Jerusalem

Week 33: The Wake – Paul Kingsnorth
Recommended by: Liz Lake

No dark satanic mills here, and one suspects that it wasn't quite what Blake had in mind, but there's quite a bit to work with here. Following the Norman invasion, French feet in ancient times were tramping all over England's green and pleasant land and making themselves pretty unpopular with the locals. Not least of whom is Buccmaster of Holland, father to murdered sons, husband of a murdered wife and hell-bent on vengeance. He gathers around him a band of 'grene men', certainly not very merry men, in order to repel what he considers the dual tyranny of France and Christianity.

Buccmaster clings to the old gods, to his ancestors, to his country and homeland in the Fens of Lincolnshire, and believes he has been chosen as a result of the omens he sees and the blade of his grandfather that he wields. Yet like his forebear Cnut, you can't help but feel that he is trying to hold back the tide and that progress is inevitable. The Normans had the advantages in numbers, in technology and in enough English folks both unprepared to fight and prepared to embrace the Church. Our protagonist isn't as eloquent as Richard Dawkins but is equally withering in his condemnation of Christianity and the priesthood. Also the French, the Scots, the Welsh, those unprepared to fight and indeed most people outside of a pretty select few.

He's a strong, single-minded character, slightly out of sync with his own time, never mind our own, but his situation at least is sympathetic as his whole world seems to be literally burning around him. The critical bit is that you fully enter not just his world but his worldview and a big part of what makes him a compelling character is his voice and indeed how the book is written. It isn't written in Old English but what Kingsnorth calls "a shadow tongue – a pseudo-language intended to convey the feeling of the old language by combining some of its vocabulary and syntax with the language we speak today." Like all books written in dialect (think Trainspotting or A Clockwork Orange) it takes a while to get into but it provides an immersive experience which is key to the book's success.

There is a relentlessness and a sense of the inevitable about the story, which keeps driving it forward and it has a page-turning quality that one might not expect from a literary historical fiction written in a made-up language. There is a strong sense of place and identity to things, of an Englishness that Buccmaster is prepared to defend to the death. Yet at the same time, it is apparent that part of what he considers to be English is originally Scandinavian and only serves to highlight that people have always travelled, that bloodlines have always had a mongrel quality to them, and that borders and identities are fluid. The march of progress may go on but here we are given a small window into an alternate history that brings a bygone age to life.

Sorrow

Week 32: Tess of the d'Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
Recommended by: Dad

Me and pre-20th century literature? I'll refer you back a couple of entries to A Tale of Two Cities. This is where I found myself with this one: having doubts about it. I'd read one Hardy before, Jude the Obscure (or as it should be subtitled, I Would Happily Punch Every One of You in the Face), which is both bleak and full of tediously dull, whiny characters. They are described as pure and worthy and brilliant yet their actions fall a long way short, which is to be honest a simple failure of 'show, don't tell'. So safe to say, I was sceptical about reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

And as I worked my way through the first couple of phases, my fears began to be confirmed. Hardy's works have a reputation for being grim and depressing and this started off on trend by following Murphy's Law. This is something I take issue with because for me tragic events become infinitely less tragic (and indeed veer towards the comic) if they are simply followed by ever more terrible things but turned up to eleven. It loses the emotional punch if you know something worse is just around the corner and laying it on thick like that devalues what you're trying to achieve. The Kite Runner springs to mind here; I know a lot of people love it, I thought it was ridiculous and terrible for the aforementioned reasons. And the same applies to 'mis-lit', an inexplicably popular genre that I have forever struggled to get my head around; why on earth would I want to read about this in the first place, never mind when it becomes an arms race of 'My terrible, abusive childhood growing up in Ireland was worse than yours?' It's like the Four Yorkshiremen but with none of the humour or charm.

Anyway, I think it's fair to say we got off on the wrong foot and I was worried that it was going to continue to be overly melodramatic and awful. Except, I'm pleased to report, it didn't. The worst excesses were kept in check and I think the primary reason for the book's success is Hardy's portrayal of Tess as a very well developed, sympathetic character. Even when her naivety and honesty get her into scrapes that as the reader you can see coming, you can't help but feel for her. She is an innocent, essentially virtuous figure who is repeatedly wronged. As events build towards a climax of Shakespearean tragic proportions (I don't feel I'm giving away much to say that it's not going to have a happy ending), Hardy walks a careful line the right side of melodrama and we have a satisfying and wholly believable conclusion that may have noticed the shark swimming by the coast but crucially refuses to jump. As an aside, was I the only one slightly baffled by the last chapter when it all goes a bit 'Oh My Darling, Clementine' right at the death in a proper WTF? moment? Either way, it wasn't enough to derail things for me and I finished considerably more impressed (happier isn't exactly the right word) than I started.

I also really liked the fact that Hardy tackled the double standards applied to men and women in Victorian times. Standing up for such things even now can be difficult depending on circumstances and can create a backlash – just have a look at the media on any given day and something's sure to come up. That he chooses to do so around the subject of rape and purity is commendable as I can't imagine many people who would stick their neck out to write on such a subject in a way that must have been pretty radical at the time. Perhaps the biggest tragedy of all is that while progress has inarguably been made in the last 125 years, we have yet to reach parity and that sadly, more often than not, to use Hardy's words, "The Woman Pays".

How to disappear completely

Week 31: Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer

Recommended by: Carol Butler

To the best of my knowledge, I have previously read two books on mountaineering: Touching the Void, Joe Simpson’s recounting of his horrendous climbing accident in the Andes, and a completely different one from W.E. Bowman, whose mountaineering satire The Ascent of Rum Doodle probably falls into a category of one. I can now add a third to the list: Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer’s personal account of the 1996 Everest disaster.

My memory for significant news events (see also bad 90s music) generally isn’t too bad, often being able to remember how old I was or what I was doing but this one didn't ring any bells so I came to it with zero knowledge and expectations. And left very satisfied. It was a gripping read in all the right ways, it had me up late to finish it and ‘just one more chapter’ syndrome ran high. Even more impressive than that is the fact that beyond the opening chapter it’s a straight-up linear narrative with no jumping around, and that you know what's going to happen before you start. Keeping readers interested in spite of this, indeed dragging them with you on the adventure, is no mean feat.

Krakauer’s journalism background obviously helps here; indeed it was this that landed him the Everest gig in the first place. The time taken to flesh out the people involved, develop them as characters is important too, as is the way of imparting what it's like to climb an 8000-metre Himalayan peak: this is not a high octane adrenaline-rush, it is man versus nature at a primeval level. And it's this, coupled with capturing Everest's allure – the desire to conquer, to climb, to explain why so many hear its call despite the ridiculous hardship, risk and pain – which really makes the story succeed.

As a personal account, it’s also unavoidably subjective in some ways. Krakauer did interview the other survivors in order to try and piece together information and corroborate stories. This must be no easy thing after such a tragedy, when memory is notoriously unreliable, particularly factoring in how fatigue, cold and oxygen depletion will have affected the participants. Passing opinions on people in the recent past (it was published the year after the event) always has the potential for trouble, doubly so when some of them are now deceased. As I’ve later read, there is some controversy over the portrayal of one climber in particular.

Reading around the subject has been interesting too, not least of which is the fact a film of the event is due to be released next month. And while I’m not desperate to rush off to learn the correct way to use crampons any time soon, I could happily read more books like this; time and quality of writing will perhaps tell if I liked this because it’s different to other things I’ve read or because it’s a stand out in the field. It's certainly inspired me to pick up some more travel (perhaps adventure may be a better term) literature in the vein of Marco Polo’s Travels, Scott’s voyage to the Antarctic, Lawrence’s adventures in Arabia. If any of them can nail the allure of the unknown, the ‘pull of the mountain’ in the same way then I'll know I'm in safe hands.