YABB*

*Yet Another Book Blip

This is my latest crop of 3-for-2 books. I only bought them two weeks ago, but a succession of sleepless nights and lazy catch-up days means that I'm only left with about fifty pages of the last one still to read. It's proved to be a good selection, unfailingly worth reading, and reasonably varied.

As always when I arrive home with a batch of books, the first difficult decision is which to read first. In this case it was made easier because two of the three are by Irish writers, so I decided to sandwich the other one between these two. The main reason I began with Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture. The blurb has this to say: The mental hospital where psychologist Dr Grene works is about to be shut down, and and he sets about investigating the history of his patient Roseanne. She was committed there as a young woman and now - her records long lost - is nearing her hundredth birthday. At the same time, Roseanne is looking back on the tragedies and passions of her life through a secret journal: her turbulent childhood in rural 1930s Ireland, and the subsequent marriage which she believed would finally bring her to happiness. When Dr Grene finally uncovers the circumstances of her arrival at the hospital, it leads to a secret that will shock them both.

That's a reasonable summary as far as it goes, and it was on the strength of it that I picked up the book to begin with (though the author's name was a big draw also). There are two problems with the book. Firstly, it is structured as an alternation between Roseanne's journal and what is described as 'Dr Grene's Commonplace Book'. This device isn't fully convincing. Roseanne's secret writing is believable, and is the pages devoted to her are wonderfully convincing (especially the way in which the reader gradually realises that not everything in her telling is to be believed. Dr Grene's parallel writing is not at all convincing, though. The tone is too personal for it to make sense as an official record of his efforts to get to the bottom of his patient's history, which is the only conceivable reason for its existence. If, on the other hand, Dr Grene is writing this as an exercise in personal catharsis (very often, what he writes is more about himself and his hangups than it is about his patient), then it would have better if three author had made this clear at the outset. As it is, Dr Grene's book descends into the realm of mere plot device.

But the biggest failing of The Secret Scripture is the ending. The blurb speaks of 'a secret that will shock them both', and one reviewer feels that 'the novel's delight lies in the way in which the two tales - and, eventually, the two lives - begin to coalesce, to the utter surprise of both the characters and the reader.' With all due respect to this reviewer, the huge failing of the book is that this 'surprise' is flagged well in advance and is one of those oh-so-neat endings which utterly fails to convince. It's all well written (though the language is a bit too flowery for my taste at times), and Roseanne is a wonderfully convincing creation. What a shame that the ending is such a let-down.

When I moved on to American Wife I thought I was in for something totally different. As it happened, there were many parallels between the two books. Most fundamentally, it is told throughout as a first-person female narrative, but Curtis Sittenfeld's protagonist isn't writing a journal: her voice is pitched more as a one-to-one telling of a personal history, the sort of thing you'd expect to hear from a close friend who decides to sit you down and unburden herself of the whole truth. Both Roseanne in Sebastian Barry's book and Alice Blackwell, the American wife, are plagued by one defining moment in their lives: an event which had shaped their lives ever since. American Wife adds another level to the mix, however.

The blurb in this case reads as follows: On one of the most important days of her husband's presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led them to the White House, and faces contradictions years in the making. Weaving race, class, wealth and fate into a brilliant tapestry, this remarkable novel lays bare the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love. What remains unsaid there is that Alice is modeled very, very loosely on Laura Bush, and it is this gradual realization as the story unfolds which adds unexpected spice to things. This author's handling of Alice's narrative leans on an alternation device also, but in this case the alternation is between a straight-forward description of events and an internalised philosophical musing. The defining moment in Alice's teenage years casts a long shadow, right through the entire length of the book, and its effects are dealt with wonderfully well. Alice comes across as a complicated, compromised (and compromising) person, frustrating at times in the decisions she makes but utterly convincing.

Ameriacn Wife was a wonderful read. Top marks to an author I'd never heard of before.

Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn was the only one of the there which I'd perviously heard of. I'd come close to buying it previously, but never took the actual plunge for one reason or another. Now I've read it, and I'm delighted I have. It deserves all the accolades it's received, and leaving it until last to read turns out to have been the right thing to do. The blurb is too long to quote in this case, but the plotline is ridiculously easy to summarize. The principal character is Eilis Lacey (another connection with the other two books: a female protagonist yet again), forced by the economic circumstances in 1950s Ireland to emigrate to New York. Her life there is difficult, and she suffers terribly from homesickness. Just as she's managed to establish a friendship and a possibly long-term relationship, she receives news which send her back to Ireland. As the blurb says: There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma - a devastating choice between duty and one great love.

That's the bare bones of what is indeed a very simple and straight-forward plot. Bot Colm Tóibín transforms this bare outline into something truly special. Eilis (pronounced Eye-Lish, incidentally, a point which made me wonder if a different first name might have been better) is another terrific literary creation. Her actions and decisions are often frustrating for the reader, but she comes across as a real person, with real hang-ups and inadequacies. He main problem is a failure to speak her mind, which makes her into a pawn in the hands of others. But behind the quiet and demure exterior lurks a strong young woman who occasionally stands up for herself, an aspect of her character which is wonderfully well handled. Unlike the other two books, Brooklyn is told in the third person (though always from Eilis's point of view). The language is much more akin to Curtis Sittenfeld than to Sebastian Barry, but neither of those can hold a candle to Colm Tóibín's exquisite, pared-down prose. The story is told in the most simple language imaginable, and much of the deepest aspects of the plot are hinted at rather than spelled out. Subtlety rules the day right the way through.

Without a doubt, Brooklyn is the best of these three books.