Books for Blokes – Cristina Sanders' blog

So Late in the Day – book review

So Late in the Day, by Claire Keegan

Cathal is one of those blokes a friend might go out with and say, you know, he’s OK. He’s got a job, not bad looking. We meet Cathal looking out of his office window where the day is good: sunshine; birds; the smell of cut grass; “so much of life carrying smoothly on, despite the tangle of human upsets and the knowledge of how everything must end.” Cathal is writing rejection letters for bursary applicants. And there we have it, Keegan gives us the heads up that this is not a happily-ever-after. In this poignant novella, the fact that Cathal is not one of life’s winners is revealed through the world around him.

Norwegian Wood, chopping, stacking and drying wood the Scandinavian way – book review

Norwegian Wood, by Lars Mytting

This is one of the most relaxing and enjoyable books I know. Odd, because it is full of men with axes living in freezing temperatures in remote forests, involving strenuous physical labour. All the hard work is for the benefit of the person snug by the fireside, tucked away from the harsh world outside. That’s us. The lucky readers.

Sixteen Trees of the Somme – book review

Sixteen Trees of the Somme, by Lars Mytting

There is something about Norwegian writing that reminds me of Irish literature. It’s so centred on place, it’s the being there that grounds the story. We are different here, these stories say, our culture is wrapped around our traditional ways based on a history, geography and climate that are distinctly our own. It’s like the country itself has a voice. We are beginning to understand this power in New Zealand writing and could take lessons from these countries, for sure. Lars Mytting’s voice is profoundly Norwegian. There is always the expectation of snow on his boots and trolls under the woodpile.

Sixteen Trees of the Somme has a long reach. The base of the story is a Norwegian farm – mostly in the snow but summer visits occasionally – and it’s a mystery and a history and a resistance story and has love and travel and coming of age, a history of gun making and an obsession with trees and their particular wood and so many other things. Lots of secrets to unravel. It kept me spellbound.

The Demolition of the Century– book review

The Demolition of the Century, by Duncan Sarkies

Tom is in insurance. Things turn bad when he checks up on a highly insured horse that dies unexpectedly and is quickly buried. There are sock-fulls of cash involved. He’s also got a failing marriage and a young boy, Frank, who he is meant to be collecting from school, but he is late because the gangsters are after him. I feel no sympathy for this character. Yet.

Pātea Boys – Book review

Pātea Boys, Ngāti Pātea, by Airana Ngarewa

I want to give this book to all the manu-ing bros and cuzzies who are living overseas to remind them what home feels like on the skin. Listen to me, I’m not even Māori. Airana Ngarewa just has that effect on me.

These short stories in Pātea Boys (Ngāti Pātea in the te reo version) are mostly funny yarns, bookmarked by vaping aunties, drenched with boys leaping into water for the sheer hell of it. Airana makes Pātea sound like the best place to spend a childhood, as timelessly cool as its number one hit: Poi E which has taken up residence on loop in my head and threatening to break through at inappropriate moments (actually, perhaps no moment is inappropriate for Poi E). There’s a tint of rose-coloured nostalgia cloaking the old town: harmless fun, boys besting each other: the meanest manu, the fastest race, the most near-death experiences, best prank. But it’s not all a laugh. We go back to a young girl running light-footed through forest in the dark, an ancestor of these kids, one who slips past the colonial forces to light a signal fire. There’s a sentient historic waka sunk on the river bank finally rescued from the mud after over a century by a couple of idiotic, bantering kids. Life is not all dive bombs and kai, but these are the things remembered.

James – book review

James, by Percival Everett

Do you think you know the story of Huck Finn? Think again. In this marvelous book by Percival Everett, the adventure is turned on its head and you find yourself reading a totally different story that seems to come tumbling out from between the lines of Twain’s. It’s still an adventure story, in which a boy called Huck and a slave he calls Jim run away by floating down the Mississippi river and get into all sorts of trouble, but this time the point of view belongs to James. The pair become true friends, they look out for each other, care for each other, discuss ideas and try to see the other’s point of view, but the world is different when the one telling the story is a piece of property which needs to be returned to its owner.

Earth – book review

Earth, by John Boyne

This post has been moved to Books that don’t make the cut. Sorry, John Boyne fans (of which, sometimes, I am one).

John Boyne’s Earth follows Water which I thought was fabulous. Unfortunately in Earth, Boyne returns to the emotionally dysfunctional narrator style he used in his horrible Ladder to the Sky (again, not one of my recommendations) where charm, gorgeous looks and undeniable talent are a facade over a morally corrupt man. Good writing, but again, not characters I want to spend time with and no lessons to learn here, except to recommend to girls who are raped to never, ever, to press charges or you will suffer truly awful humiliation and the ruin of your life may be revisited on you tenfold.

Can’t recommend this as a good read.

My Friends – book review

My Friends, by Hisham Matar

Any book that offers a description of a face ‘like a landscape liable to bad weather‘ has got my love. This is a writer with poetry in his soul. ‘We shared the city the way honest labourers share tools,’ he says of two young men finding their way around London. He describes a nurse who ‘would gently tuck in my bedsheet like a skilled cook filleting a fish.’ This is classy writing.

Whatever Love Means – book review

Whatever love means, by David Baddiel

Whatever Love Means is an easy enough read about two couples in London around the turn of the millennium, the boys best mates, one married, the other a bit of a predator, with all the ingredients Baddiel seems to think we want to read about: sex, love, death, twists, secrets. Def a holiday read, there’s nothing much very philosophical here, no bigger picture other than creepy Vic having an affair with his best friend’s wife, and an unpicking of why her car crashed into a wall. “Whatever Love Means”, of course, is the famous line of Prince Charles’s in response to his engagement to Di – a stunningly cold response to love, which sums up the book really. None of these characters seem to have discovered the meaning of love. So why has it made my good books list? Well, I enjoyed the obviousness of it. Also, I think the stilted and stifled emotions of the characters deserve exploring. A good book, perhaps, for students of creative writing to unpick. Discuss: How might different people receive the book; what does the author want us to feel; is he in control of his characters?

The Anomaly–book review

The Anomaly, by Hervé Le Tellier

Such a brilliant premise. An Air France flight from Paris to New York hits unexpected and severe turbulence on a routine flight, dramatically bumps through towering cumulonimbus, and lands with shaken passengers, but nothing seemingly untoward. This is in March. In June, the plane lands again. The same plane. Exactly. Flight 006, with Captain Markle at the controls and the passengers: writer Victor Miesel, French hitman Blake, a gay Nigerian singer called Slimboy, emotionally complex Lucie and others. All duplicates. WTF? asks the control tower.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: