Tag Archives: Racism

Book review

Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell, 2019

Another ‘popular science’ read. I had previously bought but was unable to read Gladwell’s highly successful Blink, a study of what he termed the ‘adaptive unconscious’. It’s not that I didn’t finish it – it just never got to the top of my to-be-read pile, and is probably still lurking at the back of a bookcase somewhere. So my selection of Talking to Strangers was in part a strange form of apology – I may not have read your earlier book, but I will make up for it with this one. Another reason for this choice was that the title was encouraging – the ability to talk to strangers is a important skill that comes easily to some but causes angst and distress to others, and it would be good to know more about it.

I shouldn’t have worried because the title is misleading – the book is not a how-to guide on speaking to unfamiliar people, but about what happens when people talk to one another for the first time, the different assumptions and mistakes people make when dealing with those that they don’t know. Obviously the mistakes continue even when we know the people quite well – but I suppose “Talking to People” wouldn’t have made as interesting a title. Gladwell has a relaxed anecdotal style. He draws examples from all over the place (although with admittedly an American emphasis) – Cuban spies, dodgy sports trainers, Adolf Hitler, Bernie Madoff, and Amanda Knox, to name just a few. Whether these anecdotes cohere into an overall narrative or line of argument is debatable. My impression at the time was that they were just interesting stories stitched thinly together without a consistent thread. That’s not to say the stories and the analysis aren’t interesting, just that at the end of the book we really can’t say we know that much more about how to talk to strangers. Often the points made are unremarkable – of course we aren’t as good at telling when people are lying as we think we are; of course some people are better liars than others, and of course social norms are important when assessing behaviour.

The book opens and closes with an analysis of the case of a young American woman, Sandra Bland, stopped by the police for a minor traffic violation. Gladwell tries to work out why this routine stop went so badly wrong that it ended up with Bland being arrested and jailed, where three days later she tragically ended her life.

One of Gladwell’s main themes is the ‘default to truth’, our tendency to assume the person we are speaking to is being honest. There are obviously good evolutionary reasons why we trust more than we are suspicious, not least the need to cooperate with one another for common, social enterprises. Gladwell isn’t suggesting the default to truth is a bad thing – just that we need to be aware it happens. Sadly in the Sandra Bland case it did not. The officer did not assume she was telling the truth – quite the opposite in fact. Gladwell argues that the reason this routine traffic stop went the way it did was because the officer had been trained to a) aggressively stop everyone he possibly could, because criminals drive cars, and b) to interpret normal behaviours such as irritation and nervousness as indicators of guilt – guilt about what isn’t clear. But what is almost completely missing in Gladwell’s analysis is any recognition of the role of racism in the Bland case, because almost inevitably Sandra Bland was black. I say almost because the idea that she was treated differently because of her skin colour is raised only to be quickly discounted. It is hard to look back at that traffic stop now since the murder of George Floyd and not make the case for the arrest of Sarah Bland as being part of the systematic attack upon African-American citizens by the state.

This is a book designed to make the reader feel well-informed without learning much other than a series of anecdotes. Here’s an example of the level of analysis in the book:

“The first set of mistakes we make with strangers—the default to truth and the illusion of transparency—has to do with our inability to make sense of the stranger as an individual. But on top of those errors we add another, which pushes our problem with strangers into crisis. We do not understand the importance of the context in which the stranger is operating.

That’s a distillation of some of the central concepts in the book – “we do not understand the context in which the stranger is operating”. Really? That’s it?

There is an excellent demolition of the book in the Atlantic if you want to read more along these lines. One of the very perceptive points made in this article is that readers come to consider Gladwell’s books as:

“the high-journalism version of Bond or Bourne movies, breakneck adventures that take us on a tour of exotic intellectual locales. He introduces us to historical oddities, revisionist interpretations of the past, the frontiers of social science, the backstories behind recent headlines, all strung together along a single provocative thesis.”

This is the approach used in Talking to Strangers – with the difference here that the provocative thesis goes missing, leaving us with a disjointed series of anecdotes. It’s an easy read, but not one of those popular science books that is going to change the way I look at the world in the way that the best of the genre can do.

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Book review

A Town Like Alice, by Nevil Shute, 1950

In the early 1950’s the world was full of survivors. Everyone had their own story about the second world war. Many people just wanted to get on with their lives. The UK was being rebuilt and a very different world was emerging. Some people didn’t like the direction the UK was going and decide to start new lives in Australia. A Town Like Alice is Nevil Shute’s response to that period and process.Alice

Jean Paget, a secretary in a leather goods factory, inherits a substantial legacy from her uncle. The money is put in trust until she is 35 – her uncle did not believe young women could be trusted with large sums of money – and it is managed by her solicitor, the novel’s narrator. Jean decides to use her windfall to repay the kindness shown her during the war by some Malay villagers, by building them a well. Jean is aware that the burden of manual work falls upon the women villagers, and she wants to lighten their load, describing the well as “a gift by women, for women”.

This idea leads to an extended flash-back in which she recounts her experiences in the war as a prisoner of the Japanese forces. She leads a group of women and children who are marched across the Malayan countryside. This route-march leaves many of the elderly and children dead of starvation, disease, and exhaustion. During this exodus, based on a true story, Jean meets an Australian soldier, Joe Harman. Joe is also a prisoner of war. He drives a lorry for the Japanese and wants to help Jean and her group. He steals food and medicines for them, but is caught and in a form of punishment said to be widely used by the Japanese he is crucified. The women are marched out of town to their next destination, believing that he is dead.

Back in the present, the well is built, and during its construction Jean learns Joe did not die. She travels to Australia to find him. She visits Alice Springs, the ‘Alice’ of the novel’s title, and is struck by the high quality of life there. (There is a constant emphasis in all her conversations with Australians about the poor rationed diet in the UK. Every meal Jean eats is opulent in the extreme. Shute is trying a little too hard to stress the riches of Australia). She journeys on to Willstown in the Queensland outback, where Joe is manager of a cattle station. Willstown is a shocking contrast to Alice – poor, struggling, almost deserted, with only one general store and a bar. The weather is always stiflingly hot. Joe meanwhile has been on his own journey to find Jean, travelling to the UK to find her once he realises she is single (she carried a toddler when they met, the surviving child of one of their party, so he assumed she was married. Despite Jean bringing this child up for three years he is handed back to his father and the end of the war and heard from no more.)

The third section of the novel records Joe and Jean’s relationship and marriage, and Jean’s attempts to turn Willstown into a ‘town like Alice’. She uses her legacy, which originally derived from gold-prospecting in Australia, to bring life back to the town, opening a small leather goods factory, an ice cream bar, and a number of other businesses. The novel closes three years on with the expansion plans coming along nicely, with Willstown flourishing.

In some respects Alice is a fairly progressive novel. The lead female character is strong and independent, demonstrating that her uncle’s concerns about women’s ability to make business or financial decisions were unfounded. She deals with the trauma of the war in a no-nonsense manner. The Japanese are portrayed as largely honourable soldiers, with the guards helping to carry the children among the party during their long journey. Shute also makes a persuasive case for inward investment into Australia, positioning it as a return for the use of the country’s resources.

But elsewhere the novel’s attitudes towards racial issues will be to a modern sensibility. Aborigines are described using pejorative, insulting terms. They only speak pidgin English, and are given menial jobs suited to what the author appears to believe is their limited intelligence. Aborigines and white people are segregated even in the consumption of ice-cream – Jean’s ice-cream bar has separate rooms for while and aborigine customers. A mixed race marriage is described as a source of humiliation. The earlier war section of the novel is more progressive in its description of racial characteristics. Jean adopts Malay ways of dressing and behaving because they are suitable to her situation, and is quick to abandon expat attitudes and behaviours, particularly the assumption of superiority. She bargains with a Malay village leader citing the Koran to make her point and offering to help with the rice cultivation. It is interesting that Joe behaves differently towards Jean when she is wearing Western dress – he can’t touch her – but when she puts on a sarong she is left bruised by his ‘ardour’.

At its heart Alice is an optimistic book – the war leaves its mark on survivors, in Joe’s case quite literally – but they come through it into a period of prosperity where technology and modernisation holds all the answers. If only Australia’s problems were really all that simple.

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Book review

Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1912

Tarzan of the Apes is unquestionably pulp fiction, but it is also great fun, if you can stomach the appalling colonialist attitudes. Tarzan has become one of those archetypal characters from fiction – Dracula, Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes – with a life far beyond the confines of their original story. Rice Burroughs went on to really milk the most possible value from the original success of his story of the ape-man, with around 25 sequels including Tarzan and the Foreign Legion and Tarzan at the Earth’s Core to name just a couple.

I am sure you know the bones of the Tarzan story. Newly-wed Lord Greystoke, an English aristocrat and his young wife are marooned on a deserted African shoreline following a mutiny by the crew. Here they create a mini-Eden, building a thatched hut with all-mod cons. Lady Greystoke gives birth to an heir, only to succumb to a fit of the vapours following a lion attack. Lord Greystoke quickly follows his wife, leaving young Tarzan to be adopted and brought up by the apes of the jungle. Interestingly these are not gorillas – Rice Burroughs is very specific on that point. This (invented) species of ape bears many similarities to the gorilla, but can speak a primitive language. Tarzan grows up among them, acquiring his physical prowess. He also discovers his parents’ hut and his father’s knife, which allows him to win a series of battles with the alpha-males in his troupe, as well as other beasts, finally becoming king of the jungle.

In parallel Tarzan teaches himself (improbably) to read and write and discovers more about his ancestry and the world beyond his jungle. Rice Burroughs was obviously taken with the idea of white people being marooned on the coast of Africa by mutinous sailors, because he re-uses this plot-device to introduce Jane Porter, lovely young American heiress, her eccentric father Professor Porter, and her suitor Clayton, Lord Greystoke. Yes, another Lord Greystoke, Tarzan’s cousin, has pitched up on the same shore in the same manner, twenty years on. This sums up the laziness of Rice Burroughs writing. Why bother inventing a new plot device when there’s a perfectly good one available that is only 15 chapters old?     

You won’t be surprised to hear that this novel is profoundly racist. The African natives Tarzan encounters are uncivilised, superstitious cannibals and they are wiped out by the French sailors towards the end of the novel without compunction.  Jane’s maid, Esmerelda, is a cliched American  lawks-a mercy caricature, always using clumsy malapropisms in a very unfunny manner and fainting every few minutes. The novel appears to accept an evolutionary link between man and beast, but the natural order in which white men are superior to dark-skinned men and beasts, and aristocratic white men are superior to all, is insisted on throughout.

Only in the novel’s portrayal of sex is there any hint of transgression. When Jane is first kidnapped by one of the apes, it is made explicitly clear that he intends to rape her.

“The tribe had kept his women. He must find others to replace them. This hairless white ape would be the first of his new household, and so he threw her roughly across his broad, hairy shoulders and leapt back into the trees” (Chapter 19)

Jane’s response to Tarzan when he rescues her is intensely sexual.

Jane—her lithe, young form flattened against the trunk of a great tree, her hands tight pressed against her rising and falling bosom, and her eyes wide with mingled horror, fascination, fear, and admiration—watched the primordial ape battle with the primeval man for possession of a woman—for her.

As the great muscles of the man’s back and shoulders knotted beneath the tension of his efforts, and the huge biceps and forearm held at bay those mighty tusks, the veil of centuries of civilization and culture was swept from the blurred vision of the Baltimore girl.

When the long knife drank deep a dozen times of Terkoz’ heart’s blood, and the great carcass rolled lifeless upon the ground, it was a primeval woman who sprang forward with outstretched arms toward the primeval man who had fought for her and won her.

And Tarzan? He did what no red-blooded man needs lessons in doing. He took his woman in his arms and smothered her upturned, panting lips with kisses. For a moment Jane lay there with half-closed eyes. For a moment—the first in her young life—she knew the meaning of love.

Note Jane’s response is in part to Tarzan’s muscles, but also to his violence, and she goes to him – indeed springs towards him. This would have been titillating to Rice Burrough’s Edwardian audience. This is not a novel for nice young women, but an adventure story for frustrated young men. The erotic emphasis on Tarzan’s musculature is relentless.

A feeling of dreamy peacefulness stole over Jane as she sank down upon the grass where Tarzan had placed her, and as she looked up at his great figure towering above her, there was added a strange sense of perfect security. As she watched him from beneath half-closed lids, Tarzan crossed the little circular clearing toward the trees upon the further side. She noted the graceful majesty of his carriage, the perfect symmetry of his magnificent figure and the poise of his well-shaped head upon his broad shoulders.

What a perfect creature! There could be naught of cruelty or baseness beneath that godlike exterior. Never, she thought had such a man strode the earth since God created the first in his own image.

However I am not sure how transgressive this actually is – while sexual activity between a young woman and a jungle man would have been taboo, we are never allowed to forget Tarzan’s aristocratic origins.

If you enjoy reading origin stories out of a sense of curiosity (in what way does the popular culture version of the character differ from the original?) Tarzan will keep you diverted for a couple of hours, but I doubt few if any readers will feel compelled to read any further in Tarzan’s adventures, which I suspect are simply reiterations of this template.

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Book review

Patronising Bastards, by Quentin Letts, 2017

Quentin Letts is a sketchwriter for the Daily Mail, a UK newspaper characterised by two predominant emotions- fear and hatred.  (The Mail is frightened of, and therefore hates, difference and change. It hates foreigners, the EU, the BBC, socialists, liberals, remainers, health and safety, and political correctness. It loathes Jeremy Corbyn. So it is hardly surprising that this rambling collection of short essays is dominated by hatred of the above.

Letts had a modest amount of success with an earlier book, 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain, and this is just more of the same – a series of sketches loosely connected by the theme of people whom Letts finds patronising, although ‘people I disagree with” would be a more accurate summary. His targets range far and wide, and there is a random feel to attacks that span Nicholas Serota, Bob Shennan, an obscure radio programmer who had the temerity to move one of Letts’ favourite programmes, Richard Branson, Ian McEwan, Sandi Toksvig and Sir Ivan Rogers. No, I hadn’t hear of him either.

It is entirely understandable that Letts would use hyperbole as his go-to technique. Part of the problem with this book as he really doesn’t have any other way of approaching his subjects – the people he writes about are all mean patronising bastards, and there’s little if any light and shade in his portraits.

Personal insults abound. Obama is described as “feted mainly for being black” which is openly racist as far as I am concerned, Camila Batmanghelidjh is described as “that” (ditto, and sexist for good measure), Dame Judi Murray is a “great cow walrus“, and so on. Dame Vivienne Westwood must really have upset Letts at some point, because he is appalled when she revealed that she went commando to Buckingham Palace one time, saying “Sorry about the swarm of bluebottles, your Maj“. Yes, that’s right isn’t it Quentin, women’s genitals attract flies don’t they? Elsewhere she is “gurning termagant“. He describes Sandi Toksvig and “Sir Sandi” and Gary Lineker as “Dame Gary”. See what he did there – deliberately confused their gender to make fun of them. Hold my sides.

One of the persistent characteristics of Brexiteers is their tendency to portray themselves as outsiders, anti-establishment figures campaigning for the little man. Letts doesn’t really fit that bill (neither does Nigel Farage of course). He has written for The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and The Times, amongst others. He was educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College, Bellarmine College, Kentucky (now Bellarmine University), Trinity College, Dublin, and then studied Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1982–86) at Jesus College, Cambridge, taking a Diploma in Classical Archaeology. Quite the outsider!

Given all this it was a bit disturbing when I found myself agreeing with one of Letts’ observations on the cultural significance of Church of England hymns. It wasn’t a particularly political point, but he writes well on the importance of hymns in our cultural history and collective experience. The essay itself is spoiled by the tantrum that someone had the temerity to move his favourite programme – an arguable decision perhaps, but a long leap from patronising bastardy.

It’s always good to read books and writers you disagree with, I would be the first to accept that. As a left-leaning, remain-voting, blog-writing southerner I need to better understand why people voted remain, (although I still struggle to improve on Stewart Lee’s take on the situation. I can’t link it here because it is nsfw but google it). Did I come through the ordeal of reading Patronising Bastards with a better understanding of that perspective? Sadly no, because the level of personal abuse clouded almost any effort at constructing a coherent argument. Which was a pity, because 17.2m people can’t all be racists?

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Book review

Black Mischief, by Evelyn Waugh, 1932

In many of my previous reviews I have struggled to respond to texts that either contain offensive language – that use racially insulting terms, that denigrate gay people or women, or otherwise offend my twenty-first century sensibilities. I usually try to draw a distinction between those texts that use offensive language which was in common usage in the period in which the text was written – Huckleberry Finn, for example, with its widespread use of the n-word – and texts that are more broadly offensive, that perpetuate stereotypes or go out of their way to be insulting to racial or other groups. Sometimes I find offensive novels that have not generally been considered in that category – Perfume being the obvious example, which most reviewers found harmless but which I took great exception to. 

In almost all cases however, I have been able to find redeeming features in the text. The novelist may have been reflecting outdated attitudes towards race, gender or sexuality, but they have nevertheless managed to write something worth reading. But that is mainly because I have been careful not to read those books that should be forgotten and which don’t merit a wider readership today. History has edited these novels from our bookshelves. But this is not always the case with authors who have written otherwise well thought of work, such as Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Black Mischief’. Because ‘Black Mischief‘ is an embarrassingly offensive novel. 

The events of ‘Black Mischief‘ take place mainly in the island kingdom of Azania, one of the few independent countries in Africa between the world wars. Waugh’s intention appears overt – he sets out to demonstrate that allowing African peoples to run their own countries is a ludicrous proposition that leads to profound mis-Government, chaos, and conflict. His argument is that Africans simply don’t have the intelligence, judgment or ability to run their own affairs.

Seth, emperor of Azania, inherits his role shortly after graduating from Oxford. He determines to modernise his country, but his ambitions are portrayed as utterly unrealistic – not only does he not understand what modernisation entails, but his efforts are undermined by his people, who have no interest in the modern world, and his officials, who just want to steal anything not nailed down.

Basil Seal, a feckless college friend, journeys to Azania on a whim to escape his debts in London, and is quickly appointed Minister of Modernisation. His sidekick is the Armenian businessman Yokoumian, an equally unpleasant and racist portrait. The small group of Europeans in Azania, diplomats, businessmen and missionaries, do not escape Waugh’s satire – they are all crooks and bored idiots, particularly the British consular staff headed by Sir Samson Courtenay, but there is a venom in the portraits of the Africans in the novel that is missing when the focus turns to the Europeans. 

A pageant to celebrate birth control is used as cover for the launch of a coup against Seth, with the French consul planning to install a puppet Government headed by his senile uncle Achon, who promptly dies at his coronation. In the bloodbath that follows the League of Nations steps in and claims the country as a League of Nations Mandate. The natural order with the white man running matters is restored, and Basil returns to London, where his absence has passed largely unnoticed. 

Many reviewers claim this novel is a satire. I am not sure that is right – what precisely is it satirising? Certainly not colonialism – Azania is not a colony. Modernisation? Perhaps, but it is hard to see what aspects of modernisation are problematic. Or is it modernisation in Africa? Is Waugh telling the reader that modernising Africa is pointless, because they will just use mis-use whatever modern devices or ideas we ‘give’ them (the wires used in the railway’s construction are used as jewellery, for example). The most striking example of this is the poster drawn up to advertise the benefits of birth control, showing one family wealthy and healthy with one child, and another family with many children where life is hard and poor. These posters are misunderstood by the Africans – silly people unable to understand a simple poster – and they think the single child family is the one that is being presented as the one to avoid. 

Life is cheap in Azania – people are killed casually throughout the novel – and cannibalism is widespread. There isn’t a racist stereotype untapped. There isn’t a single positive African character, not even for contrast – they are all either evil, conniving, mercenary, or murderous. Or all four. 

Waugh is not a bad writer, but I can’t help thinking that this novel should be allowed to quietly fade away. It’s not funny, the casual and incessant racism is hard to take, and the ending is callously brutal. For the first time ever I was embarrassed to be seen reading this novel (with the front cover shown above) on public transport, which probably says it all. 

 

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Book review

Farewell, My Lovely, by Raymond Chandler, 1940

farewell

I’ve written previously on this blog about my admiration of Chandler’s prose. His flair for dramatic imagery is really unsurpassed in the detective fiction genre. People have tried to copy it, but never achieved the same vividly imaginative description.
Plot is in many ways secondary in these novels, which is surprising given that in most detective fiction whodunnit is the central question. For Chandler the journey is more important than the destination and when we arrive at the novel’s denouement the reveal can be a little anti-climactic.

‘Farewell My Lovely’ has a typically byzantine plot, where it is really easy for the reader to get lost as to what is happening, even after several rereads. (Where I say ‘the reader’ I am thinking of one specific reader in particular, me – other people may not have these issues. See what you think)

Marlowe is investigating a missing person’s case when he crosses the path of the novel’s anti-hero, Moose Malloy. Malloy is a prodigiously large man, and has just got out of prison after serving an eight years sentence. He is looking for his former girlfriend, Velma. Malloy is slow on the up-take, but extremely persistent. In the course of a visit to a club where Velma once worked, Malloy casually kills the owner. Having witnessed the killing, Marlowe decides to track down Velma.

He locates the widow of the nightclub’s former owner but this seems a dead end as she claims Velma is dead. That evening Marlowe picks up another case in which he is asked to act as a bodyguard for a man delivering a ransom for some stolen jewellery. The reader is hardly surprised when this payment goes badly wrong, and while Marlowe escapes with a bump on the head, his client, Lindsay Marriott, is murdered.

Anne Riordan, daughter of a former chief of police, finds the coshed Marlowe, and decides to help him with his investigation. She is not the typical sidekick – Marlowe doesn’t seem to welcome her help – but she races ahead with the case, finding out that the jewellery that was to be ransomed belonged to a Mrs Grayle, the young wife of a wealthy industrialist. Prompted by Anne, Marlowe visits Mrs. Grayle. There is an immediate spark between them, and after making out they agree to go on a date at a club owned by the local kingpin, Laird Brunette. Experienced detective fiction readers will be twitching at this point, knowing that there is more to both Mrs Grayle and Laird than meets the eye, but the speed of the action is such that there is little time to contemplate this development before Marlowe is off pursuing another red herring.

While investigating Marriott’s possessions, Marlowe finds some cannabis cigarettes, and inside these the business cards of a psychotherapist, as we would now call him, called Amthor. Marlowe begins to formulate an idea that Amthor identified his clients as potential victims, and then passed their details to Marriott, who gets to know them, sets up the robbery, and then manages the payment of the ransom. Confronting Amthor turns out to be a big mistake, as Marlowe is beaten up by first his bodyguard and then two local policemen on Amthor’s payroll, then kept drugged in a private hospital run by the sinister Dr. Sonderborg. He escapes, but on the way out he sees Malloy in another room. Marlowe subsequently works out that Malloy may now be hiding out on a gambling boat anchored beyond the city’s three-mile limit, and run by Brunette Laird, who we have met before.

The novel now moves swiftly to a conclusion. In a tense scene Marlowe sneaks on board the gambling boat, before the final confrontation between Malloy, such a strong presence in the novel despite only the briefest of appearances, Marlowe, and the ghosts of the past.

As was often the case with Chandler’s novels, ‘Farewell my Lovely’ is something of a Frankenstein’s monster in which earlier short stories are welded together to create the one narrative. If you look hard for the joints you can find them, but the fact that detectives will often pursue several cases at once gives this a plausibility it might otherwise lack. But as I have said earlier, you shouldn’t read Chandler for the plot. He is above all a superb stylist.

“The eighty-five cent dinner tasted like a discarded mail bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax.”

“She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”

“1644 West 54th Place was a dried-out brown house with a dried-out brown lawn in front of it. There was a large bare patch around a tough-looking palm tree. On the porch stood one lonely wooden rocker, and the afternoon breeze made the unpruned shoots of last year’s poinsettias tap-tap against the cracked stucco wall. A line of stiff yellowish half-washed clothes jittered on a rusty wire in the side yard.”

Just occasionally Chandler goes over the top – “The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.” – but you feel happy to overlook this given the percentage of hits to misses. But it is as king of the simile that Chandler reigns supreme:

“Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”

and

“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window” (a line that can still make me laugh out loud).

Having said all that, I can’t finish this review without mentioning the racism that is scattered throughout this novel. It’s painful to read and hard to separate out the racism of 1940’s America which is I am sure being accurately portrayed from the racist attitudes of the author. I don’t think it fatally damages the novel as a whole, but it does a good job at trying. A politically correct Philip Marlowe would be an abomination, agreed, but there is something about the casual way that racist terms are used that is distasteful.

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Book review

The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, 1719

Or to give the novel its full title, because the full titles of early novels are always worth recording: “The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; Being the Second and Last Part of His Life, And of the Strange Surprising Accounts of his Travels Round three Parts of the Globe”. 200px-FartherAdventuresCrusoe

I enjoy literary curiosities and this novel definitely falls into that category. The original ‘Robinson Crusoe‘ was hugely popular, and this little-read sequel could be seen as a cynical cashing in, a ‘straight to video’ Robinson Crusoe 2, published just five short months after RC1. There is also an RC3 –  ‘Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelick World‘ (1720) which for me is probably one Crusoe too many.

This novel opens with a quick summary of Crusoe’s life since his return from the island. He has bought a farm and had three children. But his wanderlust cannot be contained for long and he wants to return to his island. The death of his wife acts as a form of release and he sets off on another set of voyages, leaving his young family behind. Continue reading →

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Book review, Malorie Blackman, Noughts and Crosses

Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman, 2001

untitled‘Noughts and Crosses’ is set in an alternative society in which the dark skinned people of the world conquered and enslaved the lighter skinned. As a consequence, although slavery has now been abolished, black people are prosperous, have good schools and hospitals and hold senior positions through society, white people are disenfranchised, hold most menial jobs, and are economically disadvantaged. Relationships between noughts and crosses are frowned upon – they are not unheard of, but still considered transgressive and likely to lead you to end up being assaulted. Critics have called this society dystopian (“relating to or denoting an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one”), but I am not so sure about that – I think Blackman intended it to be as realistically close to our own as possible.

This inversion of society and race is an inspired way of encouraging people to look at the power relationships in society, and the many ways in which black and minority ethnic people are still treated as second-class citizens, despite the progress that has been made in some areas. Certain scenes, such as when four “blanker” children (‘blanker’, we can deduce, is a shockingly offensive term similar to way the n-word is used in our own society) are allowed to attend a “Cross” school, are based on incidents in the Civil Rights movement in the United States in the 1950s and 60s. However a knowledge of this history is in no way essential for an appreciation of the novel.

One reason why this is not simply a dystopian nightmare is that there is some evidence that society is in transition. There appears to be a democratic Government, albeit one in which Crosses dominate, and an international organisation, the Pangean Economic Community, which promotes racial equality. Noughts can now attend cross schools. There is hope that the oppression of noughts is being eased, albeit slowly.

This world is portrayed through the eyes of two teenagers, Sephy, (short for Persephone) a prosperous Cross, and the son of her nanny, Callum, a nought. Callum and Sephy narrate alternative chapters in the novel, similar to the turns taken in a game of noughts and crosses. Their fledgling romance is disrupted when Callum’s mother is spitefully dismissed by Sephy’s mother for failing to provide an alibi for one of her affairs. Callum’s father and older brother Jude are slowly drawn into the dangerous world of the nought resistance movement, the Liberation Militia. As you can probably guess, things don’t go well for the star-crossed youngsters. I will eschew my normally strict policy on spoilers; suffice to say this is not the traditional teen romance the opening chapters might have led the reader to expect.

The target readership for ‘Noughts and Crosses’ is finely calibrated. Readers need to be young enough to forgive the simplistic structure, the use of clichéd scenarios (spurned young love, letters read moments too late, parental neglect, etc.) and the reliance of heavy handed narration in which teens sigh a lot and complain about how no-one understands them:

“I pulled him closer to me, wrapping my arms around him, kissing him just as desperately as he was kissing me. Like if we could just love long enough and hard enough and deep enough, then the world outside would never, could never hurt us.”

“That’s why I started crying. That’s why I couldn’t stop. For all the things we might’ve had and all the things we’re never going to have”.

However, the caution on the novel’s front cover – “Not suitable for younger readers” – is a warning that this is more than a teenage romance novel. The characters a bit wooden, even two dimensional, and in particular Jude is the world’s worst terrorist, but this is nevertheless a challenging novel of ideas where easy answers are avoided.

It is difficult for adults to review books written specifically for children and young adults. If we point out their bland characterisation, flaccid language, and clichéd storylines, we miss the point – children are looking for different things in their fiction, such as strong themes, identifiable characters, and just the right amount of danger. ‘Noughts and Crosses’ is a modern children’s classic, but there’s no doubt I would have enjoyed it so much more if I had read it as a teenager.

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