by John Crace
THE DIGESTED
21st CENTURY
Also by John Crace
Vertigo: One Football Fan’s Fear of Success
Brideshead Abbreviated:
The Digested Read of the Twentieth Century
Baby Alarm: Thoughts from a Neurotic Father
Harry’s Games: Inside the Mind of Harry Redknapp
THE DIGESTED
21st CENTURY
John Crace
CONSTABLE · LONDON
Constable & Robinson Ltd
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First published in the UK by Constable
an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2014
Copyright © John Crace 2014
All Digested Reads first published by the Guardian (theguardian.com)
© Guardian News & Media Ltd. and John Crace
The right of John Crace to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-78033-858-3 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-1-78033-908-5 (ebook)
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Printed and bound in the EU
Cover by Simon Levy and Nicola Jennings
For John Sutherland, superprof
Contents
Introduction
Serious Fiction
The Laying on of Hands – Alan Bennett
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
The Little Friend – Donna Tartt
Cosmopolis – Don DeLillo
Notes on a Scandal – Zoë Heller
Crossing the Lines – Melvyn Bragg
Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
Memories of My Melancholy Whores – Gabriel García Márquez
The Possibility of an Island – Michel Houellebecq
No Country for Old Men – Cormac McCarthy
Everyman – Philip Roth
Travels in the Scriptorium – Paul Auster
The Cleft – Doris Lessing
On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
Engleby – Sebastian Faulks
Michael Tolliver Lives – Armistead Maupin
Bright Shiny Morning – James Frey
The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters
The Original of Laura: A Novel in Fragments – Vladimir Nabokov
Solar – Ian McEwan
So Much For That – Lionel Shriver
Imperial Bedrooms – Bret Easton Ellis
Freedom – Jonathan Franzen
The Stranger’s Child – Alan Hollinghurst
The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes
The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides
Bring Up the Bodies – Hilary Mantel
Lionel Asbo – Martin Amis
Umbrella – Will Self
NW – Zadie Smith
Back to Blood – Tom Wolfe
A Hologram for the King – Dave Eggers
The Childhood of Jesus – JM Coetzee
Chick Lit
The Clematis Tree – Ann Widdecombe
I Don’t Know How She Does It – Allison Pearson
Liz Jones’s Diary – Liz Jones
Wicked! – Jilly Cooper
Notting Hell – Rachel Johnson
Handle with Care – Jodi Picoult
Fifty Shades of Grey – EL James
Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé – Joanne Harris
In the Name of Love – Katie Price
It – Alexa Chung
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy – Helen Fielding
Lad Lit
A Long Way Down – Nick Hornby
My Favourite Wife – Tony Parsons
Meltdown – Ben Elton
Round the Bend – Jeremy Clarkson
Autobiography/Memoir
Experience – Martin Amis
Things My Mother Never Told Me – Blake Morrison
A Round-Heeled Woman – Jane Juska
Broken Music – Sting
Chronicles, Volume 1 – Bob Dylan
The Intimate Adventures of a London Call-Girl – Belle de Jour
Don’t You Know Who I Am? – Piers Morgan
Snowdon – Anne de Courcy
Going Rogue: An American Life – Sarah Palin
Must You Go? – Antonia Fraser
A Journey – Tony Blair
Life: Keith Richards
Bird House – Annie Proulx
Mud, Sweat and Tears – Bear Grylls
A Walk-On Part – Chris Mullin
May I Have Your Attention, Please? – James Corden
Vagina – Naomi Wolf
Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography, Volume 1 – Charles Moore
A Man in Love – Karl Ove Knausgård
Girl Least Likely To – Liz Jones
An Appetite for Wonder – Richard Dawkins
Letters/Diaries
The Letters of Kingsley Amis
The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan
Alan Clark: The Last Diaries
Primo Time – Anthony Sher
The Letters of Noël Coward
Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters
The Pursuit of Laughter: Essays, Articles, Reviews & Diary – Diana Mosley
God Bless America – Piers Morgan
Letters to Monica – Philip Larkin
PG Wodehouse: A Life in Letters
Public Enemies –
Michel Houellebecq and Bernard Henri-Levy
Liberation, Volume 3: Diaries: 1970-1983 –
Christopher Isherwood
Counting One’s Blessings: The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother
The Letters of TS Eliot Volume 4:1928–1929
Distant Intimacy – Frederic Raphael and Joseph Epstein
Here and Now: Letters 2008–2011 –
Paul Auster and JM Coetzee
Buildings: Letters 1960–1975 – Isaiah Berlin
Self-Help
The Privilege of Youth – Dave Pelzer
Freakonomics – Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
The Game – Neil Strauss
The Architecture of Happiness – Alain de Botton
Small Dogs Can Save Your Life – Bel Mooney
I Can Make You Happy – Paul McKenna
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother – Amy Chua
How to be a Woman – Caitlin Moran
French Children Don’t Throw Food – Pamela Druckerman
Celebrate – Pippa Middleton
Antifragile – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Manuscript Found in Accra – Paulo Coelho
David and Goliath – Malcolm Gladwell
Science/History/Religion
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World –
Niall Ferguson
A Briefer History of Time – Stephen Hawking
God is Not Great – Christopher Hitchens
The Case for God – Karen Armstrong
Religion for Atheists – Alain de Botton
Wonders of Life – Brian Cox
Thrillers
Liberation Day – Andy McNab
Resurrection Men �
�� Ian Rankin
Avenger – Frederick Forsyth
The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
State of Fear – Michael Crichton
Hannibal Rising – Thomas Harris
Beneath the Bleeding – Val McDermid
The Troubled Man – Henning Mankell
Carte Blanche – Jeffery Deaver
Phantom – Jo Nesbø
A Delicate Truth – John le Carré
The Cuckoo’s Calling – Robert Galbraith
Cooking and Gardening
A Cook’s Tour – Anthony Bourdain
Gordon Ramsay Makes it Easy – Gordon Ramsay
Jamie’s Italy – Jamie Oliver
Breakfast at the Wolseley – AA Gill
Nigella’s Christmas – Nigella Lawson
Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine – René Redzepi
Notes From My Kitchen Table – Gwyneth Paltrow
Gardening at Longmeadow – Monty Don
Bread – Paul Hollywood
Travel
Down Under – Bill Bryson
Stephen Fry in America – Stephen Fry
The Last Supper – Rachel Cusk
Phenomenon
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – JK Rowling
Acknowledgements
Index
Introduction
Between the start of the twentieth century and the beginning of the First World War, L Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Colette wrote Claudine in Paris, Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness, Baronness Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel, EM Forster wrote Howards End, Thomas Mann wrote Death in Venice and Marcel Proust wrote Swann’s Way. All these books have entered the literary canon and are still read today.
The Digested Read started life in early 2000 and has been running continuously in the Guardian ever since. Its premise is quite simple: to take the book that has been receiving the most media attention in any given week and rewrite it in about 700 words, retelling the story in the style of the author. However the emphasis is often on those aspects of the book that the author might prefer to have gone unnoticed: the clunky plot devices, fairytale psychology, poor dialogue, stylistic tics, unedited longueurs and the emperor’s new clothes.
Is the Digested Read parody, pastiche or satire? The distinctions frequently are blurred. It can be all three, depending on the book in question; but it is always meant to be entertaining, funny and informative. Literary reviewing has become more critically objective since I began writing the Digested Read, thanks mainly to the growth of literary blogs and below-the-line conversations on newspaper websites. But it is still relatively cosy compared to theatre, film and music reviewing.
The literary world is quite small: many reviewers are also authors. That can blur the critical boundaries; sometimes towards a hatchet job as old enemies settle scores, but mostly towards reviews that are rather more anodyne and favourable than they might otherwise have been. Who wants to make too many waves, when it might be your book being reviewed next? Some writers also seem to be given an inexplicably easier ride than others; almost as if the literary world has collectively decided that some authors are beyond adverse criticism.
For many authors, writing is a lifetime’s career. And like most careers, it has its ups and downs. An author might well follow one great book with a couple of duds before finding their touch again; not least because when a writer becomes a bestseller, their publisher often finds it trickier to suggest useful edits. Publishing is a business; no one would dream of marketing a book with the catchline: ‘Not as good as her last book, but bear with her because she will come good again in a few years time’. Every book by an established author is sold as if the career progression were on a relentless upward curve.
While the Digested Read does have fun – fairly, and yes, sometimes unfairly – at the author’s expense, it is also intended as a corrective to the publishing industry itself: the disparity between the hype with which the publisher is promoting the book and the reality to which it can seldom live up. Which brings me back to where I started. This collection of the best – or worst, depending on your point of view – Digested Reads from the last 14 years are all books that publishers believed were important. They are the books that came with the big marketing budgets and promotional tours. They are the ones publishers expected to reach the bestseller lists. In some cases they are the books publishers hoped might still be read in a hundred years’ time. So, which of these books will be the Howards End or Swann’s Way of 2114? You tell me.
SERIOUS FICTION
The Laying on of Hands
by Alan Bennett (2001)
Anyone looking around the congregation and its celebrity assortment might have imagined that Clive had been a sociable creature. But the gathering owed more to Clive’s discretion than his friendships, and many household names had been mildly irked on entering the church to discover they were not the sole centre of attention.
Clive had died in Peru and, when a young man dies in unknown circumstances of an unknown disease, the question, ‘What did he die of?’ often assumes a personal dimension for those who remain. Father Geoffrey Joliffe, who was about to take the service, was no exception.
By profession, Clive had been a masseur, but he had interpreted the word generously, and although Geoffrey had little reason for anxiety – his guilt had kept their encounters to minimal bodily contact – his confusion of God with Joan Crawford often was enough to inspire alarm.
As the service neared its conclusion, Father Joliffe had some regrets. Much had been spoken of Clive’s charms, but nothing that he felt truly captured the essence of the Clive he had known.
‘If anyone has any further reminiscences they would like to share, they are invited to do so now,’ he improvised. Various people stood up to extend their thoughts, before Carl stepped forward. ‘I would like to tell you what Clive was like in bed,’ he began.
‘I didn’t know he was gay,’ chorused several women.
‘And when someone that young dies of Aids, it’s time for anger as well as grief,’ Carl continued. The mention of the word that mustn’t be mentioned caused a frisson.
‘He didn’t die of Aids,’ said a young man, named Hopkins. ‘I was with him in Peru. He was bitten by an insect.’
‘They all say that,’ snarled Carl.
‘I’m his doctor,’ ventured a smartly-dressed man. ‘His latest blood test was negative.’
As the congregation peeled away, their hearts were considerably lighter than when they entered. Hopkins approached Geoffrey. ‘I have Clive’s diary,’ he said. Seeing his initials against several dates, Geoffrey laid his hands on Hopkins’ knees. ‘I’ll take care of that,’ he whispered as Hopkins bolted for the door.
Some weeks later there was a knock on the vestry door.
‘I thought, why not?’ said Hopkins.
Digested read, digested: The Little Book of Revelations.
Life of Pi
by Yann Martel (2001)
My name came from a swimming pool. Piscine Molitor Patel. At my first school, the other boys called me Pissing, so when I moved I changed my name to Pi. I’ve spent a lot of my life looking for God. That’s why I’m a Hindu, Muslim and a Christian. I’m not sure why I’ve never converted to Judaism or Shinto. My father ran the zoo in Pondicherry. He really loved his animals, so when the zoo had to close he decided to bring them with us to Canada.
The Tsimstum sank several days out of harbour. My father, mother and brother all drowned. I had been taking a walk on the deck when the ship went down and was thrown into the lifeboat by a couple of sailors. I came to and found myself sharing a boat with a zebra with a broken leg and a hyena. Shortly afterwards, I made the mistake of helping Richard Parker aboard. Richard Parker was a Bengal tiger.
The hyena started eating the zebra alive. The zebra howled piteously. Richard Parker just looked on. An orang-utan floated by on a huge mound of bananas. The hyena had him as well.
As we all got hungrier I beca
me more anxious. Before long the hyena and Richard Parker were locked in battle. Richard Parker won, and the pair of us began our strange life aboard.
I learned how to provide him with fresh drinking water, and shared the flying fish I caught. I had to work hard to make him accept I was the alpha male. As the weeks turned into months, our food began to run out and we went blind. ‘How are you?’ said Richard Parker. Fancy Richard Parker being able to speak, I thought. But it wasn’t Richard Parker. It was a blind Frenchman in the middle of the Pacific. Richard Parker ate him, too.
Later we made landfall. It was no ordinary landfall, as it was just a floating mass of algae and trees. Richard Parker ate the meerkats. We left when we discovered the island was carnivorous.
After 277 days at sea, we reached Mexico. Richard Parker made a dash for the jungle. I was picked up and looked after by the locals. Two Japanese officials from the shipping company came to find out what happened. I told them, but they didn’t believe me.
‘Would you prefer if I said my family escaped with me, but died on the way?’
‘That’s much better,’ they said.
Digested read, digested: Johnny Morris goes to sea and returns with the Booker. Or did I dream that last bit?
The Little Friend
by Donna Tartt (2002)
For the rest of her life, Charlotte Cleve would blame herself for her son’s death because she had decided to have the Mother’s Day dinner at six in the evening instead of noon, after church, which is when the Cleves usually had it.
‘Do I have to be in a book with such a clumsy opening sentence?’ asked Harriett, Charlotte’s petite precocious 10-year-old daughter with the brown bob who bore absolutely no resemblance to the author.
‘I’m afraid you do,’ replied her mother. ‘It’s meant to convey the stultifying claustrophobia of a deeply dysfunctional family from Mississippi. Ever since your brother Robin was found hanged 10 years ago, your elder sister Allison and I have been in a catatonic state, and we’re surrounded by a variety of misfits and inbreds.’
‘Hmm,’ said Harriett. ‘I’d better try to solve Robin’s murder.’
‘Good idea,’ her friend Hely added. ‘I bet it was a Ratcliff. They’re a bad lot and some of them have been in prison.’