The Counterfeiters - Andre Gide (French)
A book which engages the intellect. Ideas and feelings are observed meticulously. In the beginning there was some action and color, a spirit of adventure, and I enjoyed it; but in the second half it turned arid and leaden. The use of a writer’s journal to record events leached all liveliness from the narrative. Gide relied on too many plot coincidences to get characters where he wanted them; people appear and disappear; their motivations, even their personalities, shift. The homoerotic undertone never emerges from the shadows. Ideas and feelings pile up haphazardly while still being scrutinized laboriously. The seriousness and intelligence of it all began to seem ostentatious. There’s an iron-like rigidity to this book, due to its intellectual rigor – but the rigidity excludes the necessities of good fiction. Geniuses can go their own way, but I don’t think Gide was a genius.

The History Man - Malcolm Bradbury
An entertaining book, odd in purpose and structure. There’s much talk about abstract concepts and sociological ideas (though the characters doing the talking are flesh and blood creations). The dominant force is Howard Kirk, achieving his devious ends with an unflappable drive. I caught whiffs of evil from this master manipulator. I wanted him to get his comeuppance – and, maybe, at the end, he does. This ending is good, leaving one with conclusions and life histories to be mulled over beyond the last page. A problem is that the characters, once established, don’t change much, and even the secondary ones are unappetizing (while spouting theories about social and personal justice, they cannot act decently and seem to have no consciences). There’s a repellent feel to this book. But the repellent can be entertaining – up to a point. Bradbury was smart enough to put a halt to the proceedings before I became alienated.

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

A book that seems to be held together by a network of electrical wires. In a sense this is fitting, for the event Vonnegut was writing about was an inhuman one. The bombing of Dresden is presented in an apocalyptic light; the aftereffects flicker erratically on one of the survivors, Billy Pilgrim. The time travel and alien abduction he undergoes are possibly products of his imagination – his escape from reality. The book’s sci-fi aspect, the humor, the repetitions, the short sections that make up the text, the skipping around in time – all keep the reader from feeling grounded. Maybe the only way Vonnegut could approach his a subject was by using evasion and distancing. Though he produced a unique and effective work, one I respect, these very aspects were a barrier to intimacy.

The Dwarf - Par Lagerkvist (Swedish)

The Nobel Prize winning author impressed me initially; I thought this was an interesting philosophical novel, using a most unusual perspective. By the end I thought it was a foolish novel. The malevolence and destructiveness of the dwarf were overdone and became tiresome. Events – such as the poisoning at the feast – were unrealistic. The prose often took on a shrill tone. And it was all so damn dark that it became oppressive. There was not one character to relate to or care about. Pessimism can be bracing, but this was the kind that’s depressing – not a glimmer of humor or freshness or exhilaration. Total negativity cannot be absorbed for long in a relationship, nor in a novel.

The Middleman and Other Stories - Bharati Mukherjee

The author takes on a variety of personas – housewife, Vietnam vet/psycho, immigrant. She isn’t ladylike, which one expects of a female Indian writer; she’s mod, tough and sometimes sets out to shock the genteel reader. But her stories – or the five I read – could not, consistently, pass the “So What?” test. There’s a pulpy garishness to her subject matter and approach; the events depicted in “The Middleman” belong in a comic book. Other stories, as if to display her versatility, are sensitive, more sedately written, but they too were marred by superficiality.

Stepping Westward - Malcolm Bradbury

Initially this book was like comfort food – the characters and situations were satisfying in a mildly pleasant way. But “mildly” is the crucial word; even the humor wasn’t funny enough. I could have read on, but the factor that tilted the scales was when Bradbury stepped westward. He’s very good with the Brits but has a tin ear for how Americans speak and doesn’t seem to understand how we act. I wanted to tell him, Sorry, old chap, we just aren’t like that.

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov (Russian)
I read half the book, often impressed, but I didn’t want to go any further. It didn’t seem worth the effort. (Much of that effort involved keeping the many characters, with their bewildering Russian names, in order.) The first scenes, with the devil arriving at the park, the Pontius Pilate story, the beheading, were very powerful – Bulgakov can make a scene attain a nightmarish intensity. But as the book progressed events were occurring at random, were unconnected and repetitious. I didn’t see any organization or restraint. Maybe this is the work of a self-indulgent genius, but he just tired me out.

Foe - J. M. Coetzee
This is a stylized novel of ideas. The ideas are abstract ones: the process of fictionalization, the nature of truth; and, mostly, the issue of slavery and freedom. It’s spared-down, with the landscapes and even the characters sketched in. The book is mostly one woman talking (or thinking). I wasn’t interested enough in the issues raised, and it’s difficult to relate to characters who don’t exist as fully-developed people. Finally, though still reading, my involvement in the story was almost nil, and at that point the book’s deficiencies came to the forefront. There’s an astringency to the writing that made it seem bloodless. The woman who tells the story does so in such an immaculately-honed prose that it’s unbelievable; how could she express herself like that, being who she’s supposed to be? The mystery of the girl who claims to be her daughter is never solved – just a perplexity, probably with a significance I couldn’t follow (but why would a mother deny motherhood, or why would a girl pretend to be a daughter?). The ending is murky. I thought the book was pretentious – but that can be intimidating. I suspect that Coetzee’s success (two Bookers and a Nobel) comes partly because he seems on a higher plane than most folks, a profound thinker, so people appreciate him to show that they too are profound.

Rates of Exchange - Malcolm Bradbury
Something different. The beginning, made up mostly of descriptions, moves very slowly, but the inventive prose held my attention. Then a plot starts unfolding, but still slowly. The conversations (and, boy, do the women in this book talk!) are bunched together in long paragraphs, so the pages are dense with words. The main character is extremely passive, saying (and thinking) little. Sound dull? It’s not – this is a funny book, partly a sex comedy in which even the cheap laughs work. And the inventive prose is in the Nabokov league. Bradbury can interest the reader even when he dispenses with plot and, to a degree (regarding Petworth’s passivity), characters. Near the end Petworth becomes more active, and I wasn’t sure I bought into the person that emerged. But when he’s betrayed and reveals his suffering, and, in small ways, his humanity and pain, I responded. The book closed on a strong note of pathos.