A touch of the Night Watch

I just finished Kate Atkinson's Life After Life - her much awaited new novel, which left some people disappointed that it wasn't the fifth in the Jackson Brodie series, but got others excited about her return to the roots, so to speak. The novel reminded me a little of Behind the Scenes at the Museum and the other earlier novels.

A kind of a Groundhog day, Life after Life follows the life of Ursula Todd and her family, until she gets it right. The novel begins in 1910 and moves back and forth in time as things happen to Ursula - until they happen the right way. She keeps learning from her mistakes and corrects them without completely realizing what she's doing and why. Not perhaps the most original idea ever, but you can trust Atkinson to make the story into something interesting and different. 

A lot of the story happens during WW2 in a way that seems strangely familiar. It's almost as if the book is a homage to Sarah Waters' The Night Watch - you can well imagine Ursula at some point working in the same office as the girls in Night Watch and they have most likely gone to the same cafes and passed each other on the streets, perhaps taken refuge in the same shelters during air raids. Atkinson's people are more upperclass - the Waters girls wouldn't hobnob with them, but the war would have made their paths cross in a way that would have been impossible during peace time. And there are several happenings that surely aren't coincidences but neither are they at all plagiarized. A tribute perhaps, an "inspired by" maybe - a copy, never.

Perhaps not the worlds most un-putdownable book ever, but Life After Life certainly creates the urgency of needing to now what happens next. Now we just wait for the next Jackson Brodie.

Finding something new to read

I'm sure I'm not the only one on a constant quest for new books read. New books that will be entertaining, thought provoking, exciting, possibly funny, sometimes romantic. Not so easy - especially when you've spent most of your life reading. Finding a new book can be rewarding but finding a new author opens whole doors into unknown worlds to an eager reader such as myself.

A New Author will probably already have published a bunch of books one can dive into and will in most likelihood be publishing new books if not annually then certainly decennially (like Jeffrey Eugenides - a book in 5-10 years, but worth the wait), unless you happen to run into a Classic you haven't yet read, in which case you can just blame bad luck for it. A New Author,when added to the list of your favorite authors will increase the likelihood of finding readable books published out of sync with each other. So you can well imagine how fortunate I've been this summer to come across two New Authors to read!

There really is no formula for finding a New Author. Some browse the internet, some ask for recommendations in their local library or bookshop. Me, I turn to my friends for help. And with great results, I might add. In the past I've been blessed with authors such as Kate Atkinson, Jonathan Coe, Colum McCann, Jennifer Egan, Mark Z. Danielewski, Dave Eggers and many, many more. Sure, I've come up with a few on my own, but it certainly helps to have friends who read.

This summer I was told to read Sarah Waters. So on I went to the local library which boasted on their wide selection of Waters. Well, the reality was very different from the fantasy created on their lousy website, but I did manage to get a hardback translation of The Night Watch. Once I managed to get over the off putting format and the language (I prefer reading books in the original language, although when it comes to foreign languages I truly only manage English and Swedish with just a little Russian and Spanish), I ended up quite enjoying the book. Set in the 1940's it follows the stories of 6-8 people more or less connected to each other. The 3 episodes are set in 1947, 1944 and 1941 - in this order. So you never learn what happens to the people because the beginning is also the ending, but you start building their future in your head through looking into their past.

A truly fascinating portrayal of the everyday life during and after the war, The Night Watch is also a suspense novel about people on the margins living in difficult situations during a distressing time (as if life during wartime wasn't difficult enough). But the every day life is pretty much the same for everyone, with routines and worries and work, so to me the true value of the book was in the glimpses into the reality of 1940's London with bombings and food shortage and death and decay and blinders - but also with love and hope and plans for the future.

Now a true friend not only recommends books - she sends them to you! So a few days ago a parcel arrived in the mail: The Little Stranger by none other than Sarah Waters. Apparently a ghost story - possibly a scary one, too - so far I’ve only glimpsed at it. I think the best plan is to read it in broad daylight. Certainly not in the evening, alone. We'll see. But that's something to look forward to in the near future!

Oh, who was the other New Author? Well, that's a whole topic on its own, wouldn't you agree?

The Rosie Project

A while back I came across a tweet that led me to Top 10 books to read in April on Stylist.co.uk (Stylist.co.uk/books/). Browsing through the list I run into a book called The Rosie Project by Graeme Simison. The author was unknown to me (not surprisingly since later it turned out this is his first novel) but the book sounded like fun. So on I march to the local bookshop expecting to find a reasonably priced paperback to carry in my beach bag. Well, not only did they not have it ("Oh, I should have guessed this, the invcompetence of these people - can't find one little book for me. I guess it's because it's in english.") but it turns out it wasn't even published ("Oops, good thing I didn't say that out loud!").

So back I crawled into my flat revising a new game plan.

Now, the fact that I wasn't able to get my hands on it made the book all the more alluring. So I looked up all kinds of sites to see where I could get it the cheapest. I tend to browse Amazon and save things for later purchase without actually ordering anything, but with this thing I started to be so determined that I actually went ahead and ordered it - along with a bunch of other stuff on the save for later list. Better get the most out of it as long as I was finally ordering something, right?

Now that I got myself proper and excited the chances were that the book was going to be a huge disappointment. Contrary to my usual book buying practices I started reading Rosie almost as soon as I got it home. I was pleasantly surprised to notice that the book was funny, intelligent and even romantic up to a point.

The main character Don or Professor Tillman and the "I" of the book reminded me of the main protagonist in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and also of Dr Sheldon Cooper of the Big Bang Theory. Like Dr Cooper, Professor Tillman is well aware of his special characteristics in comparison with his friends, co-workers and indeed people in general. Like Dr Cooper he is proud of them, but unlike Dr Cooper Professor Tillman at least sometimes realizes what makes him stand out in a crowd and what makes people react to him in a different way. The unlikely romance between Tillman an Rosie is the main plot of the book but not the thing that makes it worth reading. Tillman's struggles with his personality and attempts at understanding the rest of the world as well as his desperate, albeit short lived struggle towards normality, are what makes the book worth reading.

For once a book that I not only liked but can even recommend! Mid you - if you enjoy dark suspense filled books with explicit scenes of violence this is not a book for you. But for light summer reading this is just the thing. I think I'll follow Stylist.co.uk's advice on books more carefully in the future!