The People's Train

My views on historical fiction tend to be the opposite of Booker Prize judges, but strangely this goes out the window for anything set in Russia especially around the October Revolution.

Unfortunately The People's Train is the exception that proves the rule.

Sometime last year I chanced across a review that  praised the book and mentioned that it was based on a true story about one of the minor protagonists in the Russian Revolution.  I have never read anything by Thomas Keneally (or Tom as his Australian publishers prefer), but he won the Booker for Schindler's Ark and is undoubtably one of Australia's best regarded and prolific writers so it seemed likely to be something I would enjoy.

The first two-thirds is set in Brisbane and is purportedly the English translation of the memoirs of one Artem Samsurov (Late Hero of the Soviet Revolution) – a protégé of Lenin's who escapes from prison in Tsarist Russia and makes it to Australia by way of Japan and China. The last one-third is billed as Paddy Dykes' Russian Journal and culminates in his account of the storming of the Winter Palace on 27 October 1917.

It is a brilliant idea to swap the perspectives in this way – the Russian exile narrating the Australian section (although with a great deal of back story and plot filling along the way) and the small-town Australian idealist reporting the momentous historical events he witnesses in Russia.

Unfortunately it just doesn't work. The characters are flat and unconvincing, the historical details are correct by don't come to life and the narrative trundles along when it should race toward the obvious conclusion.

At one point Paddy complains that Artem's bride-to-be 'Tasha didn't seem to exist beyond her reputation. She was most alive and was a real presence when she spoke at factories around Kharkov. In the Gubin house she was a bit like a ghost.' Unfortunately this could applied to a great many of the characters in the novel. And on top of this the writing can be clunky and laboured, almost as if he forgot to re-write all the material that his researcher came up with. It's a shame because Artem's story is incredible and I couldn't help feeling that it was short-changed by this book.

Song for Sunday

Casio Kids – Grønt Lys i Alle Ledd

Band/artist of the week: Frightened Rabbit
Song of the week: The National – Afraid of Everyone

Song for Sunday

Venice is Sinking – Okay

How great is this? Venice is Sinking are from Athens GA (same city as R.E.M.) and specialise in a beautiful, lush and languid slightly leftfield-rock which is right up my street. The combination of male and female vocals weaving in and out is something else which I find hard to resist. Anyway, they are the best new band I've found this year (thanks mbvmusic!) and if the video above appeals then I suggest you have a look at their website – plenty of free tunes to download – and start by purchasing their Okay EP from late last year.

Band/artist of the week: Venice is Sinking
Song of the week: Venice is Sinking – Compass

Song for Sunday

White Rabbits – They Done Wrong, We Done Wrong

Band/artist of the week: The National
Song of the week: The National – Bloodbuzz Ohio

Song for Sunday

The National – Terrible Love

Band/artist of the week: The National
Song of the week: The National – Bloodbuzz Ohio

It's all about one band this week. New album May 11. Put it in your diaries/blackberries/iPhones/whatever. I think it is safe to say that I am probably more excited about High Violet than just about any other album released in the last five years. Watch the clip above, download Bloodbuzz Ohio from the web-site. I think you'll see why.

Song for Sunday

Mogwai – Mogwai Fear Satan

I don't believe in swearing. Much. But I have to say this is fucking amazing. If you are epileptic or suffer from seizures easily be warned: you may need to watch with your eyes shut. But don't worry it will still be worth it.

Band/artist of the week: The National
Song of the week: Efterklang – Alike

Election

Fantastic. More Tory campaign posters at mydavidcameron.com ...

Now, is it too late to get my postal vote sorted?

Song for Sunday

Basia Bulat – The Shore

Band/artist of the week: Malcolm Middleton
Song of the week: Efterklang – Alike

Song for Sunday

The Soft Pack – C'mon

Band/artist of the week: Efterklang
Song of the week: Roky Erickson w/ Okkervil River – Goodbye Sweet Dreams

And I hope you are all getting excited about the new Mogwai live CD and movie Burning –

Song for Sunday

Bowerbirds – Northern Lights

Band/artist of the week: Efterklang
Song of the week: Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore – Something, Somewhere, Sometime

Efterklang's new album Magic Chairs was released this week and it is excellent. Hence the large number of plays on Geography of Hope's iPod this week. If you want a preview there is a fantastic live set of four songs here and you can find out more about all the songs on the album here.

Misplaced childhood

My father told lies all his life and, because
I knew no better, I repeated them.

A lie about my father... A son's version of the truth...

John Burnside's memoir about his father is a brilliant, but brutal account of what it was like for him growing-up in the fifties and sixties in Cowdenbeath and Corby. As well as being a liar, his father is a drunk and a bully who is singularly ill-qualified for fatherhood, even by the standards of 1950s Scotland.

A Lie About My Father covers the time from John's birth to his early twenties when his dad dies. It is tough going – his dad burning his teddy bear at six, his mother bundling him out of the bedroon window late at night to avoid drunken beatings, the broken arm from a holiday in Blackpool that goes undiagnosed for three weeks, the teenage obsession with fire-lighting – but not at all gloomy. He seems to cope remarkably well with his lot and there is a complete lack of self-pity or wallowing in his predicament. Like millions of other teenagers he survives with the help of books, music and a complete rejection of his father's principles.

Of course, however, it all takes its toll and as the book ends he is diagnosed with mental illness, hospitalised and losing himself in serious drug abuse from which it takes him a decade to escape.

When they warn you about all that bohemian stuff, they always talk about the seductive properties of alcohol, or drugs, or loose morals, but they never say how seductive falling is, what a great pleasure it is to be lost. Perhaps they don't know. Perhaps only the lost know. Far from home, far from the known, the imagination starts to play beautiful, terrifying tricks on us. Maybe it is the road of excess that leads to the palace of wisdom – which is just another word for a certain kind of crazy. Being lost, being crazy: while I was falling, I knew I was on to something. I knew I wasn't anywhere near there yet, but I also knew that I couldn't get there from where I was.

His recent memoir Waking up in Toytown covers this lost decade and his escape into suburbia of all places. A Lie About My Father ends positively and, although I don't want to spoil the book for anyone, it is safe to say that he isn't going to repeat the mistakes his father made.

P.S. What is the difference between memoir and autobiography? I couldn't really have told you until recently, but according to Diana Athill (in issue number 7 of the consistently interesting Five Dials) the two have diverged recently and autobiography is the official, public version of events while memoir is the private version. Thus the key to memoir is that its success or otherwise depends on how true the account feels to the reader. A Lie About My Father certainly fits this description.

Song for Sunday

The Twilight Sad – I Became a Prostitute (acoustic)

I almost put the official video up late last year, but it is a bit rude and definitely NSFW. (I could just see myself clicking on it by accident and having a bit of explaining to do to the IT police. Not that I would look at my own blog or update it or anything like that at work ...)

Band/artist of the week: Land of Talk
Song of the week: Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore – Something, Somewhere, Sometime
(Click on the link above, download the mp3, enjoy. My pleasure. Don't mention it.)

Song for Sunday

Land of Talk – Some are Lakes

Band/artist of the week: We Were Promised Jetpacks
Song of the week: We Were Promised Jetpacks – Quiet Little Voices

Things We Didn't See Coming

Maybe I wanted to love Steven Amsterdam's Things We Didn't See Coming too much. Unfortunately I finished it feeling that I should have enjoyed it more than I did.

The nine chapters (or are they actually short stories?) are inventive and disconcerting, challenging and constantly surprising; all set in an indistinct, post-apocalyptic future which at times seem temporally near, but at others extremely distant.

Initially it looks like we are in for an alternative reality, starting with a Y2K millennium panic that really does go bad, but then we start skipping through the twenty-first century glimpsing nine snapshots of lives that seem to reference what has come before but how it is hard to tell. The connections between the stories are too tenuous or not there at all and I was left lost and a bit puzzled by each subsequent one. The book group questions on his website suggest that all nine stories are narrated by the same person, but this doesn't feel right to me – it just doesn't make sense or ring true.

Individually the nine stories are all great pieces of writing – thought provoking and haunting in many places – but regrettably the holes and gaps and disjunctures meant that I couldn't believe in it as a complete narrative.

I do love the cover design: simple, but powerful and intriguing. And his website is a great example of how a you can make the most of a tiny marketing budget to enhance and promote the book. Just don't click on the What are you so worried about? link.

Song for Sunday

Frightened Rabbit – Swim Until You Can't See Land

New album The Winter of Mixed Drinks is out on March 2 ...

Band/artist of the week: We Were Promised Jetpacks
Song of the week: We Were Promised Jetpacks – Quiet Little Voices

Song for Sunday

Shout Out Louds – Fall Hard

Band/artist of the week: Hello Saferide
Song of the week: Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Hysteric

The Steep Approach to Garbadale

I've read all of Iain Banks' books, pretty much in the order he wrote them, starting with The Wasp Factory in 1988. The Bridge is one of my favourite books ever, one that I re-read on a regular basis, and his run of non-SF novels from The Wasp Factory to Complicity is arguably unmatched in British literature. I agree with him on most of his political views, am interested in all the same things and recognise much of what he writes about from my own background and experiences. Listening to him talk it is clear that he is erudite and fantastically entertaining (just listen to him discuss Transition with Ramona Koval on Radio National's The Book Show to see what I mean).

In short, he is a bit of genius and someone I admire greatly.

Unfortunately, and you knew there was a qualifier coming, his last four (non-SF) novels haven't been very good. So over the last 14 years I have gone from keenly awaiting each new release to mild interest whenever the latest title appears. After Dead Air I even sort-of-assumed that I might be finished with his regular fiction and considered starting into his SF works. I read some mildly positive reviews of The Steep Approach to Garbadale, but even then had no inclination to pick up a copy and probably wouldn't have been tempted apart from the fact that the excellent Fullers Bookshop in Hobart was selling the hardback for five dollars.

The characters are almost all caricatures (the poncey business exec with his Mercedes S-class and Zero Halliburton aluminium briefcase anyone?), mouthpieces for Banks' views on society and politics, so unconvincing they would have trouble standing up in a Jackie Collins novel.

Even more annoyingly there are enough flashes of his best writing to remind you what you're missing. The passages recounting the hero's teenage years are beautifully written, with a real feel for the miseries and joy of that age. Sadly, these sections only remind me of similar ones in his earlier and better books.

One of the better characters seems to be speaking directly to the author rather than the protagonist when she asks: 'What are you trying to achieve? What is it you really want?' In Banks' case unfortunately it looks like he has lost track of the former and found the answer to the latter so long ago that he can't really be arsed anymore.

Song for Sunday

Slaraffenland – We're on Your Side

Band/artist of the week: Hello Saferide
Song of the week: Girls – Morning Light

Books of 2009

Complete list is in the sidebar on the right. 49 is quite an improvement on 2008's total of 26, but just short of my unofficial goal of 50 in total. This year I am upping the stakes and going for one a week.

Top ten is below, with statistics underneath. Apparent in the numbers is a heavy bias towards fiction, male authors and books published in the last three years.

Not many other trends in the top 10 apart from a fondness for Scandinavian crime novels (although I cheated by grouping all the Millennium trilogy together at number 2). More to come about that at a later date ...

Most of the list is fiction apart from numbers 1 and 10, both of which would probably be classed as travel literature. One a walk around the M25 and the other a woman's journey to the northern areas of Pakistan.

Fairly international – three Scots, two Icelanders, two Americans, two English and one Swede – and three translations.

Top 10

1 London Orbital – Iain Sinclair

2 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/The Girl who Played with Fire/The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest – Steig Larsson
3 The Draining Lake – Arnaldur Indridason
4 Ascent – Jed Mercurio
5 The Incredible Adam Spark – Alan Bissett
6 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Díaz
7 The Devil's Footprints – John Burnside
8 The Blue Fox – Sjón
9 The Invention of Everything Else – Samantha Hunt
10 Among Muslims – Kathleen Jamie

Statistics
Fiction: 34 titles
Non-fiction: 15 titles
Number of authors: 44

Male authors: 43
Female authors: 6

Books published in 2009: 4
Books published in 2008: 15
Books published in 2007: 13
Books published in 2006: 5
Books published in 2005: 4
Books published 2000-04: 7
Books published 1990-99: 1
Books published 1980-89: 0
Books published before 1980: 0

Song for Sunday

Efterklang and the Danish National Orchestra – Cutting Ice to Snow

Band/artist of the week: Girls
Song of the week: Girls – Morning Light

The Olivetti Chronicles

Eagle-eyed readers of this blog will have noticed the little LibraryThing widget about halfway down the column on the right seems to have been stuck, displaying the pensive visage of the legendary John Peel without fail for the last three months as numerous other book covers have come and gone. However, the problem has nothing to do with the irreproachable LibraryThing or even with my lax updating of the data which it requires to accurately provide this essential part of the Geography of Hope experience. No, it has all been down to the fact that I couldn't bear to finish this cobbled together, blatant (dare I say it) cash-in which is all that remains of John's wit and wisdom.

Like listening to John's radio show (which I have to confess I never did as often as I would have liked to pretend I did) you never know what is going to be up next. But it has been wonderfully comforting picking up this collection of articles and hearing in my head that gruff but reassuring accent musing on subjects as varied as Eurovision, Extreme Noise Terror, The Fall (not nearly as much as you would expect), football (lots of football), Cliff Richard, vaginal deodorants and Top of the Pops. Written for a diverse range of publications from Sounds to The Radio Times over a period of about thirty three (and a third) years it is actually the perfect memento of a singular and remarkable man whose love of new music rubbed off on a couple of generations of music fans.

The greatest pleasure in pop music derives, I believe, from the manner in which its very nature resists scholarship ... Pop is a car-boot sale, a parade of trinkets, junk and handicrafts, most worthless, some capable of giving a few moments of pleasure, with a few glorious items made more glorious by their unexpected appearance in this market. Then in an unpredictable double-bluff, the worthless can, within a few years, take on great worth and the glorious become merely laughable.

Song for Sunday

Hello Saferide – Anna

Band/artist of the week: The XX
Song of the week: The XX – Islands

Hüzün

Istanbul is travel writing at its most pure. The author doesn't travel far, at most a few kilometres from the streets he grew up in and has lived in all his life. Backwards and forwards in time a bit too, but the real travel is done by the reader, transported to a beguiling and intriguing city that is as alien and strange as anything I can imagine.

Orhan Pamuk on why he writes:

I write because I can't do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more then I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of literature. I write because it is exciting to turn all of life's beauties and riches into words. I write not tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I want to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go - just as in a dream - I can't quite get there. I write because I never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.

From Other Colours, 2007

And what does Hüzün mean? Well, you will just have to read Istanbul and find out.

Who's Gonna Love You Now Baby? (2009 in mix-tape form)

When I started compiling my best of 2009 mix-tape I thought I might include a second disk made up of completely new bands, but as it turned out that disk was my best of 2009 collection! Apart from Emiliana Torrini and The Twilight Sad all these bands were new to me in 2009. Here's the track listing:

Little Birdy – Brother
Emiliana Torrini – Big Jumps
Phantogram – When I'm Small
Burning Hearts – I Lost My Colour Vision
The XX – Islands
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Hysteric
Day for Night – Badlands
Wild Light – Red House
Young Galaxy – Destroyer
The Twilight Sad – I Became a Prostitute
Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Wrapped Up
The Very Best – Yalira
Efterklang – Modern Drift
Slaraffenland – Away
Girls – Lust For Life
Fulton Lights – Healing Waters
The Airborne Toxic Event – Sometime Around Midnight

National postal services permitting, a limited number should be arriving around now. Let me know if yours hasn't arrived by the end of the week! Alternatively you can make your own by downloading a zip file with all the tracks and the CD label here.

Song for Sunday

Tinariwen – Lulla

Band/artist of the week: The XX
Song of the week: The XX – Islands