Howard's End ~ E M Forster

This story is mainly about the division of the British classes at the turn of the century.  It took a while for me to get into the story, I felt at the beginning there was a lot of unnecessary back story to build up the plot, and although the tragic Leonard Bast was a main part of the plot I found his character to be the least well developed.

As well as focusing on the division between the social classes in 1910, it also looks at the generation gap which probably became more apparent with the advent of the motor car.  The younger generation would take to this over walking or taking a carriage. 

When a motor car runs over a cat Margaret, the main protagonist, makes an interesting observation that in their class the women hide behind their men and the men hide behind their servants for it is easier for them to send one of the servants with some cash to pacify the owner of the cat.

I did enjoy this novel but it just didn’t quite have the charm I was expecting.

Plague ~ Albert Camus

I had really been looking forward to reading this novel as I’d heard great things about other Camus works.  Whilst this was a good read, I didn’t feel that it was a great read, maybe I am missing something?  I was of the understanding that the narrative was in the same vein as Kafka, but I’ve read Kafka and I didn’t think this was the case.

The novel centres on Oran, a town in Algiers in the 1940s, and is a fictional account of a plague epidemic that strikes the population and results in the town being quarantined.  I liked the way that Camus built up the tension with the discovery of the dead rats, and the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.  As the plague sweeps through the population the town is isolated and then we follow the emotions of a group of men as they deal with separation from their loved ones, the desire to escape the town and their duty to help the afflicted. The graphic description of the final hours of a young boy will stay with me for a long time.  It was sheer suffering.

Diary ~ Chuck Palahniuk

A dark satire about an island legend that is re-enacted every third generation.  It's a story about re-incarnation, torture and ritual sacrifice, and it really should be my cup of tea but I didn't like the way it was written.  The  novel is a 'coma diary', but it just doesn't read like a diary.  There is another diary is the story which is owned by the  protagonist's (Misty Wilmot) mother-in-law who claims to know what Misty is thinking or how she is feeling because it is 'in the diary'.  The reason for this becomes apparent towards the end of the novel. 

As in Choke, there was a repeated phrase throughout.  This one being 'Just for the record' or 'Just for the record the weather today is.......' with the weather being Misty's current mood.  It was quite a claustrophobic novel, and the vibe was very much The Stepford Wives.  

I think that if I had read the actual book instead of listening to it I may have enjoyed it more than I did as the narrator, Martha Plimpton, had a rather dull bland voice.

Kafka on the Shore ~ Haruki Murakami

This was a wonderful read, and I can thoroughly recommend it.  There was not one character in the novel that I didn’t like. 

The parallel stories of Kafka and Mr Nagata are, whilst riveting, totally different from one another. Fifteen year old Kafka’s father tells him that he (Kafka) would murder him, and ‘be’ with his mother and sister (who had both left when he was just a small boy), this is the same as the Oedipus curse in the Greek legend.  Kafka does not want to fulfill this prophecy and so he runs away from home, but it all plays out against his will anyway. 

  

Mr Nagata’s storyline is just wonderful.  He can talk to cats and his quest is so mysterious that even he doesn’t really know what it is until he’s in the right spot or the right thing happens.  Along the way he becomes friends with Hishino, a young truck driver, and due to Nagata’s resemblance to Hoshino’s grandfather he decides to help him. There is a lot of subtle humour between these two characters which really brings a smile to your face.  Hoshino is a really nice laid back young man, and Mr Nagata has quite a profound life changing effect on him.

The story shifts between the two characters, with Mr Nagata's being the more complex as there is the added mystery of what happened to him as a child.  Kafka's storyline is beautifully written, it’s mystical and poetic and I loved the way the narration occasionally shifted perspective.

This will probably be the read of the year for me, alongside A Prayer for Owen Meany.