My Book Report

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'Vernon God Little' by BCD Pierre



This book won the Booker prize, and is set during the aftermath of a columbine style high school massacre - but don't let that put you off.
It's a very funny and dark comedy following the life of Vernon Gregory Little (not too bright) survivor then prime suspect in the shootings. Set in a small town Texan backwater, satirising the media approach to tragedy the humour keeps coming. There's also an emotional intensity you feel for Vernon as the paradigm shifts. My only disapointed was the end, I felt we got a bit of a TV movie kind of ending, all cream pie, rather than something harder.

I give this book a B+

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'Tommy's Tale' by Alan Cumming



My copy has a pink cover, with a gilt mirror, which is very camp. But bath tubs do appear in the story, for joint baths and having sex and a whole section about why American don't understand them, but I digress

Tommy narrates his own tale, he's fast approaching 30 and has a lot of growing up to do, meanwhile he's shagging men and woman, taking loads of drugs and getting fucked up. What Tommy really wants is to settle down and have a child!

Cumming writes well, this is a tounge in cheek fairys tale. Tommy's voice does seems authentic, my problem is that I didn't really feel all that sympathetic to him, he's shallow and selfish, he's lucky his flatmates and friends stand by him, and I didn't really see why they should.

I give this book B-, could try harder.

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'Brick Lane' by Monica Ali



Monica Ali was famously voted one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists on the basis of the manuscript of this novel.

I can see why, but at the same time my over all feeling about this book was almost that it was too worthy, it ticks so many boxes, (immigration, rascism, drugs, poverty, 9/11, Muslims, money lending, arranged marrage and going back home) that the vote was about being politically correct.

The story is about Nazneen who comes to England from Bangladesh for her arranged marrage, the characterisation is strong, we follow her from growing up in her village with her sister to life on an estate in the East End, she has a hard life, her pompous husband gives some releif but it's rather a bleak tale. At about 500 pages long the writing might be at times beautiful but not that much happens.

I think Miss Ali should read some Dickens and learn how to put a bit of suspense into the tale. She is a good writer, but I think she can do better than this.

I give this book B-

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Holy shit, kids! This book is awesome!

Well, okay, it's very good. PopCo is a toy company where the narrator, Alice Butler, works as an inventor. Raised by her grandparents - who were both codebreakers in the war - Alice now uses the knowledge they gave her to make children's code kits and mystery games. She finds herself stuck at PopCo Towers, a remote mansion in the middle of Dartmoor where she and a similar group of people are meant to create a killer product for teenage girls. Here she begins to catalogue the events and draw together a manifesto about all the things she actually believes in - workers' rights, homeopathy and maths - to create an alternative to the consumer-fed environment she has become lost in, and helped to create.

Although PopCo is very, very long and some of the passages are so dense and factual you need to read them twice, it's also very interesting - the book attempts to break down complicated mathematics and show how it applies to everyday life (such as how the petals on a flower follow the Fibonacci sequence and how computer games run on mathematical codes, just as traditional games like Go and Chess can be won with the same code-patterns).

Aside from all this, which gets a bit overwhelming, Scarlett Thomas is actually at her best when she talks about school and adolescence, detailing how friendships are created and broken in teenage girls, and how all this relates to consumerism as we use products to create an identity at school.

Basically, hooray. Read.

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The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon



The story is told by Christopher Boone, and autistic 15 year old. I normally hate it when writers try to be clever like this (like having the story told by a horse or something silly) but I really fell for this book. Christopher is bright (and a very clever mathematician) but has a different view of the world and logic. He hates the colours yellow and brown, has never been further than the end of his own street and will hit anyone who touches him (he also has a pen knife).
When Christopher finds the dog across the street (Wellington) with a garden fork through it, he decides to investigate.
The book is quirky, heartwarming and very real - It would be hard to make it into a film but if it was I think Mike Leigh should direct. The way Christopher views people and relationships is very black and white, but the detail of the writing alows a lot of emotion to come across.

I highly recommend this excellent book A+

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True Crime by Jake Arnott



The third book by Mr Arnott and it sort of completes a trilogy (that started with The Long Firm, then He Kills Coppers). I think it's probably his best book so far, it takes the east end gangster action from the '80's up until the late '90's.
Cynical and schlocky in equal measures this really is Pulp Fiction, clever but dismissive of the genre. A load of real events and charicters are woven into the story giving it weight. Ruby Ryder is Barbara Windsor, Jez is Guy Ritchie, Gaz is sort of Vinnie Jones, Piers is a bit like John Brown etc etc but of course they're not. Leah Betts like ecstasy deaths, Essex murders, Cool Britania and Kray funerals all feature.
The theme is about how these gangsters are becoming celebrites because we all get a vicarious thrill from the violence, yet the reality is something different.

It's a clever and entertaining book A