Dump it

The Women’s Room

By Marilyn French

I couldn’t finish this book, but I count it as an achievement that I made it over half way. By one page. So I won’t waste too much time by outlining why and how I didn’t like it, in case you think that my opinions are half-formed

The simple fact is that this is not a novel. It is a slurry of case studies, jammed together and fictionalised. Even literary novels must have plot, Marilyn, just plot driven by emotion. Here we have plenty of emotion, shoved down our throats like we don’t have enough emotion ourselves, but little or no development. French pulls together all the awful stories of women’s oppression imaginable in Western society and fails to edit them. You end up with (half) a book of testimonies, essentially. Maybe this book therefore had a lot of value in 1977, and maybe it does if you’re reading fem lit from a historical perspective. But in 2011, there’s nothing here. Read a proper story instead.

Imperial leather, perhaps

Imperial Bedrooms

By Bret Easton Ellis

Ellis’s sequel to Less Than Zero is as smooth and luxurious as leather. But, like leather, it also has cracks.

The author’s greatest problem is that cotton-thread of a line he walks between needing his reader to care for his characters, but creating characters that are not at all sympathetic. That didn’t matter so much in LTZ, where awful things happened to the characters, but the purpose of the book was to explore the lack of compassion and sympathy one can have in a world of gratification and ennui. In LTZ, that went for the characters and the reader. In Imperial Bedrooms, however, one can’t help but feel that the story can only really work if the reader gives a crap. The novel is suffused with paranoia (more on this shortly) that the central character is being followed and even threatened. Another character flicks between the role of a bargaining chip and a femme fatale with agency. Either way, we should probably feel something for her, as with our main man Clay. And yet Ellis relies too much in this novel on a style he established in LTZ and perfected since: glossy façade with little feeling underneath.

It is true that there are moments when Clay tells us something profound about, for example, how lonely life in this world can be. And Ellis penetrates this truth as neatly as a surgeon – but, then, he always was able to get to the heart of the matter. However, I was simply not able to care enough. Give me American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman any day – a much more sympathetic character for sure. At least we get under his skin and learn of his madness and can therefore egg him on in all his ghastliness. But this novel is so short that there is no time to understand Clay. It is a sketch, a glimpse, superficial. And in that way it is surprising: Ellis is the writer who understands the shallow depths of the superficial. He’s made a living out of exposing superficiality, and showing us the depths that lie beneath it. In Imperial Bedrooms, he seems to forget this almost completely, and it’s a great shame.

There are those who will talk about this novel as an exemplar of atmosphere. They’ll put it down to the way Ellis establishes a sense of paranoia. It is not half as paranoid – or successful – as it could be. Because he does not give himself time to craft a deeper story, Ellis relies on two very conventional techniques to inspire Clay’s paranoia: anonymous contact and a ubiquitous pursuer in a blue Jeep. These two devices are so overused that Ellis becomes the boy who cried wolf. Without the ratcheting of tension, without closer shaves, without scarier encounters, one becomes de-sensitised by such flaky motifs.

That said, Ellis’s choice to slip in LA noir mode is welcome. His approach is creative and, in many ways, this book is the perfect marriage between two great literary forms native to LA: the overgratified-but-empty analysis Ellis invented with classic noir. He brings these two worlds together in the best way possible. It’s just a shame that Imperial Bedrooms is not the sum of its parts.

Joining the dots

Pirate Latitudes

By Michael Crichton

Death is never fair. And so, the sickle-wielding spectre grabbed Michael Crichton early, leaving him time to drop only Pirate Latitudes on to his editor’s desk. My hopes of a return to a thinking man’s science thriller for Crichton were dashed. He tried it with Next, but that book is not really worthy of categorisation as a ‘novel’. It is a hole in literature.

Just before Crichton died, he turned his attention to pirates. And he’s written what can be described as a competent pirate adventure book. There’s wenches, swashbuckling, treasure, sea monsters, cannon – everything a book in this genre needs. Crichton must have written a big list of all these things and ticked them off as he happily worked his way through this manuscript. In so doing, he’s forgotten about character. I don’t mean to be so naïve as to hope that Crichton would craft a literary novel. But spending some more time developing characters that one cares about is important in any book, no matter what genre. And I don’t just mean characters that I would be happy to know in real life – I can care about the baddies too. The important thing is to make them human, so that when the giant squid attacks their sloop, I feel their anguish.

Pirate Latitudes is, unlike its author, instantly forgettable. It merges with every other genre-based pirate story with nothing to set it apart. It is pirates-by-numbers. A pirate dot-to-dot. Where Pirates of the Caribbean brought us the entertaining Jack Sparrow, Latitudes offers us nothing. Not even a decent title. Quite what those latitudes are remains a mystery. As will Crichton’s thoughts on why he decided to write such a middle-of-the-road adventure book.

Should’ve stayed at home

The Bottle Factory Outing

By Beryl Bainbridge

Although Bainbridge has a canny eye for comedy, I found the characters in this book too clichéd for the humour to work properly. It’s not that I mind satire – if that’s what this is – rather that I don’t like the feeling that an author is holding my hand and pointing out what I should and shouldn’t laugh at. This happens at every turn in this story, and it is at the expense of the characters. I found distasteful the way Bainbridge has created buffoons just to have something to poke fun at.

The character types are too strict: the honourable Italian male, the lecherous Italian male, the shambolic and romantic fat lady, and the uptight doormat woman. By all means the comedic author must rely on some stereotypes. But such an author can create a good book with a strong story only if she shows us something previously hidden about these stereotypes. This is important for creativity’s sake but, moreover, because a good story demands surprise. Or, in the least, change. The characters in this novel react as one would expect them to react, which is usually a good thing in a book, but the reader cannot escape the feeling that Bainbridge has created them thus. Her humour is contrived. She creates, and then points and laughs at what she’s done.

The novel does have some good sides, however. Notwithstanding its cheapness, it is actually funny. Bainbridge can create an amusing set piece very well indeed, with characters arriving just at the right moments for new turns in the elaborate comedic constructions. And, despite the character clichés, there is truth here. It’s unfortunate that the doormat doesn’t have more of a character arc. Her concerns are genuine, and the way they affect her behaviour are spot on. But she learns nothing over the course of the novel; in fact, none of the characters do. That’s it’s greatest failure.