Review: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

There isn't really an appropriate word to describe this book. Amazing is over-used and wonderful sounds too cheerful. Perfect would be incorrect. If I can't even find the right word for the first adjective in the whole review, I'm not going to be able to do this book justice when it comes to actually talking about it, but I have to try. All Quiet on the Western Front was so much more than I expected and it completely blew me away.

Plot summary: In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the 'glorious war'. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young 'unknown soldier' experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.

I thought this was about cowboys. Yeah, I know. I can see the giant poppy too.

I'm not even sure why I picked it up off my shelf that morning. I was in a rush and panic-picked a book that I could comfortably leave on my seat without a client believing they were being represented by a mushy teenager. Snobbery, so sue me. I glanced at the blurb and, after being disillusioned of my cowboy-related fears, I shoved it in my bag.

I read the first few pages at lunchtime and didn't know whether to cry or be sick. You know when a book grabs you completely within a page or two, and the world just sort of... stops? I put the book down and was just sat, staring blankly into space whilst everything that had just happened swirled around my head.

Every second that I was not reading All Quiet on the Western Front, I wanted to be. It's simultaneously really easy to read and really difficult. It's quite obviously not a happy story. There are no chirpy evacuees, no whirlwind romances and no duck-shaped gas marks. This is solely one soldier's experiences of life at the Front and it is brutal.

What make this book a classic, however, is the humanity of it. Paul is nineteen years old, bullied into joining up by well-intentioned teachers, and he is now numb inside. This is not a story of one man's terror, as Paul is past that now. Instead he is resigned to his death, protective of the new recruits, betrayed by authority and sickened by his life at home. There is so, so much feeling in this book.

They were supposed to be the ones who would help us eighteen-year-olds to make the transition, who would guide us into adult life, into a world of work, of responsibilities, of civilized behaviour and progress - into the future. In our minds the idea of authority – which is what they represented – implied deeper insights and a more humane wisdom.

But the first dead man that we saw shattered this conviction. We were forced to recognize that our generation was more honourable than theirs; they only had the advantage of us in phrase-making and in cleverness. Our first experience of heavy artillery fire showed us our mistake, and the view of life that their teaching had given us fell to pieces under that bombardment.

While they went on writing and making speeches, we saw field hospitals and men dying: while they preached the service of the state as the greatest thing, we already knew that the fear of death is even greater. This didn’t make us into rebels or deserters, or turn us into cowards – and they were more than ready to use all of those words – because we loved our country just as much as they did, and so we went bravely into every attack. But now we were able to distinguish things clearly, all at once our eyes had been opened. And we saw that there was nothing left of their world. Suddenly we found ourselves horribly alone – and we had to come to terms with it alone as well. 

There is a narrative, to an extent. Paul gets sent on offensives, gets some home leave, gets injured, etc. There's a story here, to an extent, but it's much more valuable for the emotion contained within. It's as if somebody has handed you a big ball of Feelings, tied up with string.

All Quiet on the Western Front is traumatic. Not for the graphic gore or the bloodshed (although obviously there's fairly prevalent), but for the aspects of war that we are so removed from. I read this three weeks ago now and it's still going through my head. That said, it somehow avoids being a depressing book. I never felt miserable, despite reading about the atrocities that are somehow acceptable in wartime. Instead I felt, and still feel, so incredibly blessed and so lucky that our generation has been able to experience growing up without fear.

Visit the British Legion's website and learn more about the Poppy Appeal here.

Review: Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

TIME TRAVEL. An organisation that investigates historical events by GOING TO VISIT THEM. Why did I not know this series existed!? I feel like you all seriously breached your duty of care by not informing me that these books existed. The Claim Form is in the post; expect a call from my lawyer. This is the best idea ever and I can't wait to read the rest of the Chronicles of St Mary's series.

Plot summary: Behind the seemingly innocuous façade of St Mary's, a different kind of historical research is taking place. They don't do 'time-travel' - they 'investigate major historical events in contemporary time'. Maintaining the appearance of harmless eccentrics is not always within their power - especially given their propensity for causing loud explosions when things get too quiet.

Meet the disaster-magnets of St Mary's Institute of Historical Research as they ricochet around History. Their aim is to observe and document - to try and find the answers to many of History's unanswered questions...and not to die in the process. But one wrong move and History will fight back - to the death. And, as they soon discover - it's not just History they're fighting.

Follow the catastrophe curve from 11th-century London to World War I, and from the Cretaceous Period to the destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria. For wherever Historians go, chaos is sure to follow in their wake....

This has 'Hanna' written all over it. I discovered it, bought it and immediately sat immobile for an entire day and devoured it. It has its faults and some of them did irritate me (no surprises there), but I loved, loved this book.

It's a relatively simple idea - St Mary's Institute of Historical Research is partnered with a more traditional university, who are paid to investigate aspects of certain historical events. The University contacts St Mary's, and two historians toddle off to the Cretaceous Period, or the building of West Minster Abbey, or the Somme. They come back with the data and everybody wins. It's actually quite well thought out - the safety checks, briefings, contingency plans, etc.

There is actually a detailed over-arching plot, which impressed me. I expected Just One Damned Thing After Another to be a sort of set-up book for the series, just sorting out the Institute and how Max got her job, etc. I suspect this storyline is convoluted enough to last throughout the entire series (seven books at time of writing) and it surprised me that such an idea was implemented halfway through Book One.

It's very fast paced... actually too fast paced. I would have liked it to take its time a little more, I think. Events occur in quick succession with no time to properly deal with what happened, whether a personal problem or a trip back to the past. I need more detail! It makes it difficult to care about the characters when you're essectially just given a list of what they did, in chronological order. Take some time and explain. I mean, the point of the book is that these people jump back in time but the historical events are almost skimmed over. They jump there, see a dinosaur, and jump back. I picked this up for the time travel, so why skim over it? If there were only more detail involved and the characters only had a sense of wonder, these books would be perfect.  

Ironically, this book doesn't deal with the passage of time well. Max is a trainee, but suddenly she'd finished her training and then suddenly she'd been there five years and there were new trainees. It was a little confusing as there were no indications of the time that had passed. It leads back to the lack of detail explained above, I suppose. 

The book drags on just a little too long. Something happens that would have been a perfect place to the end the book, but then Max has a revelation and we go on to deal with that. It carries on past the natural ending for the book and the tone is immediately changed. It's just... odd. I can't help but think that it would have been a better idea for that to comprise Book Two, and then Book One could have been expanded with the detail and explanation that I so desperately crave!

I did absolutely love Just One Damned Thing After Another and I already wish that I owned the rest of the series, instead of just the second book, Symphony of Echoes. It was an effort not to just pick it up and plough ahead, but I decided to give myself a little breathing room. It's a great idea, authored by somebody who clearly loves history, it just needs a little more detail and to slow the pace down somewhat.

Visit Jodi Taylor's website here, or find her on Twitter.  

Review: Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Frances Larson

This is the book I bought on Christmas Eve and read over the festive period - a non-fiction book about severed heads. What screams 'CHRISTMAS!' more than learning how to remove decaying flesh from a skull for display purposes?

Summary: The human head is exceptional. It accommodates four of our five senses, encases the brain and boasts the most expressive set of muscles in the body. It is our most distinctive attribute and it connects our inner selves to the outer world more intensely than any other part of the body. Yet there is a dark side to the head's pre-eminence, one that has, in the course of Western history, manifested itself in everything from decapitation to headhunting. Over the centuries, human heads have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums. Long-regarded as objects of fascination and repulsion, they have been props for portrait artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter. 

From the western collectors whose demand for shrunken heads spurred brutal massacres, to the Second World War soldiers who sent the remains of Japanese opponents home to their girlfriends; from the memento mori in Romantic portraits to Damien Hirst's platinum skull set with diamonds; from grave-robbing phrenologists to skull-obsessed scientists, Larson explores the bizarre, fantastical and confounding history of the severed head, and offers us a new perspective on our macabre preoccupations.

Severed has eight chapters (discounting the introduction and conclusion) all named after a different type of head. These include:

Shrunken Heads

Trophy Heads

Deposed Heads

Framed Heads

Potent Heads

Bone Heads

Dissected Heads

Living Heads

It's easy to guess the topic of some of these 'head'ings (HA), but not so much for others. We'll go through them anyway, as there is a little disparity in quality between the different chapters.

Shrunken Heads interested me an awful lot more than I expected it to. I suppose it's one of those topics that you think you know all about, but actually don't in the slightest. The author works from the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, which is famous for its selection of shrunken heads, so she's more than familiar with the concept. This chapter touches on the reasons for creating the heads in the first place (and whatever you're thinking, you're wrong), the process and the effects of Western influence.

I'd also expected to have to skim the second chapter, Trophy Heads, which is about heads (or parts thereof) being taken home from war as, you guessed it, trophies. Honestly, war doesn't interest me all that much - or not 20th Century warfare, anyway. This... this was actually fascinating, however. It discusses how (for example) during the Pacific War, American troops were so thoroughly brainwashed to believe that the Japanese soldiers weren't actually people, that they thought nothing of cleaning a newly-killed enemy's skull and sending it home to the family.

Deposed Heads was the chapter I was looking forward to the most, although I admit that I'd expected it to be longer. While the information contained is very interesting, I was hoping for more content on the history and examples of execution. It's the first thing that comes to mind when you think 'severed head,' after all. If I'm honest, it is pretty much the reason I bought it and it felt a little lacking.

The fourth chapter, Framed Heads, bored me a little and I ended up skimming parts of it. Call me a philistine, but I'm just not that interested in Attention Art. I don't care if somebody thought it was a good idea to freeze their blood and sculpt their head out of it - I don't want to look at it, but it doesn't bother me either. Complete apathy. My lack of interest isn't the fault of the book, however - it's written just as accessibly as the rest of it... but eh. Not my thing.

Unfortunately it does start to go a little downhill from here - Potent, Bone and Dissected Heads are remarkably similar and often repeat the same information. I swear I'm a bone (HA - ah, this is fun) a fide expert on the various ways to remove flesh from a skull by now. I'm also very, very aware that corpses used for dissections were almost always from the prison/workhouse and that there was a difficulty in getting hold of non-Anglo corpses. I know. I do. Please stop.

I understand that there are only so many different types of heads to discuss, but I do feel the information could have been separated slightly better to avoid unecessary repetition.

Thankfully, it does pick back up with the final chapter, Living Heads, which is mostly dedicated to cryogenics and other methods of keeping severed heads alive. I now know exactly how much it will cost, should I ever decide I want to be frozen for the indefinite future.

Whatever the specific circumstances, usually the people who take heads see themselves as inherently different from the people whose heads they take. They objectify their target to a certain extent. It is easy to see how cutting off a person's head transforms that person into a particularly potent kind of object - but frequently that process has already begun before the first cut is made.

The book is written very accessibly, which isn't easy considering the amount of medical terminology involved. It has a light, chatty tone that still manages to imbue an aura of authority throughout - it's not a dusty textbook, but Frances Larson still sounds like she knows what she's talking about. I'm definitely impressed with the balanced way it was written.

I really enjoyed Severed, on the whole. I think I was expecting more of a historical work, when it's actually more medical/anthropological. There's a lot more time spent on native tribes and surgical examinations than on the history of the guillotine, for example. Which is absolutely fine, but I think I was swayed by the word 'history' on the cover and the images of Anne Boleyn. It's still absorbing, but not as relevant to my interests as I had expected.     

Visit Frances Larson's website here or find her on Twitter. 

Review: Houdini and Conan Doyle by Christopher Sandford

I do seem to be doing through a bit of a Houdini and Conan Doyle kick lately, don't I? First there was The Secret Life of Houdini, which also had a large section on Sir Arthur, and then the last book I reviewed was The Coming of the Fairies, Sir ACD's explanation of why the Cottingley Fairies must be real. I think it must be fascination of the awful, like when you can't take your eyes off a car crash, because he was a strange man.

Summary: In the early twentieth century, Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini were two of the most famous men alive, and their relationship was extraordinary:

Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the ultra-rational detective Sherlock Holmes, nonetheless believed in the supernatural. After eleven family members, including his son and brother, were killed in the First World War, he searched tirelessly for word from the dead.

Harry Houdini, the great magician, was a friend of Conan Doyle's but a skeptic when it came to the supernatural. As a master of illusion, he used his knowledge to expose psychics who he believed exploited people's insecurity and grief.

Drawing on previously unpublished archive material, this sensational story of two popular geniuses conjures up the early twentieth century and the fame, personalities and beliefs that would eventually pull them apart. 

Houdini and Conan Doyle is a more than readable joint-biography of two of the strangest most interesting men from the last century. There's a good mix of facts/academia and storytelling that works quite well. Respectable but accessible. The problem is, I think I expected an in-depth look purely on their relationship, considering the title and the reasonably short length of the book. It's actually an alternating biography of them both that doesn't always work.

I'm not sure it was entirely necessary to start from birth with both of them. Considering they don't meet until they're middle aged, roughly half of the book discusses their completely separate lives with desperately and dubiously trying to link them together. It's very disjointed as it alternates between the two as it never quite manages a seamless switch.

After they do eventually meet and inevitably fall out, it gets quite repetitive. It feels like this book lists every damn time one of them was recorded saying something about the other. I understand the thoroughness but it doesn't make for interesting reading.

It seems like the focus is primarily on Sir ACD, who I actually find the less interesting of the two. Houdini-wise, I didn't learn anything that wasn't mentioned in The Secret Life of Houdini, which was referenced several times in this book. The author is clearly a bigger fan of Arthur Conan Doyle, evidenced by the amount of space given over to him and phrases like he 'consistently always thought the best of people' and that he was 'the more obviously couth of the two.' Only Houdini's arrogance is ever really discussed, while his accomplishments are skimmed over.

Of course we can't mention Sir Arthur (it's amazing how many different variations of his name I can create) without touching on Spiritualism. This book actually manages to make him sound more crazy than the one he wrote himself, The Coming of the Fairies. It streeeeeeetches whatever it can to make him agreeable and correct and it's so non-subtle that it actually has the opposite effect:

"Personally," he wrote, "the author is of the opinion that several different forms of plasma with different activities will be discovered, the whole forming a separate science of the future which may well be called Plasmology." Although their occult qualities remain debatable, the use of plasmas today in the production of everything from sanitary gels to supersonic combustion engines goes some way to fulfilling Doyle's prediction.

Okay, no. Conan Doyle theorised that one day there would be a branch of society who researched What. Ghosts. Were. Made. Of. He didn't predict hand sanitizers, for Christ's sake. Sometimes the book goes so far out of its way to protect Sir Arthur that it just sounds silly.

It is interesting how different books on the same subject can differ in interpretation. Christopher Sandford implies here that Houdini secretly did believe in Spiritualism until close to the end and that he and Conan Doyle were only superficially friendly, where The Secret Life of Houdini states that they were genuinely close friends, at least to begin with.

I feel like I've gone off track a little, but it's difficult to review biographies without reviewing the subject a little. It's not my dislike of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that puts me off this book, it's the inordinate amount of time spent on him plus the clear bias in his favour. There's also quite a lot of padding - there are a whole four pages at the end just dedicated to what his children and siblings ended up doing.

To conclude, I think it's fairly obvious that I feel there are better biographies of both Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle than this one. It's biased and over-padded, and even the accessible tone can't overcome that.

Read my reviews of The Coming of the Fairies and The Secret Life of Harry Houdini.

Review: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Sometimes you buy a book based on an interesting synopsis or even a beautiful cover; a recommendation from a friend maybe. Then again, every so often a book crops up that you know absolutely nothing about but you read it anyway just because it's within easy reach of your oh-so-lazy self. The Secret History was just such a book. Charlotte recommended it to me, but only in passing and in the vaguest of ways. The blurb tells you absolutely nothing and the cover is hardly descriptive. And yet this modern classic ended up being one of the best written and enigmatic books I've read this year.

Plot summary: Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever.

Hardly specific. Yet I do think that's an asset for The Secret History. With some books you need to begin with an understanding of the general direction of the story, but here I loved just settling back for the journey. I didn't know what The Point was, the tone or even what genre it was going to end up (and that's still under dispute), but that meant every development and twist was a complete and absolute surprise.

The prologue threw me a little in that respect. I suppose I was expecting something very academic and perhaps relationship-related, and the very dramatic and adventure-type-novel tone of the prologue threw me a little. In all honesty I nearly didn't continue with the book at all. However, I've stated time and time again that the first thing I'll do as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is to completely outlaw both epilogues and prologues alike, and I think that my point in that respect is proved with The Secret History.

The book itself is certainly not even remotely adventure-ish. It has quite a slow plot with not a great deal of action, but you feel the twists in the plot like a punch to the stomach. The story is built up ever-so-slowly with a lot of discussion about classic philosophers and morality that occasionally went over my head. It's not to a book to pick up when you're sleepy as it would be almost impossible to follow.

I listened, a bit affronted by his tone. To do what he asked was tantamount to my transferring entirely out of Hampden College into his own little academy of ancient Greek, student body five, six including me. 'All my classes with you?' I said.
'Not quite all of them,' he said seriously, and then laughed when he saw the look on my face. 'I believe that having a great diversity of teachers is harmful and confusing for a young mind, in the same way I believe that it is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially,' he said. 'I know the modern world tends not to agree with me, but after all, Plato had only one teacher, and Alexander.' 

Don't let that put you off though. The tension and the atmosphere is almost tangible, and without doubt the best thing about this novel. I put down the book and still felt the pressure to keep hold of all the dark secrets I'd been told in confidence through reading. It's a masterpiece of storytelling, it really is.   

The various relationships, secrets, plots and betrayals loosely demonstrate the Greek tragedies which are, after all, the theme of the book. It's not something I picked up upon until I sat down afterwards to consider exactly why The Secret History works so well, but I eventually clicked onto the way it shadows the very concept under discussion. It's actually kind of perfect.

The characters aren't exactly likeable; in fact, they're the very opposite. Then again, the Greek heroes were hardly the epitome of charm and goodness. Except when they transformed into swans and raped women, obviously. It adds to the story to a certain extent though. It adds a certain distance between the characters and the reader, much as though you were studying their actions in an academic context. 

All in all, I love the formal but clever tone and the aura of darkness that surrounds the story. There are lots of twists and secret revelations, but it's the stunning prose that really makes The Secret History what it is. It does require you to take your time while reading it, but I promise you that it's worth every second.

Read a much more eloquent review at The Lit Addicted Brit.

Review: On The Map: Why the World Looks the Way It Does by Simon Garfield

I bought On The Map from King's Cross Station on a whim last year. You know when you're convinced that your Kindle is going to die so you need to buy a book (genuinely need, for a change) right there and then so you're not left book-less for a two hour train journey? Oh, just me then. But apparently Kindles are way hardier than I ever gave them credit for, because On The Map ended up languishing on the shelf at home until... well, now.

Summary: Maps fascinate us. They chart our understanding of the world and they log our progress, but above all they tell our stories. From the early sketches of philosophers and explorers through to Google Maps and beyond, Simon Garfield examines how maps both relate and realign our history. His compelling narratives range from the quest to create the perfect globe to the challenges of mapping Africa and Antarctica, from spellbinding treasure maps to the naming of America, from Ordnance Survey to the mapping of Monopoly and Skyrim, and from rare map dealers to cartographic frauds. 

En route, there are 'pocket map' tales on dragons and undergrounds, a nineteenth century murder map, the research conducted on the different ways that men and women approach a map, and an explanation of the curious long-term cartographic role played by animals. On The Map is a witty and irrepressible examination of where we've been, how we got there and where we're going.

I loved this book - by the second chapter I wanted to devour every snippet of map-related knowledge it could teach me. And there are a lot of those snippets, by the way. It covers everything from cholera to GPS to the Polar Expeditions, with a great deal in between, in an accessible and friendly manner. At one point I was so engrossed I almost missed my train stop and had to hurtle to the doors with half-open book still in hand!

It's very, very comprehensive, which is a good thing, but it does occasionally result in some chapters being more interesting than others. For example, I loved learning about how disease maps have led to cures, but I really wasn't interested in the spread of guidebooks for travel destinations. 

It's set out more or less chronologically, starting with Alexander the Great founding the Library of Alexandria in 330BC and ending with the GPS-type stuff of the modern age. It includes all kinds of modern references, including the Marauders Map (if I have to explain that, you're on the wrong blog) and the 2011 Muppets Movie, which pleased me no end. It doesn't always follow the timeline though, which is a bit odd. For example it jumps straight from the creation of the London Underground map to travel books in the 1800s. I mean, I don't mind, it's just a little confusing.

The topics get more irrelevant towards the end and therefore the chapters also get shorter. Subjects like maps of movie stars' homes and the Indiana Jones-style moving diagram maps probably don't deserve an entire chapter to themselves. I really do give Mr. Garfield credit for being as thorough as possible, but I did feel like it was dragged out a little.

The writing style is actually kind of perfect, however. It's casual and accessible, but not dumbed down. It's a perfect balance - you don't need any prior geographical knowledge, but the author doesn't get the hand-puppets out to explain it either. It's not easy to read, exactly - you do need to pay attention. There are lots of names (often Greek and similar), facts, figures and dates so you can't half-arse it or you'll end up skimming and not taking anything in.

It is worth it, however. I learned so much about a wide variety of topics and actually ended up liking and respecting Mr Garfield a great deal, which is rare when I read non-fiction. On The Map has taken pride of place on my non-fiction shelf and I'm looking forward to reading it again in the future. It's a comprehensive yet accessible look at how we came to be where we are.

Visit Simon Garfield here.