Review - Pure, by Timothy Mo

Pure by Timothy Mo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is over 10 years since Timothy Mo’s last novel, but Pure has been worth the wait. Mo has written an effervescent novel overflowing with verbal ticks and tricks, addressing some serious topics in a most unusual way. The book is set in southern Thailand, where a small but vigourous Islamic insurgency, vaguely linked with global backers, dreams of a South Asian caliphate and embarks on a campaign of terrorism. In an effort to infiltrate one of the Islamic cells, the police recruit a most unlikely double agent, Snooky - a Thai ladyboy of Islamic origin working as a film critic in the city. Against all expectations, Snooky proves to be a very effective terrorist and a somewhat less effective informant for the authorities.

Pure is told mainly in the first person, with several key voices alternating their stories. Snooky is the most important and most entertaining, displaying all of the characteristic traits of the unreliable narrator. Beginning with vivid descriptions of the life of a ladyboy, moving through police brutality to life as part of an Islamic cell in the jungle, Snooky observes all that is happening and increasingly participates, maintaining a constant commentary on events and the people she meets. She has a tendency to refer to herself in the third person, and peppers her narration with cultural, and in particular cinematic, references. Snooky is highly intelligent, a trait which she continually underplays and uses to her advantage.

The second main narrator is Victor, a Church of England clergyman in a high academic position in an Oxford college, who for many years has acted as a recruiter for the security services. Because of his connections with the Far East, Victor becomes involved in an electronic correspondence with Snooky the double agent, and eventually visits Thailand to make contact with her.

Much of the novel is concerned with the clash between fundamentalist Islam and Western (and Eastern) democratic values. All battle for control of Snooky’s heart and mind, while she deteriorates physically and metamorphoses mentally. Pure contains serious philosophical discussion, historical review, theological musings, fantastic pen portraits and sketches of minor characters, surreal interludes, and above all a torrent of words, puns and verbal pyrotechnics. It is at times a challenging read, and perhaps fades a little in the latter third, but it is certainly one of the most interesting and innovative books I have read this year.

There is a danger that Pure may pass most readers by, which would be shame. Mo fell out with mainstream publishers in the 1990’s and his last couple of novels have been published independently. Pure is published by Turnaround Books, but lacks the benefits which come from a major publicity machine and promotion behind it. It is a book which deserves to do very well in the literary prizes. If this does happen, it will hopefully attract more attention. However, in the meantime it is well worth seeking out.


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Book of the Week - Patrick Flanery, Absolution

 

Absolution is a first novel by Patrick Flanery which has attracted considerable notice and good reviews.  It was selected by Waterstones as one of their debut novels of the year and has also been longlisted for the Desmond Elliot prize.  Interestingly, Flannery is an American currently living in London, yet has set his novel in pre- and post-apartheid South Africa. He was born in California and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. After earning a BFA in Film from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts he worked for three years in the film industry before moving to the UK, where he completed a doctorate in Twentieth-Century English Literature at the University of Oxford.  Nonetheless, most reviewers think he has portrayed the setting of his novel convincingly and some have compared his portrayal favourably with those of Coetzee and Galgut.  Certainly an interesting prospect and now into several printings, so the first edition hardback from Atlantic is well worth picking up. 

 “In her garden, ensconced in the lush vegetation of the Western Cape, Clare Wald, world-renowned author, mother, critic, takes up her pen and confronts her life. Sam Leroux has returned to South Africa to embark upon a project that will establish his reputation – he is to write Clare’s biography. But how honest is she prepared to be? Was she complicit in past crimes; is she an accomplice or a victim? Are her crimes against her family real or imagined? As Sam and Clare turn over the events of her life, she begins to seek reconciliation, absolution. But in the stories she weaves and the truth just below the surface of her shimmering prose, lie Sam’s own ghosts.

Absolution shines light on contemporary South Africa and the long dark shadow of the recent past, the elusive nature of truth and self-perception and the mysterious alchemy of the creative process.”

Review - Waiting for Sunrise, William Boyd

Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd is a literary thriller, starting in pre-first World War Vienna and finishing in wartime London.  In between it touches down in the battlefields of France and a more peaceful Geneva.  The main protagonist is Lysander Rief, a young English actor beginning to make a name for himself on the stage, following in the footsteps of his more famous father.   As the novel commences, Lysander has travelled to Geneva seeking psychotherapy for a sexual problem from one of Vienna’s leading psychotherapists.  Lysander remains at the centre of events throughout the novel, becoming a wartime undercover agent on a mission to identify a traitor who is leaking important logistical information to the Germans.  Several women play a key role in his story – Blanche, his actress fiancé as the book begins, is initially left back in London, while in Vienna he falls under the sway of Hettie Bull, a sculptress, who comes to dominate his life completely.  As the book progresses Lysander begins to feel that he is being and has been manipulated from an early stage by those around him, even those closest to him, and becomes increasingly uncertain who, if anyone, he can trust.  

William Boyd is a successful and well-established author, probably best known for Any Human Heart, A Good Man in Africa, and An Ice-Cream War.  He has won a number of literary awards and is undoubtedly a very accomplished writer.  Waiting for Sunrise is an entertaining read, with a complex plot with plenty of twists and turns set in an interesting historical period which is portrayed in a convincing way.  Apart from Lysander, there is a cast of convincing supporting characters, most of whom will have a significant role to play before events resolve.  Even at the end of the book, there is a sense of uncertainly as to whether the whole truth has been revealed or resolved.  To quote Lysander “The more we know, the less we know”. 

I enjoyed Waiting for Sunrise, without thinking it exceptional.  It was a good read, but I don’t expect it to stick in my mind for very long. I liked the idea of “parallelism”, a psychological technique by which Lysander is helped to forget past traumatic events by imaging repeatedly and in detail a less traumatic alternative which gradually he comes to believe was real.  There are various linkages to A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Lysander under a magical spell, a denouement in a forest etc.  Most of the book is written in the third person, but some sections are written as autobiographical notes in the first person by Lysander, and for me the transition grated a little.  Interestingly from a technique perspective, the book starts with second person sections addressed to the imaginary reader, which act as a frame for the contents.  Overall, then, a good literary thriller, but for me not quite outstanding.  I think it would translate well to cinema or television, a period thriller with plenty of sex and some violence. 

The Desmond Elliott Prize 2012

The Desmond Elliott Prize is awarded for a first novel written in English published in the UK.  This isits fifth year and the longlist has just been announced.  Three of the four previous winners have featured as my book of the week, so I was interested to see how things would go this year.  Of the ten longlisted books this year, I have previously featured The Bellwether Revivals (Benjamin Wood), The Land of Decoration (Grace McCleen) and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Rachel Joyce).  Watch out for Absolution by Patrick Flanery coming soon, as it is a book I have been having a look at.  The shortlist will be announced in one month's time.

Update - The Land of Decoration has won.  A very fine book which I liked a lot - interesting to see if Grace McCleen can sustain it in the future.  I suspect that this was a book from the heart.
 

Book of the Week - Timothy Mo, Pure

Pure is Timothy Mo’s first novel since 2000, and a small number of signed copies are currently available after he paid a brief visit to the UK. His last two books were self-published, but on this occasion Pure is published by Turnaround Books.   Mo has had a great deal of critical success in the past – three of his first four books were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and he has also won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (for his first novel) and the James Tait Prize (for his 2000 novel, Renegade).

Mo was born in 1950 to a Welsh-Yorkshire mother and a Hong Kong Chinese father, and lived in Hong Kong until the age of 10 before he moved to Britain, studying at St John's College, Oxford. He worked as a journalist for both New Statesman and Boxing News before falling out with publishers in general and moving to the world of self-publishing.

Releasing a novel called Pure so shortly after another author’s Pure won the Costa Prize with all the confusion that might cause is a typically idiosyncratic act. Luckily the themes of the two books are completely different – medieval Parisian cemetery vs. contemporary Thai Ladyboy Jihadist. Mo’s Pure has had some very good reviews and also one or two stinkers, maybe not surprising given his writing style. Despite being self-published it may do well in the prize lists (assuming it is submitted). A signed copy is well worth adding to any collection and should be an interesting read.

"Timothy Mo's first novel in a decade is set within the battle for secession in the Muslim regions of southern Thailand. Pure covers epic expanses of time and is told through narrators who range from fanatical zealots to decorated Oxbridge dons. Everything that Mo's readers expect abound in this long-awaited novel: versatile style, memorable characters, insight into those tormented by dual loyalties and the ability to handle the weightiest of themes with a light touch. By examining the cultural wars of the past and present, Pure's themes are among the most important of the day."

Book Review - Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

One woman; two men.  Which will she chose?  The core of many a Victorian Novel, and also the underlying premise of The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.  Eugenides  is not a prolific author - the Marriage Plot is his first book for a decade, but his novels are generally worth waiting for and this is no exception.   It is an intelligent and humorous book, with many unexpected twists and turns as he sets out to make a Victorian novel for our age.

Madeleine is the central female character.  We meet her as she prepares to graduate, uncertain as to what to do with her life.  She is from a privileged WASP background, passionate about the Victorian novel in an era when semiotics and deconstructionism are in fashion (the early 80’s).  The novel moves back and forwards to cover Madeleine’s time at college and the couple of years afterwards, focusing on her relationships with Leonard and Mitchell, the two men in her life.  The novel switches its narrative voice between these three characters, sometimes recounting the same events from two (or even three) perspectives.

Leonard is brash, confident, super-intelligent and popular – a science major apparently destined for great things.  Mitchell is sensitive, reflective and generally nice, prepared to be treated by Madeleine as a bit of a door mat – no less intelligent that Leonard, but less conspicuously so. While Leonard struggles with science and mental illness, Mitchell struggles with religious belief, which plays an analogous role in his life. Both love and want Madeleine – she has given herself to Leonard and he offers much in return, but for most of the novel it is clear that her heart lies with Mitchell.   Until the final few pages the denouement of these tangled relationships remains unclear; don’t expect a neat Victorian ending!

The Marriage Plot contains a good story with memorable and convincing characters.   All of the characters love books and knowledge; there are a lot of references to other books and literary theory, which some readers may find challenging.  There are convincing sections dealing with college life in the US in the early 80s, working in an unsympathetic research biology laboratory and working for Mother Theresa.  There are  very strong first and third person descriptions of the effects of both mania and depression.  This is a book which ranges widely both in themes and geography.  At over 400 pages it is a large book, but it never lags and I would happily have read more.  Excellent literary fiction. 

Review - The Land of Decoration, Grace McCleen

The Land of Decoration is a first novel told in the voice of a young girl who has been brought up as a member of a religious sect; Grace McCleen is a young writer who was herself brought up in a similar environment.  Of course, most authors draw deeply on personal life experiences as they write, not surprising since writing about events and circumstances you know is likely to be easier and more realistic.  However, sometimes the parallels between events and a novel and the author’s own life seem particularly close – Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time sequence being a good example – and perhaps that is also the case here.  Certainly, the setting of the novel is completely convincing, even if the events are at least partly imagined.

There have been a number of successful recent novels told in the voice of a young child, so the approach is by no means completely original.  However, for it to succeed requires significant technical skill as a writer as well as considerable imagination, and in The Land of Decoration Judith (the narrator) convinces completely as a somewhat precocious young girl.  The book is a little slow to get going, but ultimately the story and the world it creates is engrossing and I found difficulty putting the book down at some points.

Judith lives with her father, and it is clear from the outset that her mother is dead.  She has been brought up as a committed member of a small Church which operates under strict rules and is clearly closely modelled on the Jehovah’s Witness movement.  Judith stands out from her schoolmates, both for her intelligence and for her religious differences.  As a result, she is isolated and bullied, and retreats to an imaginary world which she makes in her bedroom.  Judith comes to believe that she has been given the power to perform miracles, and that when something happens in her model world it will be paralleled in the real world.  At first it seems to her that this will provide a rapid solution to her problems, but she quickly comes to realise that the consequences of our wishes coming true can be hard to predict, and that perhaps the adults in her life do not truly believe all that they say. 

There are many strong aspects to this novel – the voice and personality of Judith, her relationship with her father, the portrayal of the Church and its congregation and the reality of bullying in the school.  There are also some unexpected aspects – the unseen social factors which turn a child into a bully, the impact of isolation on the development of an intelligent child, the impact of a strike in a closed community.  The portrayal of the Church is not particularly sympathetic, and some readers have objected to this, but neither is it unreasonably harsh.   Above all my memory will be of Judith and her imaginary world, and how imagination can equip a child with the resilience to deal with incredibly difficult circumstances.  

Finally, I should comment on The Land of Decoration as an object.  As e-books become ever more popular, publishers need to work harder to make us buy their books.  I read the first edition hardcover from Chatto & Windus, and it is a truly beautiful book.  Coloured page edges (maroon, like an old-fashioned Bible), pictorial endpapers and a superb dustwrapper.  Who would choose an e-book over an object like this?