The Book Doctor at large
The Book Doctor – a National Help Service for those with problems of a bookish disposition (don’t forget that you too can ask the Book Doctor for help). Without further ado, here are this month’s victims, erm, patients…
First to shuffle in, wheezing pitifully, is Ric from London:
“As a European holiday-home owner, I’ve had my fill of all those ‘aren’t French builders rubbish’ books written by expats. Can the Book Doctor recommend a really good read, fact or fiction, which would help me really understand the French national character?”
Mais oui, naturellement. Forget Peter Mayle and all that, what you need is The Secret Life of France, by Lucy Wadham. Wadham married a Frenchman, in France, raised her children there and got divorced over the course of 25 years in that country, so she ought to have a few insights. She covers off French attitudes towards sex, marriage, adultery, money, work, happiness, war and race, and challenges our preconceptions about our next-door neighbours. And on a medical note, I should add that garlic and red wine are good for you (don’t say you never learn anything medical from the Book Doctor!).
Sitting in a corner of the waiting room, trying not to let anyone catch her infectious optimism, Alison says:
“Swine flu, credit crunch, war, it’s all getting too much! Can you recommend some books that offer a true escape from this bleak reality?”
Sounds like Alison is in need of cheering up, and what better than a dose of literary escapism (take three times a day after meals, and don’t operate heavy machinery while reading). How about joining Garrison Keillor in his periodic trips to Lake Wobegon, which as the name suggests will banish those blues. The most recent instalments in this much-loved series are Liberty and Pontoon. You could also investigate the adventures of Gerald Samper, as chronicled by James Hamilton-Patterson - the series kicks off with Cooking With Fernet Branca.
Alternatively, there’s The Optimist by Laurence Shorter. After feeling similarly overcome with woe, Laurence embarked on a year-long quest to find some positive thinkers and things to be cheerful about in the world – with a fridge (no, sorry, wrong book). Can Desmond Tutu bring a smile to Laurence’s face? Will he ride out the tide of pessimism with California’s famous Surfing Rabbi? Or will it fall to the ultimate icon of optimism, Bill Clinton, to show Laurence the brighter side of life? There’s only one way to find out…
Now, apparently on a quest for new voices to soothe her, Linda from Essex (no jokes please) asks the Book Doctor:
“I really enjoyed Chris Cleave’s The Other Hand – can you recommend any other titles which have strong and unusual narrators?”
For those of you who don’t know (pay attention at the back), the narrator of The Other Hand is Little Bee, a young Nigerian aslyum seeker, and Cleave does a wonderful job of letting her tell her story. There are plenty of other vividly narrated novels around, with a real grab-bag of characters. There’s:
- Lionel Essrog, a.k.a. the Human Freakshow, is a victim of Tourette’s syndrome (an uncontrollable urge to shout out nonsense, touch every surface in reach, rearrange objects) in Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem
- Trick Baby charts the rise of White Folks, a white Negro who uses his colour as a trump card in the tough game of the Con. Blue-eyed, light-haired and white-skinned, White Folks is the most incredible con man the ghetto ever spawned, a hustler in the jungle of Southside Chicago where only the sharpest survive.
Max Tivoli, who is aging backwards – as he gets older, he looks younger, as told to Andrew Sean Greer in The Confessions of Max Tivoli- The Story of Forgetting, by Stefan Merrill Block: at seventy, Abel Haggard is a hermit, resigned to memories of the family he has lost, living in isolation on his family’s farm amid the encroaching suburban sprawl of Dallas. Hundreds of miles to the south in suburban Austin, fifteen-year-old Seth Waller is devastated when his mother is diagnosed with a rare, early-onset form of Alzheimer’s, and he begins an ‘empirical investigation’ to uncover the truth about her genetic history. Though neither one knows of the other’s existence, Seth and Abel share a unique tradition: as children, both were told stories of Isadora, a fantastical land free from the sorrows of memory.
- John the Revelator is narrated in the compelling voice of an introverted, watchful adolescent, John Devine. Stuck in a small town, worried over by his single mother – the chain-smoking, bible-quoting Lily – and the gregarious but sinister Mrs Nagle, he yearns for escape. When Jamey Corboy, a self-styled Rimbaudian boy-wonder, arrives in town, John’s life suddenly fills with possibilities – welcome and otherwise – and as he hides from the reality of his mother’s ever-worsening health, he is faced with a terrible dilemma.
- And coming out very soon, we have The Hurricane Party, by Klas Östergren. Hanck Orn’s son is dead. When they come to the door they tell him it was a heart attack, but he knows they are lying. So he travels to the outermost reaches of the land to find out what really happened. When he lands on the island he is met by a young woman, hair streaked with blood, raving like a lunatic. She is one of the sisters, who tell him the story of how his son died in the great hall of the Clan, the Norse gods, who were holding a party. But the festivities soon got out of hand, the guests began to argue with one another, and the mischievous shapeshifter Loki dealt a deadly blow.
Not sure you’d want any of them living next door to you, but a more striking bunch of narrative voices you can’t hope to find.
Lastly, and perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek, Robert from Somewhere in Scotland asks:
Dear Book Doctor, I keep forgetting who I have lent my books to. By definition they are my favorites otherwise I woudn’t be recommending them to my friends. Any advice other than changing my friends ?
Bookhugger’s own Simon Appleby, who is hugely anally retentive, uses the fantastic LibraryThing.com to track his book collection, including who he has lent which book to. However, if that’s too much like hard work (you do, after all, have to catalogue them first), you could try taking hostages against the safe-return of your precious books (first-born children work quite well in this role), or maybe rescinding your friends’ borrowing rights and making them read the books at your house (sell them coffee and cake and you will be quids in). Let us know how you get on!
