Book Club - by Suhaili

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Book Club - January 2008

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

January 19th 2008 09:35

The 2nd book I've read this year is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, a pre-eminent Jewish writer and possible all-round genius of literature. This book was awesome. I read it in two days flat... which is no mean feat, but I happened to be working both days and I had other stuff on so in order to read it all so quickly I had to use every spare moment in those two days to breathe this book in like it was the stuff of life. I didn't plan it this way, it just happened. It's that kind of book.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close occupies a space amongst many other works of post-9/11 literature. Sometimes it seems like 9/11 happened just so all these weighty minds in Serious Fiction Land would have something New and Important to talk about. Obviously I'm not pointing any fingers here or appropriating blame to certain famous authors, I'm just saying, hey, some people have benefited from what happened on September 11. Art lives off this kind of stuff. This book is far from the least amongst this trend, and it manages to be very funny without diminishing the tragedy in any way whatsoever.

Basically, it's the story of this 9 year old kid and he's a weird genius/possible Aspergers candidate (he plays the tambourine and writes letters to Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr). Anyway, his dad dies in the trade centre during 9/11 and the kid finds an envelope in his dad's closet with the name Black on it and so he decides to go and visit every person with the name Black in New York. It's very cool. Mixed up between this story are the voices of two other characters, both very distinct and different from our narrating hero, but equally as intrinsic to the story and his life. To reveal any more of the book to you would be to spoil it and I'm not in a spoiling mood, so JUST GO READ IT. RIGHT NOW.

Oh, you're still here?
Well, did I mention how cool this book is? Foer employs all kinds of narrative quirks and gimmicky devices to keep the book cracking along (as well as significant photographs), and it's through his use of these unusual techniques that he manages to create something above common fiction - something of real substance - without sacrificing any story or entertainment value. As such, it was pretty much a unique reading experience for me... I've never read a book like it (duh, that's what unique means!) So if you pick this book up and read all the superlative gushing on the cover about it being incredibly moving and extremely funny... well, do not take it for publishing company-paid propaganda, it happens to be very true in this case!

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Literature

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Sucker Punch

January 13th 2008 02:46

Last year I read an appalling 37 books... about two thirds of what I had achieved the year before that. This year I am aiming to knock over a clean 50 novels, and so it is with great satisfaction that I kick off 2008 (which should, hopefully, see this book blog resurrected properly) with the first novel of the season, a Canadian crime-mystery called Sucker Punch, sent to me by one of the lads from Dundurn Press.

Joe Grundy is an ex-middle of the road boxer now turned security guard. He heads up the security at the Lord Douglas Hotel, a high-class establishment that plays host to the cream of downtown Vancouver, Canada. Whilst juggling staff issues and a dead end social life, Grundy finds himself smack bang in the middle of a good ol' fashioned murder mystery with a touch of conspiracy about it. A local hippy has just inherited around half a billion dollars (snatching it out from the under the noses of a pair of very angry corporate charity organisations), and he makes no friends when he announces his plan to give it all away to the masses. Grundy figures it's his business when the hippy gets murdered at the hotel on his watch, and he sets about chasing the mystery, an outstanding bar tab and some staff who have gone AWOL.

The author of this novel, Marc Strange, is a character-actor and creator of some old TV series I'd never heard of (The Beachcombers). I'm not sure if this is his first novel or not, but I found it to be a very enjoyable, assured and engaging read. It's more remniscent of pulpish crime-mysteries in the vein of Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett than, say, more mainstream crime fiction by James Patterson or Patricia Cornwell, which suits me right down to my bones. There's an urban sweatiness in the writing and if I had to pick out what Strange's strongpoint is I'd say it's the characterisation... this book juggles a huge cast of supporting characters (many of whom I suspect will turn up again if other Joe Grundy mysteries get written) and not once was I stuck remembering who was who. Strange seems to possess a deft ability to portray all these varying players and low-lives from the many stratas of society - shifty businessmen, money-lending gangsters, dodgy security guards, vulture-like relatives, ambitious journalists, scumbag journalists, etc, etc - without any self-consiousness or irrelevance. And anchoring all this is the narrator, Joe Grundy himself, an amiable and humble protagonist who could easily carry a few more adventures should the situations that arise not be too contrived. It's refreshing to read one of these books where the main character isn't a detective or a policeman, and the plot and Grundy's involvement in it here is suitably realistic for the reader to play along and believe in it.

Anyway, if you're a fan of pulp fiction or engaging crime novels, then I'd easily recommend this book. If you're reading this from Australia though you'll probably have to order it in via your local bookshop or just look it up on Amazon.

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Crime/Spies

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