Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera

If only Milan Kundera’s short story collection Laughable Loves had been simply an enjoyable read… Several other adjectives come to mind: arresting, compelling, strange, detached, sometimes disappointing. None of these get to the core of the work, a core that, on finishing the book, might seem more elusive than at any time during the progress of the text.

In Laughable Loves we are presented with characters that often seem to behave like cut-outs being pushed across a stage whose set is alien to them. They often seem only partially engaged with their own lives, even lost in their surroundings, no matter how familiar they are claimed to be. They are apparently controlled by others, perhaps by forces not only beyond their control, but also beyond their influence, even beyond their experience.

On the surface, however, this is not a book about totalitarianism or overt control. There are hardly any overtly political themes or references. As a background, as might be expected, this seems to be taken as given. There are references to a faceless system here and there, but this in no Kafka-esque construction of an all-embracing and constraining reality.

In Laughable Loves Milan Kundera seems to imprison people primarily within the demands of their own humanity. They seem to be enslaved by their own, inevitable, controllable but not controlled urges. This is fundamental behaviour that they think they can control, but the fact that they cannot confirms that it controls them. And, of course, the urge of sex, the reality of sex, the realisation of sex, the promise of sex, the deferment of sex, the doing of sex, all of these vie for the forefront of consciousness, their common factor apparently both the motive and the end of all intent. We may play with gods, careers, influence or power, but our ultimate and single-minded motive is the achievement of the momentary majesty of sexual communion. In his film, Casanova may have been likened to an erectile clockwork toy, pre-ordained by virtue of inevitable, hard-wired mechanism to perform whenever wound up.

And in this book, Kundera presents people who mimic such automata, except that occasionally a spring gives, or a cog slips. “Ah, ladies and gentlemen,” he writes, “a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anyone or anything seriously.” But almost no-one in these stories is eventually serious about anything, except the sex drive that controls them and whose realisation so often results in no more than sensations of the ephemeral. Immediately it is the next time that is yearned. They are thus all sad, quite absurdly sad, even as the invisible hand that manipulates their cut-out play in an alien theatre makes them move and perform. Even sadder is the human cut-out who doesn’t even believe that such a controlling hand might exist.

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

Time is undoubtedly linear, but our perception of it is not. And for Claudia Hampton, the principal character of Penelope Lively’s novel, Moon Tiger, time, manifest as her life, is a veritable jumble of memories, unfulfilled ambition, probabilities and denied possibilities. She is confused, at least on the outside, and lying infirm in a nursing home bed. But her mind is alive with a life lived, a life she distils to share with us. Claudia´s confusion, however, is only an external phenomenon. Internally her memory is sharp, if not ordered. She reminisces on childhood, eager sexual awakening in adolescence, a career as a war correspondent, historian and writer, an affair or two, one very special but doomed, an eventual marriage, maturity, parenthood and old age, but not necessarily in that order.

Events are assembled and revisited. Along the way there has been death, birth, a miscarriage, disappointment, fulfilment and ambition, seasoned with shakings of passion, hatred, pride and not a little incest. It has been an interesting life, especially remarkable for the way that Claudia relives it for us. Claudia’s memories are often intense. There is an attention to detail that renders her character completely three dimensional, four if you include time. She has struggled – and continues to do so – with what seems to be a fundamental lack of love for her daughter, Lisa, and a deep impatience with her grandchildren.

Jasper, her partner, was something of a disappointment, but at least a reassuring one, after war had dealt cruelly with what she herself had wanted. Claudia not only recalls but also relives her passion. She has often been free with her affections, but she has only once given herself completely. Her recollections of the horrors of war are both raw and stark. There is no heroism here: heroic deeds maybe, but only when the protagonists effect them by default. But in many ways Claudia’s life stopped those years ago in the nineteen forties.

What life promised would never be realised and what it had generated died before it truly came to life. Living has thus been a compromise that Claudia herself was only partially willing to make. It is into the gaps left by compromise that occasional views of her from another’s perspective add real spice to the narrative. Moon Tiger is a complex, challenging read. It is so rewarding, however, that time stands still while you read, but then, at the end, seems to have flashed by in an instant. The instant, of course, was Claudia’s life. Moon Tiger was a brand of mosquito repellent that Claudia and her lover burned during their brief time together in Egypt. What was left was just a little ash.

The Republic Of Love by Carol Shields

Republics do not have kings or queens, nor princes or princesses, so, we must assume, fairytales are out. Winnipeg is not exactly a republic, and, at least in terms of their love lives, two residents of the city, Fay and Tom, seem to inhabit a world where fairytales are inconceivable. But that place might not be Winnipeg: it might be closer in to themselves.

Despite – or perhaps because of - having had a multitude of mothers, Tom has been married three times, each attempt turning success into apparent and mildly painful failure, with or sometimes without associated acrimony.

For her part, Fay, at thirty-five, has had several relationships of varied length, but none has led to wedding bells, a fact that seems to trouble her, sometimes. Tom is a radio presenter. He hosts one of those late night phone-ins aimed at insomniacs, but usually attracting the opinionated.

His mood, his history, his takes on where life has taken him clearly influence his style. Rises or dips in his personal life are immediately apparent, communicated without trying. But do not assume that anything offers even influence to what the contributors say. Rest assured, they will offer precisely what they want, perhaps precisely what they have been fed, if only because they are all as self-absorbed as everyone else. Fay works more regular hours.

She is an ethnologist and works in a folklore centre. She is heavily into mermaids, and perhaps they are also into her. She researches the mermaid myth, catalogues sightings, interviews people who have seem them, travels the world giving papers on our social and psychological need to invent these creatures. Mermaids, though overtly sexual and obviously female, are eventually sexless, unless they have exaggerated tails. They are both alluring and inviting, but, being half fish, they are cold-blooded and cold. They tempt, but cannot satisfy. Obviously Tom and Fay are going to meet.

They, along with their accumulated baggage, join forces and, as a consequence, begin to see life differently. But each is still influenced by relatives, acquaintances, ex-partners, ex-in-laws, new partners, parents and anyone else who might have an opinion. They all count. They all influence, especially when stiffness of apparent resolve can be easily bent by contradiction, shock or surprise. And so Fay and Tom’s relationship develops to what Carol Shields deems it should become.

Throughout The Republic Of Love is beautifully written. Carol Shields’s prose is often witty, elegant, telling, funny, incisive or provocative all in one. A single sentence can turn on itself to frighten or mock its own beginning. This is a book worth reading for its style alone. But it offers more than elegance of expression. These characters have all the confused confident complexity, the undirected and variable resolve we would expect from non-ideological adults in the last decade of the twentieth century. It would be interesting to revisit them twenty years on to see where they are now, to know if anything might have lasted. In The Republic Of Love they certainly come to life.

The Dead Heart by Douglas Kennedy

We first meet Nick Hawthorne in a Darwin bar. As a stripper offers contorted perspectives on what Australia has to offer, our hero from Maine meets a fellow countryman from Detroit intent on doing to Asia what America does to most places. (Personal opinions, eh?) Nick has some of those. He has a personal approach to life, but feels he gets little out of it, despite having achieved the status of being the first person principal character of Douglas Kennedy’s novel The Dead Heart.

Nick is a journalist who has only ever had bit jobs. They interested him bit, earned him a bit, stimulated somewhat less. Then he found a map of Australia and became so obsessed with the continent’s emptiness that he sold up and left the US to discover the unknown, to visit the unvisited. He is less than impressed with Darwin. It’s not a good start. But a VW camper van bought from a Jesus freak promises a great escape along the road to Broome. Not round the corner…

A hitcher called Angie provides welcome diversion from the repetition of the road. She seems easy-going, not to mention easy, and a little threatening. She is travelling for the first time, but exudes confidence. Nick, however, retains control. Or so he thinks… Until he finds himself in Wollanup. It’s a town whose recent tragic history has removed it from the map. Nick has arrived at nowhere, the dead heart of a land. 

He is now unknown, has sex and beer on tap and an awful diet. A horror story haunted by powdered eggs… Until Krystal starts to cook… His mechanical skills come into play. The rebuilt camper van is destroyed again. Its renewed mobility is a threat. Events happen, like they do… Douglas Kennedy’s The Dead Heart evolves into a kind of fast-moving, page-turning thriller. But there are characters here. Something – not sure what! – seems almost credible. Nick is not the most likeable person, but this rather self-centred, thirty-odd, overweight hedonist does realise that there might be more to life than unlimited sex and beer on tap. He wants both, but clearly somewhere other than Wollanup.

What happens in The Dead Heart is crucial. It’s a plot-led work, but it is also engaging and well written. Its racy style fits the characters´ obvious preoccupations and helps to create a vivid portrait of lives that know only the here and now. The Dead Heart is a book to be read in a single sitting. The process will leave readers wondering how they might have reacted in such circumstances. And what about Australia as depicted? Is this a stereotype? You bet…

Dan Leno And The Limehouse Golem by Peter Ackroyd

Dan Leno And The Limehouse Golem is quite simply a masterpiece. Every aspect of the novel is remarkable. It’s a whodunit, though it suggests a couple of credible suspects right at the start. It even convicts its central character to death by hanging before we have even got to know her. Clearly things are not going to be obvious. The novel is also a study in character, especially that of its central actor, Lambeth Marsh Lizzie, later Mrs Elizabeth Cree. It’s also an evocation of London in the late nineteenth century, complete with colours, smells, vistas and perspectives. 

It’s a highly literary work, ever conscious of its place beside the genres it skirts. Overall, it’s a wonderful example of how form can be used as inventively as plot to create a story. The novel has a series of interlocking stands. In one our anti-heroine, Lizzie, is accused of the murder of John Cree, her husband. In another, John Cree’s diary reveals certain secrets that not only he would have wanted to hide. In a third strand, we learn of Lambeth Marsh Lizzie’s past, how she came to a life in the theatre and how she met her husband. A fourth strand follows the career of Dan Leno, a music hall player, worshipper of the silent clown Grimaldi and mentor of Lizzie’s stage life. And in a fifth strand we see how, in a great city like London, our paths inevitably cross those of great thinkers, writers, artists and, of course, history itself. Peter Ackroyd thus has his characters cross the paths of a writer, George Gissing, and a thinker of note, one Karl Marx, as they tramp the streets of Limehouse after a day at the library. 

 As usual, sex has a lot to do with the relationships in the book. It is usually on top, but here it also comes underneath and sometimes on the side of events. Mrs Cree is accused of poisoning her husband. Their married life has been far from conventional, but are its inadequacies the motive for a series of brutal killings of prostitutes and others in the Limehouse area? As a result of the curious placement of certain trophies, the killings are attributed in the popular mind to a golem, a mythical creature made of clay that can change it shape at will. Karl Marx examines the Jewish myths surrounding the subject. Others steer clear of the subject. Lizzie continues on the stage until she meets her husband. She learns much stagecraft from Dan Leno and eventually resolves to help her husband to complete the play over which he has unsuccessfully laboured. When the book’s plot resolves, we are surprised, but then everything makes such perfect sense. And in a real piece of insight, Peter Ackroyd likens the mass murderer to Romaticism perfected, the ultimate triumph of individualism. There is much to stimulate the mind in this thriller. 

 A reader of this review might suspect that Dan leno And The Limehouse Golem is a difficult read, a book whose diverse strands never converge. But quite the contrary is true: it comes together in a wonderful, fast-flowing manner to a resolution that is both highly theatrical yet thoroughly credible. Read it many times. View the book on amazon Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem