The Raising

The publisher's sales pitch for Laura Kasischke's The Raising runs thus: "Imagine if Donna Tartt and Audrey Niffenegger wrote an episode of Twin Peaks..."

Well, obviously this was a red rag to a bull, as far as I was concerned, and I simply had to get hold of an advance copy to prove to myself that it couldn't possibly be as good as that fanboy-wishlist-boxticking tagline would imply. After all, aren't Laura, Donna and Audrey all characters from Twin Peaks? Spooky...

The book that arrived looked, for a worrying moment, to be a young-adult supernatural romance novel in the Stephanie Meyer mould. But fear not.

The novel begins with a death - a terrible accident with a supernatural flavour, which befalls two presumably lovely college students. From there it develops into a campus novel peopled with characters pretty familiar to us all by now: the quiet, buttoned-down room-mate who has to share a dorm with the drunken lout who is sleeping with his childhood sweetheart, the 30-something professor who half the students fancy yet whose home life is disintegrating, the lesbian in the music department, the girl on crutches with a terrible secret, and the Sorority house full of secrets, rumours and mysteries.

So, is it particularly reminiscent of Twin Peaks? No, of course not. The magic of that show was all in the soundtrack, the lingering direction and occasional moment of raw horror these two devices could combine to produce. You can't do that in prose (well, I can't, leastways) and all we're left with in the similarities column is that both the book and the TV show begin with the discovery of the dead body of a beautiful, wholesome all-American girl who is revealed, as events follow, to be at once far more and less than she first appears. One could also argue that the Girl on Crutches is not a million miles removed from the character of the Log Lady. But there's nothing in the characterisation within this novel to justify any comparisons with David Lynch and Mark Frost's masterpiece. no-one is as odd, quirky, crazy or stylised as the characters in Peaks.

Are there elements of Donna Tartt? The obvious similarity with The Secret History (it's a campus novel) aside, then still yes. The writing is crisp, occasionally very clever and sometimes funny enough to elicit a proper laugh. The main similarity with Tartt's work is actually with her second novel, The Little Friend, however, in that as you finish the last page, your initial reaction is a frustrated cry of "....AND?"

And is it reminiscent of the writing of Audrey Niffenegger? Again, yes, more or less. The artistic yet craftsmanlike structuring of this novel is its towering accomplishment, as with The Time Traveler's Wife. Two stories unfold in the book simultaneously: the story of what happened after "the accident" and the story of what led up to it. It's a delicate juggling act which Kasischke pulls off expertly. Her writing contains much that is familiar without quite being a cliche, even when writing about over-earnest college kids and their love-lives. The sex was never clumsy or forced, (which is odd since it often involves teenagers...) The atmosphere and tension was ramped up as if by a master of the suspense genre.

I know nothing about Kasischke other than she's a Creative Writing professor, which could make her an American equivalent of Scarlet Thomas, although as a novelist Kasischke is effortlessly superior to Thomas in both skill, style, structure and pacing. Thomas's books are not as clever as she thinks they are, and often her characters prove vastly irritating, with very poor dialogue. You are in a much safer pair of hands with Kasischke. This is a great book which will hold you enthralled right up to the last page.

I imagine that, if Tartt and Niffenegger had got together to write an episode of Twin Peaks, it wouldn't have been a particularly good episode. I'd rather have this book on the shelf than have had an extra episode of my favourite TV show written by two literary fiction writers trying to out show-boat each other in the middle of someone else's franchise. If I want to watch a great TV show interrupted by a famous genre novelist's take on the format, I'll watch the forthcoming episode of Doctor Who written by Neil Gaiman.

But I digress. Read this, if you like the sound of a campus crime thriller tinged with the possible touch of the supernatural. For it is excellent.

Shaun the Happy Grape.

Today's hilarious announcement from the world of publishing is that there is to be an autobiography from shoegazing Indiepop coke-hoover Shaun Ryder.

Armstrong and Miller came up with a great line on drugged-up poppists: "If you can remember being in Chumbawumba then you weren't in Chumbawumba."

I would suggest that the same is true of the Happy Mondays/Black Grape frontman. If he can remember anything at all which happened to him from about 1987 onwards, I'm a dutchman...

If only the Decepticons had had Alastair Campbell...

When you can't keep up the frantic literary pace, Booksface recommends regressing into comforting reads from your childhood. I picked up a copy of 'Classic Transformers volume 1', a bind-up of all the comic strips I hand-on-heart adored when I was nine. The UK comic differed from the US - we had our own stories, power-struggles, history and mythology. Some critics have argued the UK Transformers comic was the most powerful and consistently inventive political and mythological tale ever told in the comic format. Well, Bookface thought, if that's the case, Alastair Campbell must have covered it in his diaries. So I delved into his memoirs from the 1980's...

Mon September 12

Megatron keep to maintain the pressure on Optimus Prime and the Autobots. I agree this is the best thing to do while we've got the interest of the electorate.

Had a strategy meeting with M, also Shockwave and Soundwave, who was keen to keep promoting our main lines of attack: that people are sick of the Autobot government, time for a change, etc. Shockwave wanted to re-establish our progressive stance, and remind people that the Autobots are hopelessly divided on Europe and haven't recovered from the miner's strike. In short reiterate how Optimus Prime is out of touch and struggling with a divided party. Basically, said Megatron, our people need to get serious if we're going to start winning.

Tue September 13

Why do the Decepticon party despise Soundwave so much? He's got a huge majority in Hartlepool and his mastery of the media is beyond question, but every time you mention that he's steering policy, our rank-and-file become twitchy. Maybe it's his soft-spoken, slightly sinister air.

Wed September 14

The argument at the top seems to have died down - for now. Apparently Megatron and Shockwave met in secret last night, at Granita; just round the corner from Megatron's. Shockwave has come away from the meeting with the impression that Megatron has agreed to stand down as leader of the Decepticons after his first term in office, although a casual chat with the boss revealed he feels he had made no such promise. We need Shockwave's strategic brilliance, but he's a grumpy, irrational and paranoid micro-manager who just doesn't have the people skills to lead. Or the charisma. On the way to Millbank he even referred to a member of the public as a "bigoted woman", while Soundwave was still broadcasting. Total disaster.

Thur September 15

Day one of conference. The Sun ran an editorial about how Optimus Prime was going to revive the fortunes of his party, so I rung up the editor and tore him a new one. Meanwhile the row on the opposition front bench about Maastricht rumbles on. This election can't come soon enough. Megatron gave great speech at the conference. "Tough on Prime, tough on the causes of Prime" was a great little soundbite.

Q Plays a Blinder

'Come in, 007.'

'Why thanksh.'

'How are you getting on?'

'Bit of a quiet patch, Q. Shmersh and Shpectre are keeping pretty quiet, and no sign of activity behind the iron curtain either. Between you and me, until M givesh me a job I'm jusht twiddling my thumbsh. What are you up to down here, Quartermaster?'''

'I'll show you. Read this press release from an American publisher.'

'There couldn’t be a better combination than world-renowned secret agent James Bond and thriller master, the bestselling Jeffrey Deaver. Selected personally by the Ian Fleming Estate, Deaver was the first choice to write a swiftly-plotted, high-octane, dazzling thriller to resurrect 007 for the 20^th Century. Deaver has outdone himself in recreating the beloved character of Bond, his intelligence and instinct, his wit and seductiveness, in a novel that captures everything you loved about the classic books along with an updated espionage thriller plot that will entertain even the most jaded reader. Sharp, sexy. And smart, Project X has all the makings of a perfect beach read and runaway bestseller. Pretty hyperbolical shtuff.'

'Let’s look at that again, shall we, through these special sunglasses that I've made, which filter out publishing bullshit.'

'They're a shnug fit. Let'sh shee: There couldn’t be a better combination than world-renowned secret agent James Bond and thriller master, the bestselling Jeffrey Deaver. (Well, okay, there could, but we’re too scared to see what Jodi Picoult, Jean Auel or Paul Auster would do to the franchise.) Selected personally by the Ian Fleming Estate, (Ian’s insane grandson Hemming Fleming, who lives beneath a metal volcano where he builds rockets and keeps henchmen) Deaver was the first choice (after Sebastian Faulks) to write a swiftly-plotted, high-octane, dazzling thriller to resurrect 007 for the 20^th Century (Again. Just like Sebastian Faulks did in 2008.) Deaver has outdone himself in recreating the beloved character of Bond, his intelligence (British Intelligence, arf arf!) and instinct, his wit (when not on a mission, Bond would often pitch up at open mic night at the Comedy Store) and seductiveness, in a novel that captures everything you loved about the classic books (which is very little) along with an updated espionage thriller plot that will entertain even the most jaded reader (Martin Amis, perhaps). Sharp, sexy, and smart, Project X (or Carte Blanche, as everyone else is calling it) has all the makings of a perfect beach read (apart from being a hardback, of course) and runaway bestseller (it won’t shift a quarter of what Devil May Care managed).'

'What do you think of them, Bond?'

'Theshe are pretty powerful shpecsh, Q. Can I borrow them?'

'Of course, James- where are you going?'

'Up to Pershonnel. I want to reread my employment contract with these babiesh.'

Apology

I am reading Cedilla by Adam Mars-Jones.

It is enormous. And I'm in no mood to rush a novel this excellent.

Therefore, there is no hilarious blog post this week.

I'm sure you understand. You're very kind.

It's just so brilliant.

I'm only on page 80 out of about 800.

It's so incredibly detailed and sustained, I simply can't quite believe it's fiction. (Obviously, much of it isn't, I know how writers operate, the whorish tricksters.)

It's utterly immersive and comforting, and like the first installment (Pilcrow) it contains an embarrassment of riches. A veritable multitude. Each bite-sized piece of prose is perfect and profound, if you'll allow me alliterate.

There are to be four volumes in this series, apparently, when it is complete. In a hundred years from now, they will be held in the same regard as books like Ulysses and, more closely, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. I honestly believe that.

Anyway, this is why there's no new blog post this week. I'm very sorry.

Do say you'll wait for me. I'd hate for this to be the end of the road for you and I.

But I'm just a bit busy right now.

Please can this win the Booker Prize?

How To Remember

Previously on Bookface: My favourite novel of 2003 was Making Love: A Conspiracy of the Heart by Marius Brill, who hasn't published anything since...

www.goodreads.com can be a marvellous website, allowing you to record all the books you can remember ever having read, so you've always got them to hand if racking your brains about something. You can use it to review everything you ever read in glorious purple-prose and give every book five stars in a naked and shameless attempt to attract the attention of the publisher and be "discovered", if that's the sort of person you are. Me, I just like the virtual library it affords me while my real book collection is in my Dad's attic 4000 miles away. How I miss my little paper babies. One shortcoming it has is that its book search is powered by Neilsen Bookdata, so you can only add books still in print, and not books which are so new they've not yet been added to the interweb.

Which brings me to the very kind thing which 'a source close to the publisher' did for me recently when I noticed a new book due for publication in late 2011. On your behalf, dear readers, Bookface got in touch with Doubleday to try and find out if the new book is indeed a novel, the long-awaited second novel from the amazing mind of Marius Brill. Two weeks later, without being all vulgar about the disgusting perks one can expect as a book industry fiction-slut, I can reveal that I have now read the new novel, entitled How To Forget. But since it won't even have an ISBN number for another month or two, or be published until Sept, I can't add it to my www.goodreads.com library, so that, ironically, I might forget about it.

I'm kidding, of course. There's no danger of me forgetting a book this good, and if you've got any sense you'll clear the decks in September when the hardback is released and hunker down with this great novel.

What sets it apart from most is the jack-of-all-trades approach taken by Brill, who is clearly reluctant to merely excel in any one field of the writer's craft. This amounts to a laugh-out-loud funny book written by a shameless gag-merchant, yet one with the addictive unputdownability and mastery of structure and plotting which would make Fleming, Deaver, Dan Brown and all the bestselling thriller writers gape and fall weeping to their knees in jealous despair, grinding their teeth and muttering dark imprecations.

For such a book to combine two usually incompatible animus qualities like this is bad enough, but Brill is there with the anima, too. The romantic sub-plot is genuinely charged, leading not only to the most erotic passage in a book I can remember since...er.... but also to a concluding hundred pages where the reader is emotionally pounded, minced, grilled and stuffed before having their hearts handed back to them in a brown paper bag.

If you're still not impressed there's lengthy digressions on the subjects of memory and psychology, and a rather nice Shakespearean allusion running merrily through proceedings too. It's a great novel of revenge (in precisely the way Stephen Fry's The Stars Tennis Balls wasn't) and subterfuge, with FBI agents, television mind-botherers, senile old men and hassidic henchmen running amok.

I'm not going to recount the story, because I want you all to read it for yourselves.

Now go and get a pen. Got one? Good.

Now.

Write down:

Books of 2011 which I must read:

1. How To Forget by Marius Brill

The Four Hour Bullshit

Bookface does not, as a rule, read self-help books, because he knows a lost cause when he sees one. However, sometimes, if the claim is really outrageous, he'll have a flip through the book, identify the central premise, realise it is not something that can be applied to his life, then forget all about it. This is why he can't shift those last 6 lbs, or the first 300 lbs he needs to shift before he gets to the last 6 lbs, and why he persists in writing about himself in the third person.

(The last person to do this in public was Noel Edmonds in a leaked draft of his contract for more Noel's House Party in which he wrote "Noel Edmonds, hereafter referred to as The Creator" at which even the BBC Light Entertainment Division could no longer pretend not to have noticed that Edmonds was insane and promptly pulled the plug on the Saturday evening TV cackbubble.)

However, intrigued by the sales of Timothy Ferriss's Four Minute Body, I decided to buy a copy and see what the fuss is all about. He goes on for about five hundred pages, in a forced and blokey fashion, swearing about stuff that doesn't seem to make any sense to make him seem like you or I (but he's not, he's a very fit, rich, and no doubt utterly villainous man.) Calories, for example. He thinks calories are 'bullshit'. He pisses all over established scientific wisdom at every turn.

His great trick is disguising his actual content (of which there is very little) amidst pages and pages of empty waffle and hyperbole, which reads like the patter of a stage magician. However, to save everyone the bother, here is the secret to having a perfect, superhuman body which only requires four hours of maintenance per month:

Do the Atkins diet, and the Kettle ball swing. Once your body is perfect, stay perfectly still and never again touch anything that may contain a calorie for as long as you shall live.