Review Post 18 - Bits and Bobs

I'm rather busy at the moment (things to do, people to see, you know how it is), so after finishing Cloud Atlas, I decided to take it easy and not plunge straight into another long book which might take me a long time to finish.

Instead, naturally, I went through three short ones in five days. I really should learn not to kid myself that I'm not going to read... Anyway, the books in this post, unlike those in some of my recent reviews, have very little in common, other than the fact that they live in my study, and I've been vaguely meaning to read them for a while. Enjoy ;)

*****

As you may have noticed, my preference is for long, involved novels, so short stories are not really my thing (I find them a little frustrating at times, to tell the truth). However, there is something more frustrating than a short story, and that's an unfinished short story - and that's where we'll start today. You may have read my first and second reviews of Katherine Mansfield's Collected Stories, and this week I finally managed to polish off the last parts of the monster, consisting of her last (posthumously) published collection, The Doves Nest and Other Stories, plus a bunch of fragments which remained incomplete at the time of her death.

Again, there were some lovely pieces; I particularly liked The Doll's House, a moving story involving Kezia and her family (the stars of a couple of earlier stories), and A Cup of Tea, an interesting tale of a random act of kindness between social classes. However, once through the few complete stories and into the fragments, I just lost it. I simply couldn't engage with four pages of build up towards a denouement which had never been written and never will. I'm sure academics specialising in Mansfield find these morsels fascinating; I was just glad to get them out of the way.

I know. It's my own fault. Short stories aren't meant to be devoured by the plateful, and I have behaved like a little boy at a wedding, stealing a plateful of fairy cakes and stuffing them all into my mouth as quickly as possible (before regurgitating them outside the toilets). There were some amazing stories in the collection, but there were also several weaker efforts, and the problem with reading them in such a large bundle is that they blur into one big mess after a while. I promise that the collection will be revisited at some point: one. book. at. a. time.

*****

When I was a teenager, Neverwhere, a short series written by Neil Gaiman, was shown on the BBC, but it was one of those things I never got around to watching. Even though I read Good Omens, Gaiman's collaboration with Terry Pratchett, I had somehow neglected to read any of his books until now (which is strange because: a) I've read plenty of Pratchett books in my time and b) I loved the concept behind Neverwhere). Finally, this week, I got around to reading the book behind the show, and pretty damn entertaining it was too.

The story follows Richard Mayhew, a young Scottish office worker living in London who, after a random act of kindness towards a woman he finds bleeding in the street, finds his world turned upside down. Ignored by the people around him, he finds his way into a world beneath the city he knows, a parallel, twisted version of the metropolis above. Welcome to London Below...

Richard finds himself involved in a quest to help Door (the woman whose aid he came to) find out who killed her family and is initially all at sea in a dark world of fantastic and sinister characters. Accompanied by the enigmatic Marquis de Carabas and the sultry bodyguard Hunter, Richard and Door traipse the byways of London Below, seeking help from some of its denizens and avoiding others. Mind the Gap indeed...

It's a marvellous read, reminiscent (naturally) of Pratchett but slightly more measured and less frantic (I often feel that a Discworld novel rushes you through it as if it has somewhere else to be, and you're holding it up). It does have the feel of an adaptation - a lot of 'scenes' and not as much characterisation or description as one might have hoped -, but it does have some interesting twists and turns which most readers will be fairly surprised by.

Of course, like many people, I was most amused by the twists on the city above. Richard encounters such people as the Black Friars, Old Bailey, the Angel Islington and Lady Serpentine (one of the Seven Sisters) and visits both the Earl's Court and (K)Night's Bridge. Believe me, after reading this book, you'll never look at a tube map the same way again.

The special edition I have is padded out with some book club questions (something I'm not really fond of) which allude to serious themes of reflecting the lost souls of the real London, but I doubt that the average reader is thinking much about social issues when Richard is trying to avoid having his liver cut out by a variety of underground ne'er-do-wells. This is an entertaining book, and that's how I read it. American Gods next? Don't mind if I do...

*****

Short stories, a novel and now a play; it certainly has been a varied week so far. Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt is an old favourite of mine, and even though I'm not really one for drama, I'm happy to make an exception for him. Der Besuch der alten Dame (usually translated into English as The Visit) is a short play describing a visit by the titular lady, Claire Zachanassian, to her hometown of Güllen. Claire, through a series of well-judged marriages, has become fabulously wealthy while Güllen has gone the other way, so poor that the whole town has been mortgaged. When she decides to come back and visit, the town is counting on Alfred Ill, Claire's childhood sweetheart, to persuade her to restore its fortunes. It turns out that she is prepared to do so, but only at a price. She will give the town of Güllen one billion dollars on one condition: namely, on receipt of Alfred Ill's dead body...

You see, Claire's past is anything but happy, and Alfred's is anything but as flawless as people think. Woman, scorned, revenge, dish, cold, laugh, last longest... Cliches are wonderful, but this is no joke; when the richest woman in the world wants something, she is used to getting it. The Gülleners close ranks initially, the mayor declining her offer amid loud cheers from the citizens of Güllen, but Claire's ominous reply "Ich warte" ("I'll wait"), hints that this may not be the final answer, as much as the townspeople believe that they stand behind Ill.

The crux of the story is temptation, personified in the figure of the old, seemingly unkillable, Zachanassian. The artificial limbs fitted after numerous crashes and air disasters (of which she was always the only survivor) serve to make her seem more sinister and inhuman, a hideous goddess straight out of a Greek play. The townspeople, despite professing to support Ill, mysteriously begin to appear richer, buying new clothes, drinking more expensive beer, smoking more refined cigars - all on credit. It becomes clear that they are all speculating that someone may just take up Claire's offer, and Ill quickly begins to fear for his life. While denial is rife, the more responsible members of the community do let their facade crack at times: the priest begs Ill to flee; the teacher threatens to make the truth known to the outside world in a drunken rant; the mayor and the policeman visit Claire to beg her to change her mind. All to no avail.

It sounds very dark, but it's actually just as much of a farce as a tragedy. The stage directions are absurd, as is Dürrenmatt's wont, with actors pretending to be trees, and four chairs serving as a car. Claire is a monster and brings a bizarre court with her, including a couple of muscly ex-con stretcher bearers and two blind eunuchs who speak in unison (not to mention the three husbands she goes through whilst in Güllen, all to be played by the same actor).

When it comes to the crunch though, the writer knows how to pare away the comedic elements and leave a stark truth facing the protagonists: either Ill's body is placed in the coffin the old lady has brought with her, and taken away to buried in Capri, or he lives, Claire leaves, and Güllen rots in poverty. We all suspect we know the outcome, but it is still painful to watch. In another work, the writer talks of his Swiss countrymen as being "spared and not tempted", a response to Swiss moral superiority over the actions of Germans in World War II. Here, we see what it is to be tempted and hope fervently that it never happens to us.

52 - 'Das Versprechen' by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Back in April, I read two slightly unusual detective novels by the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt, one of my favourite discoveries from my German studies, but he actually wrote a third... OK, I think you're with me now.

The third detective novel is called 'Das Versprechen' ('The Promise') and takes place in post-war Zürich. In a story within a story, a famous writer on a book tour meets a retired police Captain who, not thinking much of the way his metier is portrayed in fiction, decides to educate the novellist in real police work. While driving the writer back to Zürich, the policeman relates a story about a former employee who tried to act like a character in a novel and instead found his whole existence crumbling around him.

The policeman's story centres on Lieutenant Matthäi and his insistence on continuing the search for a little girl's murderer, even after the main suspect, a travelling salesman with a prior conviction for sexual molestation, admitted to carrying out the attack, before hanging himself in his police cell. At first, his colleagues refuse to believe that a mistake has been made; however, through the use of ever-so-slightly unethical tactics, Matthäi manages to lure the real murderer into his carefully-laid trap. And that's where real life starts to have an influence...

Matthäi's inhuman persistence in the face of wide-spread scepticism hangs on the promise he made to the mother of the murdered Gritli Moser. Unable to ignore the doubts he harbours about the confession of a convenient scapegoat, Matthäi forces himself to continue the hunt for the real murderer, despite the effect the chase is having on his life. In the end, a prediction made by a psychologist he consults about the case comes chillingly true; unable to find the murderer, he only finds madness.

As mentioned above, Matthäi was actually on the money, and the real murderer is tempted to stalk the cute eight-year old girl that Matthäi uses for bait (told you it was unethical...), so where does it all go so wrong? As in Dürrenmatt's earlier novels, it is luck, or rather misfortune, that provides the twist in the tail. While little Annemarie sits waiting for her fateful encounter with a child molester (and half the Zürich police hide in the bushes), the potential murderer has already met his fate. At the end of the book, we learn that he died in a car crash on the way to the secene of the crime... After a week of stake-outs, the police lose patience and leave Matthäi to his fate; for the poor unfortunate genius, this consists of drinking, smoking and waiting for a murderer who will never appear.

For such a short book with a fair amount of action, the writer is able to build the tension to unbearable levels, with the reader feeling the urgency of Matthäi and his captain as they lie in wait for the murderer. Annemarie sits and waits, the policemen hide and watch, Annemarie sings the same song over and over again, nobody comes, Annemarie plays with her doll... for days the policemen watch and wait until, finally, one of them cracks; then, the remaining detectives begin to shout and scream at the poor girl, demanding she tell them all she knows. Under the unbearable pressure of the wait, the girl's protectors become the ones she needs protection from.

This tension is also evident in the final part of the book when Frau Schrott, an old lady on her death bed, summons the captain to tell him something important before her death. Through her meandering nothings about her family and her various marriages, she stretches the story (and the captain's nerves) to breaking point, leaving the reader breathless in her slow, measured progression to the part about the murderer. Only when she reveals the truth about her husband, the murderer, and the events leading up to his death, does the reader finally learn that Matthäi was both right and terribly, terribly wrong.

It is Matthäi's character which reinforces the effects of his investigation. Unable to adapt to unforeseen events, he continues in the path he has taken, which should, logically speaking, lead him to his goal. However, life has a funny way of meddling with even the best-laid plans; while fictional detectives usually get their man in the end, in real life luck can intervene to stop you achieving your goals, no matter how well you have prepared.

At the end of the novel, there are some very poignant lessons to be learned from Matthäi's downfall. Firstly, expect the unexpected. Life cannot be micro-planned; something will always get in the way of your best intentions. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, be very careful with what you say. Never, ever, make a promise that you may not be able to keep. Who knows what may happen to you if you can't keep your word...

29 & 30 - 'Der Richter Und Sein Henker' & 'Der Verdacht' by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

A long, long time ago, back when I was doing my A-Levels, I was first introduced to the work of the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt, in the form of his classic detective novel, 'Der Richter und Sein Henker'. The title can be translated as the judge and his executioner (literally, hangman) and the book tells the story of a policeman from Bern, Kommisär Bärlach, who uses events to his advantage to finally bring a career criminal to justice. A couple of years later, while I was what is laughingly described as 'studying' at university, I took a unit on Dürrenmatt and read the sequel to the original tale, 'Der Verdacht' ('The Suspicion), where the now-retired Bärlach takes on another evil-doer, an action which almost costs him what is left of his life.

I read a few detective novels when I was a teenager (and I still like a bit of Inspector Morse!), but, on the whole, I find them a little simplistic, even when the plot is well thought out. The difference with these two stories is the way the solving of the suspected crime becomes unimportant compared to the sub-plots and interplay between the characters. Dürrenmatt uses his works to discuss the role of good and bad in the world and how far good men can, and should, go to prevent evil from gaining the upper hand.

The two titles are chosen quite deliberately; throughout the two books there are several judges and executioners, none of them appointed by the law of the land. In 'Der Richter und Sein Henker', Bärlach and his subordinate, Tschanz, are assigned to solve the murder of another policeman, Schmied (who was secretly working for Bärlach to gather evidence against Gastmann, a career criminal who continually crossed paths with the old inspector). Again and again, the investigation comes across obstacles preventing access to the suspected perpetrator until Tschanz finally confronts, and kills, Gastmann and his sidekicks. Only then do we find out that Tschanz was Schmied's real killer and that Bärlach used this knowledge to increase the pressure on Tschanz to push the blame onto Gastmann. The old inspector has judged the inveterate criminal and sent his executioner to carry out the sentence.

In 'Der Verdacht', however, a chance sighting of a picture of a Nazi war criminal operating without anaesthetic in a concentration camp leads Bärlach to investigate a high-class Swiss surgeon. Only too late he discovers that his suspicion is actually the truth; worse, the surgeon knows that Bärlach is onto him and is not inclined to allow the frail old man out of his hospital alive...

Both criminals, Gastmann and the surgeon, Emmenberger, are portrayed as rich, successful, intelligent men who commit crimes for the sake of it. Gastmann is just as capable of murder as he is of paying the taxes of an entire town. Emmenberger, who tortured hundreds of prisoners in concentration camps by operating without anaesthetic, but with the consent of his victims, rejoices in his freedom from the normal rules of society, believing himself to be living the only kind of life possible, one where you are free to make whatever decisions you want (even if that involves torturing and killing people).

Both behave with full knowledge of what the results may be, and, in his own way, so does Bärlach. Dürrenmatt insists on the importance of taking responsibility for your actions, even if they do not always turn out as planned. In the first book, the old inspector, while seeming to be unable to match Gastmann in their battle of wits, is eventually the victor, able to use events to his advantage and 'convict' the criminal for a crime he did not commit. However, in the sequel, the tables are turned, and it is Bärlach who is out-thought and out-manoeuvered. As a result, he causes the death of an innocent man who was enlisted to help him put pressure on Emmenberger. This is something the policeman must take full responsibility for.

From the discussion of the events in 'Der Verdacht', it is probably clear that these events take place shortly after the end of the Second World War, and the role of Switzerland itself in this period is implicitly handled, especially in the second novel. While we condemn the criminal behaviour of the two villains and are appalled at the horrors of the concentration camps, Bärlach questions the self-rightiousness of the Swiss, stressing that they were "verschont, nicht versucht" (spared, not tempted). Gastmann and Emmenberger were tempted by life unrestricted by society and became criminals. In the same way, Tschanz, passed over again and again for promotion, jealous of the better-educated Schmied and of his beautiful partner (and car!), is tempted to get rid of his superior in order to slip into his role. Lead us, indeed, not into temptation...

However evil or good, cunning or impulsive, plans are never perfect in this world; luck can always prevent your intentions from being realised. The publication of Emmenberger's photograph in a magazine, Schmied's untimely death, Tschanz... Nothing is certain, and we must always rely on a little luck to cover up our crimes, or uncover those of others. It is no coincidence that the key character in the first book is called Tschanz (pronunciation? Chance.). A coincidence brought Gastmann and Bärlach together near the start of their lives, and luck helped the criminal commit a murder in front of the policeman's eyes without his being able to act. In the end, it is fortune that helps to complete the circle.

Quite a lot for around 250 pages, but then, Dürrenmatt is a very special writer. The difference between these dectective stories with a moral and the usual plot-driven pulp fiction is that knowing the outcome doesn't lessen the effect of the novel. Even (almost) twenty years on, the books still have the same pull, and I know I'll read them again and again. And that is the hallmark of good writing.