Friday Five: Books Read in July

1. Redback by Howard Jacobson (Black Swan) - I struggled with The Finkler Question, so thought it was worth giving Howard Jacobson another go; he is well-known for being funny and writing award-winning fiction. I suspect, however, his may be a style of humour (self-indulgent, middle-class, academic white man) that has passed me by. Think Tom Sharpe and Kingsley Amis, but more Jewish. Dense paragraphs, picaresque style, random characters, anxious first-person narrator, excessive hyperbole, roughly linear narrative peppered with tangents, flashbacks and digressions, and a barely-there storyline all appear to be hallmarks of the author's practice. The plot, such as it is, is that Karl Leon Forelock receives a double-first in Moral Decenies from Cambridge, is recruited by the CIA, and heads to Australia as a spy where he attends a lot of parties and makes sweeping generalistions about the country and women, whom he clearly doesn't understand. While he claims to have resolutely, "kept my nose out of politics", he feels entitled to comment on such matters, occasionally with amusing results. “Liberal in Australia, incidentally, means Conservative (unlike in England where it means nothing very much in particular), and is not to be confused with Labour. Which also means Conservative only not to quite the same degree.” Written in the 1980s, and set in the 1960s, the tone of this novel is very much last century.
2. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones - The winner of the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction is an extremely engaging and accessible novel, narrated by the main three protagonists. Celestial and Roy are happily and newly married when he is arrested and sentenced to twelve years in prison in Louisiana for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. She finds comfort in her childhood friend, Andre, Roy’s best man at their wedding. As their feelings develop, Roy’s conviction is overturned and Celestial has big decisions to make. Celestial is an artist; Roy is a business executive – they are not the blue-collar stereotypes of the American South, but because they are African-American, their lives are destroyed by a system which is prejudiced against them. On the evening of the alleged crime (a woman was raped and claims Roy was the perpetrator and, as a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time, he is almost automatically convicted) Roy and Celestial had had a big fight. This is their last interaction before he is hauled away by the police, and the situation throws their 'perfect' marriage into question. Jones has expressed that her novel is a version of The Odyssey, with Celestial playing the role of the waiting wife, unsure how to handle the return of her man. The men are infuriating as they fight over Celestial - "You don’t have to pee on her like a dog marking your territory. Have some manners.” They may well have suffered hardship and institutionalised racism, but that does not excuse their machismo and their sexism. This was a favourite of Oprah, Obama, and books clubs all across America.
3. The Windsor Knot by S.J. Bennett - This is the first in what has become a series of cosy crime novels, described as ‘Miss Marple meets The Crown’ in which the Queen solves mysteries. It was written in 2020, when the author went on a writer’s retreat during the pandemic to write something else entirely and came up with this instead. It’s highly implausible but thoroughly entertaining, as we are told, “The Queen solves mysteries. She solved the first one when she was twelve or thirteen, so the story goes. On her own. She sees things other people don’t see – often because they’re all looking at her. She knows so much about so many things. She’s got an eagle eye, a nose for bullshit and a fabulous memory. Her staff should trust her more.” At the behest of Prince Charles, the Queen hosts a ‘dine and sleep’ for Russian dancers, composers, and selected glitterati. When a pianist is found strangled the next day, hanged by the cord of his dressing gown in a wardrobe at Windsor Castle, the optics aren’t good. Initially it appears that it may have been a case of autoeroticism gone wrong, although the aides are hesitant to alert the Queen to this fact. She, meanwhile, tells Prince Philip that she is unshockable because “I’ve lived through a world war, that Ferguson girl and you in the Navy.” The MI5 suspect political involvement, but the Queen disagrees and sets out to solve the crime herself. Which, of course, she does.
4. Murder in Paradise by Ann Cleeves - Set on Kinness, an island off the coast of Scotland (bleak and misty with 'traditional values' and sheep), this is billed as a George and Molly Palmer-Jones mystery, but George is on his own, and Molly is back at home. George works with Sarah instead, a new bride who has just got married to Jim and returned to the island (where he grew up) for celebrations. It is difficult for her to adjust as everyone has secret alliances and their own ways of being. There is very little bird-watching (they ring some swans and shoot some geese) and George is cross and irritable with everyone and everything including himself and his feelings about retirement. “How pagan they are still, he thought… They pretend to be Christian, but when they’ve had a few drinks, they still behave like loutish Norsemen.” George is determined to solve the crime – the death of a girl who is believed to have fallen to her death – and even this annoys him. “He felt the weight of responsibility. It was as if the police had given up, and had handed over the task of finding the murderer to him.” The murder seems incidental to the narrative, which is more about adaptability. There is an entire red herring thread about child abuse, but mostly the islanders are afraid of change and the pervasive question is whether they can preserve the island as it is, or does that make it a museum?
5. Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes by Deborah Lesser - Inspired by a woman at a conference who was exploring 'the power of myth in modern culture' (basically, my university dissertation), the author decides to look at how female stories are interpreted, such as those of Eve, Pandora, Athena. It has a very Western focus.  Her tone is irritating - telling people what to do and treating the audience as if they haven’t considered this before she brought it to our attention. I am not surprised to learn she delivers TED talks; her approach is didactic, individual, and lecturing. She comments,“Everything I knew about European history had to do with wars and kings, trade routes and power plays between religions, royalty and tyrants. Why did we only know and care about those aspects of being human?” Speak for yourself! Maybe stop blaming education from fifty years ago and look into things yourself, like those of us who are interested already have. It may appeal to young people (as the alarming pink jacket suggests) as their first foray into this sphere, but there is nothing in here that I haven't read (in better formats) before.