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.

Beryl Bainbrige: Zachraň se, kdo můžeš (Every Man for Himself)

   We read the first chapter of this book at a literary seminar and than I chose to read it at our Reading Club. Nevertheless, there was a last minute change of plan and we will read something else.

  I wrote the fist paragraph of this review few days ago and I have to say I have been a little bit lost about what to write about this book since. I also forgot all the interesting things I noted when reading it (those I didn’t write down because they were all so clear and easy to remember…I’ll never learn). Anyway, I’m gonna do my best.

   Few interesting facts – it won the Whitbread Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize and was a nominee of The Booker Prize. It treats the Titanic disaster and it was published the same year the movie Titanic went out. Many people probably believed the movie was based on this book and the success was great…I don’t think Bainbridge calculated like this when she was writing the book but still…lucky girl.

   The narrator’s name is Morgan and he’s a young, rich American. The story begins on the day of Titanic’s departure when a man, completely unknown to Morgan, dies on the street and gives him a photo of a Japanese girl. The reader doesn’t know from the beginning that the mentioned ship is Titanic but…there’s hardly anyone who has ever taken this book into his hands without knowing what it is about (and for those few who really did not know…the cover spoils the surprise anyway). The way Bainbridge reveals the name of the ship is one of the things I appreciated about this book. She feels no urge to dramatize new revelations. The name is mentioned only by the way and as if the reader was supposed to already have guessed it (he probably is). She doesn’t put it at the end of a paragraph or a chapter…the name just appears and you tell yourself: “OK, so I was right.” Nice change…

   There is not much of a story to tell. Morgan meets with bunch of rich people who all know each other…the world of wealthy is small. There are quite many characters and it might be a little difficult to get who is who at the beginning (ok, it’s not such a challenge but most of them turn up in one scene). A series of shorter episodes follows and it’s rather a mosaic of people and their characters than an epic story. Of course, the ship sinks but I felt like it wasn’t such a big deal for the author. It seemed to me that she used the catastrophe to make a morbid atmosphere rather than anything else.

   So, the book focuses rather on Morgan than on the story. He seems quite detached from the rest of his friends. One of the things is that his childhood wasn’t particularly easy one. His father died before Morgan was born and his mother followed few years after that. He spent some time in an orphanage and later his family found him and his aunt and uncle raised him. I am not absolutely sure but I believe that when they took him to their home he was old enough to remember it so he feels different from people who have always lived in wealth. The aunt and uncle didn’t really make it easier to him – for example, Morgan recollects that once he travelled with them on a ship but they were in the first class and he was in the third…quite clearly so that people didn’t know about him.

   But he is quite a likeable characters. Yes, he is detached and sometimes behaves oddly (he stole a picture of his mother from his uncle’s study) but he’s very ironical and pretty fun. Bainbridge’s style is another thing why this worth reading. You feel the whole time like nothing serious is actually happening. Titanic goes down. People die. Yeah, well. What’s next? She makes kind of morbid atmosphere from the very beginning – a man dies on the very first page of the book and the way she (or rather Morgan) describes it is quite cruel (the dying man holds on a fence and Bainbridge/Morgan makes a simile with an old scarecrow). There are also many moments when a character says something like “Yeah, but this ship is unsinkable” and everyone laughs. It’s not some extremely innovative idea but yet…it gives you the shivers.

   There is also kind of a detective story, because Morgan a bit by bit discovers some facts from is childhood. There are also different interconnected characters and events, sometimes rather implied than really said, so that’s interesting too.

    To summarize it, Every Man for Himself is an interesting book – it probably won’t sweep you off your feet but it’s still a good reading.