal benefits. Some supermarkets even offer after school classes for kids - this should be owned by the neighbourhood library.

6. Bookstores have long understood the benefits of extending customer dwell time with cafes but libraries have been slower on the uptake. A new generation of librarian baristas wouldn't go amiss. Libraries could become the perfect testing ground for start up coffee brewers and artisan bakers.

7. With good quality newsagents on the decline in the high street Libraries have an opportunity to introduce a well stocked news stand covering specialist and professional print titles not stocked by WH Smith.

8. New start ups, Doddle and the like, are finding a growing market for parcel collection services at train stations. Libraries should work with a commercial partner in this area to help distribute all those Amazon orders (and maybe convert a few to book borrowing at the same time)

9: Many libraries offer much loved read and play sessions for pre-schoolers. This needs to continue but libraries also need to engage young adults. With YA publishing on a high libraries need to work harder at the stage when they currently lose their cool.

10: Finally, libraries need to embrace social media to communicate services and events and to attract new members. Book publishers create huge demand for new titles by developing digital content and working with online bloggers. Libraries are behind the curve.

So how do we measure the benefit of a good local library in the community; number of books borrowed, footfall through the door, demand for top titles, membership numbers? If each town had a happiness rating there can be no doubt that a well stocked and curated library, with friendly, knowledgable and approachable staff, that's open when people want to visit would take any town to the top of the league table.

The Word's Shortlist

Discover your next read with The Word's Shortlist bookshelf...


What to read right now:

* The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan: Reviewed here http://wordsshortlist.blogspot.com/2015/01/harrowing-and-lyrical-in-equal-measure.html?spref=tw


* Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: Reviewed here http://wordsshortlist.blogspot.com/2015/01/this-is-story-about-secrets-and-family.html?spref=tw


* Brooklyn by Colm Toibin: Reviewed here http://wordsshortlist.blogspot.com/2015/01/tender-sincere-and-beautifully.html?spref=tw



On the reading list this month....

1. Stay Up With Me by Tom Barbash

2. Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn

3. Station 11 by Emily St John Mandel

Keep a look out for reviews coming soon!

#readmore

A week in books.... Margate, E.M. Forster, short stories from Tom Barbash and surprise new twitter followers!

Reading: Stay up with Me by Tom Barbash
Reviewing: The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Bought: Where Angels Fear to tread by E.M. Forster
On the book shelf: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Bookshops Visited: The Book House, Thame

The week kicked off with a fresh delivery of new reads including Stay up with Me by Tom Barbash, thank you HarperCollins. Look out for my review of this book, shortlisted for the Folio Prize, next month.

Midweek I was dispatched to the Kent Coast and Margate on a work assignment. Work aside the highlight was meeting up with lovely bibliophile Bee's Bookshare (check out @beesbookshare). Can't wait to attend one of Bee's inspiring book share events later this year!

I'm a sucker for a second hand bookstore and found myself mid-week picking up a well thumbed copy of E.M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread. Both Room with a View and Maurice would be fighting for a place on my bookshelf best reads so looking forward to getting stuck in.

Caught up with the new TV adaptation of Wolf Hall this week. The jury is out for me but if this sends viewers in to bookshops to buy the source Mantel novels (which it should) then its a winner for reading which is fine with me.

A quick check of my most read blog posts this week revealed a surprise. Two older reviews from last year seem to have been picked up....

Highrise by JG Ballard - must be the forthcoming film
http://wordsshortlist.blogspot.com/2014/04/later-as-he-sat-on-his-balcony-eating.html?spref=tw

Terms and Conditions by Robert Glancy - now out in paperback http://wordsshortlist.blogspot.com/2014/04/always-read-small-print.html?spref=tw

Some nice new followers joining the Word's Shortlist cause this week. So, how big is the Word's Shortlist community? 

452 Facebook likes and 272 followers - that's 724 people committed to reading more in 2015!!! Let's reach 1k

Follow @wordsshortlist, share and, above all else, READ

Harrowing and lyrical in equal measure

Title: The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Author: Richard Flanagan

Tags: #pow #bookerprize #australia

Discovered: Man Booker Prize winner 2014

Where read: (In part) 

The Word's Shortlist view:

"A good book, he had concluded, leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your soul"

My one regret with this book is that I didn't pick it up when it was first shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Much of the reviews for the novel, although gushing, focused primarily on the explicit descriptions of life as a POW on the railway in Burma. The truth is that the real genius of this book lies in the way these sections are  told with a clever narrator switch that a lesser author just couldn't pull off.

This is the story of Dorrigo Evans, an young Australian surgeon who finds himself propelled into war and ultimately into incarceration by the Japanese on the infamous Siam to Burma railroad which was so key to Japan's aggressive empire building. Flanagan doesn't hold back on intimate and forensic detail

The novel takes us on the full journey from Dorrigo's youth and a passionate pre-War affair right through the horror of War and beyond. Flanagan plays with pace effectively, the hellish mundanity of life on the railroad unfolding slowly and methodically in a numb nightmare.

Truth be told the prose in the novel is both harrowing and lyrical in equal measure. Graphic descriptions of disease torn inmates and cruel torture by Korean guards are balanced by heart breakingly beautiful passages which keep you wanting to read on and on. Really, you need to read this book. 

Watch Richard Flanagan discuss the book in an interview here: http://youtu.be/GAJ1v3YPhpU

Twitter: @wordsshortlist

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This is a story about secrets, jealousy and a family in very deep water

Title: Everything I Never Told You

Author: Celest Ng

Tags: #debut #americanfiction #stylistmagazine

Discovered: Stylist Magazine

Where read: (In part) Over 5 days on the Jubilee Line

The Word's Shortlist view:

"Before that she hadn't realised how fragile happiness was, how if you were careless, you could knock it over and shatter it"

I came across this debut novel from Celeste Ng (pronounced 'ing') in the briefest of mentions in Stylist Magazine over Christmas. Instinct rather than research told me to a buy a copy after all there's nothing like the anticipation of reading a new novel by a first time novelist.

The novel tells the story of the Lee family whose lives implode when their teenage daughter, Lydia, is found drowned in a lake. The story takes place in mid-seventies small town Ohio which is key to the way the story develops around themes of alienation and suspicion. Lydia's father is an American born to Chinese immigrants and, as such, the Lee family is amongst only a handful of mixed race families in town.

Whist Lydia's death sets the narrative spiralling this really is an ensemble piece with Ng perfectly weaving the individual family members stories around their response to the death. This is a story about secrets, jealousy and and family in very deep water. 

Parents Marilyn and James deal with an frightening case of deja vu but its the other children, Nathan and Hannah, who are the most interesting characters. Their experiences, as children growing up amongst other's who look so different to themselves, exposes much about the pressure Lydia was under.

How much do you really know about your siblings' lives? 

Ng's unique framing of the story through the eyes of a mixed race family in small town America lifts this novel beyond the normal family drama. That said, this is sort of novel that will leave you with questions family life - at what point does love, support and aspiration become an unbearable pressure.

Watch a clip of Celeste Ng talking about here novel here: http://youtu.be/cUVZvl5cTTI

Twitter: @wordsshortlist

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