Klara And The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro: Book Review

Kazuo Ishiguro is famous for his ‘unreliable narrators’, central protagonists that tell their tales in such a way that you can’t be sure that what the story they are relating is true or manipulated to protect their side of it (most famously in the Remains of The Day, and a Pale View of Hills). Thus his seemingly simplistic narratives are riddled with undercurrent, red herrings and blind alleys, although none of them are crime stories.

In this he sets up perhaps his most unreliable narrator of all, because the narrator isn’t even human, she’s an Artificial Friend (AF), or, technically, a robot. She has been created through robotics, for sure, and powered by AI to act as a companion for rich kids of the future who live lonely existences in what is a privileged but fairly nihilistic lifestyle.

You’d think that, as a robot, she wouldn’t have emotions, but she does, and these develop as the novel does (that’s AI for ya!). The keenest of all, the hardest to describe and the least reliable of them all, is love. Not romantic love, but familial and caring love. The love of a devoted nurse, or ‘Agape’ (the love of God for Man and Man for God).

In the beginning Klara is for sale in an AF shop and we learn that she is acutely observant, the best AF The Manager of the shop has ever had in fact, despite the fact that she’s a lowly AF2. The far more advanced AF3’s are bossing the sales charts and she’s in danger of being remaindered – something this novel never will be.

Despite her lower spec something about Klara resonates with Josie, a silly teenager, who has her eye on her and the first part of the book is a cat and mouse relationship that results in Klara eventually being sold to The Mother of Josie. All characters are capitalised by Klara and referred to in the third person throughout. The same applies to The Sun.

Part two (of six) sees the unfolding of a love story between the increasingly poorly Klara, her platonic boyfriend Rick, who has lived next door since childhood, The Mother and Klara.

Gradually the significance of The Sun unfolds and its role in the story. In the simplest of terms Klara is solar powered so needs The Sun for energy but in the book The Sun is also God and Klara believes The Sun has the power to make Klara well again. How she became unwell is not revealed for some time but is an important part of the story as it is a consequence (and a risk) of creating her elevated position in the novel’s society.

It’s futuristic, but not terribly so. This is part of Ishiguro’s skill in that he creates a science fiction setting (rather like in Never Let Me Go) without going all flying cars on us. It’s no Blade Runner. Rather, Ishiguro uses science fiction merely as a means of lifting his astounding character studies into a heightened sense of reality, so that he can play with language, allegory and emotion (or a form of it) that would be impossible in a conventional setting.

The richness of Klara’s characterisation is impossible to overstate. Despite her fairly rudimentary language and her unsophisticated emotional range he succeeds in creating a protagonist that the reader falls in loves with and feels every bump of her personal road as she tries to navigate life in a heartless, selfish, frankly dystopian society. A society where, a subtle subplot suggests, fascism is waiting to spring into life, that would probably manifest itself in some form of Krystalnacht that lies two or three hundred pages into an extended version of the book.

This almost reads like a Young Adult novel, it’s incredibly pacy if you want it to be, but I found myself going back and forth making certain that I’d grasped the significance of many of the scenes and themes in the book: love, hate (in the form of fascism and societal exclusion), a dying planet, religion and the role of God in a secular society.

It’s bursting with ideas, with energy, with pathos and for me stands as Ishiguro’s greatest achievement yet in a canon of work that few can match (that’s why he’s a Nobel Laureate).

Your children could read and enjoy this, you could simply take it at face value and enjoy this, or you could take a little more time and really love it.

Love, after all, is what we are all surviving and striving for.

One last point. I cannot wait for this to be interpreted in movie form.

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American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld: Book Review

This is the second novel about First Ladies that I have read by Sittenfeld this year. Rodham (about an imagined history: If Hillary hadn’t married Bill) and this, about the life of Laura Bush.

In different ways both are magnificent. This is far longer (636pp), more serious in its observations and gets way deeper into the psyche of a First Lady who was pro-abortion, killed a classmate (boyfriend) accidentally, did not agree with the War her husband initiated and, at least in the novel, was so humble that she questioned her validity to hold the position of First Lady at every turn.

The main protagonist (Alice Lindgren/Blackwell) is never named as Laura Bush but it cannot be otherwise and that’s what grants it so much gravitas as a novel. Historically it is accurate and the issues that trouble Alice are exactly those that troubled Bush. She too was a librarian that entered, through marriage, a mighty rich dynasty and served her country as best she could and with far greater popularity than her idiot husband (in the novel he’s called Charlie Blackwell).

What makes the novel so compelling is that it is an extremely detailed analysis of not just a life (it takes us from 1954 to 2007 or so) of initial ordinariness through to spectacular fame, but that it throws up the moral compass by which Alice has to (chooses to) live her life. This takes in a huge transition from her small town upbringing in Wisconsin, where the ramifications of the death of her boyfriend, caused by her in a car accident, to her relationship with the highly privileged Charlie Blackwell (George Bush).

In the chapter where we first meet the extraordinarily rich Blackwell clan for the first time I was reminded of the scenes in The Crown where Thatcher goes to Balmoral and is overwhelmed by her daughter of a grocer status in the presence of extreme wealth, privilege and fame. It’s cringeworthy but delicious.

In the final quarter of the book we get to imagine in close detail what the ramifications of that life mean to her as a woman (First Lady), an ordinary woman, and the political consequences of her actions.

Much of the book is a polemic on what it means to be a wife, any wife, not just the First Wife. As public property she has a ‘duty’ to support her husband and his political beliefs (tricky for Alice as a Democrat). As a woman, simply in a long term relationship with a man who does things she might not agree with, we witness her tussling with how to change his behaviours without wrecking their relationship.

It’s mighty writing.

At times it can feel a little stretched out, particularly in the second half of the novel, but mostly it’s absolute gold.

Curtis Sittenfeld has a comedy stardust pen and I’m amazed, astonished in fact, that to my knowledge none of her masterful work has made it to the screen. She can, at times, give Aaron Sorkin a run for his money in the acerbic political writing stakes.

She also has a knack of dealing with sex in a very believable way. In Rodham we squirmed as Hillary and Bill made out. She does not shirk the responsibility here either, and it adds even more realism to the drama. They are human beings after all, not political robots.

As the novel reaches its climax (even though it covers a lifetime of change the narrative arc is not what matters particularly here) it pulls all the strands of guilt, worth, love, duty and loyalty together in a really quite moving denoument.

If you have not read any Curtis Sittenfeld please trust me when I say American Wife and Rodham are extraordinary works of art that will stay with you for a very long time. (I have lost count of the number of recommendations I’ve made of Rodham, this will be no different.)

Entirely recommended.

This will make you cry, I promise.

The group I watched this with at STV this morning were sobbing.

Cold War: Movie Review.

The first thing to state about this beautiful movie is that it’s monochrome.  So stunningly so that at times you feel you are in a photographic gallery rather than a cinema.  The quality of the cinematography is quite extraordinary thanks to Lucas Zal.

It’s also in 4:3 format.  Not the square format of Instagram, but close.

We don’t see 4:3 very often these days but Wes Anderson used it to immense effect in Grand Budapest Hotel and so did Lazslo Melis in Son of Saul.

It’s an engaging format that draws you in.  It suggests a time before cinemascope (16:9 etc) and only really works in period cinema of a time.

This time.

But it also lends itself to incredible framing, such as when our female protagonist floats down a river gradually disappearing out of shot, and later in the movie when the chief protagonists leave a bus and walk out of frame in a composition that Henri Cartier Breson would be proud of.

It’s one of the most beautiful movies I’ve seen in many years.

In truth that’s probably its biggest strength.

It is, but it isn’t really, narrative driven.  More episodic than story, but it does tell a tale about director Pawel Pawlikowski’s parents’ love affair set against the Cold War backdrop in his native Poland.

It’s fairly sordid in a way (his mother was abused by her father as a child) but without anything shocking to see.

Imagine, yes.

The two leads ( Joanna Kulig and Tomasz Kot) are magnificent.  Brooding, beautiful (although unconventionally so) and real.

Lucas Zal has a great time dwelling on three particular things.  Crowd shots.  Amazing, Dance sequences. Amazing.  Joanna Kulig (the lead).  Amazing.

In particular, Joanna Kulig has a stand out performance.  She’s not one to show her enjoyment in life.  Sullen most would say.  But it is an immense performance.

It’s a love story, set against the challenges that Cold War Poland put in front of people of artistic belief where communist doctrine made creativity very difficult.

What Pawel Pawlikowski achieves is a mood piece of exemplary, peerless really, detail.

And it’s a musical.

I was constantly drawn to comparing it to La La Land, yet it is so NOT La La Land.  Partly it’s down to Kulig who shares the unorthodox looks (beauty) of Emma Stone.  Partly it’s the framing of scenes by Zal.

And the music fuses from Polish country folk to French basement jazz (which La La Land would have been so comfortable with).

This is an Oscar nomination shoe in.  It’s absolutely brilliant.

And, at 88 minutes, certainly does not outstay its welcome.

Bravo!

A Straight 10 from me.

 

 

 

The Shape of Water: Movie Review.

The Faberge Egg:  A thing of undoubted beauty, extremely costly but serving no real purpose.

So it is with The Shape of Water.

Constantly Guillermo del Toro leaves me disappointed.  Pan’s Labrynth especially and now this much hyped ‘masterpiece’.  Both miss the target by some distance for me. (I’ll give you, he nailed it in both Cronos – a long time ago now – and Hellboy.)

There’s much to like about The Shape of Water (but NOT the music which is standard fare and I’m puzzled as to why it won the BAFTA).  The design is superb, it really is a sumptuous feast both in period detail, cinematography and mood and the sets are great.

Sally Hawkins is fine in the role of a mute who falls in love with a fishy ‘monster’ but why, oh why, does she need to get full frontal naked and masturbate in her bath in the opening scenes of the movie.  Wholly gratuitous.

Octavia Spencer puts in a decent shift in the supporting female role but, oh my gosh, this is not an Oscar-worthy performance. (Exactly the same can be said about the mystifying nomination for Mary J. Blige in Mudbound – I’ll leave you to your own conclusions on why these were Academy nominated.)

Both the male leads are on form; Michael Shannon as the nasty finder and torturer of the fish man and Richard Jenkins as Hawkins’ neighbourly friend and the narrator; an alcoholic, cat-loving, adman fallen on hard times.

My biggest criticism lies with the script, or more correctly, the plot which has holes the size of the budget (actually, on checking it was only $19.4m, so my Faberge analogy is stretched a little.  Author’s note:  Faberge Eggs sell from around $6m to $33m.)

OK it’s a fantasy movie but it’s pretty silly really and stretches credibility throughout.

I wanted to like this, I really did and I don’t dislike it, it’s just so fundamentally flawed that its 13 Oscar nods verge on ludicrous.  I don’t think it will take home more than three (I wouldn’t give it any with a possible exception for design) – Best Movie most certainly should not be one of them.

My Wonderful Uncle Willie. (20 June 1941 – 23 November 2017)

Kathryn, Kenneth, Willie, Anne, Andrew, Susan and Julie.  All the family.

Although my Uncle Willie passed away on 23rd November we had to wait rather a long time to say our final farewells.  The reason being that he had died from complications as a result of contracting Mesothelioma, a truly horrendous disease caused by inhalation of Asbestos during his time working as an electrician in the construction of his beloved Cockenzie Power Station, which, like him, has been laid to rest.

Although many tears were shed at his funeral mass and then again during a rendition of Annie’s song by John Denver, yesterday was a joyous occasion.   (Amusingly, his granddaughter Lucille told me it was the only song he knew, but it was to open the floodgates yesterday at 12:05; my cousin Georgia and sister Jane somehow managed to sing along through their veil of tears.  Me? I was a goner.)

The family will be taking up the fight against this evil disease, but I can only thank the stars that Willie did not succumb to quite the depths of cruelty it can unleash.

But the fact is, Willie’s no longer with us.  So I’d like to thank him for what he was.  A huge, gentle, giant of a man with a heart of platinum (gold is too cheap an element to use in describing this great man).

His smile, I will never forget it.  It was beatific, almost saintly, it emanated a warmth like no other I have ever seen.  Although, my daughter Ria has ‘inherited’ some of it I have to say.)  And that was, for me, his trademark.

As Ken so beautifully said in his wonderful eulogy, and echoed by the lovable Father Basil, Willie would help ANYONE, do ANYTHING, although his biggest strength was electrics – so many a fridge, theatre power source and bit of wiring was carried out in our house, at Forth Children’s Theatre and at the homes of ALL of his huge wonderful family, his Church family and his youth theatre family.

After the tears though, came the incredible love and happiness that only a great family can bring to your heart.

The wake was a wonderful celebration of his life with more greeting (the letter from his beloved grand-duaughter Madeleine, whose hair he used to prepare for school, was a highlight, although again the tears came – what a beautiful and loving tribute to her Grandad, but also with equal measure to her Grannie,  my wonderful Auntie Anne.)

Perhaps the best was saved for last, at the ‘after wake’, with a smaller almost completely family group we swapped stories, reminiscences and updates of our marvellously varied lives.  You certainly couldn’t accuse us of conforming to a ‘type’ as a family.  A ‘look’, yes, as my brother in law Nik commented, almost open jawed.

And we ran out of whisky, so someone was despatched to raid Willie’s drinks cabinet. A bottle of Glenlivet marvellously appeared and lasted only minutes but that meant we’d had a dram on Willie.  A touching gesture.

Willie, this is not goodbye (as CS Lewis said) it’s au revoir.

 

 

Meet Me at Dawn by The Traverse Theatre Company at The Traverse: Edinburgh International Festival Review

My Summerhall Fringe was brilliant, but so too were my Traverse experiences.  With the exception of Party Game by Blue Mouth Inc, which mis-stepped (pun intended) a little, we were fed a great diet of work.

This 4**** show is an intense experience and so created an almost perfect set of emotional experiences; alongside Adam 5*****, Lilith: The Jungle girl 4.5****, Nina 4****, and Party Game 2.5**.

This is the Traverse’s foray into the official Festival and the EIF is to be congratulated for giving ‘The Trav’ this opportunity to impress on the ‘big stage’, in their own home. with their resident director, Orla O’Laughlin, on board – she grows in stature steadily.  I expect this show to feature heavily in the CATS next year.

This is a big, profound piece of theatre, centred on grief.  Its story takes its time to unveil itself as a gay couple (it later transpires) are washed up on a fairly remote island after a boating accident that at first appears to be simply a foolhardy act, but gradually it emerges the consequences of the accident are far greater.

It transpires the accident was indeed fatal and this remote island is an island of the mind where the two lovers are granted a wish.  That one so often said on death beds.  “if only we could have one more day together.”

They do.

But, one day?  One fucking day?  Why not a year?  Why not a fucking new lifetime?

The additional day doesn’t play out perfectly. and in a series of time shifts it’s tricky to decide really which time is now, which then and which in the future.

It’s a bold complex theme, brilliantly directed, designed and lit.

The central performances of Robyn (Neve McIntosh) and Helen (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) are electric.  They revel in the depth of Zinnie Harris’s dense plot and shine light on all the key emotional triggers.

I could hear several sobs coming from the audience as the play reaches its finale.

Great, grown up theatre.

 

 

 

Love’s young dream

My wife and I in our first ever movie…

Recent reading. Stoner by John Williams

I only picked this book up because of a series of quickly glanced and actually somewhat disingenuous reviews at the end of last year as 2013’s best books were revealed.

“The undiscovered classic” the reviews shouted, but actually John Williams was far from undiscovered having won the National Book Award for another of his books, Augustus, in 1973.  Far from being un undiscovered classic it is perhaps a forgotten one and certainly, until 2013, an uncelebrated one.  But it’s no longer all that forgotten given that the Vintage paperback that I read was the 30th Edition.

But these are all distractions.  Forgotten, undiscovered, below the radar.  Whichever is the truth, for some reason it rose to prominence in 2013 and I for one am very glad that this novel from 1965 fell into my hands.

The opening page  says it all.

It’s a profoundly unremarkable opening to a book, about a profoundly unremarkable man leading a profoundly unremarkable life.  It’s not autobiographical it seems, but most certainly it’s acutely observational given John Williams’ career

The novel charts the life story, from rags to moderation, across 65 years of a university professor. Sixty-five years in which he endures two world wars, although he fights in neither, a ludicrous marriage and a career so undistinguished it’s almost as if it never happened.

You’d want to slap him, if you could get past comforting him.

You’d shake him, but he might break.

You crave him growing some balls to stand up the absolute bitch that marries him, who sucks his lifeblood away, but that would only upset him.

At every turn he’s trampled upon, walked over, overlooked, ridiculed, cheated and lampooned.

And yet, amidst a life of bitter anticlimax after bitter disappointment, something about this everyman fills you with deep abiding empathy.

Respect almost.

How Williams achieves this is down to writing of the very highest order.  Never is a scene overstated.  Nothing is overly dramatic and yet it’s completely riveting throughout.

It begins in a period where manners and protocol were everything.  They collude to stifle Stoner’s life unbearably but his sense of propriety stops him challenging all that is happening to him.  The only victim of this painful reticence is Stoner.

Again, and again, and again.

Stoner’s is a life that singularly disappoints.  He is shat upon by all but two people that he comes across; his long time college buddy and Dean of the Faculty and, almost unbelievably, his lover.  These two luminous characters make Stoner’s life worth living and it is their presence in it that saves it from one of utter despair.

Perhaps this makes the novel seem depressing but far from it.  It’s too well written. Too beautiful.

In writing about the Great American depression of the 1930’s this stunning passage grabbed me.

“He saw good men go down into a slow decline of hopelessness, broken as their visions of a decent life was broken; he saw them walking aimlessly upon the streets, their eyes empty like shards of broken glass; he saw them walk up to back doors, with the bitter pride of men who go to their executions, and beg for the bread that would allow them to beg again…”

It’s this sort of elegant prose that turns a life so ordinary into a read so extraordinary, so that whatever kind of classic this book is belatedly described as; lost, found, undiscovered,  it IS a classic.

You must read it.

It’s our twenty first wedding anniversary today (actually it might be our twenty second but who’s counting?)

So I got (made as it happens) the old dear a lovely card because I am the old romantic.  (See below.)

And she just called, as I write, to ask me to tape the first ever episode of Thirtysomething on Sky Atlantic.  Series link of course.

Remember that?

I’m sure I got to fourth base (in our winching days)  during more than one episode.

A view from the Bridge. Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh

Life is about decorum, ritual, appropriate behaviour, pleasing one’s community and peers.  Not acting instinctively, ferally, as one sees it.  Because the community one lives within; the workplace, the neighbourhood, the church sets the standards and morals.  No matter how much it might be inappropriate or even wrong it’s the rule of the crowd that defines the behaviour of the one.

When Eddie Carbone decides he’s against this collective spirit; driven by jealousy, lust and rage, the rule of the crowd in Italian Brooklyn is jettisoned and Eddie Carbone becomes a lone ranger with disastrously selfish consequences.

It’s a big theme and a big play.  Probably Miller’s greatest, certainly the most thought-provoking I’ve had the privilege to experience.  And experience is the right word to describe John Dove’s “View”.

I kid you not, this was the most compelling and jaw dropping night I have spent in a theatre in my existence.  So powerful are the performances, most notably Stanley Townsend’s which held you in his thrall every moment he uttered a word, that theatre becomes a vehicle of transportation into another world.  Other stand out performances are Richard Conlon’s Marco (restrained but ultimately very scary) and the inimitable Kath Howden.  The whole is held beautifully together ( a la Greek Chorus) by Liam Brennan.

This is no ordinary play.  The subjects it brings out; jealousy, homosexuality, incest, faith, community, life long love, hope are at the very core of one’s being and it does so in a way that is hugely provocative and actually, with a performance of this standard, really quite humbling.

This is not just a five star show; it’s five star+.

nice new Puma ad for Valentine’s day…

Nice ad; but the clever bit is that you can connect, via facebook, to your loved one and send them this movie as a Valentine’s day greeting.  Leaving you free to get to the footie.  Sweet.

A Short Love Story

I am deeply indebted to my mate Nick Gibsone for this touching love story.

A man and a woman who had never met before, and were both married to other people, found themselves assigned to the same sleeping room on a Trans-continental train.

Though initially embarrassed and uneasy over sharing a room, they were both very tired and fell asleep quickly….. He in the upper bunk and she in the lower.

At one am, the man leaned down and gently woke the woman saying,

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind reaching into the closet to get me another blanket? I’m awfully cold.”

“I have a better idea,”  she replied with a twinkle in her eye.

“Just for tonight, let’s pretend that we’re married.”

His eyebrows went up and he smiled, “That’s a great idea!”

“Good,” she replied. “Get your own bloody blanket.”

After a moment of silence, he loudly farted.

brightening up the high street

love is a many splendoured thing.