The Last of Mr. Norris

This Christopher Isherwood novel was picked randomly off the list. I was intrigued when I found it on Amazon as they had one used copy in fair condition for $5 and two first editions for over $900! You can probably guess which I bought. I found out later that it can be found fairly readily as part of a two book collection called The Berlin Stories.

The cover of the version I have shows a man sitting on a couch with lots of young people around him engaged in some heavy petting. The blurbs on the cover promise lots of smut, orgies, and S&M, 1930s style. It turns out the book is very tame in regards to titillation. It is actually a pretty light spy/double cross/crime novel set in Berlin in the early 1930s. And while the title character does enjoy a little light bondage, most of the perversions promised on the cover are only hinted at in the text. Our narrator, Bradshaw, an English teacher in Berlin, meets Arthur Norris on a train to Berlin. They become fast friends and Bradshaw becomes intrigued by the effete, shady Norris. Slowly he becomes entangled in some of Norris' scams revolving around the nascent Communist party in Berlin and the rise of the Nazis. More interesting than the novel itself is the fact that this book and his subsequent Berlin stories were the basis for the famous musical and film Cabaret.

As a political thriller, it is fairly second-rate, although it is interesting to read a contemporary account of Berlin in between the wars from the English perspective, especially when the reader knows full well what will happen in a very short time. While this novel wasn't terrible, I'm not really sure how it merited making the list.

Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord

Louis de Bernieres might be best know for Captain Corelli's Violin, a novel that was turned into a film starring Nicolas Cage. I haven't read that book, but it's a sure thing I will after having read Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord. This novel epitomizes the style of magical realism that is often associated with Latin and South American writers. The only catch is that although this book is set in South America, de Bernieres is actually British. One can assume that a teaching stint in Colombia led him to set his first three novels in that location.

Dionisio Vivo is a philosophy professor at a University in an unnamed South American country. He has begun to gain renown for the letters he sends to the local paper decrying the coca trade and its grim byproducts in his country. The local coca lord takes umbrage and makes several attempts on Dionisio's life. Through a series of mishaps, some extremely comical, Dionisio not only survives the attempts but earns a reputation as a godlike figure who is unstoppable. The coca lord lives in mortal fear of him, which only causes him to redouble his efforts to kill Vivo. Throughout all of this, Dionisio is courting a beautiful young woman, Anica, who is the daughter of a shady arms dealer who has kept the coca lord well stocked with weapons throughout his reign of terror. Anica is ultimately faced with a very difficult decision, which has tragic consequences for all involved.

This is my favorite book I have read in quite some time. The story is excellent, but it is the writing that leaves me wanting more. De Bernieres' prose takes the reader through the ecstasy of new love to the depths that lead a major character to attempt suicide. Meanwhile, the whimsical and sometimes magical world he creates is populated with memorable characters such as Ramon, the policeman who protects Dionisio, Lazaro, the tragic leper, and the motley band of women (Las Locas) who create a camp on the edge of town with the sole purpose of bearing Dionisio's children. The novel grows darker in the final third, and the magical elements step fully to the forefront. A very brief epilogue points out the tragedy of coca trade in South America and brings home how difficult the situation is. Laugh out loud funny and startlingly poignant, this one gets a very high recommendation from me.

The Brothers Karamazov

I hadn't been in the mood to tackle a long classic for quite some time, but early in August I decided to read Dostoevsky's last novel, The Brothers Karamazov. I've actually owned it for some time, but it has sat on the shelf as I waited for an opportune time to read it. I'm generally a very fast reader, and the book isn't that long (700 some pages), but it took me the better part of a month to get through it. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it however....

The book explores the lives of four brothers and their somewhat repulsive father, Fyodor Pavlovitch. Dmitri, the oldest, is a sensual being who is betrothed to one woman but in love with another. Unfortunately, his father is also smitten with this woman and is actively hoping to steal her away. Ivan is the intellectual, a deep thinker, and remote emotionally. Alexy is a spiritual young man who holds in highest esteem not his own father, but his spiritual father, a monk at the local monastery. Finally there is the servant and cook Smerdyakov, who is probably Fyodor's bastard. While the main plot of the novel centers around the murder of Fyodor Pavlovitch and the investigation into which son killed him, Dostoevsky's epic aims much higher than being a basic crime novel.

Dostoevsky was shooting for nothing less than a dissection of the modern (at the time) Russian man and his uneasy place at the intersection of politics, law, and religion. His use of psychology predates Freud and anticipates many of the Austrian's basic tenets in regards to the relationship between fathers and sons. There are long discourses on duty, responsibility, honor, religion, justice and everything in between interwoven into the main action. And while this causes the book to drag in places, there is no denying Dostoevsky's grand ambition. He clearly meant The Brothers Karamazov to be his crowing glory, and while I didn't enjoy it as much as Crime and Punishment, his reach did not exceed his grasp.