2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom

The 2 ½ Pillars of Wisdom

Alexander McCall Smith
ISBN 0-349-11850-7
Abacus Fiction
First published in Great Britain by Abacus in 2004
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People read McCall Smith to be elegantly and not too taxingly entertained. They will not be disappointed by this volume. Three risible (and painfully tall) German professors of philology disport in all their pedantic and esoteric glory before us. The book’s being broken up into three easily-digestible and fully connected sections makes the read even more user-friendly. (The sections are ‘Portuguese Irregular Verbs’, ‘The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs’ and ‘At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances’, in case you were wondering.)

The narrative follows Professor von Iglefeld, through attempts to master tennis by reading a book on it, to researching Irish obscenities, attempting and failing in an imaginary romance, giving lectures in more inappropriate situations that you would think possible, fighting off a cruise-ship full of ladies of a certain age, and getting inexplicably entangled in South American political machinations. His two main companions and associates Professor Florianus Prinzel and Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer drift in and out of the narrative but maintain a constant presence within the Professor’s busy and off-track mind.

‘Fluffy’ (or as fluffy as philology can be) as the material is, like most entertaining and easy reading the writing is highly accomplished. As an example of third-person narrative that judges perfectly between authorial slant and superb ‘show-not-tell’ technique, it stands proud as any serious work of literature. Creating sympathy for a moderately obnoxious set of characters and maintaining humour and pace in a purposefully un-humorous setting is a feat of agility most could not hope to emulate. McCall Smith knows what he is doing, and it shows.


There is however a distinct tendency towards farce, particularly towards the end. The aim is obviously to culminate in a sizeable shebang, partly perhaps to give some structure to the book. Personally I found this one of the weaker aspects of the piece. While the reader (or at least this reader) remains enjoyably engaged whilst the action is at least plausible, however farcical, once incredulity reaches a certain peak attention is lost rather than retained. However, this is a minor point and I know many readers would have no trouble in swallowing the more bizarre happenings.

Heartbroken

 

Title: Heartbroken
Author: Lisa Unger ISBN: 978 0 307 46520 7

Published: Crown

Date: 2012


Book quote:

“Sticks and stones can break my bones. But words can break my heart.”

 

Lisa Unger’s 6^th novel showcases her mastery of the art of creating sticky-finger books (that’s what I call the unputdownables). If you’ve got a deadline to meet in the next couple of days, don’t start on this just yet, or you’ll be in trouble.

Heartbroken centres on Heart Island in the Adirondack islands, along with its mysteries and the people drawn to it. Birdie, the owner of the island who has been coming there every summer of her life, guards it and its secrets with a jealous, ugly passion that’s only too believable. Kate, whose existence is finally taking a discernible shape long after anyone expected her to do anything with her life, comes to Heart Island and undergoes a peculiar, forty-something coming-of-age transformation. Finally, the tiny, malleable Emily finds herself coerced into a horrific spiral of misdeeds and, on the run from the police, also ends up at the island. Here the past and the present fuse in a cataclysmic, purging denouement after which none of the protagonists’ lives will ever been the same again.

What makes for the tension? Why is it a ‘sticky-finger’ book? Several reasons. Firstly, and probably most importantly, the character portrayal is totally believable, certainly for the female characters. As if often the case with Unger’s writing, the males lag behind the girls and have nothing of the same 3D weight. Dean is a stereotype with some embellishments, Brad is a cardboard cut-out villain, Birdie’s husband Joe barely deigns to utter a word and Kate’s son Brendan doesn’t get much more of a look-in than to limp occasionally across the stage. Kate’s husband Sean has more of a solid aura, but he is still only a bit-part. The real strength is with the women. The bitchiness, the insecurities, the hopes and misunderstandings of the women are balanced by their individual strengths and preoccupations in a manner that’s completely engrossing. Carefully chosen to mirror and counterfoil each other, the characters Unger has created pull the novel together as much as the plot does.

Which brings us to the next reason it’s difficult to put the book down. It’s perfectly paced. The twists and pieces of information are placed at exactly the right intervals: not too frenetic but enough to keep the action on a moderate to high level. Things speed up towards the end – as they should do, in any decent thriller. It’s all in Goldilocks’s Just Right club.

One thing I found curious was that this isn’t a very ‘writerly’ book, despite the obvious skill across many sectors. It’s stuffed full of ‘tell-not-show’ writing and the sentence structure is (quite possibly entirely intentionally) simple and uncomplicated. The tell-not-show incidence is much more pronounced at the start of the novel, where Unger gives the impression that she doesn’t care to beat about the bush in getting the characters sketched out for us and doesn’t rely on or trust the reader to make inferences from actions until they’ve been firmly sat down and told what exactly is going on with the protagonists. What does this all lead to? A book that slips down very easily.  The reader isn’t called on to make informed judgments, leaps of understanding or deep psychological analysis. It’s pretty much laid out for them, with a napkin at the side and a toothpick for later. Sometimes, it’s pretty pleasant to sit down to fare like that, and one could easily overeat. I imagine Heartbroken will appeal to a very wide female audience.