2009 books

52) Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men, 2005
Out-of-his-depth Llewelyn Moss stumbles across a drugs deal gone horribly wrong, makes off with a case containing $2.4 million and engages the relentless pursuit of the toweringly bad Anton Chigurh. This is not a book that's especially complex with its plot, and McCarthy makes it a relentless ride because it feels so completely testosterone-driven. It might be trite to say that his idiosyncratic grammar and punctuation is what carried this story for me: commas only when absolutely necessary, no quote marks, in fact nothing that detracts from the punch of his storytelling. McCarthy has his own way with written English; and why not, for him it's a toolkit, he uses it as he wants but with precision. The story itself is direct enough not to be bogged down with (or even need) much in the way of descriptive passages, although the rambling observations of Sheriff Bell on the decline of common decency gradually gain the upper hand in the reader's mind over the the amoral violence of Chigurh, and you end up sympathising, if not completely then at least with a degree of respect for his outdated point of view. Bell may also be something of a Jubal Harshaw: McCarthy's point seems to be that violence such as this needs to be considered minus its modern, fake, grafted-on glamour (à la Natural Born Killers) and seen once more in a properly moral context. In No Country For Old Men he embeds the men – and only the men – all at different levels in a culture of violence from the top to the bottom – the women, all but invisible in background supporting roles, can never upset the balance of machismo by getting in the way of the guys figuring it out for themselves, the hard way. A mostly excellent and memorable read despite its overtly masculine trajectory.

2009 books

53) The Bangkok Women's Writers Group, Bangkok Blondes, 2009
One predictable extreme of the Thailand expat writers' scene is its inane focus on crime and prostitution, so I picked this up hoping it would be at the other end of the spectrum; you know, well-crafted tales from a Western female perspective that intelligently explore nuances of Thai culture. Unfortunately after a hundred or so pages I ended up skimming the remaining hundred. Far less engaging than I was hoping for, this is mostly semi-autobiographical chick lit of a third-rate 'Bridget Jones' variety, merely with an Asian backdrop. Too many of the twenty or so writers on show here need to simply first get over the completely unamazing fact that they live in Bangkok, after which they will probably start writing about the city intelligently. Disappointing and not the kind of book for me by a long stretch, nor I imagine for many outside this Writers Group itself.