Book: A Death in the Family: My Struggle Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard

His struggle! How about mine? I was misled by the great reviews and all the plaudits that this book (most of them reprinted in the prelims) has garnered into borrowing it from the library. I've got to say, I just don't get it. The author/protagonist (as it's a memoir) is solipsist in the extreme. He has no empathy for nor understanding of others but seems to believe he has or that he at least recognises when he hasn't. It's hard to identify with such a misanthropist. The book, reasonably interesting to begin with, eventually degenerates into a version of `How Clean Is Your House' and that's not a programme I like: page after page on which bleach or detergent he's using on which part of the house and so on. Why would anyone find this interesting?

Then, very occasionally, something is described adequately, ok except that it's usually completely arbitrary and sometimes rather dull so in a way kind of pointless. He goes into details about some weird fantasy he had as a child without ever really explaining what's behind it. It's like if two people came into your house and you spent three pages describing one but said nothing about the other.

I think we're supposed to have sympathy for him because his father drank but if he were my son, I think I'd drink too and this book could drive anyone to the bottle.

Not sure how to explain all the praise it's received. Can only conclude that it's a peculiarly virulent case of the emperor's new clothes.

Film: Dark Storm

A movie starring a lesser Baldwin (Stephen, they’re all ‘lesser’ to Alec since he’s been around the longest) who spends the whole film looking vaguely pissed off, or as if he’s trying to do mental arithmetic (like Joey, Matt LeBlanc, in Friends is advised to do when required to show emotion), an expression that probably originates from his manful struggle to spout scientific gobbledegook like ‘I’ve never seen so much dark matter in one place’ as if it actually meant something.

He plays that disaster movie cliché, the one sensible person in the possibly (inevitably) catastrophic scenario battling whatever constitutes the powers that be (the mayor/the government/the corporation/the other scientists), questioning their refusal to act in the face of this certain calamity, usually for reasons of the bottom line, insisting that the town/beach/world be evacuated while there’s still time (time is always of the essence) because there’s going to be a tidal wave/earthquake/tornado/shark attack/solar flare/alien invasion (delete as appropriate).

He will probably be the one to deliver possibly the most used line in any horror/thriller/scifi movie: ‘Let’s get the hell outta here!’ as if anyone would contemplate staying put while the sky falls in.

To top it all, he’s absorbed some ‘dark matter’ himself, as you do, been electrocuted then struck by lightning. No wonder he looks a little peeved.

The plot is nonsensical but the film’s a trip. See the image on the front of the box – that’s the expression Stephen Baldwin wears throughout. Perplexed. Or maybe that’s just his ‘intelligent scientist’ face.

Book: Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver

I've got to admit that this book was a bit of a disappointment after The Poisonwood Bible, which I loved. In fact, the title itself is a little off-putting. It certainly doesn't grab you - Flight Behaviour. Something seems to be missing and this is the case with the book too. I ended up feeling short-changed. First of all, I thought the beginning was excellent and was excited at the prospect of Dellarobia's affair so I felt a little misled when that didn't materialise. I have a feeling that this young man would have been the most interesting character.

Then I gradually lost respect for and belief in the protagonist and don't feel she was very well realised. I would have liked to identify with her but too often, things are signposted in advance and she behaves in a weak or childish way, for instance when she first encounters Ovid Byron and talks to her friend Dovey about him. They sound like tittering teenagers. Then when he comes to the house and she and Cub talk up her expertise on the butterflies. You know that Byron is going to be the real specialist. It's too obvious. And it seems out of character to drag the reporter into Byron's lab without any warning.

The other thing I'd take issue with is the way she seems to first recognise how many toys her kids have in comparison to Josefina but then bleats on about having to shop in the dollar store or the new second-hand emporium. It seems she has no perspective. She resents people shopping there who she thinks could afford to shop elsewhere and pay full price and the implication is that, if she had the money, she would rather not economise. What's wrong with buying nearly new stuff at rock-bottom prices? I would love to find this store. She's not exactly hypocritical but inconsistent and full of self-pity, not particularly attractive traits.

I applaud her stand on the butterflies and have nothing against the message of the book. I only think that more time should have been spent on characterisation and dialogue. Her exchanges with Dovey don't ring true at all and Ovid is not well drawn enough to be convincing so ends up as merely a cipher, the scientist from somewhere exotic to Dellarobia. 

Book: The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

I did not get this book and was misled by the blurb and cover quotes to think that it would be `grand and powerful', `accomplished and gripping', `lyrical'. It was none of these things. The writer has managed to create three very detached and unlikeable characters. His style is to have them wonder a lot about pointless, uninteresting questions that he seems to think are deep and he seems to believe that this will increase our identification with them, e.g. `Do you think it's worse to be wounded or killed?'

First Arrow: `But then she begins to wonder about this. Do the men on the hills hate her? Or do they hate the idea of her ...?' and on and on. You're tempted to ask `Who cares?'


Then Kenan. He's the brainbox who kindly takes his neighbour's bottles to fill them with water when he does his own. It's a long and dangerous route, complicated by the fact that her bottles don't have handles. He has two spare bottles that do have handles and carry more than hers. Instead of taking hers from her, leaving them at his apartment and using his more manageable ones (and filling hers from these when he returns), he navigates snipers and hills and unsafe bridges with these hard-to-hold bottles while constantly whingeing about it. Didn't have very much respect for him after this. In a terrible situation like this, when it's a life or death deal, you would use your head to negotiate your own safety and not be led by the whims of a neighbour for whom you're doing a favour.

When the author uses incidental details to fill out his characters' lives and homes, this is too obvious and doesn't sound authentic.

I suppose what I'm saying is it purports to realism but doesn't deliver. This means that the reader can't identify with or care about the characters, which turns out to be a major flaw.