by Kelly Pickerill
I can’t believe we haven’t talked about this book yet. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes won the Man Booker last year. It’s now in paperback, so no one has an excuse not to read it. It’s a small, quiet, British book. But that doesn’t mean it’s not thrilling. Tony Webster, divorced and in his 60s, reflects back on his adolescence and early adulthood when a puzzling reminder of that time prompts him to look up a college girlfriend. As Veronica reluctantly opens up, Tony begins to suspect his perspective of that time in their lives, which ultimately resulted in the destruction of his friendship with Adrian, who dated Veronica after Tony and eventually ended his own life, is flawed somehow. The end of this taut novel, which could be read as a treatise on memory, will leave you reeling.
He’s not British, but Peter Carey’s new book is. I’m only a third of the way into The Chemistry of Tears, which opens as Catherine, a conservator at a museum in London, finds out that her married lover of 13 years has died. Unable to show her grief outwardly, Catherine immerses herself in her work. She’s presented with the parts of an automaton duck from the 19th century, but before beginning the process of reconstruction she delves into the journal of the man who first had the duck assembled for his consumptive son. These journal entries, which describe his journey to a small town in Germany where he gets the help of a mysterious clockmaker, are interspersed with chapters in 2010, as Catherine reflects on the nature of life and of the soul when juxtaposed with artificial existence.
I haven’t started it yet, but I also just picked up Mark Haddon’s new book The Red House, in which a British couple vacations with the wife’s estranged extended family. Simon’s just finished it and will probably write about it soon. Get a signed copy from us today; they’re going fast!
In her NYT review of The Sense of an Ending, Liesl Schillinger begins, “Many literary careers have been made, and doubtless more will be, by conveying the inwardness, awkwardness and social anxiety that constrict British mores like a very tightly wrapped cummerbund.” Mark Haddon, in his 2003 bestseller The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, explored the awkwardness of a teenage boy with Asperger syndrome, and Ron Charles, in his review of Haddon’s new book in the Washington Post, says, “in The Red House, [Haddon] proves that he’s just as astute about the verbal miscues and social awkwardness suffered by anybody.” And what could be more awkward than a horologist grieving in secret while she tinkers with an over 150-years-old robot duck that eats and defecates? Celebrate awkwardness this summer; read a British novel.
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