The Borrowed Book Club

Eka Kurniawan's Man Tiger  is (as far as I can recall) my first foray into Indonesian literature, and I have to say that it was a truly sensational start. The novel follows the links between two families in a small, unspecified village in Indonesia, which grow increasingly complex as the novel progresses. That said, the novel's opening line reveals that the boy of the first family, Margio, has just murdered the father of the other, Anwar Sadat, so it's a complicated dynamic from the off. Man Tiger  then goes back over the previous year of Margio and Anwar Sadat's lives, subverting the stereotype of the 'whodunit' crime genre by announcing this in the opening line, and instead using the novel to examine why the murder occurred. This unusual plot dynamic has the potential to have less suspense than a classic crime novel, since the reader already knows what will happen in the end, but for Man Tiger  it actually has the opposite effect. You see these two men goin...

Morrissey So-Famous-I-Only-Need-One-Name's first novel List of the Lost  is nothing short of a tragedy. A tragedy for the publishers who agreed to stroke his inflated ego by allowing it to go to print, a tragedy for readers everywhere who waste precious hours (which seem to drag on) in the valiant effort to finish the novel (if you can call it that - it somehow seems an insult to all other novels to do so), and a tragedy for the plot, which should have been a moving and thought-provoking exploration of love and loss. List of the Lost  follows a four-piece American relay team in the 1970s after they accidentally kill a homeless man. From thereon in, things get progressively weirder, as Morrissey struggles to decide if he is writing a fantasy, a philosophical novel or literary fiction. The entire thing is a mess. A large part of the issue comes from Morrissey's self-indulgent writing style, similar to that of an angsty, precocious fifteen year old who has learned about lit...

Expectations always run high when opening a Ian McEwan novel and  Saturday , his ninth novel, does not disappoint. The novel follows Henry Perowne, a middle-aged. middle class neurosurgeon, through Saturday 15th February 2003, a day of squash matches, altercations, family gatherings, a suspected terror attack and the protests against the Iraq War. Perowne lives in Fitzroy Square, London, near enough to be affected by the protests without being in the middle of them; a metaphor for the unsettled nature of Britain at this time, a time when terror attacks were seen as an inevitable part of the future and war against Saddam Hussein was unstoppable in spite of people's obvious protestations. All of this aside,  Saturday  is a novel about family, literature and science: it centres around a family dinner on the Saturday evening, with all of the complications and dysfunctions that many families face. McEwan uses a third person yet limited narrator, meaning that the reader le...

The Perks of Being a Wallflower,  Stephen Chbosky's first novel, is an epistolary tale of Charlie's first year at high school in which he writes to an unknown 'friend' about his struggles. It is unsurprisingly full of the angst that is archetypal of its genre, as Charlie develops from a lonely 'wallflower' into the more confident friend of two seniors, Sam and Patrick. That said, Perks  also deals with some serious issues that seem to increasingly affect young people internationally such as mental health problems, suicide, abuse and drug use. Each of these is dealt with in a highly believable fashion, and Chbosky seems to understand many of the issues that contemporary teens are facing. It is therefore unsurprising to discover that Charlie is loosely based upon a teen version of Chbosky, and that during the five year period it took him to create the novel, his aim was to respect, validate and celebrate teenagers' experiences. One of the most interesting...

Peter Gumbel's second published essay, They Shoot Schoolchildren, Don't They? ( On achève bien les écoliers ), is a carefully worded, thoroughly researched indictment of the French education system. Gumbel, an English journalist, academic and father of two children going through the French education system, has lived in Paris for 14 years and certainly does not hold back but, equally, does not come across as being excessively critical, as each of his ideas is supported by a great deal of evidence. Gumbel's main criticism of the system is its focus on students' nullité (worthlessness) and échecs scolaires (academic failures) - the entire system is based upon what are widely-regarded as old-fashioned styles of teaching, in which humiliation of failure is prioritised over encouragement of progress. I have experienced both teaching approaches at various times in my life, and I must confess that there is merit to both of them. However, while a nurturing approach encour...

Gil Courtemanche's first novel A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali  is a startlingly frank portrayal of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. It tells the story of one couple, Bernard Valcourt and Gentille. Valcourt is a middle-aged journalist from Canada, living in Rwanda to create a documentary about AIDS (a semi-autobiographical version of Courtemanche), while Gentille is a beautiful young Hutu Rwandan with distinctive Tutsi features who is a waitress at the Mille Collines Hotel, where Valcourt and many other expats are staying. The pair marry, adopt their friends' now orphaned child and are trying to escape from the Hutu massacre of Tutsis and their sympathisers when the two are separated.  In Courtemanche's preface, he establishes and defends the legitimacy of his novel, based on real people (and almost always using their real names) and real events, which have been used to create a realistic retelling of the genocide, where Courtemanche has only 'taken the liberty of inv...

The minute you open any one of Jonas Jonasson's novels, you know it. His third novel, Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All , is no different, including his trademark style: a funny yet improbable plot with unlikely heroes, with a detached, understated and self-aware third person narrator. The plot is based around three central characters: Johanna Kjellander, an atheist priest who has just been kicked out of her parish, Per Persson, the homeless receptionist of a brothel that has turned into a one-star hotel, and Hitman Anders, an ex-hitman who is now hired out by various members of the Swedish underworld to break the bones of other members of that same underworld. When the three collide in rather unexpected circumstances, a great plan is hatched: Per and Johanna use the tabloids' love of scandal to promote Anders' 'skills' and cash in on his exploits. However, when Anders finds Jesus and decides to give up that line of work entirely in search of the meaning ...

The Auschwitz Violin is Maria Àngels Anglada's most famous work, which was translated from its original Catalan only six years ago, following its original publishing in 1994. The bulk of the novella takes place in Auschwitz, with the beginning and ending establishing and concluding the story in 1991 Sweden. Daniel was a violin maker, or luthier, prior to his imprisonment, and when the Kommandant, who has a penchant for classical music, discovers this he orders Daniel to make him a violin of the finest quality. However, there is a twist, as Daniel discovers a bet has been made: if he succeeds in making the violin within an unknown time limit, the Kommandant will win a case of red wine. If he does not, the camp 'doctor' wins Daniel to experiment on. The novella is pacy and unpredictable, with genuine documents from the concentration camps used at the beginning of each chapter lending a tone of authenticity - the contents of the novella could have happened, but are not ba...

Originally intended to be a genuine travelogue, Jerome K. Jerome's humorous  Three Men In A Boat  tells the story of a boating holiday of three men and a dog on the Thames. The account was initially inspired by Jerome's honeymoon with his wife, and is now attributed with contributing to the growth of the Thames as a tourist attraction due to its widespread success. It has not been out of print since it was first published in 1889, and The Guardian ranked Three Men as number 33 in its list of the Greatest Novels of All Time, and Esquire as the second funniest book ever.  Unfortunately, my experience of Three Men contrasted enormously with the expectation given by all of these statistics. The lack of a plot description in my opening paragraph is simply due to the novel's inherent lack of plot - it quite literally logs the men's trip down the Thames, regularly inserting a variety of anecdotes. This mix between travelogue and anecdote, both personal and historical, cre...

Reviewing a play you have read and not seen is something of a challenge, as you try to picture what would be on stage from the (often limited) stage directions and the script itself. Oscar Wilde's renowned 'A Woman of No Importance' is no exception, as a four act satire of the British upper classes in the late 19th century with multiple characters and intertwining plot lines makes it more complicated than many other plays. The first three acts of the play are set in Lady Hunstanton's estate as she hosts a dinner party where Gerald Arbuthnot, a bastard, is offered a position of importance, his parents come face to face for the first time in his lifetime, and Hesther, a Puritan who is visiting from America, is shocked by the outdated and stifling nature of the British aristocracy. In the final act, the clash between Gerald's parents escalates further, as does that between British and American values, before a neat resolution is created with a banishment and an e...

Nikolai Gogol is a celebrated 19th century Ukranian-Russian author, who produced a wealth of fiction during his lifetime. The Nose  is one of his short stories, and follows 'Major' Kovalyov, a Russian official who wakes up one day to find his nose is missing from his face. There is no sign of it having been forcefully removed, and as Kovalyov heads to the police station, with a handkerchief over the space where his nose should be, he sees his nose masquerading as a councillor, quite unnoticed by other passers-by. The story continues in a similarly ridiculous fashion as Kovalyov attempts to get his nose back. Eventually it is found, and one day Kovalyov wakes up to find that it has reattached itself, allowing him to recommence his normal life. This satirical and fun short story can be seen as a precursor of sorts to magical realism, as it intertwines fantastic elements with an otherwise realistic narration. The story's Russian title Nos ( Нoc) is the reverse of the Russ...

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer  is German author Patrick Süskind's most renowned novel, translated into 25 different languages with millions of copies sold worldwide. Having read Perfume , I can easily see why as it is quite unlike any other novel I have ever read. Set in 18th century France, Perfume follows Grenouille, an orphaned boy, from the moment of his birth to the moment of his death. Grenouille is remarkable for his sense of smell, which is fantastically heightened to mean that he can identify any smell, no matter how indistinct or clouded with other scents it is, and remember it forever. His other remarkable trait is that he bears no personal odour, meaning he often passes unnoticed. Throughout the novel Grenouille knows no love and shows no love, except for particular scents, but his desire to obtain the perfect scent leads him to a series of murders as he creates the best manner of preserving the an individual's scent. This culminates in him murdering the girl ...

Karen Wallace's 'Wendy' is inspired by J.M. Barrie's children's classic 'Peter Pan', focusing on the Darling children before their encounter with Peter. However, the world that Wallace creates is barely recognisable as that of Barrie's Darlings aside from the Edwardian setting and the characters' names. The novel acts as an exposé of the family, as Wendy accidentally stumbles upon her father having an affair, causing the world as she knows it to change forever. Shortly after this, the children go to stay with their childless aunt and uncle, who live in the countryside. While they are away, their father knocks some people over with his motor car during a Suffragette protest and his picture makes the front page of the paper, meaning that he loses his job and turns to drink, leaving his family caught up in debt and scandal.  Without the tenuous link to 'Peter Pan', 'Wendy' would be far more credible as a novel as it carries its own...