Am quite tickled to read that Kosyrev writes for his Russian audience under the pen name Master Chen :... the first Chinese pen-name in Russia ...And it would be rather nice to see this and previous novels (Amalia and the White Apparition, Amalia and the Generalissimo) translated into English and Malay, so I hope those discussions with "a local publisher" go well.
William Boyd talks about double lives and double dealing and his new novel to Christian House in The Independent, and is profiled by Christopher Tayler in The Guardian.Adam Kindred is "a cloud man" with a problem. He is a climatologist who finds himself wanted for the murder of an immunologist he briefly encountered in an Italian restaurant. ... The dead scientist was developing a miracle cure for asthma, a drug that is set to earn his pharmaceutical company untold riches and the secret of which Adam unknowingly possesses. His life spirals out of control as a cast of assassins, river police and corporate flunkies hits his trail.It sounds pretty exciting, doesn't it? You can read the first chapter on the Bloomsbury website.
As I sit and write this, buoyed by generous lashings of wine and sated with multiple helpings of string hoppers with delicious "sodhi" and chicken curry, I keep thinking if a thriller is an apt choice for a book club discussion. After all, as a genre, it is severely restrictive in the sense of what it needs to accomplish. It MUST thrill, pure and simple. Fancy wordplay, fleshed out characters and atmospherics, those tropes favoured for lengthy dissertations, are in a thriller, purely secondary to it's ability to keep the readers hooked to a plot that, out of necessity, must be breathlessly exciting, pacy and preferably twisty with multiple reversals before a riveting denouement that ties up all loose ends.I am actually missing Child 44 now I've finished it. It was such a lovely easy romp of a read - just what I need at the moment - and the dramatic tension never flags. It should emphatically not have been Booker longlisted even, because it really isn't literary fiction. (Though if it hadn't been nominated, would I have read it?)
Looking at my jottings of the various opinions put forth in our as usual febrile discussions of Tom Rob Smith's Child 44, one common factor that stands out is that it's not an especially well written book, making it's inclusion in a Booker Long-List that much more puzzling. As writers like James Lee Burke, John Connolly and Thomas Harris ably demonstrate, good writing needn't be concomitant to an engaging plot. So why this book over other far superior ones made the Booker long list cut?
As Sham (in her book club swan song) pointed out in a summation reeking of contempt, lots of things happen in this book, and she longed for it to happen in a better written one. Ditto Uma and Jessica who felt the writing was contrived.
As someone who devours thrillers (I average one every fortnight) it now comes to a point where unless a skilled hand is behind the telling, I can usually see a twist coming a mile off, as I did here, echoed by Diana (our new member) who didn't find it engrossing in the least and found the ending a little too pat.
Sharon took issue with the multiple points of view on display in this book while Alina felt the violence very dark and gratuitous (although I must interject here and say this is pretty much de rigueur for most thrillers being written today) and the book's tone hollow while finding Smith's depiction of an oppressive regime anything but compelling.
In addition to being a lovely host, thanks to Alison for pointing out the "gay" sub-text in Child 44 (Vasily's obsession with Leo, persecution of homosexuals etc), something my all but dormant "Gay"dar would never have picked up (I frequently pause in typing this to slap my forehead).
Taj and Alice probably encapsulate my thoughts best in finding the book a thoroughly entertaining read with nary a wasted word. It has a gruesome beginning, engrossing middle and a twisty end with doors left wide open for a sequel.
I pride myself on soundbites, but it's Sharon who delivered the best one for the night; after the constipation of overtly literate books, this au fait airport thriller debut from Tom Rob Smith is a perfect laxative:-)
The post-mortemising of the Man Booker longlist has been playing out on the book pages and on the Booker bulletin boards, and these are so far the biggest controversies.
I wouldn't say this is the first thriller on the Booker longlist, as Brian Moore's 1990 shortlisted Lies of Silence fits the bill very nicely ... except that it wasn't called a thriller, because to call it a thriller would be to pander to the masses who aren't up to litfic.
Maybe we should think ourselves lucky that terrorists do not spend all their time scanning the fiction shelves for ideas.Peter Millar in The Sunday Times reflects on the often uncomfortable relationship between the real world and fiction, especially when the plots of thriller novels suddenly seem to predict real life atrocities.
detailed a plot by four British-born Muslims to explode bombs on the Undergroundfive months before the 7/7 suicide attacks on the London Tube, and the blockbuster climax of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series* which saw
... a crazed anti-American Japanese airline pilot crashing his 747 into the Capitol, killing the US President and half of Congresswell ahead of 9/11.
In his house in Jamaica, Ian Fleming used to write a thousand words in the morning, then go snorkelling, have a cocktail, lunch on the terrace, more diving, another thousand words in late afternoon, then more Martinis and glamorous women. In my house in London, I followed this routine exactly, apart from the cocktails, the lunch and the snorkelling.Sebastian Faulks describes his experience of following in Fleming's footsteps to write a new Bond thriller, Devil May Care. The launch on May 28 this scheduled to coincide with the centenary of Fleming's birth.
... the extent to which the book and films reflect the reality of the Cold War and how much they were a product of Fleming’s prodigious imagination.The IWM's website is worth a visit so you can spin the roulette wheel and learn some Fleming trivia. (And if you think you have enough at your disposal already, you can take this Bond quiz on the Guardian website!)
In the Guardian, Charlie Higson, author of the Young Bond series, takes a critical look at Fleming's life. He puts down the enduring apppeal of Bond to this :It is simply that he is the man who knows. He's a professional who always does the right thing at the right time: "Nobody does it better." This is the ultimate male fantasy, to know how to order good food and fine wine in fancy restaurants, how to charm a lady into bed, how to drive fast and how to kill. We plodders reading the novels can only dream of this level of savoir-faire, and Fleming himself knew his own limitations. Bond is very much the creation of a man who never quite felt that he was a success.
Should I look forward to the Iris Murdoch quest where players race to collect symbols and Jungian archetypes, and the first Martin Amis first-person shooter? To the Henry James adventure where you attempt to escape from inside 3-D versions of his sentences? The Crime and Punishment actioner where you must get away with murder; to rescue fantasies where you can save Tess or Anna Karenina?(Please do feel free to add your own - I think this is fun!)
We need more real writers getting involved in making video games, not fewer. The results could be astounding. It will happen. Elitist suspicion of a new way of storytelling will only last so long, and I doubt the next generation of writers, who grew up on the likes of Beneath A Steel Sky, would have so many prejudices. Heaven only knows what a great writer could do with this new format. I can't wait.I'm an old fashioned paper book loving grouch who will never mend her ways, but I do find the possibilities of these hybrid forms of fiction very exciting indeed.
