Flann O’Brian: The Third Policeman (Třetí strážník)

Not everybody knows how I killed old Philip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of hollow iron bar.

   OK, takže první věta je úlet. Jak jsem s povděkem kvitoval celý zbytek knížky, ujetost se postupně spíš zvyšuje, než aby po první větě prudce klesla a zbytek knihy se už nevrátila na výchozí bod (jak tomu občas bývá).

   Hlavní hrdina je, jak jsem hned na začátku zjistili, vrah. Divney (celou dobu jsem si říkal, jak to pěkně koresponduje s češtinou... je totiž vážně divnej… ) je jeho kamarád (teda... „kamarád“) a  trochu se vnutil na jeho farmu. Je to vůbec dost sketa, ale radši to nebudu dál pitvat. Nicméně nějakou dobu po vraždě se vydají vyzvednout peníze Philipa Matherse, přičemž hlavní hrdina se od Divneyho oddělí a poměrně záhy zjistí, že krabice s penězi není tam, kde měla být. Dostane radu, že má jít na místní policejní stanici, kde narazí na párek obtloustlých policistů, co se neustále snaží zjistit, co se stalo s jeho kolem, protože přece co jiného by hlásil, než ztracené kolo. Pokud se tohle zdá jako absurdita, tak to je jen začátek šíleností, co se našemu vrahovi přihodí.

   No a proč vlastně zabíjel? Potřeboval peníze, aby mohl zkompletovat svoji sbírku děl a kritiky děl filozofa de Selbyho. Knížka je prokládána rozbory jeho poznatků, např. že den a noc jsou neexistující pojmy, protože noc nastává ve chvíli, kdy se ve vzduchu nahromadí tolik nečistot, že zakryjí slunce (jsou tam lepší kousky, tohle jsem si tak narychlo vybavil).

   O týhle knížce by se toho dalo napsat spousty, ale prozrazovat děj nechci a vyprávět tu o tom, jak je to děsně vtipný čtení, nemá smysl (protože, přirozeně, tím by to nikomu pak nepřišlo vtipný). Jediný, čím snad aspoň někoho přesvědčím, aby si to přečetl (protože tohle za to stojí), by mohla být prohlášení…In Watermelon Sugar hadr.

William Trevor: Děti z Dynmouthu (The Children of Dynmouth)

   Well, after a few weeks with no review, I am back. I read this book quite a long time ago so I can’t remember it very well. But I will do my best. We chose this book for our reading club, I had had no idea what it was about, who was the author…I really didn’t know what to expect. But the book surprised me – it is really good.

   It takes place in Dynmouth – an imaginary little town on English coast (in the exact place where Francis Drake destroyed the Spanish Armada…it’s probably somehow meaningful for the book, I just didn’t find out how exactly). The main character is a young guy called Timothy who spends most of his time on his own, watching telly. His mother and sister have to work and even when they are at home, they don’t pay him much attention. As expected, Timothy seeks attention elsewhere.

   As he has very little to do, Timothy browses the town and watches people. Unfortunately, he watches them more or less all the time (except for the time he watches TV) and with no regard to their privacy.

   There is an annual festival where people have different performances and they can win some totally worthy prizes (something like British Hillbillies Got Talent). Well, Timothy thinks he can participate. Not only participate, he can win. He makes up a funny scene about a serial killer and his three victims (young brides) who he drowned in bathtub. Obviously, no one thinks it would be even remotely funny but Timothy is resolved to get all the props he needs (a bride’s dress, a bathtub and a curtain).

   He may be a complete weirdo and the most antisocial guy in the town, but it doesn’t mean he’s stupid. He starts blackmailing his neighbours in order to get all those things and when they don’t agree to give what he wants…well, that’s when the real fun starts. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really matter if people obey him or not, he tells their secrets to everyone anyway.

   There is no point in describing the whole of the plot so I will proceed right to the core of the matter. Timothy is an ass (obviously) but he is a) still more honest than most of the town and b) unlike the others, he sees the life of the town as it is. On the other hand, he might see through people’s masks but when it comes to his own life and the way he lives it, he is just as delusional as everyone else. Another point of the book is that people never really change. Timothy forces some of the inhabitants into really tough psychological struggle, they get through it and than…they carry on as they always have. An lastly, Trevor shows not only particular stories but he also presents the town as a unit. There is an old crazy religious lady, a divorced couple, an unfaithful husband with a young mistress, an old couple, a spinster who has spent all her life waiting for her beloved man to leave his wife, etc. Not only you can find almost same pattern in basically every town and village, people themselves repeat it – the children in the story begin their way to become some of these people themselves.

   It’s not a very nice book. I really hated Timothy. I wanted the little sod to die (I somehow expected that someone will lose their nerves and do him in). People in the city are all weak and when he threatens them, they run or they just let him hurt them. But…that’s probably how it is.

Paul Murray: Skippy Dies

   I have no idea how I cam across this book, I guess I must have read about it somewhere on the Internet. Than I asked my Dad to get it for me for Xmas and it was only now that I finally got to read it.

   There is not much of a story, at least there is no clear story line to follow (although the book has 660 pages). It’s more of a mixture of characters who are trying to somehow lead a worthy life (in which most of them…if not all of them…fail) or at least survive (in which some of them fail too). The story takes place in Seabrook – a prestigious Catholic boarding school in Dublin (it actually doesn’t exist but it is based on a school the author attended). The book presents us with POVs of several characters – mainly Skippy, Ruprecht, Carl and Howard. There are some other minor narrators, like Greg, the headmaster and evil incarnated; Father Green (aka Père Vert), a French teacher who hates French people and language, he hates teaching and most of all...he hates teaching French; and Lori, Skippy’s and Carl’s dream girl.

   Skippy is a student at the school, he’s 14 year old and for some unknown reason (later it is known, of course) he is so depressed he has to swallow handfuls of pills. He gradually falls deeper and deeper into depression until one day, he sees Lori and helplessly falls in love. Ruprecht is his friend and room-mate, a overweighed genius whose best entertainment is to sit in basement, trying to contact other intelligent species in Space. He tries to prove the string theory but after Skippy dies, he kind of loses it and tries make a contact with the beyond. Carl is same old as Skippy and Ruprecht but he’s a big, strong guy, a bully and a drug dealer and drug addict in one person. And Howard is their History teacher with a girlfriend whom he no longer loves who falls in love with a super-hot bitchy substitute teacher Miss McIntyre.

   The over-all feeling you’ll get from this book is a super-deep depression because this world is just fucked up beyond repair. All the characters try to deal somehow with this fact…mostly by getting high or drunk…or, in Ruprecht’s case, by eating piles of doughnuts. Sometimes, they get almost philosophical and reflect about life and world and Universe and Love and stuff and there are some really interesting ideas. The book mixes all kinds of moods – it’s funny, tragic, cynical and in a way brutal and disgusting in the same time. Sometimes it might be a little bit too much (one of Lori’s chapters will change your attitude to oral sex forever).

   But besides great characters and ideas, there is Murray’s excellent style. If you happen to teach about direct, indirect and all-those-between-direct-and-indirect speeches in English, use this book as your source text. On the other hand, it sometimes get a little confusing (especially Carl’s chapters lack quotations marks and sometimes they lack diacritics completely). He uses unbelievably wide range of similes – from biblical visions (used in really funny way – like when he describes Ruprecht putting his robot on floor as Moses’ mother letting her baby float in basket) to contemporary movies and computer games. He also has wonderfully imaginative, almost poetic language – mostly in the part when people are affected by drugs (I doubt there is any other book in which someone would describe eyes of someone on drugs in so many different ways).

   I really loved this book and if it weren’t so long, I would be sure to read it again sometime later. Hard to say if I’ll ever make myself re-read the whole novel but it is worth it. It was longlisted for Booker Prize 2010 so I really wonder what the awarded book is like because it should be frelling awesome if it beat Skippy… Anyway, there will be a movie next year so there should be a trailer soon.