Leamington Letters #120: The year's fiction

​The year started well. Back in January, we had a new novel by Julian Barnes and a new book about Shostakovich. In this household, either or both would be welcomed, but this was two-in-one. Barnes had applied his meticulous research, sensitivity and beautiful prose to the life (and times and music) of Dmitri Shostakovich.
 
The focus of The Noise of Time, inevitably and rightly, is on the compromises which Shostakovich was forced, and forces himself, to make in order to survive and this theme is made manifest on the very first page. He is standing by a lift in a state of terror, waiting to be taken by the secret police after Stalin had walked out of a performance of Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk: ‘All he knew was that this was the worst time’.
 
Or maybe not, because it is one of three crisis points – ‘conversations with Power' - which allow Barnes to create a series of monologues within the historical context, and despite the echo of Dickens in the opening line, it is to his great love Flaubert that Barnes nods in this desperately sad story of a man coming to terms with his betrayal of himself.
 
The inversion of Marx’s famous dictum may be glib, but it is true. ‘History repeats itself; the first time as a farce; the second time as a tragedy’.

​Which is an appropriate thought upon which to remember my summer reading, the complete works of Simon Raven, of whom it was famously said that he had ‘the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel’. It will not come as surprise to learn that I rate the Alms for Oblivion sequence to be funnier, more insightful, more telling, and superior to the Powell parallel, Dance to the Music of Time. And I admire, amongst so many other things, his description of his writing: "I arrange words in pleasing patterns in order to make money . . . I try to be neat, intelligent and lucid; let others be 'creative' or 'inspired'."
 
And so to the autumn, when it gets later earlier and my thriller and detective story writers invariably publish their latest novels. This year, Lee Child, Ian Rankin and Michael Connolly all had new books out on the same day and all, to a greater or lesser extent, disappointed. The Harry Bosch, The Other Side of Goodbye was probably the best; the new Jack Reacher, Night School, by some measure the worst, leaving the new Rebus, Rather Be The Devil, somewhere in the middle. Not bad, but, well, you know, haven’t we been here before?

​The other problem with these was that in the days before I turned to them I had been fortunate enough to read an uncorrected proof copy of a first novel by Rick Gekoski, who normally figures in my favourite non-fiction books.

​The eponymous protagonist of Darke is an extraordinary creation and the writing intelligent and intellectual, full of allusions and half-familiar references which haunt the reader as much as the narrative. It is one of the best novels I have read for many a year – but that’s all I have to say for the moment, because it will not be published until next year. But I promise you it will be worth the wait.

​And finally, another first novel: A Time for Peace by the poet Marg Roberts. Like Barnes, she combines the inner life of her characters with a well-researched insight into historical events, in this case the occupation of Serbia in the first world war. If I have a criticism, it is that too much pure research has made its way onto the page, but the writing is spare and sparse and the characters, which could so easily have become stereotypes, are beautifully drawn. I commend it to you.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Just created a lunchtime playlist for Wilde's. Dylan, Dead, Ella Fitzgerald, Chet Baker, Ry Cooder, Miles Davis, Yo la Tengo and loads more. It's great!