Review: Him With His Foot In His Mouth by Saul Bellow (1984, 294pp.)

This review contains a few excerpts from the book but doesn't spoil any surprises.

Featuring just five short pieces, Him With His Foot In His Mouth might be an ideal introduction for those who have never read anything by Saul Bellow. The collection showcases his unique voice and style, while familiar readers can find some interesting new perspectives on the usual themes.

The longest story in the collection, for example, is called 'What Kind Of Day Did You Have?'. It's underscored by Bellow's trademark examination of what it means to live in a mass society more organised than its individual members, among the rubble of grand ideas and failed dreams. At the centre of the piece is Victor Wulpy, a mouthpiece for Bellow's various anthropolitical musings, trying 'to pole his way upon a walking stick against the human tides of airports'.

Review: For Esmé — With Love And Squalor by J. D. Salinger (1953, 215pp)

This review contains a few excerpts from the book but doesn't spoil any surprises.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have a confession to make. The Catcher In The Rye was a very important book for me. I read it one summer as a still tender nineteen-year-old, working in a quiet pub, saving for my move to university in the autumn. I'm sure many of its readers will know what I'm talking about when I say the novel's narrator Holden Caulfield seemed to perfectly embody my own naive cynicism while simultaneously showing up everything that was wrong with it.

For Esmé — With Love And Squalor is the UK title for a collection of Salinger's short pieces, which in the US is simply called Nine Stories. All nine will be of interest to anyone who was impressed or moved by Salinger's most popular novel, but they might also provide an interesting taster for readers who've yet to be swayed by The Catcher In The Rye's often earnest admirers.

Review: The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute (1948, 278pp.)

This review is fairly safe to read if you haven't read the book (i.e., it doesn't give away any major plot points or twists in the story) but offers an interpretation for those who have.

Those familiar with Nevil Shute through his more famous books probably won't be surprised to hear that aviation, engineering, and entrepreneurship all feature in The Chequer Board, which nevertheless presents a story told in his usual, accessible style.

Mr Turner is a British war veteran who has lately been having fainting fits. He goes to see a specialist called Mr. Hughes who tells him that there are pieces of shrapnel from an old war injury lodged irretrievably in his brain and that, as a consequence, he doesn't have long to live. He begins to think about what he would like to do with his remaining time and reminisces about the hospital where he initially received treatment for his wound. He remembers the three patients he shared a ward with: two Englishmen — a commando wanted for murder, a snobbish pilot with an unfaithful wife — and an American — a black man who has slit his own throat and also stands accused of rape. When he realises he doesn't know what happened to them he decides to find out and, with the assistance of his somewhat sceptical wife, to see if he might be able to help them in some way. It's a simple premise but one that Shute uses to build a complex narrative of interlocking stories.

The Chequer Board manages to address racial tension, considers and compares Buddhism alongside Christianity, and successfully depicts something of British character, all in under 300 pages. It must have been a somewhat unconventional book upon its publication in 1948.

Review: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien (1967, 206pp)

This review is fairly safe to read if you haven't read the book (i.e., it doesn't give away any major plot points or twists in the story).

Although the title of this post gives the publishing date 1967, The Third Policeman was actually written sometime between 1939 and 1940. It was O'Brien's second novel, and after it was rejected by publishers he claimed to have lost the manuscript. It was made available to the public after his death.

The fact that The Third Policeman was written some two decades before the 1960s only makes it seem all the more groundbreaking for its time. It's nonetheless an accessible book, considering. The main story follows the narrator — an unnamed murderer — into an absurd world full of strange characters and odd devices. So far, so Alice in Wonderland.

As he finds himself getting increasingly lost, however, he takes comfort in the equally eccentric ideas of a philosopher named de Selby, with whom he's apparently obsessed. These ideas emerge primarily via footnotes that appear throughout the book. One in particular spans eight pages and outlines in some detail a bitter but amusing rivalry between scholars of de Selby. Long, comic footnotes and endnotes are the much remarked upon trademarks of the more recently deceased David Foster Wallace, yet here was O'Brien using a similar technique back in the Ireland of the 1940s.