We need to talk about reading

Reading catch-up for this year:

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Attwood (re-read)

I find it hard to come back to books I have loved reading in my formative years, if only because I'm often dismayed at how simplistic their worldview now seems, or how trite a story I have previously considered groundbreaking. The Handmaid's Tale was neither of these things, I was delighted to rediscover. I got through this book in no time, perhaps because I'm not so well-disposed to men of late. ;)

The Private Lives of the Roman Emperors by Anthony Blond

Not quite as titillating as it sounds. This was rather an adult version of those splending Horrible Histories books they do to get children interested in history and it did the trick with me - there were some really interesting chapters on Roman warfare, their games, Roman food and then the emperors themselves. The author has a fun (though sometimes gratingly informal - referring to people as 'buddies?') tone to his writing.

There was also an unforgivable point where two pages of untranslated French were used to explain Roman cooking. It's all very nice that the author can speak French and also that he lives in a lovely part of France (which he was careful to drop into the book), but really... it struck me as rather snobbish to presume that your average English speaker picking up a quick read on Roman life is expected to also be fluent in French.

 Still, it was an enjoyable read in the main and its enthusiasm for Roman history was infectious. It's almost enough to make me brave going to Rome again. Almost.

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

My friend Anthony has been trying to get me to read this for months. I'm glad he persisted in nagging me to read it; I loved this book, even if it is one of the more shocking novels I have ever read. The story is that of an American mother, Eva Katchadourian, writing a series of letters to her absent husband about their troubled son, who is languishing in gaol for embarking on a school shooting. The twist is that the child, Kevin, wasn't bullied or pushed into it, but that his standoffish mother regards it as a supreme example of his inherently cruel nature.

Shriver neatly sidesteps debate about gun control (to explain why would be to spoil an important aspect of the book) and Eva dismisses Kevin's angst-ridden 'colleagues' with a sneer - this book is not so much about school shootings themselves than the twisted love-hate relationship between a mother and her child.

If the concept seems jaded or weird (as a friend informs me), I think it is more than saved by Shriver's sharp prose. For instance, grief transmuted into art when angry relatives of the dead vandalise the Katchadourian house:

Picking my way to the side door again, I puzzled over how a band of marauders could have assaulted this structure so thoroughly while I slept inside...there were no jeers and howls, no ski masks and sawn-off shotguns. They came in stealth. The only sounds were broken twigs, a muffled thump as the first full can slapped our lustrous mahogany door, the lulling oceanic lap of paint against glass, a tiny rat-a-tat-tat as splatters splattered, no louder than fat rain. Our house had not been spurted with the Day-Glo spray of spontaneous outrage but slathered with a hatred that had reduced until it was thick and savourous, like a fine French sauce.

Or, one simple passage on travelling that really resonated with me and almost choked me when I read it:

I don't believe I ever told you how sorry I was for putting you through all those little deaths of serial desertion, or commended you on constraining expression of your quite justifiable sense of abandonment to the occasional quip.

It's a sharp, often nasty book that doesn't pull punches. It's not perfect, but it's one of the most entertaining and provocative things I have read in a long while. The ending is compulsive.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory

Currently reading. I hope the Mary-Sueish qualities of, er... Mary are toned down later in the book.