Birdsong tells the story of Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman who travels to France before the First World War to stay with a family and learn from the family business.  He subsequently elopes with the young wife of the household and part of the story revolves around what happens after that.  The remainder of the book describes Wraysford’s experiences in the trenches of the Great War, his relationships with his fellow soldiers, especially the civilian engineer, Jack Firebrace and how this experience eventually helps him come to terms with his emotional relationships.

Birdsong adaptation featuring Joseph Mawle (Jack Firebrace), left and Eddie Redmayne (Stephen Wraysford)

The final portion of the book is an extraordinarily harrowing account of trench warfare and in particular the work of the trench tunnelers; the group of engineers from both sides who dug tunnels for hundreds of metres under the enemy trenches to plant explosives there.

Birdsong is a book of rare quality; it was the first Sebastian Faulks novel I had read and if the love story didn’t catch my attention, the descriptions of life in the trenches certainly did.  Faulks relates the feelings of the fighting men in the following paragraph superbly:

“No child or future generation will ever know what this was like.  They will never understand.  When it is over we will go quietly among the living, and we will not tell them.  We will seal what we have seen in the silence of our hearts and no words will reach us.”

So to the television adaptation then and I have to say it was probably as good as it could be when squeezed into two 90 minute slots.  I’m not accustomed to sitting down and watching TV for that length of time so it says something that Birdsong managed to hold my attention.  The largely linear narrative of the book is broken so the show jumps back and forth between events in Wraysford’s life in France but it works.

Eddie Redmayne could have been born to play the part of Wraysford; it’s a personal thing of course but he looks exactly as I had imagined while reading the book.  If I have one criticism, it’s that the tunneling scene at the end of the book is scaled down; you don’t appreciate the days spent underground by Wraysford and Firebrace.

This is a minor concern though – ultimately Birdsong was a fine adaptation.

Measuring the World

translated into English until 2006, meaning that English language readers were unable to appreciate this fine piece of writing until late that year.

Measuring the world is a partly fictional, mostly imaginary, look at the lives of German mathematician Carl Gauss, German geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859) and Frenchman Aimé Bonpland (1773 – 1858).  Gauss (1777 – 1855), the extraordinarily gifted mathematician and physicist, rarely traveled far from his home but made some of the biggest theoretical discoveries of his era. He was known as the Prince of Mathematics.

Alexander von Humboldt was the man raised to be a scientist and explorer and was brother of Prussian minister Wilhelm von Humboldt.  Aimé Bonpland was the French naturalist and botanist who accompanied Humboldt on his five year exploration of Latin America and it is this vast journey which occupies most of the novel.  Their comprehensive studies and data from this immense journey laid the foundation for the study of physical geography.

Measuring the World is about more than a journey though; it is a very funny travelogue which looks deep into the flawed characters of our protagonists; Gauss is the sociopath who regards everyone else (especially his son) as slow and dim-witted, Humboldt is the scientist so devoted to his work he fails to understand the real lives of those around him and Bonpland is the long-suffering companion, whose health deteriorates as the journey eats up the years.

There’s more to the book of course; we relive the childhoods of Gauss and Humboldt, accompany Humboldt on his later trip across Russia and witness their eventually meeting as elderly men.  For me, the overriding theme of the book is the unimplied question of whether Gauss or Humboldt has traveled further.  Humboldt has been around the world and visited many unexplored countries but Gauss, just by working in his study, has uncovered mathematical truths, the secrets of navigation and the paths of planets.  In the end, Humboldt wonders if it is Gauss who has achieved the most.

The Ascent of Rum Doodle

which could be described as literature you’ve never heard of but which instantly becomes one of your favourite reads. It’s a comedy, as you might gather from the title and a satirical one at that.  The story revolves around a mid-20th century expedition to climb the highest mountain on earth – the eponymous Rum Doodle.

I first encountered a copy of this book in Nepal about ten or so years ago and that’s no surprise really; the trekking and mountain climbing tourists which populate Kathmandu and Pokhara are well familiar with this book and it’s sold and passed on in numerous hotels and guest houses in the region.  The surprise that most people express when reading it revolves around how funny it is, how old it is (1956) and why have they never head of it.

It’s a superbly well observed diary of an enormously complex plan to enable two members of the party to reach the 40,000 and a half foot peak of Rum Doodle.  Each character in the party is hilarious in his own way – the navigator who constantly gets lost, the cultural expert who consistently enrages the local porters with his useless translations, the constantly ill doctor and the team leader who fails to see the enmity with which each member of the team views each other.

There is not one age of this book which is not funny and out of many memorable moments, my personal favourite involves the team leader and narrator trying to overcome altitude sickness by incorrectly taking one step then waiting ten minutes in that position to acclimatise, leading him to……

“…..fall over sideways; then I got cramp in the calf; then my nose started to itch; then my foot started to vibrate and had to be held down with both hands.  This was very tiring and when I crouched to hold my foot I was lower than I had been before making the step, which caused me to wonder whether I was gaining height or losing it….”

For fans of this of this genre, whatever that is, and comedy fans of all types, The Ascent of Rum Doodle should not be missed.

The story is very simple, combines a static moment in the present with the memories of an affair of the heroin with a married man. I liked the feeling of no motion this story had, stuck in traffic or stuck in your head. The basic human condition is complete solitude, even when, and maybe especially when near others. Sartre came to my mind once or twice while reading the story.

It’s not a story you will think much about after reading, but it stays there, silently, in your head, pounding.

But The Lost City of Z was different. The book tells the story of Fawcette, an English explorer that disappeared 80 years ago in the Amazon together with his son. This famous Amazon explorer attracted many other people who became obsessed with his disappearance and went to the Amazon after him – only to never return themselves.

Writer David Grann only became obsessed after beginning to write about Fawcette, and this made me identify with Grann, as I too know the feeling of a writer obsessed with the subject of his writings.

David Grann writes well, and the structure of the book works very good in combining Fawcette’s expeditions and Grann’s own journey. There is everything you would expect to find in such a story: suspense, thrill, family sub-textual drama, and despair.

A great book that will take you for days.

At first you may think this book is about Bangkok, and indeed I was disappointed that the publisher didn’t include a map inside, so guys like me, with no knowledge about this big city, could at least try to follow Osborne’s quick steps in it. But then after you read some 40-60 pages, you get it. This book is not at all about Bangkok, or the hookers, or the messy streets. It’s about the loneliness in the west, and what it brings there.

The book is written beautifully, and it creates a gap between the low-life Lawrence Osborne speaks about and lives in Bangkok, and the life he is indeed part of backhome, life that includes less alcohol and more literature.

Interesting picture of a difficult-to-grasp city, through the eyes of an Englishman.here’s a quote of Osborne from an interview he gave about his book:

It’s a very convivial city, but I think people are very isolated because there’s no social glue to connect people. If you’re a foreigner living there, you don’t have any social reason to meet other people, unless you’re working for a bank, or a newspaper or something. And I wanted to write about these guys, because they’re all retired or f—ed up or whatever. There are drifters, and they may not be significant, but I think they’re more symptomatic of the kind of people who end up in Bangkok. It’s quite sad. And that sadness is very important.

Whatever. All this is irrelevant drama, since when I first started reading this book, I had no idea it was a true story, nor have I heard of the Oprah fuss. I just took it at the book store, I liked the cover with the many sparkling dots on it, and started reading. The book got me immediately. Frey has a very unique voice, and this voice goes deep, fast deep, under the skin, into your mouth.

He describes his feeling in a way that keeps you very close but very far at the same time, just like an addict feels with his body. It’s there, it’s controlling us, but in a way it’s separate to us. Nothing he says is too surprising, or funny, or weird, it’s just the way he says it. A Million Little Pieces is all about the prose, forget the narrative, it’s hardly there.

The book starts legging at around midpoint, maybe slightly earlier. Then the prose is already transparent to you, and what’s left is the narrative. It’s not much, as I said, and this is where I thought someone should have edited this book better. And if Frey ‘fixed’ his story, he should have fixed it a bit more.

The romantic narrative of the present (Lilly) is boring, the romantic narrative of the past only appears rarely and is under-developed. The manhood in the clinic is nothing too interesting. There’s no drama, and this I guess is the real pain of the addiction: after a while you’re just getting bored.

Xiaolu Guo is a Chinese that lives in the west, and she studied filmmaking. I think I felt it while reading her short stories, especially one that’s titled Beijing’s Slowest Elevator. The visual side is very strong, and the atmosphere is precise. The characters don’t say much, in fact there are very few spoken words in Guo’s short stories. What counts is the action, the inside of the characters meetss the outside world in a quiet clash.

Very good short story collection and I for sure will try to find also one of Guo’s films.

This short story was published last month (June 14 & 21 2010) in The New Yorker Magazine, as a part of their 20-under-40 issue (which included 20 writers under 40 year old, an interesting way of looking at literature I guess). I read it online, as my new subscription to the magazine is on hold until I find myself a permanent address. Reading from the screen is only doable with stuff you really just can’t stop reading. I did it with ease with Joshua Ferris’ new short story.

The story is about a struggling screenwriter, one that his unpolished pilot is his only chance, that is invite to a party. He’s not sure he was even invited. Or was it just a mass email mistake, and he would very much like to know if he was actually invited to this party. And perhaps he should not go, all by himself, with the unpolished pilot still waiting to be polished one day.

It’s another funny-disturbing story from the successful young writer Joshua Ferris, who wrote And Then We Came To The End (his debut roman) and other fiction (another books and a few short stories). He’s considered one of the hottest names in the contemporary literature world right now, or maybe better say the American Contemporary Literature world.

He is, in fact, a very American writer, and The Pilot is a very American short story. The kind that embraces the failure that comes hand in hand with the American Dream. Hey, does anybody dream any more over there? It’s all so…dark. And so is this story, that leaves no hope for our poor alcoholic screenwriter.

It’s a small story, of a small screenwriter, or a wanna-be, of an alcoholic, of a man who fights until he cannot fight anymore. It’s a sad story, beautifully written. I’m waiting for Ferris’ next book. I still have some hope.