Bryan Murphy's Blog

The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The 21st Century Witchfinders will have a field day with this novel. The identity politics brigade will excoriate Updike for presenting characters who express casual racism without a second thought or apparent disastrous consequences, whereas the Creative Writing graduates will be horrified by his breaking of Mr King's commandments: all those adjectives and adverbs, as though they added meaning, as though they were a valuable part of the English language! Like the witches of old, he will be found guilty where there is no guilt, no witchcraft. In this age of new, improved puritanism, it is the devil's own job to have satire understood, never mind appreciated. If only there were an afterlife, so that we might catch the sound of the author's spirit cackling fiendishly.



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The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The 21st Century Witchfinders will have a field day with this novel. The identity politics brigade will excoriate Updike for presenting characters who express casual racism without a second thought or apparent disastrous consequences, whereas the Creative Writing graduates will be horrified by his breaking of Mr King's commandments: all those adjectives and adverbs, as though they added meaning, as though they were a valuable part of the English language! Like the witches of old, he will be found guilty where there is no guilt, no witchcraft. In this age of new, improved puritanism, it is the devil's own job to have satire understood, never mind appreciated. If only there were an afterlife, so that we might catch the sound of the author's spirit cackling fiendishly.



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The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This novel is cunningly written for Young Adults. It lures them in with tales of unlikely derring-do for the boys and excruciating soppy romance for the girls, then zaps them with deep philosophical and ethical questions typical of the most ambitious science fiction. If they can handle those, which I expect most of them can, they can do without the lures, and shortening the book judiciously would improve it. (It's almost as though it is being deliberately spun out to provide enough material for a full television series.) If the author ever decides to focus on writing science fiction for adults, memorable works might well result.



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Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Earthlings is a multi-genre extravaganza from the planet Popinpobopia.
It starts as a fable, mixed with a kids' story, then stirs in science fiction, crime and horror, all served up as misery lit.
The narrator seems like an idiot savant: at times stuck in childhood, at times perspicacious about the nature of modern human society, though not nearly as perspicacious as your average sociologist or anthropologist: if only the author or her characters could have read some.
The three main characters deserve and elicit our sympathy, but they are anti-conformists not non-conformists, and so equally shaped by the society they hate as is everyone else.
A happily retired translator is not going to criticise a working translator, so I'll assume the original Japanese version reads as awkwardly as the English version. Fortunately, the narrator's perverse character, the author's story-telling skill and the book's insights into contemporary Japan and its cultural conflicts are enough to keep the reader going until the spaceship arrives.



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Normal People by Sally Rooney

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A book for jaded readers: it will rekindle the joy of reading.
It is a compelling story with fine characterisation, told in splendid prose. A timeless romance and a magisterial social critique. A work that shows the generation gap up for the advertising stunt that it is.
After that embarrassing gush, I fell obliged to pick a few nits.
The chapters are titled by their date and time elapsed since the previous one, yet Rooney often presents in the new chapter events that have occurred during the interval between chapters. (Was Ireland on Airstrip One?)
She sometimes slips in vital events or changes as though they were mere background information. (Has she read too much Carver? She has no need to emulate anyone.)
The ending is somewhat abrupt and inconclusive. Some may feel they have been told a shaggy-dog story. Never was a shaggy-dog story so well told!



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Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


David Mitchell is a great story-teller, and here he uses that talent to sublime effect in a historical fiction recreation of the late 1960s. In the process, he takes a collection of stock characters and breathes life into them.
He is very kind to the real-life people he includes, portraying them first and foremost as dedicated to developing their talents as musicians more than their drug habits. The only jarring note in his evocation of the 1960s concerns language habits: he has English characters using 21st century colloquialisms (e.g. the rhetorical “even” instead of “What on earth” or “What the [expletive]” and “going down” instead of “going on” to mean “happen”) decades before they slipped into Britspeak.
Unfortunately, rather than simply present us with a superb piece of historical fiction, Mitchell tries to link this novel up with other works of his, via the character of Jasper de Zoet, and to do so finds it necessary to weigh the book down with a great lump of frankly stupid fantasy. Ah, well.



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The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The book of the century, so far. Its only flaw is that it is too short.



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The interesting thing about this book is the spoken language it portrays, which is that of young people in today's urban USA. It often baffles me, an ancient Brit, and not just because of its references to objects by their brand names, and leaves me thinking, to adopt the idiom, “Seriously?” This is a good thing, because it means that USAmerican English is continuing to evolve faster than my fellow Brits can keep up with it, leaving them room to help Britspeak evolve through innovation, not just emulation.
Reid's novel is an addition to the literature of identity politics. She seems particularly keen to deny the possibility of love or even friendship between members of different ethnic groups. This conceit, that the racists were right all along (but just misidentified the bad guys) is itself a bad fiction.
The central character is engaging: a passive young woman who from time to time leaps into life when she is egged on or just egged. She ends up stewing in her own juice, alone but with health insurance. The other characters are stereotypes. The plot hinges on a coincidence that defies belief.

From the predictable opening story to the pretentious final story, this volume contains a lot of clever writing. Rarely, though, does it grab you. The bios show that most contributors have experience of university writing courses, which is perhaps a reason for their similarity of approach: I suspect they are tempted to write for each other as much as for the wider public. Perhaps, to cite Ayi Kwei Armah, “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born”.

From the predictable opening story to the pretentious final story, this volume contains a lot of clever writing. Rarely, though, does it grab you. The bios show that most contributors have experience of university writing courses, which is perhaps a reason for their similarity of approach: I suspect they are tempted to write for each other as much as for the wider public. Perhaps, to cite Ayi Kwei Armah, “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born”.