The Page Count

Tag: Novel

  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane

    Neil Gaiman, 2013 

    Read: June 2025

    Edition read: Headline Publishing Group, 2013, 235 pages 

    Fiction – Fantasy 

    Read on a trip to Edinburgh 

    *Spoilers* 

    I saw a National Theatre production of this in November 2023 and did my best to follow the plot, but at a certain point it just took an absolute left turn to comprehension and I had no idea what was going on. Let’s see if I can do any better with the book.

    It starts with a funeral, which leads the (unnamed) narrator to revisit his childhood home, and the pond, or the ‘ocean’, at the end of the lane. In turn, he remembers a childhood memory – the story at hand – for the first time. As such, it is told in the form of analepsis. Here, death is a gateway.

    Much like Gaiman’s Neverwhere, the story takes place in a universe that could be ours, until it very much doesn’t, with the introduction of a different – perhaps parallel – universe. I spent a while considering whether this was surrealism or fantasy; despite the title, I think it’s the latter. The element of surrealism that is a lack of understanding of the rules of the universe, and the suspension of the normal rules – those of reality – evolves into fantasy as the sense of normalcy completely gives way to another, strange and unfamiliar, world.

    It is written from a child’s perspective, quickly deploying the trope of a child dealing with gaps in their knowledge and understanding, particularly of adult themes, with the early suicide of the opal miner. The narrator, who often articulates his feelings of a lack of agency, is convincingly passive as a child. I wondered what the significance of the opal miner was for a bit: he is gone almost as soon as he appears. Ultimately, besides this character providing a dark example of something beyond the child narrator’s understanding, as well as driving the plot forward, I read it as a note on the letdowns of adulthood. As this suggests, although it could be read by older children or young adults, it works on two levels, and in many ways this is quite a dark book; besides looking at loss (such as when Lettie is hurt protecting the narrator and has to ‘rest’ for what turns out to be a lifetime) it draws upon what adults say/look like versus what they actually do/how they act, the protagonist’s father’s affair with Ursula being an example.

    As this early development suggests, the plot whips along (I read this over a long weekend), although the logic behind ‘why is this happening?’ is not always apparent and re-reading a couple of pages proved necessary (this made me feel better for not having been able to follow the play). Gaiman is inventive, creating his own tropes, such as the suicide of the miner summoning the spirit/Ursula to distribute money. Although he has written a compelling fantasy, this book could be read on a purely symbolic level for memory and loss of childhood, the ocean being something to return to and submerge in but never cross.

    Worth reading? Yes.

    Worth re-reading? Yes

  • Shogun

    James Clavell, 1975

    Read: January – June 2025

    Edition read: Hodder & Stoughton 2017, 1125 pages

    Historical fiction

    *Spoilers* 

    In Down Under, Men at Work sing their way through a couple of culture clashes. These all turn out to be relatively benign; cars break down on hippie trails, people make Vegemite* sandwiches, beer flows and people chunder. There is an attempted drug deal, but the proud Australian tells the Bombayite that he comes from the land of plenty, and that Aussie rules is the best sport, so clear off mate.** In Shōgun, the learning curve is a bit steeper; the (Protestant) Elizabethan protagonist gets shipwrecked in ‘the Japans’, the only people who can translate to and from Japanese are pesky Catholic missionaries, people are either beheaded or expected to commit ritual suicide (‘seppuku’) for slight infractions, eating raw fish is a yes and daily baths are expected.

    The Erasmus, a trading ship of Elizabethan-era Dutchmen and an Englishman (John Blackthorne, the navigator and our protagonist), arrives at a key moment in the history of feudal Japan; the Taiko (Japan’s main man) has died, leaving an infant son and five lord regents to rule for him as a council until he comes of age. These five regents all want to kill each other off, but manners dictate that no one can even openly show that they are mildly offended by obvious stingers, so they resort to a lot of scheming instead. Talking of scheming, the Portuguese Jesuits are already there, facilitating their monopoly of trade between Japan and China, as well as working on The Treaty of Tordesillas. They are not pleased about a bunch (in fact, the very first bunch) of Protestants appearing. 

    As such, Shōgun covers the build-up to war and the requisite manoeuvring, moving between the perspective of various characters, including Blackthorne, to do its world building. Although based on a true story, from a post-colonial perspective, that a story about feudal Japan had to involve an Englishman seems a bit questionable, although Clavell’s approach does make for an interesting premise. (This is also not to mention that feudal Japan did a fair bit of colonising of its own.) Upon first consideration, it just seems improbable that Blackthorne is the protagonist (and also gets the main lady.) However, he is very much used as an oft-unwitting chesspiece in a game of political chess; it ends with an soliloquy from Toranaga (who, indisputably, grows into being the Shōgun of this story), rather than from Blackthorne, wherein it is revealed that the latter’s plans of sailing off into the sunset back home to England may not quite work out. Emphasising this point, the rest of the crew of The Erasmus quickly become minor characters; their main purpose is to show the tension between what Blackthorne was and what he becomes. Fortunately, Clavell doesn’t try to place Blackthorne on a typical hero’s path and make him become a great warrior who comes to surpass his (many) enemies in combat; instead, Blackthorne quickly comes to understand that he is no match for any samurai. 

    Shōgun packs a lot of plot into its 1000+ pages, and my initial assumption that there was going to be a swordfight on every page was incorrect – it actually ends before the major warfaring begins, being very much about the preceding manoeuvering. The flipside to this is that what with the politics, plotting, spying and power struggles, the plot can be hard to keep up with and the sections focused on social propriety make for slower reading. 

    When it comes to show versus tell, it leans towards tell, wherein a lot of historical information about Japan, and the personal stories of characters, are set up, generally via free direct discourse. It is a nice touch that Toranaga disappears at times, not just from the events of the book but also from the narrative, with Clavell resisting the urge to jump into his perspective and instead let the reader get a taste of the other characters’ confusion.

    Worth reading? Yes – it’s a long read, but stick with it.

    Worth re-reading? Yes, and given the complexity of the plot, would be a fruitful read with the added comprehension that a second read invariably brings. However, to compare apples to orangutans, the 2024 TV series is better than the book, so if you don’t have time, do that.

    Death is part of our air and sea and earth. You should know, Anjin-san, in this Land of Tears, death is our heritage.

    * Don’t listen to the Aussies – Marmite’s better.

    ** They cut this line, more’s the shame.

  • Lost in the Garden

    Adam S. Leslie, 2024 

    Edition read: Dead Ink Books, April – May 2025, 446 pages 

    Fiction – folk horror. Won a Nero Award for Best Fiction. 

    *Spoilers* 

    Three young women live in personal stases of varying degrees in a village in northern England where the dead meander and a six-year summer shows no sign of abating. This is the first interesting point (besides the dead roaming about and everyone seemingly just kind of…meh about it): a folk horror set in a warm, sunny, endless summer, inviting at least just a little bit of comparison to that most famous piece of work in the folk-horror oeuvre, The Wicker Man (we’ll come back to that later). 

    The title refers to the unnaturally ever-abundant vegetation created by the endless summer that these three female protagonists – Heather, Rachel and Antonia – inhabit. In this world, Leslie has a different take upon zombies; they are generally harmless until underestimated, at which point they close in, gang up and kill people with hard objects. No eating reported. 

    The descriptions of this eternal summer are rich without being saccharine (‘Very occasionally it was a dry heat, a soily heat smelling of bug carcasses and stones, but usually the air sweated as much as the people’), and rural scenes abound, with the action sticking to the countryside and villages.* In this garden, there are no old(er) people and no authority figures, although there does exist the accepted aphorism, ‘Don’t go to Almanby’. No one seems to know why; just going there is taboo. Plotwise, Heather is trying to find her boyfriend, Steven, who disappeared to – of course – Almanby around six months earlier, although a difficulty in keeping track of time is a recurring theme, getting pushed to extremes later on in the book, with one particularly atemporal slippage of reality. 

    Rachel needs to deliver a package – the contents of which she keeps a secret from Antonia and Heather – again, to Almanby! This is the start of the story proper. Roadtrip! 

    I started off quickly, then slowed down, finding the irreverence of Rachel and Heather a bit grating, then got back into it as the narrative drive picked up. Rachel clearly has something to hide, but we aren’t just let in on what. She receives mysterious, nonsensical transmissions via a portable radio. The unknowns, including an ever-elusive ice cream van, build up the mystery, driving the story via intrigue, and although the unanswered questions ultimately add to the feeling of a bad dream, these don’t all resolve as clearly as possible. For example, it’s implied that Antonia is a murderer, which doesn’t go anywhere, nor does it really seem to inform her character. Her love interest in (but seemingly never with) Heather also just fizzles away at the end, without any requisite epiphany. 

    Although it moves between the perspectives of each of the three main characters, it can sometimes be hard to remember the ‘whys’ in this novel; why did David hold them up? He is also being manipulated by Steven? What’s the deal with Rachel – is she addicted to something? At one point I wondered if Almanby was an analogy for addiction (‘it was the best feeling she’d ever experienced, and she never wanted it to stop, even as she knew it soon would’), but this isn’t developed and her motivation remains unclear. 

    Jumping back to that use of ‘folk horror’ and The Wicker Man – when they arrive in Almanby is when it really becomes clear that the normal rules of this universe have fallen aside and that something is off, although Leslie does a good job of maintaining the build-up and making it hard to place what. As suggested, a lot remains unexplained, which at times really adds to hazy feel, such as the farm building which turns into a looping maze, but this doesn’t deliver on all fronts. Is Heather struck by lightning towards the end? Is Steven trying to destroy Almanby? The theme of sacrifice also comes up, but not as a heavy-handed copy and paste of The Wicker Man. So, although the composition falls apart towards the end, the ending is still delivered with considerable interest, and does leave a satisfying chill. 

    Worth reading? Yes.

    Worth re-reading? Yes, although the strength of the writing carries the plot a bit.

    *These were pleasingly effective compared to another recent read, Benjamin Myer’s The Offing. 

  • The Grapes of Wrath

    John Steinbeck, 1939

    Read: November 2024 – January 2025

    Edition read: Penguin Modern Classics 2000, 476 pages.

    Literary realism

    * Contains spoilers *

    A realist novel about American tenant farmers (monikered more literally in the book as ‘sharecroppers’) whose crops failed in the dustbowl during The Great Depression. In the process of their subsequent eviction they are completely disenfranchised. It is a documentation of the shift from one way of life to another – a hallmark of the Great American Novel.

    This road trip of the Joad family, as they are forced to become migrant works and drive from Oklahoma to California via Route 66, is defined not by a sense of adventure or a historical sensibility, but by a precariousness; they, alongside thousands of others, have to pack up their entire lives into a single truck and find a new home.

    As opposed to, say, Cormac McCarthy or Virginia Woolf, Steinbeck’s straightforward writing style doesn’t initially draw attention to itself, but its clear, earnest manner brings a gravitas to the story being told. More complex yet still authentic, the speech is conversational and as spoken (‘just set and figured’; ‘don’t get ornery now’, etc.) Likewise, there is a strong layer of symbolism (I particularly liked the rising flood waters and downed tree towards the end), although it’s interesting ow rich the story remains even when read without these.

    This declarative quality serves the depiction of life being harsh and people being poor; when Grampa dies, the family have no choice but to bury him in a field; even the tractor driver, who can do the work of dozens of sharecroppers, talks about having yet to buy shoes for his youngest child; and Rose of Sharon, self-centered, pregnant, abandoned by her husband and suffering from malnutrition (fried dough does not a well-rounded diet make), is shown little in the way of sympathy. The family unit is consistently depleted, with family members either dying or wandering off on a regular basis. The ties that bind are severed as misfortunes assail the Joads day by day.

    This builds into the major theme of the individual versus the collective. Some of the people taking part in this exploitation hate themselves for it, as they know what they are doing, but are subject to the same downwards financial pressures. When the employees unionise, they are immediately denounced as ‘red’ and attacked, verbally and physically. There is no ignoring that this is more than just a story – this is a political book.

    The longer chapters, which are directly about the Joads, are interspersed by short chapters of exposition, wherein the narrative point of view is anonymous and omnipotent; I read this as the voice of Steinbeck. Either way, these shape up as what the introduction refers to as ‘atemporal interchapters’, serving to show the scale of the suffering.

    Worth reading? Yes.

    Worth re-reading? Yes – this was a re-read from seven to ten years ago. Perhaps Steinbeck’s best book, combining the human struggles of Of Mice and Men with the scale of East of Eden.

    Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there […] I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’ – I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry n’they know supper’s read. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build – why, I’ll be there.