*The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes

978022409413
Jonathan Cape, 2011
150 pp


   "History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation."


I don't often expect much out of a book that is only 150 pages long -- actually, I don't remember the last time I read one this short that I walked away from simply dazzled.  But there's so much in this little book that gives one pause to think about his or her own life, especially when you get to a certain age and something happens to make you look back over the past.  And like the main character, Tony, in this novel, you get older physically but inside your head you tend to hold on to the you of an earlier, more youthful age, often revisiting those times in your memory every now and then.   The trouble is, how accurate are those memories? Memory, like time, is malleable, and when confronted with a reality that doesn't exactly coincide with how you remember it, what do you do?  How do you deal with your younger self from the point of view of your older self? I think this is why this book kept me engaged ... it's something that happens to everyone.

There's a mystery at the heart of this novel: Tony Webster, retired, has received a letter from an attorney informing him that he's been left 500 pounds from the mother of his first girlfriend Veronica.   The second part of his inheritance is the diary of his school friend Adrian, a larger-than-life figure from Tony's school years, who had, later in his life, committed suicide.  As he's pondering what all of this means, he begins to go back through his memories of Adrian, Veronica and his own life, or at least what he thinks he remembers.  As he notes, he feels no "nostalgia" for his school years, but he needs to "return briefly to a few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty." 

The story is related in two parts: the first is the story of Tony Webster  looking back over his time at school in the 1960s in the sixth form (it's equivalent to our American senior year) with his group of friends, then on to his days with Veronica at university.  The second part (which throws into question some of what Tony remembers from the first part) follows Tony as he tries to piece together the real story.  He attempts to get hold of Adrian's diary, which Veronica refuses to give up, hoping that the real story is in there somewhere.  Veronica has only allowed him a small piece of Adrian's writing, enough to tantalize him into discovering what part he might have played in later events.  But what he discovers will bring him around the inevitable conclusion that

 "You get towards the end of life -- no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life.  You are are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?"

and by then he realizes that there's no way to go back and change either the situation or himself, that any possibility for change has long-since ended.  

Considering its brevity, there is a great deal in this little book, and like all good books, it gives the reader a great deal of material for thought.  There is a great deal of insight in here, as the narrator reflects on memory and its influence, the gap between our older and younger selves, aging and regrets. But one of the most important things I take away from this novel is the question of what I think I know about myself juxtaposed with the reality of memory as an imperfect entity. It's a lovely and poignant book, very well written, very thoughtful.  Julian Barnes never disappoints, and this book is no exception.

fiction from the UK

*Pigeon English, by Stephen Kelman

9780547500607
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011
263 pp

Pigeon English is Stephen Kelman's first novel. It has had an interesting journey, moving from potential obscurity in a publisher's slushpile to the Booker Prize shortlist. Although the story is set in London, the issues it describes are just as relevant in major cities here in the US or anywhere else.  It is structured so that each section pertains to a month in a young Ghanian immigrant boy's life in a London housing project.

The story is told through the eyes and voice of Harrison (Harri) Opuku, eleven years old. Harrison is just eleven; he came to the UK from Ghana with his mother and his older sister Lydia. The family was able to get a council flat in an poor area of London, but Harrison's father and his baby sister Agnes had to stay behind in Ghana until there's money enough to bring them out. The story begins just after another boy (a "half-friend" of Harrison's) has been stabbed to death. Harrison and his friend Dean decide that the police are never going to solve this crime so they take it upon themselves to do so.  Dean is a huge fan of CSI, and knows all of the things the two will need to do: surveillance, gathering fingerprints on tape, getting DNA, and watching potential suspects for any signs of guilt. They plan to take the reward money and buy new bicycles.  This bit of child's-play detective work is really the frame for the novel rather than the real story.

Harri may be eleven, but he's different from the other kids.  Not because he's from Ghana (there are a number of immigrant families in the complex), but because of his innocence.  He tries very hard to fit into his new life, taking the time to memorize the "rules," over one hundred of them, but for the most part they're general kid-type rules for fitting in, and he forgets a lot of them:

"No running on the stairs
No singing in class...
Jumping in the puddle means you're a retard
Going around the puddle means you're a girl
The first one to answer the question loves the teacher...
The library stairs are safe...

He has a crush on a girl at school, paints his tennis shoes to look like Adidas, likes stuff kids his age normally like, is fascinated with Haribo gummy candies, and in general is a typical boy. He is friendly with everyone, and when the Dell Farm Crew gives him an opportunity to join with them he's tempted, even taking but failing their entry tests.

While Harri is offering his often-delightfully innocent viewpoints throughout the book, things are going on all around him that he misses. He sees and hears things that even at his age should make him put two and two together and come out with four, but doesn't get it.  How ironic, if you think about it...here this boy is playing at being a detective, but has no clue how to put all of the facts together once he has them all within his grasp. It's not that he's dense; he's an intelligent kid, but he's been sheltered. Harri's brief memories of life in Ghana reveal that he came from a place where the extended family and others in the community were a part of his upbringing. Moving to London, that support system's been removed, and his mom and sister try to shield him from the negative realities of living there. They get it:  mom has succumbed to some shady dealings, his sister is peripherally involved in what's going on with the Crew, and his Aunt Sonia's story speaks for itself -- but  their attempts at protecting him, along with his natural optimism and quirky views on life, sadly leave him without the resources he needs to adjust and conform. 

I liked this book, and with a few exceptions, found Harri's voice to be pretty consistent throughout. I also found this story to be convincing and once I started it, couldn't put it down.  So many people have taken an ardent dislike to this novel, mostly to do with the issue of the child narrator.  That didn't bother me, even though sometimes it got too cutesy and sometimes wore a bit thin;  my beef is with the pigeon.  I can sort of get where Kelman is coming from, but it just didn't work for me. A pigeon as a spokesperson was just too much, dropping the credibility factor a point or two.  But when all is said and done, if you can get past the annoying bits, there's a good story in here.

*Jamrach's Menagerie, by Carol Birch

9780385534406
Doubleday, 2011
295 pp.

"...the time before the dragon and the time after are not the same."

I love all things Victorian; I love Victorian novels, well-written Victorian imitations, and I just have a thing for this time period in general.  Two things about this book grabbed me from the very start: first, the fact that it's set in 1857 and second, the only illustration in the book, that of a fiendish-looking waterspout on the open sea standing just behind a ship at full sail.   And as it turns out, most of the way through the novel I was a very happy reader.  More on this later. 

Jamrach's Menagerie is Carol Birch's eleventh novel; she published her first book in 1988. It is told in the style of a Victorian narrative, although probably not as well imagined as Derby Day, which to me is a much better imitation of the style and better use of idiom. The story is related through the eyes of one Jaffy Brown, who is eight years old at the outset of the novel, and follows Jaffy through to adulthood.  It is told in three parts: Jaffy's childhood and his fateful meeting with a tiger on the loose in the streets of London's East End; the events during a three-year sea voyage on which Jaffy was a crew member, and finally, Jaffy's return from the sea.

In Part One, we are introduced to Jaffy, his mother and the streets of the East End. Having been forced to move to Watney Street, one day Jaffy is out running an errand and comes upon a tiger moving down the middle of the Ratcliffe Highway.  Awed by its beauty, and without fear, Jaffy lifts his hand to touch it, and is snatched up in the beast's jaws.  Jaffy is fine, but the meeting with the tiger leads to a meeting with its owner, the Jamrach of the title.  It is then that Jaffy's life changes -- he gets a job with Jamrach tending to his menagerie of exotic beasts. It is also then that Jaffy meets several people who will remain important in his life throughout the story.   But it is how Jamrach obtains these creatures that is important to Jaffy's story, and which  leads us to part two of the novel -- Jamrach arranges expeditions to capture and import the animals after a collector has decided upon his choice.  As part two begins ("So much for Jaffy the child. He didn't last long, did he?"), a Mr. Fledge, "who always wanted what no one else had ever had," has decided that now he must have a dragon, an "ora".  One of Jamrach's associates, a sea-faring adventurer named Dan Rymer, had related that he knew of a place where he could obtain this creature, on an island east of the Java Sea.  Jaffy and his friend Tim are recruited to go on Fledge's ship the Lysander along with Rymer and the ship's whaling crew to catch and return the dragon.  Promised that upon their successful return, they would never have to work again, the ship sets sail.  While there is much speculation as to the nature of the dragon before the ship arrives on the island, it is finally captured (it turns out to be a komodo dragon or something along those lines) and caged on board the ship.  But it isn't long until mayhem ensues and the ship is wrecked, forcing the crew to take to the whaleboats.  The rest of part two is the story of the crew's adventures on the sea, reading much like the narrative of Owen Chase in The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex, also retold in Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea. If you've read either of those, you will know how things come out; if not, well, you're in for something pretty gruesome. (As an aside, I can highly recommend both books).   In Part Three, Jaffy returns to England (neither surprise nor spoiler since Jaffy's telling the story), where he tries to make sense of his experiences and to find his own sense of place and peace after the horrible events of the voyage of the Lysander.

This book has so many good things to offer, but there are also a few things that bothered me.  Birch gives us a vivid picture of street life in London -- the mix of colors and smells, the descriptions of  people at their occupations, the  living conditions of the poor, the circus of people on the Ratcliffe Highway.   The sense of place is well evoked; the East End comes alive.  Life at sea is also well described, and through her characters, Birch manages to get across that the whaling industry is on the wane;  a longstanding way of life for so many is about to end.  And even here, it's like she'd been on a whaling ship herself: the scenes where the crew captures a whale and its guts are all over the decks are so real I was kind of gagging just picturing it.   Later there are some pretty tense moments during the capture of the dragon on the island and  on board the ship,  but surprisingly, even though what comes afterwards in the whaleboats will both haunt and  come to define Jaffy's post-Lysander life, the telling of these events comes across as rather flat.  And even more surprisingly, other than the group of three main characters Tim, Rymer and Jaffy,  I didn't find the rest of them  to be as well developed, always staying on the periphery of becoming real people to which readers could relate, maybe with the exception of Skip.

Other than those issues with the novel, I actually ended up liking Jamrach's Menagerie -- it may have been a bit on the shallow side at times but overall it was one of those books you want to call a "rollicking good yarn."  Seen in that context, it was a pretty good read.