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Joe O' Connor
December 27, 2009
VOL 26 NO 52
Demons, Dark lords and Dan Brown
It was the era of 'The Da Vinci Code' and Harry Potter, Ross O'Carroll-Kelly and David McWilliams, misery memoirs, misguided 9/11 novels and strident anti-religious polemics. Carl Brady leafs through the decade
Cormac McCarthy
Marian Keyes
Colin Tóibin
JK Rowling
Dan Brown
The Noughties was the decade of earnest, misguided novelistic responses to the events of 11 September 2001. It was the decade of misery in which people wrote about growing up in the tenements with rats, rot and bad parents. It was also the decade when you could write a book about the origins of vinegar, or about commas, and have an immediate best-seller on your hands.
People were looking to books to feed their apoplectic liberal outrage. Books were being written which both adults and children could enjoy (although adults preferred the versions with the boring covers). The boy wizard came of age, and the trend for "faction" culminated in the strange synchronicity of a book about the King of Pop being finished mere hours before his death. All human life was here, and what follow are some of the more memorable books of the Noughties.
Fiction
Unless you lived in a hut in the Arctic you couldn't escape Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (2003). For some inexplicable reason, Brown's hodge-podge of conspiracy theories, bad grammar and clunky writing, along with his tendency to throw inappropriate adverbs and verbs around like so much linguistic confetti, was a huge global hit. This reviewer has fond memories of an excitable work colleague confessing: "It's the best book I've ever read. It's the only book I've ever read." And therein lay the secret of Brown's success. Somehow he had stumbled on a recipe that combined X-Files-like paranoia and the literary equivalent of a cheeseburger. The book sold millions, Tom Hanks and Ron Howard brought their own bland touch to the film version, and Brown repeated the feat with the runaway success of The Lost Symbol (2009), another fine mixture of bad writing and ludicrous plotting which was almost interchangeable with its predecessor.
There were a lot of post 9/11 novels. Most were ponderous, worthy efforts that elicited the cry "too soon, too soon" when really they should have inspired the words "too boring, too boring." When they weren't being boring, 9/11 novels such as Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005) were quirky, irritating, self-satisfied works that did nothing to illuminate anything. The finest of the bunch was Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), a superb examination of one Muslim immigrant's reaction to the events of that day. It was sharp, intelligent, unsettling, and even comic. By narrowing the reader's focus, Hamid managed to say more than many heftier tomes could in their vastly overwritten pages.
On paper, the idea for David Peace's The Damned United (2006) sounded like a potential disaster. Peace's novel was a fictionalised account of Brian Clough's disastrous 44 days as manager of Leeds United. Clough leapt from the page. There was egotism, self-disgust, loathing, low cunning and manipulation aplenty, told with prose that felt like a few swift punches to the gut. Peace was particularly brilliant at describing the desperate machismo and the almost childish vulnerability of men pressured to keep on achieving in a world where football directors have very short memories.
Simon Crump's Neverland (2009) was a surreal expedition through the world of Michael Jackson. The book hopped back and forth between different periods and locales, and no one was sure whether to categorise it as a book of short stories or a wildly innovative novel. Whatever genre it belonged to, it was both hilarious and dark, and deserves a special mention for the chapter in which Jackson buys a unicorn on Ebay. Allegedly finished hours before Jackson's death, it was an eccentric but strangely fitting examination of one man's very odd life.
Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road (2006) has been feted as a warning against environmental apocalypse, but hijacking it for ideological purposes does it a disservice. It's a modern classic with a gut-wrenching and primal father-son relationship at its core. Reading it is a harrowing experience, but its biblical quality, and its unflinching honesty resulted in what is arguably McCarthy's masterpiece.
Philip Roth was writing about America again, but the best novel about America to come out of the noughties was – shock horror – written by an Englishman, and, even worse (whisper it now) it was a fantasy novel. Neil Gaiman's American Gods (2001) took folkloric gods and transported them to America where their powers faded, people lost faith in them, and Gaiman investigated the imagination of a country searching for certainty. It was the novel that confirmed Gaiman's growing powers as a writer, and cemented his reputation as the prime mythologist of the 21st century.
Elsewhere, cheap Tolkien rip-off merchants were writing about elves, dragons and dark lords as if it were still original. George RR Martin, on the other hand, was continuing his fantasy saga, A Song of Ice and Fire. The latest instalment, A Feast for Crows (2005), continued with his trademark epic plotting, stunningly complex characterisation, and dispensed with the fripperies of magic. The first volume is being filmed for HBO in Ireland as we speak, and it promises to be the mediaeval equivalent of The Wire.
Irish Fiction
After going off the boil a bit with Breakfast on Pluto and Call Me The Breeze, Pat McCabe returned with Winterwood (2006), an eerie and brilliant novel that played like the modern equivalent of old Gothic masterpieces. It was a superb return to form.
Colm Tóibín was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2004 for his imagining of the life of Henry James in The Master. For Henry James and Tóibín fans it was a joy. For those who could never understand the appeal of the listless James and the earnest Tóibín it was a marriage made in hell.
On the other hand, Joe O' Connor's Star of the Sea (2003) was a delight. With this Famine-based novel, O'Connor burst out of the proverbial dugout like the most improved footballer on the team. Star of the Sea saw him revelling in his powers, playing with the form, and having an enormous amount of fun in the process. The book was both entertaining and literary, and it teemed with life. The imprimatur of Richard and Judy soon followed. O' Connor followed it up with the superb Redemption Falls, and we await his hat trick with the soon-to-be published Ghost Light.
Refreshingly the most relevant novel to come out of Ireland in the Noughties wasn't one from the more acceptable faces of our so-called literary elite. Julian Gough's Jude Level One (2007) was a brilliant satire of modern Ireland which mixed the comic sensibility of The Simpsons with Flann O' Brien, Joyce and Beckett. The gags were hilarious, the writing was scrupulous, and Gough's Swiftian world view promises much for the remaining books in the trilogy.
Journalist Paul Howard took what easily could have become a one-trick-pony and turned Ross O'Carroll-Kelly into the perfect prism through which we could view Irish excess and delusion. Ross was a child of the '90s, but as he grew to adulthood in the Noughties (well, as much as is possible for a self-obsessed D4 rugger bugger), his tale grew, and it became the perfect example of fiction highlighting the vanity and obsessions of a decade through the rise and fall of one character. Special mention goes out to Ross's father whose own brand of comic delusion surely tops that of his son.
Irish chick lit writers led the field again in ? terms of success. Unfortunately, Cecelia Ahern was still churning out her extended Junior Cert essays at the rate of almost one per year. But Marian Keyes kept the flag flying for quality with This Charming Man (2008). The typically reliable Keyes wit was there, but there was also the added darkness of spousal abuse and alcoholism. Keyes made it all look easy, and the book was funny, serious, and brilliantly written.
Non Fiction
Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (2001) ushered in a new era of heightened awareness for consumers regarding the fast food industry. Schlosser took us to the slaughterhouses and the labs where scents and tastes were manufactured in vials. It was a rigorous and entertaining book with far-reaching effects. McDonald's in particular rushed out to reassure people with the introduction of salads and a PR campaign centred on how concerned the fast food giant was about healthy eating habits.
Naomi Klein's No Logo (2000) was the seminal text about consumerism and corporate irresponsibility. It was an entertaining tome but had plenty of intellectual rigour. Ironically, the success of Klein's book paved the way for more books of its type, and the corporate bosses in publishing houses all over the globe rubbed their hands with glee at the prospect of a lucrative new genre.
The atheists also arrived in force with Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (2006). Fiercely polemical, and for some a bit too hectoring, it sold in the millions and tapped into a seething anger that a lot of people were feeling in a decade when religious faith, and the Catholic church in particular, were looking very shaky indeed.
Dawkins' book was undoubtedly important, but for sheer wit and intellectual pyrotechnics Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2006) was more entertaining. Hitchens' rant against religion was provocative and delightfully irascible , and arch-conservative Michael Medved hated it, so Hitchens must have been doing something right.
Everyone became obsessed with economics, and our own David McWilliams tapped into the zeitgeist with The Pope's Children (2005) a survey of an affluent generation (where are they now?) which was entertaining but sociologically dubious. It's hard to see McWilliams' tidy neologisms and acronyms (HiCos, Breakfast Roll Man) passing muster at any meaningful academic level. There were also detractors who pointed out its similarity in approach to David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise. That said, the book was a best-seller and developed a huge following.
Children's fiction
Shaun Tan created The Arrival (2007) a magical and surreal picture book which explores immigrants arriving in a strange new land. The wonderful illustrations captured the feeling of alienation that new immigrants experience, and it was a beautiful fusion of the ordinary and extraordinary.
Neil Gaiman managed the commendable feat of writing an entertaining book about death for kids. The Graveyard Book (2008) told the story of Bod, a boy raised in a graveyard by the spirits of the dead after the brutal murder of his parents. Comparisons were naturally made with Kipling's Jungle Book, but this was a children's classic which had its own unique merits. Gaiman's prose has never been better, and there was a standout chapter about ghouls which was skin-crawlingly horrific but magnetic. The book won the Newberry Medal, and followed that win by sweeping up every other major award under the sun.
JK Rowling brought the Harry Potter saga to a close with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007). Plot ends were tied up and as usual there was exposition aplenty, but for some there was also a nagging feeling that Rowling had written herself into a corner. The Potter books have been lauded for introducing a new generation of kids to reading, but unfortunately the Noughties brought us the film adaptations, and for the first time ever we have a generation of children who will see the films before reading the books, a sad reflection on the industry.
Arguably the most irritating franchise of all was Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series (2005). Girl meets vampire. Girl falls for vampire. Girl and vampire have adventures while adolescent readers and, rumour has it, some mothers (yes, we know you're out there) quivered at the underlying eroticism of it all. And yet Meyer's work managed the almost impossible feat of making Dan Brown's prose look good. The film adaptations followed, fans groaned, detractors groaned for other, more logical reasons, and vampires sprouted up everywhere. Meyer has a lot to answer for.
Mark Haddon found the Holy Grail of publishing, the best-selling crossover book which entertained adults and children alike. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003) followed the adventures of Christopher Boone, an autistic boy delving into the mysterious death of his neighbour's dog. Around this Haddon managed to write a sensitive examination of familial strife and isolation.
Memoir
The mid-Noughties brought an almost tidal surge of misery lit which threatened to engulf intelligent readers everywhere. But while some people were writing about how their brutal, chain-smoking, meths-drinking daddies sold them for sixpence, Hugo Hamilton was writing a memoir filled with intelligence and sensitivity. The Speckled People (2003) was a dark and troubling look at his family history. Describing how he grew up in 1950s Dublin with a German mother and an Irish father, Hamilton wrote about isolation and identity in a beautifully understated manner. This was a book that gripped in a quiet but forceful way.
Alan Bennett wrote about the dark heart of his own family history in Untold Stories (2005). Starting with his mother's breakdown, Bennett uncovers the sad truth behind his uncle's death, and the opening pages are typical Bennett in that they capture the comedy and tragedy of family life in one simple image. No writer comes close to making a sentence sing with both pathos and humour the way Bennett does, and Untold Stories had the added bonus of containing his brilliant diaries from the '90s.
In the US James Frey was lying to Oprah (how dare he) about his experiences as a drug addict. Indeed, on closer inspection his memoir A Million Little Pieces (2003) felt a little too tidy at points, and Frey had to come out and recant some of his more outrageous claims.
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