2007 books

1) Neil Jordan, The Dream of a Beast, 1983
The world is changing, cities are being overrun by strange plants and some ordinary people are mutating into freaks. This first-person story of one such beast could almost be a narration of the breakdown of society into some half-functioning state, all awash with yellow light. There is little to stop this book more properly being shelved as fantasy, except that Neil Jordan is more concerned with the human condition and the internal emotional distances between people. As the outer strangeness increases so does the dreamlike quality of the narrative, so I can't quite see where Jordan wanted to take this or indeed if he actually succeeds in arriving. A difficult book to fathom, with little to guide the reader as to quite what he is getting at.

2007 books

2) Ben Okri, Astonishing the Gods, 1995
Depending on whether a mainstream fiction reader also reads any fantasy at all, that reader could either agree that Astonishing the Gods is "a modern day classic" or, if not fooled by pull-quotes so easily, astonishingly bad. I certainly defer to the latter; what starts out as a quest for an understanding of invisibility set on an invisible island in an invisible city (which is somehow also made of stone, or fire, or is it water?) then immediately descends into a clichéd fantasy of bridges and riddles, randomly altered states, know-it-all spirit guides and universal laws. Formless, vague, boring, pedantic and ultimately completely pointless, there must be mountains of this kind of drivel deservedly sitting unread in slush piles the world over, but this is by Ben Okri so it gets published, though I honestly can't see why. I shall inevitably give him another chance with one of his slightly-more-down-to-earth works, but this is absolutely not the best place to begin reading Ben Okri.

2007 books

3) Zoran Živković, Time-Gifts, 1997
Four concise, well-told episodes about how time travel resolved three personal dilemmas, the fourth tale revealing the identity of the person who possesses the ability to send others back in time. A book that needs to step outside itself in order to explain itself; this is a risky literary device but is also one that Živković pulls off with panache. A very good read, and I like Živković's solid, reliable style.