The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (2 stars)

As a winner of the Booker Prize in 2000, and on Dymocks' top 100 list, I decided this was a worthy candidate for my summer reading list. I wish I hadn't.

The unusual thing about this book is the number of simultaneous stories that are being told. They are: Laura and Iris growing up, Iris' affair with Alex Thomas, the science fiction story Alex and Iris come up with together, and Iris' day-to-day life as an older woman. The only interesting story out of all of these is sadly the sci-fi one, which gives the book its title. Unfortunately Atwood treats this story flippantly and has Alex end it in a couple of paragraphs with no regard to the readers' interest:

Not one escapes alive. The King is hanged from a tree, the High Priestess is disembowelled, the plotting courtier perishes along with the rest. The innocent slave children, the guild of blind assassins, he sacrificial girls in the Temple - all die.

My main complaint about this book is the lack of any interesting, thoroughly developed characters. Atwood pre-empts this criticism in the text by acknowledging that she (Iris) has merely provided a cardboard cut-out for her husband Richard. Unfortunately it is also true of all the characters except Iris.

Iris is boring, lacks backbone, and is so weak-willed she does nothing when others conspire to commit her sister to a mental institution. In contrast, Iris' sister Laura is one of the most interesting characters, yet we never discover her motivations: why does she constantly challenge the status-quo and display all of the spunk that Iris lacks?

The only other potentially interesting character is Alex Thomas, but his involvement is mainly limited to an emotionally cruel treatment of Iris and being the vessel for the science fiction story.

The 'twist' at the end of the story is less twist and more bleeding obvious plot development. Even Atwood acknowledges it:

But you must have known that for some time.

As I would expect for a Booker Prize winner, the writing is excellent. It's a shame the story is no good.

2 stars.

My 2009

The best (5 stars):

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty

Special mentions (4.5 stars):

• The Steig Larsson trilogy.
  
• Peeps and the Uglies, Pretties, Specials trilogy by Scott Westerfeld.
  
• In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan
  
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
  
• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.
  
• The Host by Stephenie Meyer (NOT the twilight saga).
  
• March by Geraldine Brooks.
  

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (0.5 stars)

Could a book be more highly acclaimed? Midnight's Children has won the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and 2008, which makes it the best book ever. Right?

Not so much. I gave up after 400 pages, and it was a serious struggle to get that far. Rushdie obviously has amazing talent as a writer, but it certainly isn't light reading (or fun reading, or interesting reading, or enjoyable reading). The story is different: incorporating chunks of Indian and Pakistani history into Saleem's life story with a bizarre sci-fi-like thread that pops up out of nowhere into:

a Goanese girl with the gift of multiplying fish ... and children with powers of transformation: a werewolf from the Nilgiri Hills, and from the great watershed of the Vindhyas, a boy who could increase or reduce his size at will, and had already (mischeviously) been the cause of wild panic and rumours of the return of Giants ... from Kashmir,...

Overall I found the novel fairly boring and slow, but it did have a habit of sucking me back into the story; so I found my interest in it went through peaks and troughs. Although the writing is of high quality and very 'literary' I was annoyed by the ridiculous use of ellipses: turn to any page in the book and you will count 5 or more. The narrator's interjections and meta-story with Padma were also annoying and continually disrupting the flow of the story, although I concede her voice often brought sanity and an end to the rambling, for which I was grateful.

I will admit to liking some parts of the book - I think my favourite character was Tai the boatman who made a stinky pact as a personal attack on Saleem's grandfather.

0.5 stars.

Finnikin of The Rock by Melina Marchetta (4 stars)

I wasn't sure how this was going to pan out; it seemed somehow unlikely that Melina Marchetta who wrote Looking for Alibrandi could write a decent fantasy novel. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the book and barely put it down.

I thought that Evanjalin was obviously important, but I hadn't picked her true identity until it was revealed. I was slightly surprised that Froi didn't turn out to be royalty or have some special powers, given how much he features in the story and the lengths to which Evanjalin goes to keep him.

I found Finnikin a little annoying, especially at the end of the novel when he acts more like a petulant child than someone who is ready to assume an important role. There is plenty of talk of Finnikin interacting with the other kingdoms, negotiating treaties etc. but it all seemed implausible given his level of immaturity. I guess it is young adult fiction, so the young adult has to do all the important stuff, even if they are under-qualified and have no real authority.

Enjoyed it!

4 stars.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson (4.5 stars)

The final book in the Millennium trilogy, and it is a big one at 599 pages. I have really enjoyed the trilogy, and this book was a great end to the series. It begins where the previous book left off with Salander seriously injured, which means the pace is frantic from page one. I found it really difficult to put down.

Salander perspective isn't told nearly as much as in previous books - she spends a large part of the book in hospital. This is a shame, since she is by far the most interesting character. Most of the story focuses around Blomkvist, with a strange, seemingly out-of-place side-story involving Berger. I have spoken before about the lack of editing of the previous books, and I think a decent editor would have scratched that side story.

The trial itself seemed pretty silly at times. Maybe I have watched too many American legal movies, but it seemed ridiculous that Giannini could just interrupt her questioning of one person to fire questions at Salander, Palmgren, Ekstrom and others:

...We can interpret that as a manifestation of self-hate".
Giannini turned to Salander.
"Are your tattoos a manifestation of self-hate?" she said.
"No," Salander said.
Giannini turned back to Teleborian...

Blomkvist continues true-to-form by sleeping with pretty much every important female character in the entire trilogy. Surprisingly there was much less product placement in this book (or I was more immune to it).

If there had been more of Salander kicking arse I would have given this 5 stars.

4.5 stars

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (3 stars)

This book has sparked a lot of discussion in Australia - it won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and was on the shortlist for a whole swag of other awards. It centres around an incident at a BBQ when 'a man slaps a child who is not his own'. This act divides friends and family (and Australia it seems) about whether he was right to slap the child, given that his own child was possibly about to be hurt by the other kid. It also creates discussion about how children should be disciplined, and what effect a lack of discipline from one set of parents has on other children and families.

I think there are plenty of interesting issues and themes in this book, but ultimately I didn't enjoy it much. Tsiolkas totally overdoes the sex (there is way more than The Bride Stripped Bare!) and swearing (I've never read so many c-bombs in one novel before). There was also not a single character I actually liked, which made it hard to care about the story.

Tsiolkas chooses an interesting set of eight points of view; I was expecting him to write about the same chronological time from each point of view (like the movie Go), but the chronology is linear, so each person's part of the story adds on where the last left off. I thought the end of the book dragged with Aish's experience at the conference and then the horrendous Bali 'holiday'. I totally didn't buy Hector as some sort of Greek Adonis. He was such a prick and so self-centred, I don't care how good looking he was, he would have been ugly.

Should Harry have slapped Hugo? No, he should have protected his own child without hurting anyone. Is Hugo a little shit? Yes. Every time I read about Hugo being breastfed, I thought of the Little Britain 'Bitty' skit...

3 stars.

The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller (4 stars)

I read this book without any pre-conceptions after I had run out of library books. It turns out it is one of the best selling books of all time, which is an interesting and depressing list (How to Win Friends and Influence People beats Dune). It seems like every literature critic across the world has made a hobby of pouring vitriol on this novel, and that is balanced by an equally passionate group of people in love with the story.

The criticisms are mainly that it is a Mills and Boon dressed up as literature, the characters and dialogue are implausible, and the writing is something you would expect from a high school student. Some of that is true, but I didn't think it was groan-worthy, and I didn't want to throw it at a wall when Robert says 'I am the highway and a peregrine and all the sails that ever went to sea' as some reviewers have stated.

I think the story is very powerful and interesting. The characters and dialogue, while unusual, could be plausible for two highly educated people passionate about poetry and literature. Those qualities are so rare in modern society I don't think any of us are qualified to apply the 'implausible' stamp to the characters.

If I said I didn't enjoy it, I'd be lying. I do wonder if I read it again with those criticisms in my mind if it would be just as good. Literature intelligentsia, we're going to have to agree to disagree.

4 stars.