Reviews
2011 in fiction
Andrew Tate
'We are not suited to the long perspectives ... They link us to
our losses,' claimed Philip Larkin, poet, librarian and all-round
bringer of sunshine. Looking back on the year in fiction scarcely
involves such a risky backward gaze but melancholy hindsight has
been a big feature of novels in 2011.
Julian Barnes's Man Booker Prize winning The Sense of an
Ending, for example, turns on the mysterious ravages of the
ticking clock. Barnes's title is a precise echo of Frank Kermode's
superb, theological 1967 study of 'end determined' literature; both
books are concerned with stories that emerge from devastating
moments of epiphany. 'We live in time . . . but I've never
understood it very well,' reflects the Larkinesque narrator, Tony
Webster. This not-terribly remarkable statement prefaces a wholly
remarkable, gutsy novella; one that evokes everyday regret,
failures of empathy and, ultimately, the human need to be forgiven.
The narrative's brevity is fitting for a piece which crackles
with reminders that our experience of life is fleeting and that
actions are rarely neutral.
A similar mood of twilight retrospection pervades David Lodge's
A Man of Parts. At 576 pages, this sympathetic but
unsentimental re-telling of the long, odd life of H. G. Wells,
might seem like one of the 'loose and baggy monsters' of the
Victorian era. It is also, however, a real return to form for
Lodge.
Alan Hollinghurst - whose last novel, The Line of
Beauty won fiction's most famous prize in 2004 -
also returned to the fray with The Stranger's Child,
another delicate, witty narrative which gained the author yet more
acclaim (but no place, this time on the Booker
shortlist).
Hollinghurst's narrative span - 1913 to 2008 - is very close to
that of Jo Baker's fourth novel. The Picture Book
revitalizes the family saga genre, in a multi-generation story:
from William, a factory boy turned First World War sailor (and
sender of the postcards that form the eponymous album of memories)
to Billie, his great granddaughter, a London-based photographer in
2005. Making sense of the mess of cruelty and progress that is the
twentieth-century is a near-impossible task and faith plays little
obvious place in the lives of Baker's characters. It's fascinating,
then, that The Picture Book should take as its epigraph words from
a book of biblical wisdom: 'One generation passeth away, and
another generation cometh. All the rivers run on to the sea, and
yet the sea is not full' (Ecclesiastes 1: 2, 7).
Echoes of the Bible in literature are older than the relatively
sprightly narrative form known as the 'novel'. The 400th birthday
of the King James Version has prompted a plethora of praise from
people not normally associated with religion. A number of novelists
- including Jeanette Winterson, Stella Duffy (a hit at last
summer's Greenbelt festival), and Toby Litt - are among the 66
writers and 130 actors who contributed to the theatrical cycle
Sixty-Six Books: 21st-century writers speak to the King James
Bible.
The Jewish and Christian scriptures - in whatever translation -
continue to fascinate supposedly secular writers: James Frey has
followed Philip Pullman's recent (ir)reverent
demyth-ologizing of Jesus/Christ with The Final Testament
of the Holy Bible which imagines the Messiah dwelling in
21st-century New York city, angry with the holy, consorting with
the marginalized and engaging in a lifestyle that might raise one
or two eyebrows.
The man of sorrows is also (sort of) central to Richard Beard's
literary transfiguration of Christ's most famous miracle:
Lazarus is Dead is not in the Jim Crace
Quarantine mode of attempting to debunk signs and wonders. Beard,
an experimental writer, fuses techniques of creative non-fiction
with a compelling, imaginative take on miracles and the problem of
suffering. It is as likely to prompt a re-examination of scepticism
as it is of uncritical faith. Highly recommended.
Literary resurrections of a less obviously spiritual kind were
conducted by Anthony Horowitz and Jeffrey Deaver of, respectively,
Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. Deaver's post-War-on-Terror
incarnation of 007 is readable but less atmospheric than Charlie
Higson's page-turning 1930s-set sequence of Young Bond
adventures.
Where Bond and Holmes occupy a fictional realm in which cold
logic and/or being rock hard reign, Ben Aaranovitch's Rivers of
London blends myth and the supernatural with the mundane
reality of police procedure. A kind of Sweary Potter, DC Peter
Grant is the most likeable narrator in recent detective fiction.
The secret of good genre fiction (said somebody smarter than me) is
the creation of a world to which readers wish to return and I'm
looking forward to reading the second book in the series, Moon
Over Soho.
Finally, a genre-bending-and-blending work by the US illustrator
and writer, Craig Thompson. Readers familiar with, for example, Art
Spiegel-man's Maus or Posy Simmonds' Gemma Bovery
will know that graphic novels are no longer the exclusive
domain of vigilantes wearing tights. Thompson - whose previous work
includes the gorgeous, wintry rites-of-passage tale,
Blankets (2003) - has produced the most visually arresting
book of the year. In Habibi delicate Arabic
calligraphy frames a bold narrative of faith and exile, slavery and
the search for freedom. This is a vivid meditation on the risk of
love in a fallen world and an allegory of the shared history of
Christianity and Islam. The image-maker does not flinch from
representing the worst elements of human behaviour but Thompson is
a sensitive, serious writer. Habibi is alert to political
division but seeks its answers in prayer, justice and
mercy.