dead europe

It’s been over a month since I finished Christos Tsiolkas’ Dead Europe and I’m still unsure what to think of it.  I’d say it’s really really good, but I can’t explain why. I’d say it is really visceral and revolting, but I don’t mean that in a bad way. I’d tell you it has vampires in it, but I’d hate you to think it’s Twilight.

Dead Europe has two stories running at once. One is narrated by Isaac, a Greek-Australian photographer travelling in Europe. The other seems like a parable or a fairy tale, but is actually the back-story of Issac’s mother. Both of them are filled with horror, the difference being that Isaac’s horror creeps up on him despite his rational new-world outlook, whereas in the back story the horror is tied to superstition and ignorance.

The two stories together cover a lot of ground – World War Two, the end of communism in Eastern Europe, the immigrant experience, the Holocaust, the Greek coups and Junta. Where the book is really successful is that it doesn’t use just one of these, it ties them all together into a kind of pan-European story without losing significance of each, and centering these events on the lives of ordinary people.

As Isaac comes to realise that he is possessed, and doomed, the two stories begin to mesh together, and instead of the pretty picture postcard Europe that an Australian tourist might photograph, the dark festering depths of all of Europe’s history and unresolved hatreds come bubbling up to the surface and can’t be ignored.

This is one of the most interesting things about this book – it directly challenges clichés that most readers and writers actively participate in. Immigrants do not make good in the new country, prodigal sons are not lauded on their return to the old country, Paris and Prague are not pretty and romantic, but grim and cruel.

While I can’t say why, I would strongly recommend this book as a compelling and thought-provoking read, and will leave it to people more coherent than me to say why.

Dead Europe
Christos Tsiolkas
Random House, 2005

american wife

This book has all the ingredients for a saga: a heroine damaged by early tragedy, a dashing hero with a fatal flaw, violence, politics, families, money, abortion, secrets, a lesbian grandmother and obvious parallel to recent events. It could so easily have gone wrong. Curtis Sittenfeld gets it exactly right.

Alice Blackwell, the heroine, is married to a President of the United States, whose presidency, in 2007, is not going very well.  What is keeping Alice awake at night is the fear that she’s done, or will do something that will put his presidency in jeopardy.  The book consists of Alice looking back over her life, searching and analysing what she has done, looking for that unnoticed event that, if revealed, could bring everything crashing down.

Alice is very ordinary – she has no strong opinions about anything, and apart from a short period of tragedy and unhappiness at the end of her highschool years, her life has been unremarkable. However these events have also shaped and informed how she’s lived and are in part responsible for where she is now: First Lady of the US.  While she’s not particularly perceptive, the book manages to use her voice  for a remarkable analysis of class, power, human nature, and politics in America since the 60s.

I found this book really absorbing – it’s well-paced, never boring, clever and full of insight. It combines excellent story telling with a thought-provoking parable on compromise and belief, in a way that’s incredibly subtle.

Highly recommended.

American Wife
Curtis Sittenfeld
Black Swan (2008)

hexaflexagons, probability, paradoxes and the tower of hanoi

I’ve been reading this book over and over for about a month because the mathematical part of my brain isn’t much used any more.  Martin Gardner, the author, wrote a column on mathematical games for Scientific American for 25 years, which provided much of the material for his Mathematical Library, of which this is the first book.

Hexaflexagons has 16 short chapters with a different mathematical puzzle or paradox in each. Some are easier to grasp than others. Some are familiar from high school, some new.  This was an enjoyable book, though hard work – I recommend reading with a pencil in hand because at some stage you’ll want to work things out for yourself. Nerdish fun.

arlington park

Rachel Cusk is known for articulating ambivalence to motherhood.

Arlington Park is no exception.

It’s so bleak that it could be used as contraception.

Other than that it’s a collection of irritating and middle-class people who have dinner parties.

Not recommended unless you’re having doubts about your decision not to breed.

Arlington Park
Rachel Cusk
Faber & Faber (2006)