False Azure

Some time ago, I gamboled my way through The Alteration by Kingsley Amis. This was the first book by the elder Amis that I've read and I really enjoyed it. The prose style was confident and a perfect complement to the story, it was laugh-out-loud funny in places, while being a real roller-coaster ride of tale, even though nothing much really happens. It's an "issue" book, in that a problem is presented at the start, and then the rest of the book takes the reader through a sequence of varying and highly contrasting viewpoints on the problem. But the setting and characters are so perfectly and entertainingly chosen that it doesn't feel anything like as dry as this sounds. It's the kind of book where you are continually turning the page, just to find out what the author is going to dare to do next.

That said, I was slightly disappointed by the ending, although I can't put my finger on why exactly. Maybe subliminally I was hoping for a happy ending, but I think I was also put off by the fact that the event that brings the ending about is a massive coincidence, albeit a very clever one that ties together a number of the themes set out by the book.

So what's it about? The book centres around a 10 year old chorister, Hubert, who has the singing voice of an angel and a prodigious musical talent to go with it. The story describes how Hubert and those around him wrestle (or, in some cases, fail to wrestle) with the question of whether his talent should be preserved by means of an "alteration" - surgical alteration, that is. The whole story is set in England in the 1970's but... well, perhaps the easiest way to explain is to give a quote from the very beginning of the book that gives the reader the first clues as to the setting for the story. (This is rather long but hang on in there... you won't pick up on all of the clues (I certainly didn't) but it will be worth the wait when you get there.)

Hubert Anvil's voice rose above the sound of the choir and full orchestra, reaching the vertex of the loftiest dome in the Old World and the western doors of the longest nave in Christendom. For this was the Cathedral Basilica of St George at Coverley, the mother church of all England and of the English Empire overseas. That bright May afternoon it was as full as it had ever been in the three centuries since its consecration, and it would scarcely have held a more distinguished assembly at any time: the young King William V himself; the kings of Portugal, of Naples, of Sweden, of Lithuania and a dozen other realms; the Crown Prince of Muscovy and the Dauphin; the brother of the Emperor of Almaigne; the viceroys of India, New Spain and Brazil; the High Christian Delegate of the Sultan-Calif of Turkey; the Vicar-General of the Emperor Patriarch of Candia; the incumbent Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of United England; no fewer than twelve cardinals, together with less pre-eminent clergy from all over the Catholic world--these and thousands besides had congregated for the laying to rest of His Most Devout Majesty, King Stephen III of England and her empire.

[...] A large number of those attending his Requiem Mass would have been moved as much by a sense of personal loss as by simple duty or the desire to assist at a great occasion. Just as many, perhaps, were put in awe by the size and richness of the setting. Apart from Wren's magnificent dome, the most reknowned of the sights to be seen was the vast Turner ceiling in commemoration of the Holy Victory, the fruit of four and a half years' virtually uninterrupted work; there was nothing like it anywhere. The western window by Gainsborough, beginning to blaze now as the sun first caught it, showed the birth of St Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, at Colchester. [...]Holman Hunt's oil-painting of the martyrdom of St George was less celebrated for its merits than for the tale of the artist's journey to Palestine in the hope of securing authenticity for his setting; and one of the latest additions, the Ecce Homo mosaic by David Hockney, had attracted downright adverse criticism for its excessively traditionalist, almost archaizing style. But only admiration had ever attended--to take a diverse selection--the William Morris spandrels on the transept arches, the unique chryselephantine pyx, the gift of an archbishop of Zululand, above the high altar, and Epstone's massive marble Pieta.

To few but the tone-deaf, the music must have been far more immediate than any or all of these objects: Mozart's Second Requiem (K.878), the crown of his middle age and perhaps of all his choral work. Singers and musicians had just entered upon the Agnus Dei. There was a story about this too, that it had been written out of the composer's grief at the untimely death of an esteemed and much beloved contemporary [...].

These first paragraphs set the tone for the rest of the book. The setting is England in the latter half of the 20th century, but not our 20th century. England (never referred to as Britain, though the exact history is not made clear) is a devoutly Catholic country, at the heart of a devoutly Catholic Europe. In this world, electricity and science are adjured as being evil, and an entire alternative technology based on gas power has arisen, allowing trains to travel from London to Rome in just 7 hours (over the magnificent new Channel Bridge). Martin Luther was persuaded back into the fold and became a high ranking catholic. The great enemy is the Turkish Empire and wars are still being fought over possession of Constantinople. To top it all, the Pope is a tone-deaf Yorkshire man.

The alternative reality is close enough to our own, with so many names that are recognisable, that a big part of the fun of the book is to see what strange changes the different path of history has made to these familiar figures. But it's also beautifully written and thought-provoking. I enjoyed it very much.

My story Inside Out has been published in Issue 5 of Outercast Magazine. The issue celebrates the 75th anniversary of the publication of Brave New World, and all the stories are based around the themes and issues that Huxley explored in that novel.

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.