The Face (Chris Abani, 2014)

Nigerian-English writer Christopher Abani has written a series of essays about his face. I learned fascinating things about Yoruba culture and language. A lot of Abani’s thinking about his face revolved around observations about how he is perceived by different people. He also dwells on the memory of his father. Abani’s writing style might be characterized as vigorous, with experimental elements like lists of “things that might not be true” and “this is hope”. He also reproduces text message exchanges between with his brother.

Autumn (Ali Smith, 2016)

This book has been much discussed in recent years. It is the first of a quartet (or quadrilogy as some Americans might say) of books named after each season, much like Antonio Vivaldi‘s 1725 masterpiece. It has been hailed as the first “post-Brexit” novel, and the series is considered innovative because the books are written and published very quickly and in step with the zeitgeist and current developments. They were in bookstores just six weeks after being finished, instead of the usual 18 months that publishers normally take before launching a book. This must be a factor in these books being so popular.

The conceit of four books focusing on each season had been an idea Ali Smith had had for 20 years, and reading Autumn made me think of books based on similar ideas. There is nature writer Edwin Teale Way‘s “the American Seasons” (1951-65), and the Hunter Diary of Ivan Turgenev (1852). Norwegian wunderkind K.O. Knausgard wrote a series of books named for the seasons in Norwegian 2015-16, but they are not more than glorified diaries, really. Smith invents characters and plots and does things with her writing.

Autumn centers on the friendship of a 101 year old musician, Daniel Gluck and his 30-year old ex-neighbor and art historian Elisabeth Demand. Through the character of Demand, Smith revives the story of Pauline Boty, a the half-forgotten figure in the London Pop Art scene, who tragically died young and whose legacy was somehow swept under the rug. Another story Smith weaves into this book is that of Christine Keeler, a woman involved in the so-called Profumo affair in the early 60s, where it was revealed that a group of politicians had visited prostitutes.

The writing style is quite unusual, with a lot of jumps and witticisms of varying success. I get the impression that Ali Smith allows a lot of herself and her opinions to come out in the characters. Numerous are the comments on contemporary mores, art history, feminism and love. Some of the exchanges feel a bit too constructed. In the final analysis, this is not really something I particularly liked, but now I know what one of the more celebrated recent author’s writing is like. I remember when I first saw her name years ago, I thought it was a muslim writer, because of the way she has chosen to spell her first name.

War with the Newts (Karel Čapek, 1936)

I have read War with the Newts as part of the 1936 Club, hosted by Simon at “Stuck in a Book” and someone calling herself Kaggsy. Thank you for arranging this circle, once again! I also participated in earlier installments of the circle, 1920 Club and 1956 Club. It’s great fun. Check out the other reviews at Simon’s page!

Outside Sumatra a sea captain discovers a strange underwater creature when he is searching for pearls. It turns out they are a peculiar breed of humanoid lizards, not larger than a small boy in size, living underwater. The captain trains the highly intelligent creatures, now called “newts”, to fish for pearls.

Soon the Newts are exported to harvest pearls elsewhere and the news about them spread as an incredible curiosity around the world. They have a tendency to propagate quickly and soon there are so many of them that it becomes an issue. At the same time the Newts have become more and more intelligent and a high-stakes military confrontation seems inevitable…

This highly imaginative novel is filled with political subtext and is open for numerous interpretations. I was highly impressed with Čapek’s composition and how this story has been brought together. It could be read as a commentary on colonialism and racism, but it could also be thought of as an allegory over the subjugated working class. It also functions as an excuse to comment on 1930s geopolitics. A reviewer in the NY Times in 2018 proposed that the genius of Čapek’s book is that it is decidedly not allegory for a single thing, and that this was a purposeful choice. He had read it earlier as a comment on climate change, but upon rereading it had taken it as a good treatment of the threat of AI.

I am fascinated by speculative books from this time period. They often contain prescient comments about the coming world war, but without knowing how it ended, the stories are often a window into the interwar imaginary. This particular book also plays with form, as it doesn’t really have a protagonist, but rather follows multiple people and viewpoints. The chapters are interspersed with small images, imagined newspaper clippings, documents and other media, somewhat reminiscent of John dos Passos typographical execution of the Manhattan trilogy.

It must also be noted how much humour is in this book. A lot of Czech writers have a reputation for biting satirical wit, and Čapek surely delivers on that point. Many scenes in the book are LOL-funny (the scene where the zoo janitor teaches the newt to read the newspaper is one of them).