The holidays are receding rapidly into the past (sadly) as are the memories of the books I took with me, so I had better make some notes whilst I remember!I broke off in the middle of Waugh's Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, there being so few pages left that it wasn't really worth taking away with me. I read some of his collected short stories on the outbound plane - that is, when I could read: the two and three year-olds sitting behind me were totally undisciplined by their parents and spent the entire journey kicking the back of my seat and catching my hair as they grabbed onto the top of it. Not conducive to concentration! I did manage a few stories though, which were a fairly engrossing representation of a particular echelon of society at a particular time in history.
We spent less time just lazing about this year, so I didn't read as much as I did last year, but it didn't take me long to dispatch Alexander McCall Smith's Corduroy Mansions. It was a warm, fuzzy holiday read, as are all his works, but the new cast of characters aren't sufficiently well-defined in my head to warm to yet. Additionally, there seems to be some overlap between characters in this latest offering and the Isabel Dalhousie series: another older lady caught in an unexpected romance with a beautiful youth? I also kept getting mixed up between the young men in the book....they're all so unbelievably sensitive and in touch with their inner selves!
I started on Dan Simmons' Children of the Night, but the setting was so dark and bleak (post-Ceaucescu Romania) that it was not consonant with the holiday mood and I once more retreated to dip into the brittle world of Waugh.
On my return home I polished off Gilbert Pinfold and moved rapidly on to Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Shadow of the Wind, which I'd picked up in a Waterstones' three-for-two offer. It would actually have been the ideal book to take on our city-break last autumn, set as it is in the very city we visited, Barcelona.
I have very mixed feelings about this book. I've read a lot of reviews on it since finishing it (to have read them before would have prejudiced me, I feel) and find myself agreeing with most of the views expressed. The characters - particularly the female ones - are thinly padded stereotypes, the protagonist, Daniel, seems colourless and unsympathetic. The character that some reviewers enthused most about (and an equal number hated), Fermin, I found to be a highly irritating caricature of a lecherous cod-philosopher who - if I were Daniel - I'd have dropped quicker than a hot potato. Or punched into unconsciousness and silence. The way Fermin was accepted (and this in the paranoid post-civil war Spain) by the father without murmur or question into the family business was incredible. The 'evil nemesis', the police chief Javier Fumero, was a cartoon villain, who apparently 'giggled'. Indeed, quite often the translation let the book down, with the translator seeming to prefer formal rather than dynamic equivalence, which led to stilted, unbelievable or tortuous phrases. The plotting was confusing, and the lack of colour and differentiation between characters meant that I if my concentration lapsed (as it does if one is tired), I became unsure as to which time-thread I was reading (Daniel/Julian, Penelope/Bea/Nuria).
However, having said all this and despite its faults I actually thoroughly enjoyed the book in the same way that I enjoyed The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson, and found myself looking forward to picking it up and reading it at the beginning and end of each day. What better recommendation is there? It had sufficient atmosphere to immerse the reader in the city, and I felt that this was where this book triumphed, rather than in its characters. It is a good, holiday season book, and I am actively looking forward to reading another of Zafon's books, The Angel's Game, which is similarly set in Barca.
After the Shadow of the Wind, I read The Elegance of the Hedgehog by the French author Muriel Barbery, whom I'd never heard of until I spotted this. Opinions are sharply divided on this book too, people either loving it or hating it in equal numbers, calling it either profound or pretentious. The conceit, that of an socially and emotionally stunted concierge who hides a sensitive, intellectual side behind a drab exterior is quite intriguing if somewhat unbelievable - who'd really have a TV set playing game shows to fool the residents into thinking that one is really dumb? Would it really be worth the effort to buy bland foods to kid the neighbourhood that one had plebian tastes? The characterisation (mostly of unpleasant or deficient people) is satisfyingly well done. For my liking, Renee surrenders her mask somewhat too easily during the course of the book, but the surprising denouement literally had me in tears reflecting that, at the moment of death, our thoughts must inevitably turn to those who we are leaving behind, and to the second death of those loved ones who are kept alive only in the memory of the dying person. I'm not sure what message the author intends to impart. There seems to be a divide: that a person can only blossom in the company of a like-minded soul (and we get glimpses of Renee's ultimate potential in the company of her friend Manuela), and that beauty can only really be appreciated at the moment of its passing. A bit like life, I suppose.
