Half a Life - V. S. Naipaul
This novel is made up of three sections taking place in three worlds: India, London, Africa. In the India section we get the life story of Willie Chandran’s father. Since Willie assumes his father’s first person voice to tell this story, it serves to establish Willie as a writer. For the rest of the book Willie tells his own story. He’s an aimless young man, and a decision is made to send him to London where he’s to study to become a teacher. He has no interest in becoming a teacher, and we get almost nothing about his studies. The subject of the London section is his social education: he gets caught up with various groups, various people. He begins his sex life, which is tentative and unsatisfying. He writes a book made up of sketches set in India; though it gets published he’s not proud of his accomplishment, nor is the book successful, and the matter of his writing is dropped. In London Willie marries Ana, and they go to Africa to live on an estate she inherited. He will stay there for sixteen years. We get an in-depth look at a world exotic to me (and to Willie). One aspect that comes across strongly is the prevalence of interracial sex. Ana is mixed race – Portuguese and African – and such a mix, in some form, is the norm. All sections are good, but the Africa one is the best – up to a point. As Willie nears age forty, a shift in emphasis takes place. Though he loves Ana he’s not fulfilled by her, and he starts to frequent clubs where he has sex with African girls. Or, rather, children (the African belief, Naipaul informs us, is that a female is ready for sex when she has her first period). Later Willie enters into an affair with a woman whose husband is the manager of a nearby estate. The attraction is immediate and mutual (they look into one another’s eyes and get a message). Willie was never a very appealing character, but when he became so absorbed in the quality of his orgasms I had my fill of him. At this point the novel ends abruptly, with Willie leaving Ana and Africa (as a violent uprising looms). On the last page he tells her that he had been living her life too long. Since the life that awaits him goes untold, I saw the title in a new light. In Half a Life we get half a book. Possibly the sixty-nine year-old Nobel Prize winning author found an old manuscript in a drawer and did some work on it, but hadn’t the will to follow Willie’s journey any further. Pure supposition.

Village in the Sun - Dane Chandos
Ajijic is a village in Mexico. Chandos resided there for a year (in the 1940s), and he writes about how the villagers lived and how he fitted himself into that life. But with a book like this you must be on friendly terms with the narrator, and my attitude toward Chandos became increasingly critical. I objected to how he turned a young man into a flunky who learned how to properly set a table and mix drinks; I was bothered by his attitude toward the “humorous” ways of the villagers. As for fitting in, he doesn’t; he adjusts circumstances so that he can live in a privileged manner (also, he’s often away, at the houses of friends in cities). He purports to have liberal views and compassion for the impoverished, but he’s quite stingy (he believes that to earn the villager’s respect you mustn’t throw money around). He tells little about his private life – I didn’t even know his nationality – but the most insight comes when he has a globetrotting visitor (Provence, Cannes) who exhibits all the stereotypes of the unenlightened bigot. It’s a catty portrayal, and Charles comes across as a parody of effeminacy (“Isn’t that divine!”). I felt that the two men were cut from the same clothe, and I didn’t care to spend any more time with Chandos. I would find it interesting to know what private thoughts the villagers had about him.

Such Fine Boys - Patrick Modiano (French)
The “fine boys” of the title all attended the prestigious (or, at least, expensive) Valvert School on the outskirts of Paris. But the novel isn’t concerned with life at a fictional boarding school (and Valvert isn’t depicted as a place of cruelty and victimization). Modiano’s subject is the years after school. In chapters that read like short stories we get glimpses into how some of the former boys are getting on in life. As men they aren’t getting on; an aimlessness seems to prevail. They look back at their years at Valvert with nostalgia; some still hold onto their personality as it was when they were fifteen, others lead dangerously derailed lives. Near the end of the novel a character says to himself “our school had left us completely unprepared for life.” But the fault lies in another direction. What emerges forcefully is how the boys were neglected by their parents. Since they had no caring family, their compatriots at the school became their family, and when school was over they were cast into a void. Modiano is quite good at creating a mood that’s melancholy and at times eerie. His prose is crystal clear, but the way he structures the book isn’t. He switches narrators from first to second person, and the stories that constitute the chapters don’t take on a novelistic narrative. The resulting elusiveness seemed purposeful, and I never felt confused or frustrated by any game playing. Some of the stories are slack, not as compelling as others. But to use the word “compelling” at all is high praise. In the Foreword Le Clezio (who, like Modiano, is a Nobel Prize winner) writes that the Little Jewel passages “are among the loveliest pages written in the French language in the second half of the twentieth century.” I agree, they are lovely. I’ll read more by this author.

The House on Clewe Street – Mary Lavin
To read 242 pages of a book and then abandon it because of a lack of interest can breed resentment (especially if, as in this case, the print is small and the line spacing tight). Why did I waste my time? Of course, to keep me going for so long I was experiencing some degree of pleasure. The writing was nice, the characters were well-drawn, scenes had life. The pace was leisurely, but I can accept that if things seem to be evolving. It was okay for Aunt Theresa to always be a tyrant, but the novel’s main character was Theodore, and as he grew up his development was occurring with glacial slowness. More and more Lavin’s choices as to how to expend words began to strike me as misguided. For a good deal of the beginning of the novel Theodore’s grandfather is the main character; it’s his mind we’re in. After the birth of Theodore he’s alive, he’s present in the house on Clewe Street, and I wanted to know how he was getting along, what he was thinking. But he’s totally absent from the pages; even his death occurs offstage. Yet his funeral (and a farcical race to get to the cemetery ahead of a competing burial) takes up thirty pages. There are many examples of Lavin inflating inconsequential events while letting vital issues idle away or die out completely. Theodore’s predicament should be paramount; when he’s in his mid-teens he gets interested in the maid, and big changes were in the offing. But by that time I had lost confidence in the author. The point at which I called it quits was when some lady visitors are standing in the doorway in a dither about how to dispose of their scarves and hats and gloves. Lavin apparently found this scene so funny she couldn’t stop writing about it.

The Voyage of the Beagle – Charles Darwin
In 1831 twenty-two-year-old Charles Darwin boarded the HMS Beagle in Plymouth, England and set out on a journey that would circumnavigate the world. He later cited the five year trip as the most important event of his life, one that would determine his entire career. I had owned this book for many years but didn’t attempt to read it because I thought it would be about matters of concern to a naturalist. Of course, it is, but only to a certain extent; though I found the sections about animals on land and in the air and sea interesting, those devoted to insects and plants and land formations were less engaging (and sometimes incomprehensible). Still, I was impressed by Darwin’s knowledge; I felt I was in the presence of a great mind. That I read all 400+ pages of this journal can be attributed to two factors. One is the excellence of the writing, which, besides having an efficient clarity, succeeded in capturing the personality of a young man full of enthusiasm and curiosity. The other is that Darwin gives much attention to his fellow human beings and how they lived in various environments. He doesn’t just observe and report; he thinks about what he sees and experiences and gives his opinions (notable is his abhorrence for the slavery prevalent in Brazil). Almost all the journal entries are about his time on land (he meets the Beagle at appointed ports). Darwin had many adventures, and in no way was he coddled; he roughed it, mostly on foot or horseback, and only someone with a strong constitution and mental toughness could have endured the hardships and dangers he encountered. Though the book has elements of an adventure story, on a deeper level it presents the vastness of life in all its myriad and mysterious forms. Every creature strives to survive on this earth. A “lowly” insect needs food, and it’s equipped with the means to get it; it can kill, it can defend itself; it also needs to procreate. In these respects man shares a commonality with a dung beetle. Some people that Darwin encounters (such as the residents of Tierra del Fuego) live in such a brutal environment and in such a degraded condition that he’s moved to speculate about what pleasure they can derive out of life. As for his theory of evolution, it isn’t developed on these pages; yet, in giving advice to someone considering a trip such as the one he took, he writes, “No doubt it is a high satisfaction to behold various countries and the many races of mankind, but the pleasures gained at the time do not counterbalance the evils. It is necessary to look forward to a harvest, however distant that may be, when some fruit will be reaped, some good effected.” This is the journal of a naturalist whose scientific side was combined with an enlivening humanness, and who just happened to have the artfulness to produce a classic of its kind. *

Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion – V. S. Naipaul
I tend to like odd characters and situations, but this novella is odd in a way that fostered incredulity and boredom. Mr. Stone came across as inhuman, and his plan for his company to aid retirees with a program called the Knights Companion was too quirky a basis to build a plot around. Add to that an inexplicable marriage and an overly-imaginative PR man named Whymper, and I felt I was in a murky alternate universe populated by people who act without believable motivations. I groped to the halfway point before putting this novel aside. You have to wonder about the vagaries of creativity when you consider that three years previously Naipaul had written the wonderful A House for Mr. Biswas. Also a cause for speculation is his choice of the name Whymper for the PR man. Surely he knew that the words “whimper” and “why” would immediately come to the reader’s mind. Since those words have no relation to the character (who’s emphatic and upbeat), what point is Naipaul trying to make (if any)?

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe - Carson McCullers
McCullers assembles a group of grotesques and puts them in deadly conflict in a backward Southern town. We enter a strange, gothic world, one in which things are darker, denser than normal. The prose is as sinuous as the tale it tells. Accompanying this novella are stories, including McCullers’ wonderful “A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud.” *

The Man-eater of Malgudi - R. K. Narayan
This book, by an author I greatly admire, was a disappointment. I was surprised at its slapdash quality. The prose was amateurish and the plot trailed about, taking various directions and then abandoning them. The death at the end was gimmicky. There was some sweetness here, a benevolence I like about Narayan, and many parts were appealing – characters, scenes – but it didn’t add up to much. And Narayan’s novels usually do.

The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
As a psychological study, this is outstanding. Mr. Ripley is a sick individual, yet Highsmith makes him understandable and even sympathetic; we wind up rooting for this double murderer. Especially impressive is the author’s handling of Ripley’s ambiguous sexuality. His problems are presented subtly, just enough to suggest something really creepy. The intricate plot is handled well – it works on a logical level. The glaring problem was the sloppy prose; did anyone (Highsmith or her editor) care about fixing it up?

In a Free State - V. S. Naipaul
This book takes an unusual form; it’s composed of sections connected only by the theme of cultural alienation. Its main worth is that Naipaul makes us understand that condition. Two of the sections, about an Indian in America and someone (I’m not sure from where) in England, are quite effective at portraying estrangement. Both are told in first person, which gives them a needed liveliness. The longest section, for which the book is titled, is tiresome. If anyone wants an example of the faults of over-description, this is the text to use; it buries Naipaul’s story and characters. The African landscape is described in detail, but try as I might I couldn’t see the places; what it amounts to is a lot of empty, boring words. Authors, please – just create a telling image and be done with it. A tree doesn’t matter to a reader unless it falls on someone’s head.