Holiday Reading Ideas

Less

by Andrew Sean Greer 

4 ****

We authors know there’s a lot of luck and gamesmanship that goes into literary fame. Many brilliant authors never get published, or get ignored when they are. Others, with far less talent, happen to have the right connections or hit the zeitgeist in just the right way at the right moment and become rich and famous. So it’s no surprise that many authors struggle with envy and professional jealousies. That, mixed in with complicated gay love lives, is the subject of the novel, Less, which won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Arthur Less is an insecure author who, for many years, lived and hung out with some of the big name writers of his day. Now he is on a round-the-world literary field trip that he cobbled together to have an excuse not to attend the wedding of his ex-lover.

I enjoyed the book, but I suspect it’s Pulitzer Prize win was influenced by the subject matter – it would naturally appeal to the sorts of people on literary prize committees. I’d give it four stars, not five.

To be fair, though, apart from the entertaining story of poor, doubt-plagued author, Arthur Less, it does contain many marvellous turns of phrase. As a Canadian (and a terrible baseball player who always got put in the furthest outfield) this one caught me:

“Nothing had happened in right field all season, which is why he was put there: a kind of athletic Canada.”

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

by Gail Honeyman

4 ****

The word autistic is never mentioned in Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, but it does seem like Eleanor has many traits that would put her well on the spectrum. She has a tightly controlled, orderly life, with a steady job and no friends. The most stressful part of her routine is her weekly call with her mother, who is in jail.

After she and a work colleague help an old man who has been hurt outside their office, her finely balanced spinning-top world starts to wobble. At the same time, she’s developed an obsession with a musician, and is working out a plan to meet him, convinced he’ll fall in love with her as soon as he sets eyes on her.

It is heartbreaking to see how deluded she has become about the musician and delightful to watch her get pushed further and further out of her comfort zone. With gentle humour and pathos the reader is subtly set up for a startling twist near the end. An enjoyable read.

A Simple Scale

by David Llewellyn

4 ****

This complex, multi-timeline novel explores secrets: a possibly plagiarized musical score, homosexual lovers in times and places where exposure could be career-ending at best (Hollywood during the McCarthy Era) or deadly at worst (the gulag in the Soviet Union of the 1930s).

It took me a while to figure out the timelines but once I did I was fully hooked.

I was especially struck by David Llewellyn’s amazing use of similes and metaphors. “Trams whisper through slush”. We hear the “ribbed dog shivers” of a xylophone. Or understand that feeling when you are “ironing out the last traces of worry from your voice.”

How to Kill Your Family

by Bella Mackie

4 ****

A timely tome for Christmas, don’t you think? Hard to imagine describing a book told from the viewpoint of a mass-murderer as a romp, but that’s basically what this is. Bella Mackie’s skewering of the rich and famous often brought the series Succession to mind. Will she or won’t she get away with murdering her awful family members? And does she have a valid reason for doing so? There are delightful twists that add to the fun.