Small things like these

It has been a while since I finished reading Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, but I am frequently reminded of the story by all the 'best books of 2022' overviews. These usually contain the novel (or rather; novella) and are generally very positive about it, some saying it should have won the Booker this year instead of the novel that did win (which I can't actually remember at the moment). My experience of the story was quite different, which is why I've decided to honour it with a post such a while after the fact.

I knew the premise of the story way before reading the book; it was in all the reviews. It's nearly Christmas when the coal merchant and protagonist of the story discovers something horrible in the all-girl convent in his small Irish village. He muses on this for a while, then comes to a decision.

And that, really, is the whole story. There are some bits on his past as an orphan, on how the church has shaped the lives of those in the little village, on how you can loose everything by taking one step wrong, and on how his daughters will suffer when he does. These are probably intended to cast a dark shadow across the whole novel, which make the ending a shining path out of this darkness, but for me it never felt that way. The protagonist felt like too much of a decent character, grown up to believe in the goodness of others and the ability to shape his own life to be actually burdened by the expectations of others. The inevitable outcome felt inevitable from the start.

Which made the story to me not that spectacular. Perhaps if I was expecting bleakness or horrors, I would have felt uplifted at the end. But already expecting exactly what did happen, I merely felt disappointed. Was this really everything there was to it? Was this the 'story of hope' that should have won the Booker in these dark times?

I can't really remember any of the exact writing, which isn't a great sign either. The setting was 1986s Ireland, which felt strange to me; descriptions of how people lived felt like they were more at home in the 1950s than the 1980s. I know I found none of the characters remotely likeable, including our dear protagonist. There were five daughters, but they all mingled together, their respective ages and characters blending into one perfect being, safe from all the supposed horrors the story would throw at them. 

It's not that I disliked the story, it just really didn't make any impression at all. Perhaps it is because I haven't grown up in a small town, or under the yoke of an all-controlling church, which makes it hard to relate. As it is, I found the story unremarkable, the setting unbelievable and the characters unlikeable. If this is indeed the best thing to have received a Booker nomination, I will refrain from reading any of the others.

NaNo Days 21 to 29: Winner!

I made it! It took a couple of long evenings writing, but I pulled it off!
Dire measurements were need, though, as the stats page indicated I would not make it if I kept up the pace I had on the 20th. So I set myself the goal of writing at least 2,000 words every day I could write, and writing at least 3,000 days on the weekends. This led to even more crazy roller coaster graphs:

If you count properly, I reached 50k in 20 days rather than 30. I can't remember ever having so few days to actually write on in November, but I didn't realise that it really was only 20 days until I finished this evening. Wow, that makes the result slightly more impressive...

One of the things that saved this NaNo was the World Cup. I like writing with something happening in the background, a sort of constant white noise, as long as it doesn't demand too much of my attention. Football for me is just the thing. I don't really care about the outcome, but it gives me a nice point to rest my eyes on whenever I need to think of where to move the story next.

Not that I had a lot of those moments with this NaNo story. I had planned out the main story points in advance, with all the characters I needed to make the whole come together. About two thirds through I feared I needed another character to flesh everything out enough, but I managed to get there in the end. Just, I might add; I finished at 50,018 words; perhaps the narrowest marging I have ever had over the 50k. But I was so done with writing at this point... Getting 1,667 words in every day is pretty doable, but putting in at least 2,000 whenever you write, with some days getting close to 5,000 words just to catch up again, is like doing small sprints during a marathon; exhausting.

But I made it! And I pretty much like my story! There were some inspired sentences in there, when I felt like was really in the writing flow. There were also some bits where I was just stringing words together, pretty sure I was already done with the topic, pretty sure nothing was gained from saying basically the same thing in yet another slightly different way, but as always with NaNoWriMo, it's not about the quality, it's about the quantity. 

And I got there in the end, even in just 20 days.

NaNo Days 10 to 20: The only way is up

I'm still writing! I just haven't been writing about the writing. But the NaNo'ing is still happening.

Somehow this November has work-wise turned out to be one of the busiest months in a while, which means that I can't find the time to write every day. This has led to more of the roller coaster behaviour on my daily written amount graph:

Yup, those are two days of not writing at all, followed by two days of pretty frantic writing to get back to par. There is also another write-in in there somewhere, where most of my writing group have already achieved 50k or are at least above 40k, whereas I was the one barely making it to the halfway point of 25k during that meeting. They applauded politely. We are group with team spirit.

But, today, for the first time this NaNo year, I managed to get my total word count above the par graph:

I'm at 34k words currently, the par is at a nice round 33,333 today. So not a very big margin. And I expect more work related things in the evenings for the coming week, so keeping up the high numbers might prove difficult still.

So it is hard to find the time to write. But when I do have that, the writing itself still flows easily. I have to struggle with the English vocab sometimes, and I think I am in dire need of adding another character before the story comes to an end, or I'll be left short before the finish line, but all in all the writing itself isn't the problem. If I'd had all the time of the world on my hands, I'd probably have reached the 50k by now.

So that's the good news. The outlook is optimistic, let's see how far I'll get in the final 10 days.

NaNo Days 1 to 9: rollercoaster time!

NaNoWriMo started nine days ago, which means I should be at 15k words if I were writing on par. As of yesterday, I am at a little over 10k. I haven't written today yet, so the number will be closer to the 15 at the end of today. But I thought doing the blog first and the NaNo after meant the blog would actually happen today.
So this year's NaNo has had a bit of a rollercoaster start. There were some days, including November 1st, when I didn't write at all. Then there were some days when I poured out 3k. My average word count per day is somewhere around 1,111 which is a nice number but not the greatest if par is set at 1,667. All of this is reflected in the nice daily word count graph NaNo provides me with:

Yup, pretty big ups and downs.

But when I write, it is easy. I like my story, I like my characters, I can rant on about customer service for 2k words without feeling like I should really be doing something better with my typing. So the NaNo vibe of just pouring out the words and see where they'll get you is happening. I just didn't have the time or space to make it happen every day of November so far.

Given what I've planned for the rest of November, I'm pretty sure this vibe will continue for the weeks to come. As long as there are a couple of really good days where I can put down 3 or 5k, I should be able to make it in the end.

NaNoWriMo 2022

November is creeping up on us slowly but surely, which means it is almost time for the National Novel Writing Month! Apparently last year I forgot (or ignored) all about it, but this year I fully intend to participate and win! I've been wrestling with a story inside my head for a while now, so I thought it might be the thing to try and get a move on for NaNo, but then a completely different thing popped into my head a couple of weeks ago. Since a new shiny idea is always better motivation in the world of NaNo than something you've been mulling over for months, I'll go with the second one. And I may even write it in English!

The only downside is that my laptop has become a bit old and short in battery life. Also, my license to Word was suspended a couple of months ago, so I don't actually have a text editor to write in. But these are all just technical bumps, the main thing is the inspiration, which seems to have hit.
As always, I'll detail my progress here, if and when there is any typing left in my hands! Wish me luck (if only in spirit)!

First Person Singular

I've read a couple of novels by Haruki Murakami, which were enjoyable but never fully understandable. Apart from novels, he's also written a couple of short story collections. Recently, I read his newest; First Person Singular.

Now I generally like short stories. If done well, they have all the fun of a novel, sharp characters, a coherent plot, a punchline ending, condensed in a one hour reading experience. Win-win. However, Murakami's novels are not known for these elements, they are more mystical and meandering and can resolve into absolutely nothing. So I was curious how this would work out.

There are eight stories in total, which are written from the first person singular perspective, as per the title. We never fully find out who these protagonists are, except for one story where he is clearly named 'Haruki Murakami'. Otherwise, we can deduce that the speaker is a middle aged Japanese man, mainly writing about his experiences in the past. These range from his first girlfriend in his teenage years, through his love for baseball and poems he wrote about the sport (poems which translate very poorly into English), to a mystical experience with a talking monkey in a hotel. This is the only story that felt properly 'Murakami-esque' when compared to his novels.

Although there is some structure, none of these stories have a coherent story arch, or theme, or goal. They are the musings of the past, in some cases probably the actual past, as there must be several autobiographical parts in these stories. The language is nice, but as I mentioned before, Japanese simply doesn't translate very well. I had the same issue with Kafka on the Shore, which has several layers of meaning in Japanese due to the characters used, but falls flat in translation.

So in the end, what we're left with is the ramblings of an older man, mainly concerning past relationships or his love for music or sports, without heads or tails. As I read through it, I wondered why this was worth publishing? Because Murakami is a big name, probably. Since he hasn't written any proper novels for a couple of years now, maybe his inspiration has run dry. And there are some philosophical elements in there. But if this was written by a random man of the same age and experience, no publisher would probably ever put this to print. 

The Glass Hotel

While in Portland I bought Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, which I read immediately and enjoyed immensely. At the same time I bought another of her novels, The Glass Hotel, which I saved for later. But with great new authors, later always comes sooner than I expect, so when the weather turned grey I turned towards her fifth novel.

Now Station Eleven is set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future, but The Glass Hotel stays closer to home. We meet a couple of characters, who all at some point find themselves in the same hotel (mostly made of glass) on Vancouver Island. Afterwards they go their separate ways, but their lives remain interconnected less obviously but tied in nicely towards the end of the story.

Now apparently Barack Obama included the novel in one of his recommended reading lists, so it must strike a chord with some people, but it sadly left me a bit underwhelmed. I liked most of the characters, but I couldn't really sympathise with them. Some of them disppeared for long stretches of the novel, which made it unclear who exactly were the main characters. Also, most of them don't get a happy ending, but I wasn't particularly interested in their fates. 

Apart from the characers, the language and writing style were good, but the themes and subjects just didn't really grip me. Two searching millenials, trying to achieve something but at the same time trying to hold each other back doesn't make for happy reading. The most enjoyable part was the collapse of the business of one of the other characters, which is probably not supposed to be the high point of the novel.

I read somewhere that St. John Mandel is working towards an inclusive universe, where all her novels are interconnected and characters can be found in several places, like David Mitchell does in his works. In this novel, the Georgian Flu that wipes out most of the population in Station Eleven is quickly quenced, and we meet a couple of characters from that novel in more detail. However, they didn't strike me as the most interesting characters then, and they weren't that special here. It is a nice touch, but it doesn't give you the surprise element that often happens in David Mitchell novels, where you meet the grandson or best friend of a character from an earlier novel, and a throwaway remark suddenly brings the two together. Here, it was more on the nose, which clashes with her otherwise pretty subtle style.

So all in all, it left me underwhelmed. It is always hard to follow-up on a very good novel, as the recent example of Sally Rooney also proved, so maybe my expectations were just too high. Luckily, St. John Mandel already has a new novel out. The only annoying thing is that I now have these two novels in a specific edition and want to buy all her other novels in the same edition. Which are nowhere to be found. I may have to travel back to the US, possibly even Portland, to locate the right versions...

There but for the

During the summer, my newspaper features writers and the books they love. Most of them included at least one Ali Smith novel on their list. The last one included There but for the, saying it was one of the best novels they'd ever read. I recently read There but for the as well, but I found it the worst Ali Smith novel I've read so far. Not that it was a bad book, it just wasn't as good as her other novels I've read.

There but for the centers around Miles, who while at a dinner party of people he doesn't know locks himself in their upstairs spare bedroom. We never really get to know Miles, as the story is told in four parts by four characters somewhat surrounding him. The four parts start with the words there, but, for and the, which gives you the titel. We could go into a bigger explanation of what that title could mean and how the various words are found in their various parts, but I feel that would be reading too much into it.

So the story contains Miles, but he isn't really a part of it. We never find out why he locks himself into the room. We never find out why he wants to contact one of his friends from a long lost past, who in turn visits the house and meets the other characters of the story. We never find out why he befriended one of the other characters, who was at the dinner party, or why he opens his locked door to character number four. This is what annoyed me the most; we have the central motivator for most of the action, but it never really becomes clear why.

The style is classic Ali Smith, almost stream-of-consciousness reading. I really enjoyed the first two parts, which center around the long-lost friend and the recent friend who brought Miles to the dinner party. I got sort of stuck on the third story, which centered around a very old women who appparently had nothing to do with the rest of the story until suddenly she did. This feels like a trick Ali Smith uses in more of her novels, but in this case I really didn't care for the character. The final part is seen through the eyes of a too-clever young girl who featured in all of the other stories, but it didn't really add too much to the first two parts. 

So all in all, I wouldn't call it her best, but it was an enjoyable read all the same.

Station Eleven

A couple of weeks ago I found myself in the largest independent bookstore in the world (in Portland, Oregon) and despite the weight limit on my already pretty full suitcase, I was determined not to leave without buying a book. I had a list of books that I maybe somewhat wanted, and as I walked past the shelves stuffed with books, I managed to locate all of them. This was surprising in itself, since a couple of weeks earlier a bookstore in London (England) managed to contain exactly zero of the books on the list.

So which to choose, with so much to choose from? 

I will not bore you with my entire thought process, but in the end I walked out with Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel (which actually took the longest to locate, as her name gives you so many options to place it). In the beginning of the pandemic, Station Eleven became a small hit because of its supposed prophetic qualities: we witness a global pandemic that quickly wipes out more than 99% of the world's human population. The novel describes the inevitable steps of food hoarding, the flickering out of the Internet, the beginnings of violence, until not much of civilisation is left

Luckily for us, covid proved to be less fatal than the fictional virus in the novel.

Also luckily for us, the pandemic brought to the limelight this beautifully crafted story, with its clever jumps in time, its well-crafted characters, its philosophical musings and its overarching plot that in the end combines all the threads of the story, all the lives of the characters, to Station Eleven. It is hard to write anything about the story without giving away major plot points. The character I loved best, Kirsten, finds herself some time after the pandemic travelling the world with the Travelling Symphony. They perform Shakespeare and musical pieces to the newly developing hamlets under the motto 'Survival is insufficient'. Just that image, of art being created in a world that is almost devoid of anything that we would call civilisation, is so beautiful. They are haunted by a Prophet and his gang, who proclaim to know the real truth about the pandemic and its cause, another chilling reflection of forces at work during the pandemic's worst times.

I loved every part of this novel, even when things turned very dark. It was one of those books which I wanted to finish to find out how everything connected, but didn't want to be over at the same time. Only the very best books bring this dual longing.

Luckily, I bought The Glass Hotel at the same time. And there are many more to read, including the just published Sea of Tranquility. 

I read somewhere that St. John Mandel is creating an interconnected universe in her novels, with similar characters appearing in different novels. I can't wait to find out how all of her novels are part of this greater world, and how many pieces we can puzzle together while reading.

Wake

After reading Expectation (and finding it much better than I'd expected), I went in search of other novels by Anna Hope. Opinions were pretty divided, but one of her earlier novels Wake seemed to get overall approval and I thought I'd enjoy the subject matter: women in the aftermath of World War I.

It starts with a threefold definition of the title:
Wake: 

1) Emerge or cause to emerge from sleep 

2) Ritual for the dead 

3) Consequence or aftermath

And to be honest, this must have been the most apt title I've seen in a long time, as this in essence is exactly what the novel is about. 

We follow three women: Ada, who lost her son to the War and is now estranged from her husband; Hettie, who lives at home with her brother who returned but is severly damaged; and Evelyn, whose lover was killed in France. Evelyn is the most embittered of the three; despite here posh background she chooses to work for the Pensions Exchange, helping disabled veterans in the best way she can without getting emotionally involved or connected. She finds little joy in life and seems intent on pushing away anyone who tries to get close. Ada is lost in her grief, imagining seeing her lost son on the street and trying to bring back a time that is now utterly lost. Hettie, on the other hand, can't wait for her life to start again, but cannot find the means to break free from the constraints the times put on her. 

The lives of these women are interconnected, although it takes a while for the connection to become clear. Plot-wise, the novel is very clever. The chapters on the women are interspersed with chapters in which the body of the Unknown Soldier is selected and moved to his final resting place in Westminster Abbey on the 11th of November 1920. This appears to be the culmination of the novel, the final day, but as always, life goes on after that. It is all very cleverly done, supported by beautifully poetic language in places.

However there was one thing that greatly annoyed me. The novel appears to be about the lives of these women after WWI, how the war affected them and how they are moving on, but the most impressive part of the novel, the story that has stayed with me in the days after finishing it, took place amongst men, in the fields of France. It is this event that has an effect on all three of the women, so it is obvious it must be included, but it somehow seems to take centre stage in the novel, pushing the stories of those the novel is supposed to be about to the sideline. The men in this scene find some sort of resolution by the end of the novel, whereas some of the women do not experience any 'growth'; they find themselves exactly where they started.

So even though it is beautifully written and well thought out, the way the experiences of the men do appear more important, more meaningful than those of the women, despite the whole goal of the novel being the opposite, annoyed me to no end. It is a missed opportunity in what is otherwise a great novel.

Story of your Life (and others)

A while ago I was talking about the film Arrival with a friend. I recalled how I was moved by the whole experience; the images, the music, the story (and plot twists), without actually really remembering the exact story arch. All I had were some images and a feeling of understanding. This was not helpful in any way when the friend started asking detailed plot questions like 'how did they create visuals for Heptapod B?' I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained that he had been wondering about that ever since he read the story; how one would visualise Heptapod B.
This was when I found out that Arrival is actually based on a short story, 'Story of your Life', by Ted Chiang.

So the next I did was order the collection which contains this story, called Stories of your life and others, a title which I immediately loved due to its many possible meanings. It contains 8 short stories, some of which are really short-shorts, while other could be considered novellas in their own right.

'Story of your life' is by far my favourite; it is also a better story than it ever was movie. Or rather, the two are almost incomparable. I can't really explain without giving away too much of the plot, but in a story, you can move grammatically between the lines in ways that a film never could. A film can contain flashbacks, but they will always be linear to the main story (if we don't count really confusing films such as Memento). And a short story can explain background theory, in this case on how languages work, without it becoming boring or hard to follow. In a film you're stuck with narration, which breaks the suspension of disbelief and often doesn't really add something. Now I can see what they did with the film (which I rewatched after finishing the story), but I prefer the original written version.

Other stories I really enjoyed were 'Understand', where someone turns themselves into a super high-functioning human being, aware of everything and every interconnected event around them. It was tough going on a couple of instances, but a rewarding read when you actually got through it. 'Hell is the absence of God', about a world in which visitations by angels are a common occurrence, around which a whole industry of spotters and followers and support groups and motivational speakers has arisen. This is one of the stories in which the social commentary, which I think is an inherent part of a good SF story, shines through. The same goes for 'Liking what you see: a documentary', in which it is possible to turn off your ability to differentiate between pretty and ugly people. You attach no opinion to for example birth stains or burn marks, but 'see' all people as equal. A great premise to muse on; would you turn your judgement off? How would this effect our lives, our social interactions?

These were the highlight stories for me. There were a couple I didn't really like, especially 'Seventy-two letters', which is pretty long but doesn't really have a proper point (and was confusing in its time setting), and a couple which were nice reads but won't really stick with me for any time to come, like the three stories that are more of a social commentary.

It has been a while since I read SF, at least proper SF, but this was a really nice experience. Reading short stories is also always better than I remember it, so hopefully I'll discover some more proper collections in the months to come.

The Every

I started my reading year in the middle of the dystopian horror that is The Every by Dave Eggers. The Every is the sequel to The Circle, which I read almost 10 years ago, even though it feels just a couple of years ago. Time really flies...
Rereading what I wrote about The Circle, time does not seem to have flown in that universe. In the earlier novel we follow Mae Holland as she enters The Circle, a Google+Facebook media conglomerate. She quickly adopts to its philosophy and immerses herself in its workings. In The Every, The Circle has merged with Amazon into The Every, an even bigger, all-encompassing company that controls not just social media but also warehouses, stores, surveillance, transport and most other things people need to function. We do not know exactly how much time has elapsed between The Circle and The Every, but Mae Holland has become the leading figure at The Every, buying several smaller companies a week and incorporating them into The Every's business model.

In this new novel, we follow another young woman as she enters the company; Delaney Wells. Where Mae was naive and impressionable, Delaney enters The Every with the sole purpose of trying to destroy it from the inside out. We get a little bit of subplot as to why she thinks the Every is destroying people's lives (her parents lost their biological grocery store to an Every store and she was angry about the enforcement of cell phones in the national park where she worked as a park ranger). How she actually intends to do this is less clear; apparently she wants to launch as many intrusive apps as possible, so people will turn against The Every for intruding on their lives.

Other than that, we don't really get to know Delaney herself. Sometimes she too seems swept away with the need to control and record everything, at other times she struggles with the most basic privacy intrusions. She feels for one of her co-workers, Kiki, who is clearly suffering from all the goals she sets herself, but she doesn't do anything to interfere or help Kiki. Apart from these thoughts, we never see any personality traits, no more than we see the outlines of her plan.

With a flat character like this, the story hinges on the plot. Sadly, there isn't much of a plot to speak of either. The first half of the novel consists of all the crazy apps Delaney plants around the company, which are all quickly developed and launched without any resistance from users. In the second half her resolve seems to seep away as her plans all come to nothing, but some sort of plot kicks in as other people start to attack The Every in other ways. All in all, not much of a story.

But still, this novel is haunting. It gives an insight in how these corporations work, but also in how people work. And how this can lead to the horrors people willingly submit themselves to in The Every. The need for security, for knowing where others are and what they think of you, or knowing which goals you can achieve and how to go about reaching them, is universal and very recognisable. If then lawmakers and judges and others who can limit the exponential growth of a company that feeds upon this human insecurity are asleep, or somehow cancelled out (there are several examples of how The Every kills off any resistance in the novel), human nature will fall victim to such a dystopian scenario. That is wat makes this novel so scary; it could all very well become reality. I read somewhere that Dave Eggers was thinking up the crazy apps that Delaney proposes, but that he found out that many of the outrageous ideas he had already exist. Reality was scarier than fiction.

So as a novel, it is not the best. But as a warning, as a red flag against media monopolies and handing over basic human rights for fear of missing out on something, it is almost a must-read.