Category: Books reviews – non-fiction

James Essinger, Writing Fiction (The Conrad Press 2019)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50199457-writing-fiction—a-user-friendly-guide?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=aIXIcYOFM0&rank=1

When I first began writing novels, I was determined that I was not going to ‘follow the rules’. How boring it was always to have a ‘five-part structure’, always to follow the stages in ‘the hero’s journey’.
However, now that I’ve grown up, I realise that there are rules. Readers expect them, and if your novel doesn’t follow them, the reader feels disappointed. We want a big climax in the middle and some kind of resolution at the end. We can’t empathise with a protagonist who’s fighting for a goal we don’t understand, and we lose interest in a hero who wins too easily.
It begins with the basics—write an outline, show don’t tell, character and voice. A novel needs a hero who is grappling with stakes the reader considers significant.
Two of the most important basics Essinger calls ‘golden rules’. 1. Stick to your story. Everything in your novel must be ‘pursued’; it must have something to do with the story. Any detail that’s out of the ordinary needs to be there for a reason. 2. Make your hero be an active participant in the story. Avoid authorial intrusion.
Essinger explodes some old canards. For example, if you ‘only write what you know’, your novel is probably going to be as boring as real life usually is. No, you should use your imagination, but only write what you know, emotionally. ‘Tell’ is not an inferior cousin of ‘Show’; it is simply a different way of telling a story, useful in particular circumstances, for instance, to summarise events in order to move the plot along quickly.
In a useful Appendix, Essinger includes specific advice on common mistakes he’s seen as a publisher.
He concludes, ‘So let’s get to work.’
This how-to book is a good exposition of the basics of fiction writing, featuring illustrative examples from literature and films. It would be a useful handbook for someone who is just starting out. This book adds to a growing shelf in my office of how-to-write books, as, now I know, I need all the help I can get.
I was given an ARC by the author.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899; this edition Green Integer 2003)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4900.Heart_of_Darkness?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_17

A dreamlike tale of a man’s moral integrity challenged by the barbarity around him

In this famous novella, Marlow recounts the story of his voyage to the Belgian Congo one evening while he and others are moored on a boat in the Thames.
It is written in an old-fashioned style (published 1899) that modern readers may find difficult (I did). For example, he begins with a long, though beautiful, description of the Thames ‘crowded with memories of men and ships’, which strains the attention span.
Marlow decides to seek his fortune. He wants to go to somewhere that was ‘a blank space on the map’ and procures himself a position as captain of a steamboat involved in the ivory trade. He finds that the steamboat has sunk and is dredged up to dry dock, where Marlow must repair it, an enterprise thwarted by the inefficiency of bureaucracy and the resulting lack of supplies. High on his list of wants is ‘rickets’, of which there had been thousands at the coast.
From other white men he hears complimentary things about the mysterious Kurtz, another ivory trader, the man he is supposed to meet. He eventually sets off with a crew of cannibals, and his descriptions of the jungle they float past—dense, oppressive silences ‘with the word ivory ringing in the air’, punctuated from time to time by threatening native drums whipping the crew into a frenzy—are dark and disturbing.
Finally arriving at Kurtz’s Inner Station, they discover that the man has set himself up as a sort of god, and a collection of severed heads on posts attest to his omnipotence. Kurtz is determined to ‘civilise’ the natives, his motto being ‘exterminate the brutes’. The steamer breaks down, and they have to dry dock again. Kurtz dies, uttering the last words, ‘the horror, the horror’.
Marlow struggles to maintain his moral integrity, with all the savagery around him, and he struggles against Kurtz in his descent into madness. He barely survives but makes it back to Europe.
Along the Congo River, exploitation of the native black men is at its most raw, and the scenes Marlow describes are nightmarish. Various techniques add to the dreaminess. For example, no character other than Kurtz is named. It is often unclear where Marlow is situated within the narrative. He begins telling us him impressions of a place before he has told us he has travelled to that place. The dream-like feel of this book led to its providing the inspiration for the film Apocalypse Now. The nebulousness is artful, but makes for difficult reading.
This is a ‘hero’s journey’ where the hero doesn’t prevail, but instead returns home haunted by the horrors he has seen.

David Gaughran, Following: A Marketing Guide to Author Platform (2020)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53919170-following?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=KER0IP0xH9&rank=1

This pamphlet, which the author gives away free as a Reader Magnet, boils down the essential elements in developing an author platform. What is an author platform. It is ‘a writer’s collective presence on the internet’. Gaughran simplifies the gobbledy-gook and pares it down to the essential tasks, also recommending requisite services and software.
Never mind blogging, he says, unless you want to. The three main ‘planks’ of your author platform need to be 1. a Great website 2. a Thriving mailing list 3. an Active FaceBook page.
He goes through, step by step, how to do this.
Check it out, and start building your ‘following’.

Ian McEwan, Solar (Random House 2010)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7140754-solar?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=cHaGQwgYSE&rank=2

The beginning is studiedly nebulous. ‘He belonged to that class of men—vaguely unprepossessing, often bald…’ physicist Michael Beard is an Everyman, but in a tongue-in-cheek way.
His fifth marriage is disintegrating—his wife Patrice is having a flagrant affair—and he hasn’t a clue how to react. Adultery seems to have made her more desirable. Even his Nobel Prize and the fame of his Beard-Einstein Conflation couldn’t keep her in his bed.
While his attention is occupied by Patrice’s affair, he sleepwalks into leading a huge project, which grows more unmanageable by the day. He takes off for a sinecure trip to a frozen fjord to discuss climate change with a select group of artists and scientists. Stuffed into a 20-pound snowsuit, urination-related accidents and near-encounters with polar bears ensue, seemingly designed to ruin his chances of fjord-based hanky panky.
Enter brilliant, young, idealistic post-doc Tom Aldous, who, annoyingly, worships Beard. Then, mishaps and retribution.
Years on, Beard tries to live his life in the same way, resting on his laurels. A battle of wills with a younger man on a train over a packet of crisps and an ideological disagreement with a female colleague in which the press become involved push him to his lowest point. For a while, he retreats from human involvement. ‘Stick to photons,’ he thinks—his current project involves simulating photosynthesis—but there comes a point when the brou-ha-ha dies down. Then, on the eve of the grand opening of his project, all his ghosts come out to haunt.
One of the world’s great writers, McEwan turns a beautiful phrase; it’s chock full of inventive metaphors and gorgeous descriptions. In this Bollinger Everman Wodehouse winner, he applies his skill to wit as well as beautiful language. The plot overall is quite humorous, and some of the scenes are hilarious.

Saul Bellow, Herzog (Penguin Classics 2003)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6551.Herzog?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=9dGruMtrcW&rank=1

Moses Herzog is floored by the collapse of his second marriage; she’s leaving him for his erstwhile friend Valentine. For Madeleine, the announcement of their break-up is ‘one of the greatest moments of her life’; for him, he realises that he ‘has mismanaged everything in his life, everything’. He seeks solace with other women—Wanda, Ramona, Zinka—avoids work on his book on Romanticism, and writes manic notes to himself and erudite ‘impertinent letters’—which never get sent—to all and sundry.
I remember someone from my feminist days describing Bellow as ‘misogynistic’, and for that reason I avoided for years picking this book from my bookshelf. Reading it myself, I can agree that he has little empathy with his female characters, and Herzog has little remorse for his philandering. Nevertheless, the depiction of his characters, both female and male, is immensely deep, rich and funny.
During an event-filled five days, he descends into madness, becoming ever more philosophical and verbose. He ends up at his erstwhile marital home in the countryside, realising that, like the old place, he just needs a bit of fixing up.
Bellow won the Nobel prize in 1976 for works such as this National Book Award for Fiction and Prix International winner. Herzog doesn’t really follow a linear plotline, instead, mostly consisting of the ramblings inside the protagonist’s head—but, what a protagonist! His mental process as he prepares for a date goes on for twenty whole pages. For this reason, I found it a bit hard to read, though worth it for its virtuosity.

Colleen McCullough, The Grass Crown (Avon Books 1992)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3424.The_Grass_Crown?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Jn1BkEG0NI&rank=1

This Book Two of the Masters of Rome series follows the political and personal lives of the famous men and women of ancient Rome.
Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Publius Rutilius Rufus dine together. Marius announces his intention to go on pilgrimage to Pessinus, but his friends know he wants to check out what’s going on in Cappadocia.
Quintus Caecilius Metellus (Piggle-wiggle) is out for blood, and Marius’ man Manius Aquillius is on trial. Sulla is about to leave for Spain on campaign. Marius takes his family to Patrae, then Athens, then Helicarnassus and in the spring, on to Pessinus. Young Gaius Julius Caesar is a precocious lad, and Aurelia hires a pedagogue. The rivalry between Sulla and Piggle-wiggle escalates.
In Sinope, King Mithridates of Pontus reads a letter—Gaius Marius wants to meet. Mithridates travels incognito. He is out for conquest.
Marius and family make it to Bithynia, where he becomes involved in politics with Mithridates and Nicomedia.
Marcus Livius Drusus dreams of ‘a general enfranchisement for the whole of Italy’; Quintus Poppaedius Silo, an Italian, dreams of Italian ‘secession from Rome’.
Drusus is determined to get his law passed emancipating the Italians. Their spokesperson thwarted and murdered, leaders of 14 Italian peoples decide to use threat of war. The early victories in the Social War go to the Italians, giving Rome a fright. Though Rome eventually wins, the Italians win their citizenship.
The story follows the lives of Young Caesar and Young Marius. Young Caesar attends upon Marius after his second stroke. Caesar pulls Marius back into politics, and Marius begins to train him. Young Marius kills Lucius Cato the Consul in a mutiny, which saves a battle. Sulla is awarded by his men a Grass Crown. Sulla massacres Aeclanum.
Despite his infirmity, Rome wants Marius at the helm against Mithridates, and Sulla is told to hand over his legions. Instead, he invades Rome. But the troops rebel. On the run from Sulla, Marius flees and takes shelter at Cercina.
At the ludi Romanii, Lucius Cornelius Cinna makes his move to introduce laws regarding the distribution of new citizens and for the recall of 19 fugitives—including Gaius Marius. The controversy leads to the Massacre of Octavius’s Day.
The story finishes with the tale of the battle between Cinna and Gnaeus Octavius Ruso and the deadly rivalry between Marius’s faction and Sulla’s.
The scope of this novel, encompassing the gamut of Roman history, both political and personal, during the 1st century BCE, means learning a lot of complicated Roman names, more so than Book One, which was mostly Marius and Sulla. It takes you through the Senate meetings, the patricians’ dinners, the war strategy and the battlefields as if you were there yourself.