I’ve been AWOL from Alexandria for a little while now (and from the internet more generally...I apologise for my dearth of commenting around the blogosphere too) – finishing the dissertation, starting my slavery at Marks and Spencers and a minor reading slump have all been contributing factors, the latter probably a result of burn-out from the former… And, admittedly I haven’t been terribly inspired by recent books either: I’ve felt horribly ambivalent about the last two Booker longlisted novels I’ve attempted, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula has me bogged down in the last 100 pages. Oh the interminable politenesses following the (show-stopping) ‘slaying’ of Lucy Westenra! I’m left gnashing my teeth: Bring on the Count for gods’ sake and let’s get it over with. As it is I’m inching my way through, page by page, hoping for a pick-up in my interest and a pay-off in the denouement. To be honest, I think I’m a victim of the cinematic and televisual ubiquity of Stoker’s trope – it’s sad I know but I can’t grasp the sensationalism of vampires, especially when swaddled in late Victorian torpidity.
I’ve also had my first (and hopefully, only) abandoned book of 2006 in the last week: Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children. This embarrasses me since I was excited over it after dovegreyreader waxed lyrical about its charms…but only ten pages in I knew it wasn’t going to light me up. All that stiff realism and those solipsistic New Yorkers, in a plot leading up to the tragedy of 9/11? Not my cup of tea. Four days later I was only on page 50 and suffering from debilitating inertia, equally uninspired by both my fiction books. So I gave up and returned it to the library. No point forcing 
myself on for the remaining 500 pages; there has to be a limit to anyone's readerly masochism. I moved on to James Lasdun’s Seven Lies, which was mercifully short at just under 200 pages, and I raced through it as a result. The epitome of a well-formed micro-novel, being composed of one man’s linear narrative, it was precise, clear and, in parts, moving; built of the kind of bare prose that is highly favoured by contemporary fiction writers at the moment. Stefan Vogel, the narrator, is a (fake) East German poet living in America after the fall of the Wall and the book is his memoir – beginning with his childhood in the GDR (by the far the best section, prose-wise) segueing into his involvement with artistic dissidents in his early 20s and his consequent flight to the States. His identity, built on the perpetuating lies he tells himself and others, was compelling enough and the claustrophobia of his existence was discomforting, even terrifying. But there was nothing wonderful about it, nothing particular to exalt over. Maybe I’m just feeling that way at the moment: my critical faculties are working but the emotional mill that drives them is switched down to low, almost off. Does anyone else have these periods, where they feel unimpressed by everything? Or rather, when they feel disengaged from their reading material?
Hopefully the disengagement is over though, for the time being. This morning I embarked on Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, the last of the Booker shortlisters on my reading list and, on the basis of it’s first quarter, entirely impressive. It got off to a wonderful start, with a descriptive passage that inveigled its way into me:
“All day, the colours had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths. Briefly visible above the vapour, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whittled out of ice, gathering the last of the light, a plume of snow blown high by the storms at it’s summit…”
And has already made good headway in establishing a cast of characters that promises to charm me to death – a former Judge, bitter and lonely, living in the mountains in the shadow of Nepal with his reservedly passionate granddaughter and one old tired servant; said servant’s son, Biju, an ‘over-stayer’ in America, working in a succession flea-pit restaurants and living in someone’s basement; a dog with the poise of Audrey Hepburn; and a pair of spinster sisters, worried over the integrity of their Nepalese watchman and dedicated to aged principles of English colonialism, embodied by a) the Queen and b) Marks and Spencer’s underwear. (This made me smile; I sell these plain pants and bras to many a spinsterly lady.) The novel is dedicated to Kiran Desai’s mother, Anita, the grand-dame of Anglo-Indian fiction and probably amongst my favourite novelists. And I can see her influence in it already – the structure is a little like an interwoven Fasting, Feasting (read it!), with the young Indian man struggling in America and the reserved, convent educated girl in India striving against repression at home. But there is something decidedly new about Kiran Desai’s prose too; it has none of her mother’s sparseness and is, instead, ornate but still has that richness which I so admire. A very credible shortlister for the Booker I think, and perhaps, also, a winner.
~~Victoria~~