The Teleportation Accident

History happened while you were hungover.

 

When you haven't had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.

 

If you're living in Germany in the 1930's, it probably isn't.

 

But that's no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with cosmic evil that claimed the life of his hero, the great seventeenth-century stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can't, just once in a while, get himself laid.

 

 

I am a sucker for beautiful covers and Ned Beauman's The Teleportation Accident happens to have a cracking cover.  When I finally managed to stop staring and open the book to read the first page, I was worried. Was Beauman's second novel going to be a verbose waffle, trying too hard to be what a Man Booker Prize longlisted book should be?  He certainly had me going for a while...and then it became funny.  Not small laughs either, but proper out loud, I have to repeat what I've just read to everyone I can find, funny.  Beauman had me hooked at 'Tassels on Tassels on Tassels on Tassels' and my worries about not understanding a thing melted away. 

That's not to say that The Teleportation Accident is just a barrel of laughs.  It's frustratingly bonkers and that's down to the lead character.  Loeser is pretty much a loser.  He could have been an Ian McEwan character, for he is totally, unequivocally selfish.  He's completely oblivious to events outside of his own small world, including the impending WWII, and only cares about his ever decreasing sex life.  Loeser only starts to look like a better human being when he is in the company of the other demented characters that populate this weird world. 

There's a haphazard nature to the book, in the way that Loeser keeps falling into trouble, but at the same time Beauman makes sure that everything that happens stays interconnected and relevant to the core story.  I also found that just because the setting and the year changes, it doesn't mean the story or Loeser will, turning The Teleportation Accident into a bizarre version of groundhog day. 

The ending, while wrapping everything up, is still a bit WTF?!? but after I finished I realised how glad I was I kept reading even though I wasn't keen on the first few pages.  It makes me wish that more of this sort of fiction would find a way onto the Man Booker Prize longlist/shortlist each year, proving that intelligent reads don't always have to be uptight and dreary.

Sweet Tooth

Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed for the intelligence services.  The year is 1972.  Britain, confronting economic disaster, is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terroism and faces its fifth state of emergency.  The Cold War has entered a moribund phase, but the fight goes on, especially the cultural sphere.
Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is sent on a 'secret mission' which brings her into the literary world of Tom Haley, a promising young writer.  First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man.  Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life?  And who is inventing whom?  To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage - trust no one.

  While Sweet Tooth is not my favourite Ian McEwan novel - Atonement holds that title - I still enjoyed reading about Serena Frome and her time at the CIA in the 1970's.  So far, all of the characters that I have encountered in McEwan's books have interesting jobs but are messes as human beings, making them hard to emphasise with, but McEwan has a brilliant way of manipulating the story that you want to follow these selfish and sometimes despicable people further into their story.  Although I found the narration a little 'off', I enjoyed reading about Serena whose faults include, but are not limited to, being too proud and self involved.  She is a product of her time and upbringing, stumbling through, and is always identified through what men think of her.  When reading, I had this feeling that if the book was told from another character's perspective it would be something completely different because of Serena's selfish nature, only seeing what she wants to. 

  As with a story about spies there is a lot of duplicity. Serena's job at MI5 is just a mask for her love of literature, as the M15 elements of the book are are mask for the meta musings on literature.  I especially found the ending fascinating, and really clever, as it gave me a new perspective on the novel as a whole.

Enduring Love

One windy spring day in the Chilterns, Jose Rose's calm, organised life is shattered by a ballooning accident.  The afternoon, Rose reflects, could have ended in mere tragedy but for his brief meeting with Jed Parry.  Unknown to Rose, something passes between them - something that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Rose's beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.

 

Enduring Love didn't capture my attention, much to my dismay.   I have loved reading every other Ian McEwan book that I could get my mitts on (Attonement, Saturday, Amsterdam, Sweet Tooth, Solar) but I couldn't continue reading this tale of obsession for any prolonged amounts of time.

  Maybe I have been in an odd mood for the past week, or maybe I found the
prose alienating. Rose rattles on like an elitist madman about his scientific
beliefs for much of the book. I know this was supposed to add to the confusion
and cement Rose as a character but I was only interested in finding out who was
the madman - Rose or Parry? - and couldn't really engage with Joe and his
plight. This is odd, as normally McEwan can make the most detestable characters
readable and interesting. I'm not denying that Enduring Love is a good read, it just wasn't a good read for me.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Totchili, a young Mexican boy, loves hats, samurai, and really wants a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus for a pet.  It is through his unique, yet sometimes obscure, observations that reveal Totchili does not have a normal family. 

 Villalobos has constructed a complete and fascinating world within only 70 pages.  In Totchili, Down the Rabbit Hole has a clear voice that leads the story into grey areas without losing focus of how a young boy would act, for example,  if he found out that his father had been lying to him.  An extremely enjoyable, quick, read that definitely deserves more than one reading.

The Week Ahead 25/06

I have a confession to make: I'm running behind schedule.  I finished Down the Rabbit Hole, went to start Open City, and somehow got caught up with Louis Theroux and his Call of the Weird.  Therefore, I've tried to reduce the list this week with books I have already made an attempt at reading, so I can try and catch up.

First up is Tender Morsels.  I've had this for a while after seeing it in a 'fairytale twists' display in Waterstones Norwich, and started it a month ago, but couldn't gain any momentum when reading, and ended up passing it over for other books. This week is Tender Morsels last chance to impress me before it has to be returned to the library.


In her inspired re-working of the fairy tale Snow White and Rose Red Margo Lanagan has created characters that are vivid, passionate, flawed and fiercely devoted to their hearts' desires, whether these desires are good or evil.  It is the story of two worlds - one real, one magical - and how, despite the safe haven her magical world offers to those who have suffered, her characters can never turn their backs on the real world, with all its beauty and brutality.

Next is Atonement.  I saw the film when I was at University, with no knowledge of Ian McEwan,  and then separately started reading other McEwan books (I read Saturday in conjunction with my Modernism and the City module and last year I read and reviewed Solar).  As there was a copy available in the library, I thought, why not?

On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briny Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house.  Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge.
  By the end of that day the lives of all three will have been changed for ever.  Robbie and Cecilia will  have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination.  Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

Finally, a change from novels I ordered Jo Shapcott's Of Mutability, which happens to be part of the Summer Reads Program '12.

In a series of fresh, unflinching poems, the author movingly explores morality and the nature of change: in the body and the natural world, and in the shifting relationships between people.  By turns grave and playful, arresting and witty, the poems in Of Mutability celebrate each waking moment as though it might be the last, and in so doing restore wonder to the smallest of encounters.



Happy Reading, and here's hoping I don't fall behind. x

Angelmaker

Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker is an astounding piece of literature, that includes but is not limited to:
lesbian spies, mechanical bees, undertakers, a villain that wouldn't look out of place in a Bond movie, rivalries and J. Joe Spork.
  Joe is a humble clock maker, who intends to live his life on the straight and narrow, unlike his criminal father.  This plan goes to pot after he is sent to a strange town to inspect a strange device, and he becomes entangled with a rivalry and plot to destroy human kind that has lasted decades.  With plenty of meanderings throughout what seems like a complex ,and yet once deconstructed totally simple, plot Angelmaker is hilarious, sombre, sad, and baffling all at the same time.  The size of the hardback may be intimidating, and the first few chapters are perhaps not the page turners that the rest of the book turns out to be, but trust me, Angelmaker is bonkers, and that's why it is brilliant.