STARTER FOR TEN by David Nicholls

Naturally, I have yet to finish any of the books I brought/ started on my trip to London (which was wonderful, thanks Hay!). But, of course, as I passed the time in a bookstore in Heathrow waiting for my flight to depart for home, I decided to add another book to my heavy backpack – Starter for Ten. I saw the movie when it first came out, though I remember almost nothing of it, and I have friends who loved the book (which is also, oddly, sometimes called A Question of Attraction). Because of all this, and because I had vaguely been meaning to read it for a while and had recently been talking about it, I gave it a try.

I read the majority of this book in public places – the plane from London and on the subway coming to and from work each day this past week. Not a good idea. I got so invested in the main character, the supremely awkward Kate Bush-fanatic Brian Jackson, that I would catch myself scowling at what he was about to do or, more often than not, laughing out loud at his awkwardness (often to the curious looks of my fellow commuters). It is a hilarious book. Brian, a young man from a working class English town in the mid 1980s, enters college with dreams of finding a great girl, becoming cool and aloof, and starring on his college’s University Challenge (a TV quiz show) team. As an avid collector of useless facts and general knowledge, Brian has always believed that being on a University Challenge team would somehow bring everything together: he would find the beautiful smart girl, make his mother proud, honor his dead father, and succeed beyond his humble upbringing. Of course, all does not go according to plan. As he becomes distracted by his blind love for the beautiful but selfish and mean Alice, he neglects his studies and slowly isolates himself from everything and everyone that is important to him. It becomes a story that would be sad if it weren’t so funny.

As a recent college student and English major to boot, I have encountered very few characters in books that have been as recognizable as Brian Jackson. Time period, class warfare, and general ridiculousness aside, his thoughts and insecurities are the kind that most kids in their late teens and early twenties are plagued by. Brian desperately tries to fit in and find his place at his university, but continually fails at his attempts to be cool and aloof while overanalyzing every conversation he has with people he is trying to impress. It is the perfect picture of freshman year of college: insecurities about new friends, academic qualifications, leaving home, and the opposite sex. So often when reading Brian’s thoughts I wanted to yell, Yes! That’s exactly how I felt! So much of what Brian does, from the way he makes up conversations and encounters in his head, to the way he applies literature and song lyrics to his life, to the way that no matter how hard he tries he is unable to avoid superb awkwardness, are things that I (and many of my friends) have definitely been known to do. It’s amazing how Nicholls so often knew what was going on in my head as a young and impressionable college student. But Nicholls knows how to make Brian not too recognizable – some of his situations are just so absurd and painfully awkward that he always remains a comfortably safe work of fiction. The recognizability that remains, however, is what makes the book so funny and still so poignant.

Each chapter of Starter for Ten is preceded by a University Challenge-esque question that shows itself to be pertinent to the chapter. Likewise, each of the four parts of the book (or ‘Rounds’) begins with a quote that becomes relevant. The epilogue begins with this quote from a Kate Bush song I love, ‘Cloudbusting’:

I know that something good is going to happen.

And I don’t know when,

But just saying it could even make it happen.

And so, in honor of Brian and his love for Kate Bush, here is the wonderful (/ridiculous) video for Kate Bush’s wonderful song 'Cloudbusting.' Enjoy!

(Cover via)

THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt

I’ve been terribly neglectful lately in writing about the books I’ve read right after I finish them, so sadly this discussion of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History may suffer a bit. I finished the book weeks ago and, while I loved it, it is no longer fresh in my mind and so I may be a bit lacking in my remembering of it. Alas, I will do my best.

I came upon The Secret History when a friend and I were talking about The Likeness. She said that as she was reading Tana French’s book, she was reminded of Donna Tartt’s novel. As I read reviews of The Likeness, I noticed many of them mentioned The Secret History, almost always in a favorable way (for both books). And then, when said friend gave me a copy of the book, I figured it was about time to read it. It is true that there are many (many) similarities between The Likeness and The Secret History; both are set at secluded academic locations, both feature a bizarrely close circle of friends, both involve a the murder of a student, et cetera et cetera. And yet, I did not find The Likeness to be a rehashing or copy of The Secret History (which came first – it was published, and apparently was very popular, in 1992).

The book opens with Richard Papen, our trusty protagonist, reflecting on his tumultuous time at Hampden College. As a sophomore transfer student, Richard was quickly accepted into an exclusive group of five friends. His need to belong, particularly to this elite group by which he is fascinated, moves him to make sure to fit in at any cost. Though he must work hard and often to put himself through school, he pretends to be of the same wealthy class of his new friends (though in some of these friends’ cases, it is more like used-to-be-wealthy class). Their collective wealth, with the leisure and freedom (especially academic) it brings, makes their self-inflicted seclusion all the more influential on the developments of their philosophies. Hampden, the small liberal arts school at the foot of a mountain in Vermont, keeps its students isolated in a bubble of academics, drugs, and general college-revelry. These six students, however, are in their own tiny bubble within Hampden. They take only Classics course with each other, with only one professor. Entrenched in the Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, mythologies, epic poems, and dead languages, their worldview and mindset is entirely disconnected from modern reality. This disconnect – with its accompanying amorality and intellectual and social isolation – inevitably leads them towards irrevocable evil.

As these students are consumed by the Ancients in their mountainous Vermont isolation, their imagined world clashes with the real one. The bizarre recreation of an Ancient tradition leads them to an accidental (but no less horrific) murder. And yet, this is only the beginning; Richard’s story is really the story of he and his friends’ murder of Bunny, one of their own (worry not, no spoiler here – this murder is revealed on the first page). The horror of it is that as the book progresses, their actions begin to make sense. Bunny (who acts like a character from out of a Fitzgerald short story, both intentionally and not) has become a threat, not to mention a nuisance to his friends, and so he must be gotten rid of. In the warped minds of these students, this makes sense. As we become part of this mindset and their world – a world that is set more in Ancient Greece than in reality – the thought of murder seems less inhumane and more as an ordinary part of life. Bizarre events and elements of the book somehow seem reasonable, as Tartt has slowly eased us into this strange world where the natural and philosophical reign over the logical and corporeal. And yet, the students find that their otherworldly actions and beliefs have very real consequences.

As a sort of intellectual murder mystery that unfolds backwards, The Secret History kept me reading like crazy (into very late hours) to finish it. I loved so much about it: the quiet college setting, the complex and slowly unfolding relationships between characters, the structure of the story, the juxtaposition of the high intellectualism of Latin poetry and Greek philosophy with the basic animalistic act of murder. It is certainly one of those consuming books, one that you cannot put down and that appears in your dreams. At least, it was for me.

COMMENCEMENT by J. Courtney Sullivan

Every time I entered a bookstore for much of the summer, J. Courtney Sullivan’s debut novel called to me from the new releases display. Recently, I finally gave in and got my hands on it (with the help of my library, where the abundance of readily available free books will never cease to amaze me) to see what kind of wisdom a book seemingly about commencement could impart upon a recent college graduate. It proved enlightening in more ways than one, as I found myself both identifying with its characters in familiar settings while being challenged to think about where to take my education from here and what it means to be a woman today.

The story of four close friends from Smith College, Commencement chronicles, often nonlinearly, the progression of the girls’ friendship from the start of their freshman year through their mid-twenties. I was, before I read the novel, pretty unfamiliar with Smith and its customs and hierarchies. But Sullivan paints such a vivid picture of the college – I imagine it must be a unique experience for an actual Smithie to read the book – that, upon its end, I almost felt a connection to the school. I think, however, this connection comes less from Smith itself than it does from Sullivan’s main theme: modern feminism. (Disclaimer: I have never actually studied feminist schools of thought and am speaking purely from the perspective of a female, so take this how you will.)

What the book is really about, I think, is the feminist movement in its many forms and divisions in modern America, and what this current generation of young women (myself included) can and are doing with our abundance of choices. Just as every woman is a unique representation of modern feminism in the real world, each of the girls in the book is a different kind of feminist, from the apathetic Southern belle to the radical anti-men activist. At times these different takes on feminism in the book could be isolating and even infuriating; there were times in the book in which I actively disliked some of the characters and was angered by their choices and opinions. I think, however, it was necessary for Sullivan to make her characters and their actions so polarizing, as they thus represented all sides and extremes of the debate (feminism is, after all, still a polarizing issue). All of this discussion of feminism and its place in America is only that – discussion – until we see it put onto action. As the four girls leave Smith for the ‘real world’ they each take their vastly different meanings of feminism to become very different kinds women, thus calling for reflection on the tangible effects of their kind of education and feminist thinking.

The book does not go on to explore what kind feminist idea makes a ‘successful’ woman - I don't think this is the point of the book. For all its big ideas and meditations on modern society, the heart of the novel is in the friendships of the four girls. I may not have gone to Smith, but I did go to a lovely all-girls high school and fully appreciate the unique friendships that come out of all-girls education. Still, it wasn’t the idea of Smith or any kind of all-girls school that made Commencement powerful for me. It was the exploration and admiration of the kinds of friendships that women share.