2014 books: 20-25

[the_siobhan]

    

King, Queen, Knave by Vladmir Nabokov I have no idea where this came from. The only identifying feature is $4.50 stenciled in pencil on the inside of the front cover. Anyway. The story takes place in Berlin just prior to the Great Depression. It's the classic and heart-warming tale of a young man who moves from a small town to the big city to work at his rich uncles's company and immediately commences boffing his uncle's wife.

The story feels very slow-paced - not a lot actually happens from one chapter to the next. Instead the text is all about the creation of atmosphere. Nabokov focuses on tiny gestures and details until you can almost smell the faint odor of mold in the nephew's dingy rooming house or hear the clink of crystal glasses at the uncle's dinner table. The plot emerges gradually through layers of description like an image that is created out of layers upon layers of paint.

    

The Moon and Sixpence by W Somerset Maugham This was published 1919. I have no idea where this came from. It says "Murray MacAdam February 16 1973" on the inside of the cover so maybe he snuck inside my house and left it here. According to the Wiki article this is the story of a stockbroker who abandons his entire life, including his wife and children in order to paint. It's loosly based on the life of Paul Gauguin. I say according to the Wiki article because I ended up not being able to read the book at all. I made it through the first four chapters which went on and on about how great and talented a painter the main character was and I just had to give up because my eyes were glazing over. I may try again with one of his other books, but I just don't think I'm going to be able to read this one.

    

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene Published in 1958. I have vague memories of reading it in some undergraduate English elective. Other than that, every detail of the story seems to have completely left my mind. The main character is an Englishman who lives in pre-Castro Cuba with a modest vaccuum-cleaner business and a demanding and expensive teenage daughter he can't seem to say no to. Almost by accident he is recruited to be a spy and starts padding his income by making things up to report. His efforts to make his reports "exciting" end up being too successful and events spiral completely out of control.

I loved this book. Before I even finished reading it I looked it up to see whether it had been made into a movie, because it would make a brilliant screenplay. (It has, in 1959.) It is both wonderfully farcical and tragic.

    

A Handful of Dust, The Loved One, and Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh A collection of three of Evelyn Waugh's novellas. Apparently I bought this in 1989. All of Waugh's stories are amusing if you like your humour wry and black. A Handful of Dust is the earliest of the three and it tells the story of an English couple and how their family falls apart. 'Cause women be bitches, mostly. Men at Arms is the latest and it tells the story of a middle-aged gentleman who joins the army at the outset of WWII and experiences all of it's efficiency and organization. A slightly more genteel precursor to the novels of similar vein that came out of America post-Korea and Vietnam. Both A Handful of Dust and Men at Arms feature introverted and socially awkward heroes who are married to capricious, self-absorbed women. And everyone "dines out" and has servants.

The Loved One is the odd one out; a weird little story about a woman who works as a cosmetician at a cemetary in LA and is wooed by both an English poet and the head mortician at the same time. Waugh wrote in the forward that it was conceived when he was in Hollywood negotiating the rights to Brideshead Revisited. I'd say it shows his dislike of America and Americans but the English characters don't really come off any better.