False Azure

Looking over the books I've read in the past year, there have been several that did little for me, but only two that made me gnash my teeth in frustration at the wasted time I'd bestowed on them. (I may be in the middle of reading a third that comes into this category, but I'll save that for a future post.)

One of these was High Society, by Ben Elton. I got this free by collecting coupons from cereal packets, so probably shouldn't have expected too much. But I was caught out by the hammy dialogue and clumsy plotting and deeply unfunny writing, coming from half of the writing team behind Blackadder. It is supposed to be an expose of the drugs situation in the UK, but it read like a ham-fisted attack on nasty middle-class middle-Britain. All of the characters were lying, manipulative and dislikeable, except for two chirpy and hard-done-by working-class characters, who strove hard in difficult situations but came through in the end due to the depth of their working-class sincerety and all-round chirpiness. One of them is even a "prostitute with a heart of gold". Blegh! I'm as happy as the next person to have a laugh at the middle classes, but this level of stereotyping is just sick-making.

The other dud was Naked in Death, by J.D. Robb, a book so memorable that I had to go and look the title up on the internet so that I could type its name in here. Actually, that's not fair ... I do remember a bit more about it than that. I remember the bit where I got down on my knees and begged the heroine not to sleep with the hero, partly because he was clearly a jerk of Kilroyian proportions and partly because I was afraid her personality might get all soggy and munged up in the process. I also remember having to flick backwards through twenty or so pages, to check that I hadn't misread the hero's name, on account of the massive behaviour change he went through once the pivotal shagging event was over. What a brainless book this was. Still, at least now I feel I understand the meaning of the term "cookie-cutter characters" on a really really deep level.

On to something much better, with Rates of Exchange, by Malcolm Bradbury. This book has to have one of the slowest starts of anything I've read this decade, and I was beginning to get quite irritated with it. But I persevered and was glad I did. The story follows the journey of Angus Petworth, a lecturer in linguistics at an unremarkable college in an unremarkable English town, to The Republic of Slaka - a fictional Eastern European country, under the umbrella of the old USSR. Petworth is a frequent traveller for the British Council, and has given his anodyne lectures on "The English Language as Medium of International Communication" all round the world. But this is his first visit to a communist country - and one where the British Council has no formal representation to look after him. Instead, he is left in the hands of the Slakan bureaucracy, and in his innocent, ineffectual way, manages to get himself embroiled in politics, sex and diplomacy.

Bradbury evokes a wonderfully complete picture of the bizarre Republic of Slaka, giving it culture, geography and history, even inventing a very convincing language for it (and producing a phrase book). And though there is a lot of stereotyping going on, the characters seem very real and individual despite it. Bradbury does an excellent job of making the book funny (I laughed out loud in many places) while also still managing to convey the continual sense of low level tension that is a feature of travel in countries very different from your own. Petworth is always on the brink of disaster - whether he is trying to order a meal in a restaurant, find his way to his hotel or smuggle illicit documents out through customs.

This is definitely a book for anyone who likes social comedy or satire, and who isn't put off by a lot of puns. Here is a small taste, describing Petworth's first meal in Slaka. His guide has advised him to order the duck (crak'akii) as the speciality of the house, and has then abandoned him to his hotel.

It is over an hour later, and Petworth still sits in the vast, chandeliered dining room of the hotel, awaiting, as he has long awaited, the meal he has once ordered. It is a grand room, with some sixty tables, each spread with white table cloths, which cast up a damp smell of recent laundering in the water of some brackish river. The tables are laid, creating an atmosphere of vast vacancy, for all but six of them are empty. Nonetheless, the maitre, in the way of maitres, has chosen to seat Petworth in a dark corner, under a noisy air vent, and next to the smells of the kitchen. The doors from the kitchen open frequently, to let out black-suited waiters who carry peppermills ceremoniously about the great room, carefully avoiding contact with all the diners. "Crak'akii," Petworth has said, some time ago, to one of these, as he passed incautiously close to the table. "Negativo," the waiter has said, "Kurbii churba, sarkii banatu. Da?" "Da," Petworth has said. "Tinkii?" the waiter has said. "Tinkii?" Petworth has asked. "Da, tinkii," the waiter has said, pointing to Petworth's glass, "Pfin op olii?" "Well," Petworth has said, "Pfin." "Da, pfin," the waiter has said, raising his peppermill and entering the kitchen. He has not, since then, appeared again, though others have, carefully curving their paths away fromhis table. The cloth on the table in front of him steams faintly; on it is a small stand holding the flags of twenty nations, none of them his own. The door to the kitchen now opens, and the waiter appears, comes over to his table, takes away the flags, and disappears again.