Death, sex, drugs and self-harm – Not the next Harry Potter then

When the The Casual Vacancy was chosen for book group I was quietly pleased I was going to be made to read it. It’s not a book I would normally pick off the shelf myself – I enjoyed Harry Potter but that’s because it’s a really exciting series I got hooked on when I was younger, surely, not because JK Rowling is such a remarkable author? Anyone can write children’s books, no? Or even if they can do that well, it’s no sign they can transfer to adult writing too?

Well no, of course that’s not true. I should have learned that from reading Roald Dahl’s short stories. And what I should also have remembered is just how engaging the Harry Potter books are, how well the characters are written and developed and how the story draws you in so you just can’t put the books down. Much the same for JK Rowling’s adult fiction then – and that shouldn’t really be a surprise.

The body politic

The story central to Casual Vacancy concerns the death of a very active Parish Councillor and the council’s petty political grapples to find his successor. Always seeing the best in everyone, Barry Fairbrother, was an ardent champion of keeping a particularly unpopular council estate within the political boundaries of his council. The council, however, is desperate to hand over responsibility for it to the neighbouring town. Barry grew up in the estate and valued the opportunities its links to the better off town of Pagford gave him to get to a good school and thrive despite a difficult upbringing. Hence he wants it to stay.

Those who feel similarly want to appoint a sympathetic replacement for Barry, while his political enemies want to seize their chance both to cut the offending estate loose and establish full council control. Nothing is of course that simple though. Adding emotional grist to the mill are family ambitions (father wants son to follow in his footsteps) and family disputes (including several incidences of online sabotage by children of their parent’s promotional campaigns). The issue is also taken down to a personal level through the character of Crystal and her brother Robbie. Children of a drug-addicted mother, they live in the disputed estate. Drawing on the support and resources many council members want to cut off, they attend school, compete in rowing teams and sleep with those same council members’ children.

Character piece

What makes this a really good read are the great characters JKR has created. This goes for both the council and the council members’ families. It includes children being bullied who self harm, children who bully and want to kick back at their parents, and children being beaten by abusive parents. Add to that wives being cheated on, wives fantasising about members of the boy bands their daughters love and daughters being ostracised for not loving boys at all. And of course that particular kind of teenager who wants to be ‘genuine’ and ‘keep it real’ by generally being a self-absorbed pain in the ass to everyone who genuinely wants the best for him.

The political arguments raised did make me think. For example, like Barry, I believe that choosing to live in a society comes with responsibilities to take care of all members of that society, for the greater general good. We can’t always make that someone else’s problem. However, the book does wear its politics clearly on its sleeve; it isn’t the most subtle investigation into class differences, domestic abuse or any of the other issues it covers. Nor does it dwell long on them – a particularly effective way of demonstrating that for some people awful things are just a part of life.

In a few places I wondered if the mentions of sex, drugs and rock and roll were at least on some level a deliberate attempt to break the link to JKR’s children’s books (although in places Harry Potter and Co do deal with some pretty dark goings on). Such occurrences generally rang true with the story and characters though.

Overall the book made me think about ‘normal life’ and how no matter how picture-perfect this might appear to be in Pagford, no-one there is really happy. Cutting off the apparently troublesome estate won’t really make anyone’s lives easier. Only the dead Barry is ever really presented as content and he’s dead.

Once I got into it I couldn’t put it down. Although a number of the characters annoyed me immensely, that was really because they’re so well written; I wanted them all to get their comeuppance (which they generally do – this is JKR after all). It was a good holiday read – entertaining and very English, reminding me of home, while containing just enough meat to get your grey matter moving; worth reading without being too dark and depressing. Yes, life isn’t always easy but it goes on regardless and we can all contribute to making it easier for each other.

Grease is the word

An old book for book group last month, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, published in 2001 (my copy with a new afterword in 2002). Still some very current issues raised despite this – from knowing the true content of our food to paying a fair wage, the ethics of marketing to children and phenomenal power of some bodies to influence and lobby against regulation. And of course we all still have to eat.

I’ve been reading another book at the same time, How to Read a Book by Adler and Van Doren (see separate comments once I’ve finished it) and attempted to apply its approach to make sense both of Schlosser’s overall argument and how he builds this up. This wasn’t easy to do.

Overall Schlosser’s purpose is to expose the grim realities of the fast food industry (and I’d argue what’s become normal and accepted in the wider food industry). Some of this is shocking stuff: stories of poorly paid abattoir workers (in ‘the most dangerous job in the US’) being injured and killed at work; schools striving to sell more fizzy drinks to meet corporate sponsors’ sales targets; long lists of chemicals used in ‘natural flavourings’ in milkshakes. However, look more closely and it’s harder to follow specific lines of argument. Facts come fast and furious, with little introduction and few conclusions obviously drawn. You can spend a long time waiting for a ‘therefore’ that doesn’t come, with the author apparently assuming the reader will be so sympathetic with his arguments he doesn’t need to lay them out on a plate. There are end notes, but you have to think to look for them, which to me means they might as well not be there.

For a conversation starter this is a good read; great to dip in and out of in order to find facts with which to spice up one’s conversation – particularly effective at lunch time. Our arguments ranged from whether it really is impossible to avoid eating crap when hungry at Waterloo to the benefits (or otherwise) of organic food. Ultimately though it is, like much of the food it describes, not very satisfying. I’ve enjoyed other books on the subject before (Felicity Lawrence’s Eat Your Heart Out for example) and it’s just so dense with detail. Above all I think it’s passed its sell by date. Fair enough there’s no reference to (or prediction of) the horsemeat scandal, but both business and research have moved on. Regarding the business, I want to read about the Monsanto Protection Act and how food manufacturers are still persuading the government to protect their interests; how (if) ‘McJobs’ have moved on. Regarding the research, Schlosser states in one section that we know babies don’t like bitter tastes ‘because scientists have rubbed various flavours inside the mouths of infants and recorded their facial reactions’; on a recent Heston Blumenthal show scientists demonstrated that toddlers would actually keep reaching out to eat more lemon if you gave it to them to hold. Their conclusion was it’s just a new and shocking flavour first time.

The book does actually conclude near the end (!) with a section on ‘what to do about it’. By the time I got here though I was too worn out with facts to pay much attention, and anyway, I’m not convinced the author’s aim is to resolve any of the issues raised. Many of the quotes on the back suggest the book will make you want to give up fast food. Maybe that’s the answer. I wonder how many of the people quoted actually did it though, given how effective the advertising, brand loyalty and addictive nature of the food is supposed to be.

Unfortunately another 4 out of 10 from me then. My summary word is ‘scattergun’ for the book’s rapid spraying of facts in all directions. Not everyone at our discussion felt the same – the score was 6 on average – and as I’ve said it did spark good debate as everyone can have an opinion on the food they eat. Our next group book is another non-fiction volume all about money. Until then I’m going to go bury myself in some fiction…

Two sides to every story?

This month’s book group choice was ‘A million little pieces’ by James Frey. Sold as a memoir, it tells a story of a twenty-something guy overcoming addictions to hard drugs and alcohol while forming relationships ‘against the odds’ in a rehab centre in North America.

The writer claims to have been hooked since his early teens, blacking out regularly, getting into fights, breaking the law and generally screwing up despite his seemingly supportive and stable family background. After getting injured falling off a fire escape, his friends put him on a plane to rehab, where the book opens.

Our writer is reluctant to engage with the conventional treatments the centre offers (in particular the Alcoholics Anonymous ‘twelve steps’), resists the help of the therapists at the centre and at one point tries to leave. This is after having root canal work done on his teeth without painkillers – a particularly gory part of the book and one of the few times during that I’ve wanted to look away while reading (made me squirm a lot on the plane, much to the interest of the guy next to me)! However, owing to a supportive friend, a new love interest and the arrival and participation of his parents in family therapy, he is eventually able to get it together enough to leave, claiming to have overcome the ‘fury’ his addiction represents once and for all, all on his tod.

I found the story quite gripping and tore through it in a few sittings (something I’ve not done in ages but was able to do this month thanks to the extra time afforded by commuting to and from working abroad). I came to the end thinking that it was quite amazing that so much had happened to one guy but pretty impressed at his recovery. I assumed the author had become one of those touring inspirational speech givers whose incredible levels of activity, energy in the face of adversity and positive blog posts I generally envy. ‘It’s all about control’ I thought. ‘Instead of giving it up he’s retaken it. Bit obvious, but go him.’ I couldn’t work out the significance of the title beyond the obvious.

As I usually do after finishing a book group book, I went straight online (well, next morning as I’d stayed up late reading under the covers to finish the book (go e-book reader with built-in light!)), to learn more about the book’s background. There I got a surprise. As expected, the book had been a book group choice for Oprah Winfrey’s show, with the writer lauded for his hard life experiences. But it turns out there’s some debate about whether or not it’s all true – in fact one site online states that the author first tried to sell the book as a novel and that it’s pretty much all a work of fiction. Where he says he went to jail for three months or so, he might not even have been there more than a night or two. Oprah was very upset.

This makes me feel two things: firstly, it seems a bit dangerous for someone to be claiming to have overcome addictions without following the ‘conventional’ route if, in fact, he didn’t. People could hold this guy up as a hero and I’m not sure he is one. Secondly, I’m annoyed at myself for going along with the book so easily and wanting to believe that ‘of course the religion-based, prescribed route to a ‘cure’ isn’t the only one, there’s always an unconventional way – go the rebels!’ It seems this book doesn’t provide any evidence to suggest there is another way.

I’d still say I enjoyed it as a piece of entertainment; it’s written energetically and engagingly, with characters I was broadly interested in. However, with hindsight there were several things that just didn’t ring true and others that were really clumsy. For example, the references made to the Tao Te Ching (which the author says helped him gain some perspective) are shoehorned into the text a bit weirdly. The references to some girl he’s always been in love with but messed it up with also stuck out a bit. Was he trying to write a film and direct at which point the flash backs should appear? This is more forgivable somehow, if it’s a memoir, but as a novel it just seems a bit cack-handed.

The writer makes a sustained effort to write in a particular tone of voice – lots of stops and starts, short, punchy sentences and punctuation everywhere. For me this matches the frame of mind he’s trying to convey, and the general pace of the book, but otherwise I don’t think the language, images used, etc. bear much further review – I’ve seen this book on sale in the past in places like HMV and mentally lumped it into the ‘pop memoir’ category, which I’m not really interested in. Turns out it’s probably a pop-novel-cum-memoir, and definitely not written to be considered as a literary masterpiece.

I’m glad I read it, since it raises some good questions about the line between memoir and fiction, which I’m still thinking about. Not having read many memoirs it didn’t really make me want to go ahead and read more. The facts given on addiction are truly incredible (something like 17% of those coming out of rehab can be expected to stay sober for the next year), and it made me glad not to have experienced it at close hand. But at the same time it was a bit light and poppy and there are no doubt better books out there on this subject that I would have got more out of.

So it’s only going to score a 4 out of 10 from me (and it’s only scoring that high because I couldn’t put it down – but then sometimes I can’t put free papers down on the train…). My word for our blurb will be ‘pop’ unless someone says something to change my mind significantly tomorrow night.

My plan is to post an update following book group tomorrow, to summarise what everyone else thought and any other questions my intelligent group of friends come up with that I didn’t. Look out for it. Perhaps the story doesn’t end here…