“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” by Taylor Jenkins Reid - review

 “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” by Taylor Jenkins Reid:

Despite the hype and rave this book got in the past (2017) I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. 

Renowned Hollywood actress Evelyn Hugo, aged 79, enlists little-known, young but ambitious journalist Monique Grant for an exclusive interview. Monique doesn’t understand why she's been chosen to write and sell Evelyn’s memoir but jumps of course at the opportunity and one-time chance to advance her career. 

In a truly and undeniably visceral and addictive style, soapy, juicy, glamorous and complex, in a mix of historical and psychological fiction, Evelyn’s life unfolds from the 1950’s all the way to present time, documenting the entirety of her acting career, including the stories behind the titular seven husbands, Hollywood, the film industry, fame, glamour, scandal, sordid secrets and lies. The characters, complicated and realistically flawed, are well laid out in all their machinations, relationship dynamics and complexities. 

Especially Evelyn’s character is immaculately developed, with very human feelings and thoughts. Issues like sexual exploitation women face both generally and within the context of Hollywood stardom, are discussed in depth, lending an emotional perspective to the story.

An asset of the book is, that it is also a touching queer romance. It is a story of scandal and ambition, as well as identity, love, and the difficulty of wanting to be true to yourself in a difficult world. 

This was a fast and highly enjoyable read.

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“Appliance” by J. O. Morgan - review

 “Appliance“ by J. O. Morgan:

J. O. Morgan has earned himself recognition as a poet, this is his first novel. 

In this very compelling, highly entertaining, often tender and philosophical fable we are, in eleven chapters, confronted with the impact, the disturbances, the repercussions and ramifications of the dramatic changes a new clever invention, the Machine, brings onto mankind. 

In eleven snapshots or vignettes different protagonists, different voices, highlight another aspect of the machine’s impact on society. In this regard the novel is similar to, say, the famous poem by Steven Wallace 13 Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird. Eleven different perspectives on one central theme and they all form a chorus that tells of how this new technology is changing, morphing and growing and on its way changing, morphing and relentlessly and inevitably distorting everything on our planet and us with it.

Teleportation, the instant breaking apart, sending and reassembling of matter across immense distances in almost no-time is fairly well known in the genre of science fiction. But this is not a Science Fiction novel. It uses the idea of teleportation to show how a society, always on the move for more, always progressively expanding and advancing, might be made dependent and irretrievably transformed by it. It raises the question of the necessity of dubious progress. 

The novel does not focus on the techology but focuses on the dangers, frustrations and bewilderment it causes to those who live with it. The System, as it is called, advances the infrastructure around everyone, creeps into every aspect of human life, transforms houses, decors, fashion and work, attitudes and values and changes society to the point of utter dependency. 

In one chapter an old woman is forced to transport an old oil painting via the new technology and ponders on the concept of the Original. Not a new thought, one which Walter Benjamin explored in his The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in 1935. Seen in this new context it offers surprising new aspects, though. What is an original, what is a mere copy. Must an original  be linked to a bodily manifestation? Is the body sent the same as the body received or a mere copy?

And what about personality, consciousness and individuality? In another chapter a woman’s husband returns after a transportation slightly altered, a much nicer, more pleasing individual as the one she had to endure and live with before the event. So, might there be something that is not attached to matter, like a soul or spirit?

Innovative, full of questions, philosophical and infused with humanity, this fable forces us to re-examine our faith in technology, take new measure of our greed for new things and urges us to reflect on the future we really want and on what really matters. 

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“The Melody“ by Jim Crace - review

 “The Melody” by Jim Crace:

This is Jim Crace’s latest novel after his Booker Prize finalist Harvest. It is a a meditation on grief and poverty, an ecological fable, a lyrical and tender rumination on marital love and loss. 

The aging concert singer Alfred Busi, much cherished in his hometown for his music and songs, in the early hours hears foragers rattling the bins in the backyard of his seaside villa which has been his and his wife’s home for decades and, while investigating, is attacked, scratched and bitten by a mysterious nocturnal scavenger, he thinks it was a feral boy, neither man nor animal. Busi recently lost his beloved wife Alicia, and now feels the weight, the maladies and ailments of old age setting in and his lifelong career as a celebrated singer seems to draw to a close. He is a man taking stock of his life and looking into an uncertain future. 

His only living close relatives are the sister of his wife, Terina whom he, despite her haughty, cool aloofness, still desires and her son Joseph, a repugnant timber tycoon and housing developer. A few days after the attack, Busi discovers that his nephew has arranged for the villa to be demolished and replaced with modern apartments for enormous profit. These machinations set into motion a troubling transformation of the town. 

We don’t really get a precise sense of where and when all this is happening, this seems to be intentional. Events unfold in a coastal town that feels vaguely Mediterranean. The town itself is surrounded by an impenetrable tangle of trees, scrubs, shrubs and underwood, called the Bosk, inhabited by an assortment of wild animals. 

One of the novel’s themes is the conflict between profit and justice. Busi’s attachment to his home is set against the poverty of the town’s homeless population, whom the wealthy class call “neanderthals” and in the name of order, civilization, and decency, not to forget the monetary gain, wish to drive from their dwellings.  Busi‘s fate is personal as well as political.

In the end the house developers succeed, razing the Bosk, driving out all the animals and erecting the seaside apartments as planned, thus changing the atmosphere and spirit of the town considerably. 

Busi, as we are told by the narrator, some six years after the events, gave up his villa and moved into one of the newly erected apartments. 

In a final scene he visits the forests once more with two newfound younger friends, one being the narrator, and his now infirm sister-in-law Terina, to scatter his wife‘s ashes and say a last good-bye. Then they go back to their homes in a changed town, devoid of wildlife. As they contemplate the wilderness a last time the narrator muses: 

“I have the sense… that something other than ourselves persists.  Something wilder and more animated but still resembling us.  Something that must scavenge on its naked haunches for roots and berries, nuts and leaves, roaches, maggots, frogs and carrion, stolen eggs and honey.”

He might have Alfred’s wild boy in mind, but might also reach out to our planet that man wants to bring under control, destructively if necessary.

Sometimes it is better to not look for explanations, sometimes it is even embarrassing to want to convert all what one has read into meaning. Sometimes it might just be enough to appreciate the mood a book induced. In this case I appreciated the sense and mood very much, it stayed with me for quite a while.

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“You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty“ by Akwaeke Emezi - review

 “You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty“ by Akwaeke Emezi:

I did not like this book. 

I liked Emezi’s last novel The Death of Vivek Oji very much and thought it a beautiful and tenderly rendered story of a young person coming to terms with themselves, an investigation into ideas of selfhood and the meaning respectively meaninglessness of the body and so I was very keen to read their latest book. What a disappointment!

It is not that Emezi lost their way with words, they are as good or even better, their prose and style are not the problem. The problem is the story. It is SOAP. It hurts to say it, but that’s what it is, a soap in all its bubbling, shimmering, glimmering, iridescent, awfully shallow, superficial manifestation. The worst is that it is not even meant as a satirization of a soap, Emezi seems deadly serious. 

Everything is just too hyped-up, too much. Too much love, too much pain, too much emotion in general or rather, too much talk about emotions which I never felt, too much vulgarity. Too beautifully striking people, homes and careers and so very unbelievable settings and too much beauty in general.

To cut it short: Beautiful woman artist Feyi, widowed and still grieving with the loss of her husband five years ago, meets attractive rich guy who invites her to spend a vacation on a tropical island in the outrageously beautiful millionaires bungalow of his dad. She likes him but is afraid to let herself get involved in a love affair and pleads time, she doesn’t feel strong enough, yet. 

There in the estate she meets his dad, a celebrity chef, and instantly falls in love with him and he with her. The son is hurt, the family threatens to fall apart. Meanwhile she gets invited to exhibit at a very important art show and with instant success, is discovered as the new rising star and is offered a substantial commission. 

It’s all so awfully tacky. There is unexpected, earth-shaking love, there is seemingly insufferable grief of which we are told but don’t feel, there are nasty inevitable but astoundingly easy overcome hurt feelings and family trouble and there is easy artistic success and recognition. It made me want to put a finger in my throat. What a waste of time and energy. 

The prose itself, as said, is very Emezi, masterful as ever, with an eye for colour, texture and taste, very sensual. They dive into the minds of their protagonists, try to analyze and decipher their motivation and render the overall set quite beautifully and sometimes even touching. They even try to get into different perspectives on a same situation/opinion like they did in The Death of Vivek Oji. There is enormous talent there and it is a shame they had to waste it on such soapy trash. I didn’t care for any of the protagonists, they all were shallow, superficial beings. I did’t care for the often foul-mouthed, annoyingly vulgar “nigga-bitches“ dialogues Feyi had with her woman friend. I didn’t care for the soft porn, the swooning over nipples, golden flesh or generously endowed male genitalia. I didn’t care one bit for the showy tropical paradise her newfound lover inhabited, beautiful golden sunsets included. And, most annoying for me personally, I didn’t buy her being such a good artist, driven, boo-hooh, by her pain. It all stayed floating on the surface of a water body which could have been a profoundly pond but in the end turned out to be just a shallow puddle. 

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“The Death of Vivek Oji” by Akwaeke Emezi - review

 “The Death Of Vivek Oji“ by Akwaeke Emezi:

“They burned down the market the day Vivek Oji died”, that’s how the book starts. It is very clear from the beginning that the titular Vivek Oji will meet death in this story and this knowledge, much in the same way as the imminent death of Giovanni in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, casts a dark, moody shadow of anxiety and apprehension that up until the end never leaves. 

The novel tries to solve the mystery of Oji’s death. His mother desperately wants to find out about the last hours of her son but is deflected by his friends who want to spare her but also have their own reasons not to tell. 

The narrative moves around in time and from viewpoint to viewpoint and paints, with recollections of Oji’s life from his friends and family and his own thoughts from beyond the grave, a richly layered picture of a middle-class community in Nigeria. Slowly it becomes evident that Oji is a person torn between the desire to be what he feels to be and the realization and fear how dangerous it would be to live out such a life in an antiquated, often barbarically relentless and cruel Nigerian society. Oji in the book is dead as well as alive, sometimes on the same page. One instant we see him as a boy playing with his mother’s jewelry, the next he lies dead in the garden of his parents or comments actions of his friends and family from his grave. 

Oji is a beautiful child and, as his cousin and best friend Osita remembers: “… so beautiful he made the air around him dull”. Much to the chagrin of his parents and the disappovement of his relatives, he never cuts his hair and lets it grow into a beautiful mane way below his shoulder blades. Oji was born on the same day his grandmother died and, like her, he is born with a scar like a “soft starfish” on his foot. This spiritual sign later becomes significant when Oji tells his friends that they can “refer to him as either she or he, that he is both”. 

But Oji has to hide, from society as well as from his parents. He knows he cannot open up to them, they would never understand. Some of their relatives even think him “sick” or being possessed by a demon. Even his own overprotective, loving mother, has no conception of what her child really is, both male and female. Her failure to do so is emblematic of the blindness of so many others who claim to love and adore him. Oji is someone who is painfully misunderstood.

In a beautifully corporeal, often heartachingly tender prose, the novel investigates ideas of selfhood that transcend the boundaries of the body and interrogates its meaning respectively meaninglessness. It draws a connection between existence and invisibility when Oji asks: “If nobody sees you, are you still there?”. Invisibility is, following his death, just Oji’s latest existential rendering, before that he experienced erasure while “walking around and knowing that people saw me one way, knowing that they were wrong … the real me was invisible to them”. 

Against all the pain the world inflicts on him Oji shields himself with a strong self-acceptance and when finally Oji decides to live and break free the mood shifts from melancholy to triumph. He opens up to his friends and insists on living openly as both he, Oji, and she, Nnemdi, and becomes “bright and brilliant and alive”. Throughout most of the novel, Oji is referred to as “he” but towards the end she is given what is rightfully hers.

A deeply affecting novel, beautifully written. 

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“In The Distance“ by Hernan Diaz - review

 “In the Distance” by Hernan Diaz:

Hernan Diaz’ masterful debut novel, a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, plays somewhere around the middle of the nineteenth century. We follow Håkan Söderström’s life on a long and arduous journey from Sweden to America, always in search for his brother, whom he lost at the beginning of their trip in the harbor of Portsmouth, England. They were both mere boys, almost still children and left Sweden, like so many other Europeans, for the promises the new continent of America held.

Håkan, the “Hawk“ as he will be called by others, is the hero of the book. On his quest for his brother he grows into a remarkable giant of a man. To most he looks “like an old, strong Christ“.

The novel is a Western, reminiscent of the atypical Westerns of Cormack McCarthy or Jim Jarmusch. With them it shares the American mistrust of authorities, the strife for autarchy and the use of glorified violence. It lets us take part in one of the great myths of America, the colonization of the West. This extraordinary epic tale of a lone man’s journey into the heart of the American frontier, has many memorable scenes. Håkan, after loosing his brother in England, with dogged determination gets on a boat bound for San Francisco, rather than New York, and then spends countless, circular, unmapped years wandering the deserts and plains of the western and southwestern territories around the time of the California Gold Rush. He aims to cross the continent to New York in search of his brother Linus and starts travelling east against the endless tide of immigrants voyaging west.

We see the world close to Håkan’s consciousness, childlike, impressible and confused. Due to his lack of English comprehension Håkan has to guess most of the times what is going on. This makes him, especially in his younger years, a vulnerable character of a simple clarity who is at the mercy of his fellow travellers who are, more often than not, greedy, exploitive, mean spirited, dangerous and violent adventurers, prospectors and colonists.

After several gravely life-threatening, dangerous, disappointing and bitter encounters with humans and after his bewilderment at the rising “civilization” he increasingly finds unbearable, Håkan chooses the life of a recluse, takes on an animal existence and relies totally on what nature has to offer.

Diaz’ shows the history of America and its western conquest in all its bloody, horrifying, stupid detail, thus only showing the bitter truth of human existence. Håkan, always driven on by his quest forward to an unreachable goal and future, emerges from the depths of each terrifying experience again and again with resilience and animal intuition. 

With a precise, masterfully controlled, often rustic, poetic prose which is grounded in the young  Håkan’s perspective and a simple narrative structure Diaz’ paints an existentialist Western, a mystic parable, that leaves the reader often utterly devastated but then, as often, hopeful, too. An extraordinary achievement.

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