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Recommendations from Raymond Humphreys

Number 9 Dream by David Mitchell

This was the first of Mitchell's books that I read. It encouraged me to read his debut volume, and I am now third in the queue in our household for Cloud Atlas, a book that a number of people that I know have said should have been the winner of the Booker Prize. On the evidence of the two books I have read, Mitchell is one of the three or four best novelists to have emerged since WWII. Number 9 Dream doesn't have the delicately woven stories of his other two novels, but still comes together in a very satisfying way. What really appealed to me was the character of Eiji Miyake, caught up in some terrifying, frustrating events quite beyond his control. He responds in an entirely believable way and it's impossible not to feel sympathy with him throughout the pages of this absorbing book.

Collected Later Poems RS Thomas

I'm going to cheat here (it's my web site) and reproduce a review that I did for Roundyhouse magazine:

Let me make my own position clear to start with: I greatly admire the poetry of RS Thomas. I think he is one of the best three or four poets to have come out of these islands. It was a real pleasure to be able to read this substantial volume. It covers the period 1988 - 2000. That's the last four collections published in his lifetime and a posthumous one, Residues, put together by his literary executor. Most, though not all, who see this review will have a similarly high opinion of his writing and nearly all who have an interest in words will be familiar with his work. So, if this review doesn't bother much with the usual niceties like saying Thomas wrote with admirable economy and perception, you'll understand why. It's taken as read.

Inevitably, it's hard not to compare his later work seen en masse with earlier poems like those featuring 'Iago Prydderch' and unsentimental views of rural life like Cynddylan on a Tractor. It's certainly different. The white-light observation has partly given way to more introspection, and the metaphysical concerns - though they have always been there - are more evident towards the end of his life. This doesn't mean that his later poems are worse, or better, than the earlier ones. Take Remembering, from No Truce with the Furies, the last collection that he saw published. This simple poem is as good as anything I've read from him. It begins: 'Love her now / for her ecstasies, / her willingness to oblige. / There will come a time / she will show her love for you / in her cooking, / her sewing; in a bed made up / for passionless sleeping.' Or there is Sonata in X, from Mass for Hard Times, which begins with an admirable lightness of touch, so different from his public persona: "ADAM: 'What's that you've got on?' / EVE: 'Nothing. Why?' / ADAM: 'I could have sworn.' / EVE: 'Don't do that. Here, taste.' / ADAM: 'H'm! Who gave it to you?' / EVE: 'He flowed. Look - like this.' / ADAM: 'Whereas I am erect, rigid.'"

Among a number of other poets, references to W.B. Yeats appear in many places. This made me wonder if Yeats had been an influence on Thomas. After all, they both spent important periods in remote peninsulas, Yeats in Galway and Thomas in Aberdaron. But I couldn't find many echoes of the former in the latter's work. In any case, Thomas shows us that he had little to learn from Yeats. The part of this book that least appealed to me is the autobiographical first section, The Echoes Return Slow. This must be partly because I am traditionalist enough to prefer the use of titles. But 'least appealed' is a comparative term. Things like 'I was vicar of large things / in a small parish. Small-minded / I will not say ...' [p23] and 'The wrong prayers for the right / reason? The flesh craves / what the intelligence / renounces ...' [p33] can tell you much about his view of the world. And 'least appealed' doesn't mean much at all when you read lines like 'They keep me sober, / the old ladies / stiff in their beds, / mostly with pale eyes / wintering me' [p43].

It's only right that the last thing in this review should come from RS Thomas. It comes from the ending to the penultimate poem in this book. This doesn't mean that it's necessarily among the last things he wrote, because this would be to ignore the significant editorial work involved with posthumous collections. But I'm happy with illusions, and this is a better epitaph than anything I could come up with: '... Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart.'

A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd

I'm not going to say much about this book (you'll be relieved to know). It's not the best book by this superb novelist (and I've read them all - I think that my favourite is The New Confessions). But it's the funniest. Humour in writing, especially sustained humour is so difficult to achieve.