The Prague Cemetery

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco is not on my list. Go ahead and check. The Name of the Rose is not on my list of 'books that never leave you'. I think. If it is, I didn't put it there. Then there's Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, which I defend only because a polymath such as Eco is entitled to brag about said polymathical... polymathicalness... polymathicy. (FYI, spell check says the middle is correct. And this confirms that spell check knows everything. More than Eco, perhaps.)

Now, I can brag about having read these books because a) they were difficult and b) I wish I were an Eco or a Joyce or a Woolf. (At what point in your life do you become a polymath? Do you have to be able to read Chaucer at age 5 or are you suddenly gifted with a voracious appetite for learning on an auspicious birthday, like 21 or 25? Do you sleep? Do you eat? Do your children like you?)

Also, I just finished The Prague Cemetery, and once again, Ayn Rand and Neuromancer must move aside. Not really for any good reason except that I just finished it and have An Opinion.

If you have ever read Eco, you know that a flash mob's worth of characters break the waves of any protagonist's life. Sometimes as guest stars and sometimes as extras. It doesn't matter; we are expected to remember them all. The same applies to the Youtube channel's worth of actual flash mobs. I know, another reason Eco writes these novels is for his bookclub of learned colleagues who read it twice and make notes (not in the book, you, that's... sacrilege).

Speaking of sacrilege, the plot of the novel is a history of European sects in the late nineteenth century. Christianity, Jesuits, Judaism, Masonry, Freemasonry, nationalism and more. The joke is that most of these folks have a handful of cash hidden in their sweaty palms, in return for cheating someone out of something. Our 'hero' is no different and has a stack of neuroses to boot. We travel with him through Italy and France as he forges documents, particularly last will and testaments.

I call him a 'hero' because he is on a 'quest', an existential mystery around a series of black-outs. To colour those missing moments in, he appropriates Freud's then-untested strategy of psychoanalysis. In other words, he talks - writes - it out (pun!). Although it only really features at the beginning and end of the novel, psychology is also portrayed as a sect, albeit a divided one.

No doubt I was oblivious to many in-jokes shared between the types of people who 'post-it'ed the pages of the novel. I picture them tagging their favourite jokes and telling them at the next dinner party (which looks like a LAN party except there isn't any technology beside the microwave). I'm glad though, because the novel is dense enough (yes, the book is literally thick, too). As it is, I only just remembered most of the people's names. Unfortunately mostly not what roles they play in the plot.

Book reviewer cynicism aside (it's stuck on with superglue, so I'm just going to nudge it aside - there!) I enjoyed the superficial layer of the plot (or in other words, the parts of the plot I understood). It is less absorbing than Name of the Rose but easier to read and less self-indulgent than Mysterious Flame (although it does also have pictures).

Superhero costume back on (yes, reading is a superpower, you) the end of the novel - of the quest - caught me by surprise. I can imagine Eco has a dinner party that he doesn't want to go to, to get to by 19.00. He is feeling malicious because he has just written 400 pages about a man who is afraid of women, so he organises a set of bizarre, gratuitous events and ends with the obvious conclusion. He smiles because ending with the obvious is a joke in itself.

While I frowned in confusion and occasional realisation during most of the novel, it ended with my mouth open in surprise. Ok, not just surprise; horror. No blood, no explicit suffering, no violence, but some serious violation of society's moral code. And my personal one.

I read somewhere that Eco is one of the only polymaths - if not the only one - alive today. (As if they teach courses in this sort of thing. I wonder what the requirements are.) But be warned that being European and/or the last remaining member of an academical sect entitles you to be offensive. Perhaps the offenses are justified because they are realistic (ummm?) or are part of an in-joke (UMMMM?). Luckily there are no pictures showing these ummm's. Or the publisher wasn't invited to the dinner party and revenge is sweet and those pictures fell into the bucket of water being used to clean the floor.

Here's an in-joke: I am going to a dinner party and so I shall plop a slapdash conclusion here. I don't have in me to be offensive but to be obvious: I read the book, I finished it and I liked most of it except the ending. And the parts where I felt stupid. Bye.

The list of magnanimity

Dear reader, have you been paying attention? Have you? Here's a test: do I prefer chocolate or strawberry ice cream? You could answer: by 'I' do you mean the tapper of keys behind this blog or the one who just took a sip of coffee? When in doubt always answer a question with a question. (Just one of the many nuggets I have pilfered from The Office.)

That's not the test. The answer is obvious: chocolate. We'll tackle this later. Now, the real test is whether you have noticed that I have been speeding through some of the classics and some of the strawberry-flavoured books in my local library. Your reply? Should I have noticed? You learn well, my young padawan.

My number one survival strategy is lists, whether written down and colour-coded or mental and therefore quickly lost. This is core to my zombie apocalypse slash hunger games strategy, so I will tell you only that it involves post-its and a tree.

Anyway, last post I abused Borges' library, a really innocuous building that happens to have swallowed all eternity. Which should be paradise for us bibliophiles. (Dibs on 'F' in the fiction section. Ok, fine, 'M' then.) It isn't. It is terrifying. You've heard about the marketing study where they found that too much choice actually drives consumers away. And every salesperson knows to only give a person three options and to place the option that gives you a higher commission first.

The scale of published fiction in the last 100 years is like counting the human population since we first started practising pressing the buttons of video games with our thumbs. Confining the headcount to literary fiction, I mumble guiltily, still doesn't help. This isn't a choice between different scents of floor cleaner (FYI, no scent, especially not made-up ones like Bright Sunshine), no, this is literature!

This eternal library is a case of survival. Instead of killing zombies and other children, we must read everything. That's an exaggeration, you snort (I can hear you, through the microphone, so be please be polite about my bibliophilic delusion).

In the absence of chocolate and strawberry coloured stickers along the spines to guide my quest, I have made a list. Ok, many lists and some were colour-coded. Some are stuck on my fridge but are so faded and blotched with coffee stains you can't read them, others are pinned to a ribbon knotted onto my bedroom door handle, and some are lost in the right hemisphere of my brain, because that's where lost and found is.

The winners of this game are the titles posted on this blog, to the right >>, and those saved on my phone. The one occasion I deviated from this list ended badly, not in a zombie bite, but in disappointment. Point proven; lists are the key to survival. Also, apparently, technology.

Now that I have distracted you from the impending reappearance of the Dreaded List on this blog, here is a condensed list of my approved reads (and future reviews), gleaned mostly from the internet (the most trustworthy, obviously) and recommendations (a mixed bag, except for the ones on FB, obviously):

• 1Q84 by Haruki Marukami (unread; alternate history) I think I've bored you enough with my ravings about this and Kafka on the Shore. That's why bloggers use labels (below right)
• Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (unread; cross-genre) having read a couple of his other novels, I wouldn't rank him above David Mitchell in this category, but then I don't think many short of James Joyce could
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (read; dystopian) the character of the girl at the beginning cinched this novel for me, although I wasn't so thrilled with the book-burning
• Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (unread; literary) I hereby admit that I have never read this classic novel
• A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers (unread; post-modern look how smart I am) we studied A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and I hated it for exactly the same reason others adore it: the the iconoclastic, self-conscious self-deprecation, but I'm willing to give him another go. I'm magnanimous like that
• The Maddadam books by Margaret Atwood (two of three read; apocalyptic) post in proximity, so work, you
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson Mccullers (unread; literary) I'm magnanimous but not perfect. I hate Mccullers just a teensy bit because she published The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which is beautiful, at 23. Pure jealousy. I will read this but I will feel sorry for myself the entire time, so prepare yourselves
• The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain (read; noir fiction) only 116 pages but perfectly paced. I don't usually enjoy crime novels but this was a satisfying, meaty use of the conventions
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (unread; satire) I have faith but I need it because I read Cat's Cradle recently. It is a few marbles short of Philip K Dick's drug-fuelled novels. So, yes, I need it
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein (partly read; science fiction) the beginning reminds me of A Brave New World, although I can't say why. Also reminds me of the soundtrack to Lost Boys: "People are strange when you're a stranger"

My closest library loans out books for two weeks at a time. That gives me 16 weeks to finish all eight of the unread books. But don't worry, I'll sneak in some unexpected reviews just to see if you've been paying attention. You.

The Year of the Flood

On a shelf in Borges's library is a box. (Ok, there are many shelves and many boxes maybe even many libraries). This shelf and box is the one on your right. The other right. No, no, his left. Three-hundred-and-sixty degrees from her right. Dammit, you lost it. Nevermind; we'll get another box and label it in permanent marker. Underneath I will write: "You, the reader, lost the first box" and I will tie it to you with rope that scratches the inside of your wrist.

So I write (stop crowding me) "Literary Science-Fiction". But the letters are small and there is a space to the right and below as if something should follow. This isn't necessarily significant: writing in permanent marker on an object is as difficult as writing in a straight line with chalk. Into this box we tip Margaret Atwood, followed by the world and her husband because nerds are the cool kids right now. Which is, in its own way, a blip in the multi-verse.

Ms Atwood hates the label on the box, and not just because of the handwriting. I don't know her personally, but in a way I do, because I follow her on Twitter. I know she hates the label because I would too (as confirmed by a Gargoyle search). It's not because the label suggests that science fiction is lowbrow. It's because writers don't like boxes. We imagine that we live around the box, spending our days decorating it with warning signs, like the Borrowers in The Borrowers but more cynical.

I bet the marketing department adore that label. I bet they invented it. I also bet (I'm going to be rich) that they adore that she hates the label. They hand her buttons and glue to make pretty patterns on the wall of the nearest box, and she looks at them and paces the length of said box dropping buttons along the way. And they cheer. Because, you see, we're all in boxes with boxes stacked on our heads and around our arms like bangles. We need boxes because otherwise we would suffocate in the chaos of the universe. Trust me on this.

Why am I taking Ms Atwood in and out of the box and giving her buttons to drop like breadcrumbs? You guessed it! I just finished The Year of the Flood. Now, you know reading about books is only worthwhile if we meander down hillocks and over rivers, because otherwise, you could just spend the time reading the book. You have also guessed the Ms Atwood and I have 'a history', albeit one she knows nothing about even though I follow her on Twitter.

The first book of hers that I read was Oryx and Crake, which is part of a set of three (not a trilogy, no; more like a puzzle but not all the pieces match) including The Year of the Flood. I was a bookseller and I bought it on sale because I had heard the surname Atwood whispered among my learned friends but mostly because it is a deckle-edged, first-edition hardcover.

I disliked the book at the time. Her writing style is precise, almost minimalistic, and so much is left buried under the rubble of disaster, because it is easier than digging it out and discovering that what you have your hand is a child's shoe. Or so I thought. I was quick to believe the worst because I needed some boxes. Or shoes. Anything to hold in my hands. This easy disdain festered until I wasn't sure how I felt about the book. Or the author.

Next I read The Blind Assassin and the The Handmaid's Tale. Neither of which I can remember. Here she buried me with boxes, took them away, put them back the wrong way up and dowsed them in water. I'd had it! By now, you and I know that protest is a sure sign that you have trampled on something you care about. Still, Oryx and Crake festered. By now, I thought the book was ok, maybe even good, perhaps by some fluke. Sometimes authors write things by accident. Although I have not experienced this.

Now we get to the actual topic. Eight paragraphs later. Honestly, you have travelled further in search of My Point before, so no whinging.

The Year of the Flood, as I mentioned is part of a set, with Oryx and Crake and Maddadam. Like Oryx and Crake, the book is narrated from just after the apocalypse, although most of the book is a reflection on events before it. Yes, this is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic novel and I said I would give you a break from this, but this is what's cool. Yo. Now button up your plaid and appreciate.

The first third (and I am being kind here) is no less confusing than Oryx and Crake, because both jump from person to place to time without always being specific. But the narrative of The Year of the Flood does even out. Characters begin to reappear consistently, as do places, and mostly in chronological order. It is almost as though the author is teasing us with the character Ren, withholding so much and then releasing it like the wall of a dam. (Get it? Dam... Flood. Har!)

This worked for me better than the unceasing teasing of Oryx and Crake. I was pulled along by the main characters, sympathising and even empathising with them, even when things got damn right weird and the characters seemed to have switched personalities with people not even in the novel. Even now I have soft spots for Ren and Toby, although the spots for Amanda and the boys are small. They have to balance on the sole of one foot.

But The Year of the Flood is not festering like Oryx and Crake did. It has found its place on my shelf and I would loan it out because it is a good book and you should read it. The narrative and characters are fixed, while those of Oryx and Crake swirl around like milk that never turns into cheese, not even blue cheese. Then again, perhaps I am judging it too soon. Perhaps it will sizzle rather than swirl or fester. Perhaps it will only be complete when I read Maddadam.

So, it's on my shelf - they're on my shelf, because it fits into a bunch of different boxes. I didn't intend this (I swear), even though I started off on a rant about genre, but none of my comments have anything to do with the label. What sold me on The Year of the Flood were the characters and what haunts me about Oryx and Crake is the discontinuity of the narrative. No mention of rubble or shoes or carnivorous pigs. Until now. Surprise!

Now I dare you to pick up all the boxes (use the muscles in your legs - yes, like that) and distribute them around the library. I won't yell at you this time or chain you to anything. I only did that the first time to see if you'd let me, oh passive reader you.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers

Never judge a book by its cover? Psssht. The design of the cover tells you what genre it is, what type of reader the marketing department thinks will buy the book, how much the publisher was prepared to spend on the book, what the reviewers said and whether they can be trusted (the publication they write for)... And the title and author's name, of course. Then there's the blurb...

I never read the blurb. So many words that tell you nothing about the book. Unless you're in it for the plot. Are you? Do you read the 'new fiction' stacked at the front of the book shop? Head shaking, patronising sigh. No, no. The 'new fiction' up front is the stuff with plot in it. Plot... Pssssht. What you want are characters, ideas, revelation. You're looking for the next life-changing read.

So, you speed past the piles of ghostwritten and skeletal books, to the shelf of 'new fiction'. No, no, not the bestseller list. Have you been listening, like, at all? Around the shelf to the back of it. Ah, here is the real new fiction. The runts of the litter, the ones that will follow you around convinced you are some kind of deity from which freedom flows. These are the dogs - books - that will wrestle a bear to protect you.

(c) brusselspictures.com. Let's play find the reader.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers does not rest here. You zoomed past him 5 seconds ago.

Ok, ok, so 'new fiction' has its own place in the world of literature. It reaches many more people than new fiction, and what we really want is people reading. Because people who read are intelligent people, empathic people, empowered people. Yes, and democracy is a real thing. Did you know that a certain bestselling author, who produces one book every six months, actually uses ghostwriters? He gives them the plot, they write it, he overwrites and to the publisher it goes.

Luckily we live in societies that worship diversity (by which I mean the people who can host fundraisers and plonk pretty minorities in their ads and hire against a checklist of the previously disadvantaged that they still need), so you are free to stop at the front of the shop and pick up one of those books whose author's name is in bigger type than the title. And I shall not judge because I can't see you from behind the shelf and I am too busy playing with puppies.

I tricked you. Where do you think The Solitude of Prime Numbers is resting? Do you think it's at the front, flouncing its skirts? Ask yourselves how many seconds it will take to walk back to Raptor or Sally's Sonnet or whatever else is dancing in the window. Actually, ask me, because I actually know. 10 seconds! (I timed it. I don't have a watch but I can count, you.) Which means - ta dah! - that The Solitude of Prime Numbers is somewhere in between. Maybe hanging from the ceiling by some duct tape or held up by some poor staff member whose arm is beginning to atrophy.

The cover is made up of four layers: The first is a picture of a girl sitting on a bench. The second is a picture of a river with some water flowers reflected in the water, Monet-style but not quite. The third is a set of geometrical diagrams drawn in thin lines. Finally we have the title and the author's name, as well as the words 'haunting, bestseller,stunning'. In other words, the design is literally layered, suggesting the novel is the same.  But then there is that line-up of words that are worn through with use.

Marketing speak. Love it. There's more on the back cover but I won't bore you. The blurb? I didn't read it before I opened the book. Now, I realise, it reveals the entire plot except for the last 15 pages. Luckily, this book is about characters as much as plot, which is why it is permitted to hover in the centre of the room, caught between readers' judgements.

The novel focuses on two main characters: Alice and Matthia, both of whom suffered childhood tragedies and grow up with normal self-destructive tendencies like not eating and cutting oneself. Several other characters flow through like undercurrents, each with their own self-destructive tendencies. The plot focuses on the friendship of these characters, mostly in retrospect and with the importance we attach to single moments in our lives.

In psychology speak, they become co-dependent. They fill the void that would normally be filled with said self-destructive tendencies. Well, really, they just shove them aside.

The author treats the psychologies of the two characters with such empathy and understanding, especially Matthia. It is through Matthia that the promise of the philosophy of mathematics, posed in the title, comes through. (To be honest, I think it was the phrase 'Prime Numbers' that hooked me.) Although a lot of the book is dedicated to the characters' disorders, somehow we learn more about the characters themselves than just a list of their symptoms.

And this isn't a Jodi Picoult version of tragedy; these are the everyday lives of two afflicted characters, to whom little happens bar their early traumas. (So, don't worry, no one's sister dies unexpectedly at the end. That all happens at the beginning...)

But, see, here's the thing. Nothing happens... (I ain't a hypocrite - hear me out.) The characters meet and then we bound through their lives at intervals of a few years, sitting in their brains while they contemplate what is, was and might be. Then whoosh we're off again. We're tripping over loose ends and generally 

contemplating the angst that prevents us from ever having a real relationship with another human being - or, in fact, just saying what we bloody well are thinking - and everyone is just a step away from mental meltdown.

Then we have the last 15 pages not covered by the blurb. To give the author, marketers and reviewers the benefit of the doubt, I think maybe it's meant to be a happy ending. It only looks that way if I squint. If I squint, I can also appreciate that at least the blurb accurately describes the, errr, plot, which is really an accomplishment in the days when people can't spell without spellcheck.

Hush, now, here's a free lesson. Always judge a book by the first paragraph. This is the paragraph the author has slaved over, trust me on this. It should always leave a mystery hanging in the air, a mystery you want the answer to. That is a good book. (Except for once, when it turned out the editor must have known this and really crafted the first paragraph, because the rest was just badly written.) This good book may not be on display at the front of the shop, the cover design may be shoddy because no one really expects it to sell and, really, it may be a runt born from a runt. But have you never watched a Disney movie?!

The first paragraph of The Solitude of Prime Numbers hides the novel's mystery, letting us wonder what exactly it is until the very end. The paragraph focuses on a young Alice, does hint at the atmosphere of angst that each page coughs up, like a smoker's breath. You know this is not going to be a happy story. I was distracted by the reference to prime numbers in the title, thinking this novel was going enrich me. I probably would not have read it if I had read the first paragraph. But it's hanging in the middle of the shop if you want it.

Orbiting The Swan Thieves

There should be space in the title The Swan Thieves for a joke about how the book stole hours of my life. See, it's too far out of orbit. Also, I feel a bit mean saying that - it's a bit harsh and I could have chosen to steal my time back. Am I a sop? I am overthinking again, wasting more precious time, but this is why you love me. Well, you would if you met me. What does my foible have to do with a joke that spins in a wide orbit?

Scientifically, the joke couldn't sweep too far an orbit from the book (which we're assuming is the centre of the system), because once it moved out of the centre's 'range', it would careen into space like an asteroid. So either: the joke is skimming the very edge of the book's sphere of influence or it is floating around, unconnected with anything.

More time, floating away.

Luckily this ramble careens us back into orbit: The Swan Thieves is, like its predecessor The Historian, an unconventional mystery. In Elizabeth Kostova's first novel, we chased the legend of Dracula - at arm's length because the sources of this legend are prone to mutilating people and I am squeamish. In her second release, I think the mystery is a painter's obsession with a woman who lived more than 100 years ago. He has a psychotic meltdown, tries to destroy a painting and then refuses to speak.

Because, obviously, all artists are, to put it nicely, crazy. (You'd hate to know what other words come to mind.) Obviously. The painter is a nicely rounded set of stereotypes, which is actually a relief from the painful touchy-feely-ness of the other characters and the unethical absurdities of a teacher hooking up with a student (I suspect because he needed food and shelter), and a psychiatrist marrying his patient's ex-girlfriend. Oh and so much more that I can't reveal without spoiling the plot.

I said, "I think" because halfway through the mystery shifts, although honestly I don't know where it went, nor do I really care. The mystery petered out, without a single vampire swishing around in the shadows. Imagine, an Impressionistic painting chasing you through a psychiatric hospital. Not a Cuckoo's Nest hospital but a clean and accommodating one. When you turn around, there is nothing behind you except for a hint of a frame and the flash of a brushstroke in the moonlight.

Maybe I'm biased by The Historian, and this novel isn't meant to be creepy. (Although, as I mentioned, it is creepy in other ways.) Maybe it is meant appeal to to readers of a more sensitive disposition, who are moved to tears by flowers blooming and children bullying each other on a playground. Maybe they fancy they are the epitome of another artist stereotype: the delicate waif writing dedications to urns and then dying. Poetically. Tragically.

Again, I feel I am being glib. At about 90% of the way through the book were a few pages in which I felt the author extended the promise of her first novel: her descriptions were more focused and so more was left to the reader's imagination. My glibness is a product of my disappointment in a novel of the same breeding of The Historian and with this potential. (This novel was more a book-club read than serious literary fiction, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, because the writing catches you in its orbit and doesn't spend time describing your fellow jokes' eyebrows in epic poems first.)

The novel also reminded me of how much I used to enjoy painting and drawing. I even went out and bought a set of pencils. (Which has been opened and the pencils touched, you. Once. But once more than in 13 years.) So, despite my whinging about the amount of adjectives and adverbs and nonsense, some of it had an effect on this reader.

Recitation complete. No questions. We have all wasted enough time. I have appointments to keep: being chased down the corridors of a hospital and waning over a desk piteously. Eventually I'll have to choose one stereotype, I suppose.

Also, I'm distracted, dear reader. First, I have just started The Solitude of Prime Numbers, which I have been eyeing for years and found two days ago in a secondhand bookshop I often go to. On the one hand, the novel was originally written in Italian by a professor in particle physics; on the other hand, the first few chapters are underwhelming - not one paradox or brain-popping theorem or just the number 15 (my favourite). Let's bet on my final ruling. Because I am completely objective, I will be the bookie.

Second, I want to post about Ayn Rand's Anthem, but this is a heady topic, and my head is still annoyed. I used to look down on people who take her philosophies so seriously. I understand. Oh, I understand. Maybe you want to read it before my next post and you can share my annoyance. (If you empathise though, stay away. Only kidding. Let's discuss this and then someone will hold you down and I will smack you (I may need a few tries - my arms are my weak spot).)

I think we left orbit a while back.

The Historian and The Swan Thieves

What do William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Kostova have in common? Yes, they are all part of a Western aesthetic tradition, but so arguably are their 'ethnic' cousins. Yes, they all do have an 'a' in their first names. Schooling turns all of us into tame dogs, sitting to attention and staring hopefully when someone asks a question or utters a command, that the same someone will give us the answer, too, maybe a biscuit. So please, lean a little forward while I answer this uncontextualised and open question myself.

(I planned this.)

Here is what I learnt in three years of studying English literature: The Bible was the first printed work but plebs weren't allowed to (and couldn't) read said holy book. (Meaning that the priests could say whatever they wanted and so they did. Want to go to heaven? Pay me 500 shekels and I'll put in a good word. That's a good rate! This book here says 600 is the price for your soul. Limited time offer.)

Then along came Martin Luther (the German one), who nailed a piece of paper to the door that said that even the plebs should be allowed to read the Bible (even if they wouldn't because they had other things to do, like not starve) and see what the price of their souls are (unfortunately, there is no price list, but if you confess your sins, the priest will translate your sins into prayers for you). People died for the democratisation of the media. Just be glad the same hasn't happened with digital media. Oh wait, didn't someone just hang himself for this?

Luther's revolution is the Reformation. The Reformation is a handy bookmark for the rolling stone ancestry of contemporary literature, for today known as Post-modernism. Because like all good christenings, we name the baby after it has grown into an old person. This is when people realised that all that is written is not gold. (Gold is heavy. Even the Hulk would struggle with a bag full of this stuff. Maybe that's the real reason it's so valuable?)

But that was the German Reformation. Across the sea, England's revolution involved an obese wife-murderer and adulteress (do you know there is no male form of the noun?! Except expletives) swapping Catholicism for Protestantism. Anyway, the point is that Europe is not one cultural entity, with a single history, any more than Africa is. Everyone hear me?

Screen adaptation of Hamlet, 1990

So, the stone rolled into William Shakespeare and his infamous ilk, Christopher Marlowe. Both wrote and directed plays (a step ahead of the cops, because anything that didn't make money for the Crown was illegal. Kinda like the priests and their bribes) and plays (like movies, for the young 'uns) require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. Like in The Tempest (one of my least favourites fyi), we don't believe there is a ship, a storm and an island on the stage (duh, it's only big enough for one of those things).

Despite the haunting tragedies of Hamlet and Faust, Shakespeare and Marlowe were funny and self-deprecating (ok, no, not Marlowe) men. Like Luther handing round the Bible, these men wrote plays that spoke about themselves and addressed the audience directly. In Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, the characters stage their own plays, within the play, making us think about the nature of this play that we are watching. The one we paid (or were given comps) to see.

The Dessert: Harmony in Red (the Red Room), Henri Matisse, 1908

The two men die and enrich the soil, and Charlotte Bronte springs into being in an English moor somewhere. I have written all of this garbled and probably left of history post to get here. Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre, that proto-feminist (yeah, right, and you'll see why), Gothic (but less so than Wuthering Heights, by her sister) novel that everyone studies in English undergrad. We slot both books in the Victorian shelf, above the Romantic shelf, which is a couple of shelves up from the Elizabethan shelf (stacked with Shakespeare's plays).

The stone of self-reflexism (it used to be a shard) has rolled down the slope and through many a Romantic novel. When it gets to the Bronte's house, it is gathering speed, and protective of their family (including an complex imaginary one that may or may not have survived their adolescence), all three give it a kick in turn, to make it spin faster. This metaphor has just become cryptic. Charlotte also uses her novel to think about itself - and I use the passive here for a reason.

Because she also asks us directly to break through the suspension of disbelief (that an orphan girl, much plagued by her cousin and prone to supernatural meetings, can become an au pair, fall in love with the father who feels the same way, and then discover his crazy (debatable) wife in the attic (I would also become crazy if you locked me in an attic. Crazy angry) and talk to the main character (which is itself a suspension of disbelief).

She says, just before the conclusion of the book: "Dear reader..." This book is not written in journal form, so... To reiterate, suspension of disbelief means involving yourself in the fantasy: there are no authors or readers or characters; for a certain period of time this fictional world and the assumptions necessary for it to exist (belief in ghosts or time travel or crazy women in attics) does exist. For the author or the character to talk to us, the readers, breaks that bond we all agreed to.

Interlude (perhaps make yourself some coffee and get a biscuit): this "Dear reader" is a plea for us to sympathise with Jane and accept her next set of choices. Feminist? Ha! If she has to plea, she considers herself guilty, so my judgement is unnecessary. But, just for the record, I do. I do judge.

What now? You figure it out. I wrote an essay on this, so you can work for the answer.

This is a long post, but Elizabeth Kostova writes long books and I have read the first and am reading the second, so you can read with me. Pay attention as you read and you will see 'Dear reader's sprouting from even the least fertile pages, like crime novels. Just splattered on the page like blood. Splattered, artlessly. I think Charlotte Bronte would rather move into the setting of Wuthering Heights, without Linton to bring some charm to it, than acknowledge these offspring.

I am reading The Swan Thieves at the moment. I mean 'reading' to imply that this is a long-term relationship and I am beginning to wonder whether the bumps and bruises are worth it. I can't say until I get to the end, so I can only rely on past history. This is not My Point, but the history is tedious, largely because of descriptions of people and places and trees and grass and hands and and and..., and because of the effeminate voice of the (male) main character and his tendency to fall in love with every woman he meets.

The history is also Kostova's first novel, The Historian. In hindsight the novel was probably also tedious and for the same reasons, but the main character is a) female (and therefore effeminate) and b) the daughter of a historian. The novel is a historical mystery novel and the mystery is the source of the legend of Dracula, which is fascinating no matter how many observations about hands, because each hand could provide a clue.

You can hear (not literally!) how worked up I am getting, right? Why? The protagonist follows a series of notes and letters, one of which begins: "To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history." My brain leaps the suspension bridge (har har) and I become the protagonist. Silly thing, it can't differentiate between the fictional 'you' and me 'you'. This is now my story and my inheritance, although I know I'm being manipulated, I see the bridge below me - but, wait, does this mean the protagonist is being manipulated too? We both know that Dracula is a novel built on an East European myth (all those countries being the same, right?). So what are we chasing?

Again, essay written, book read, your turn.

The history of literature is its own type of fiction. As is any history. I have identified what I want to see, to argue for the evolution of free thought in the Western world, as if this is a good thing. Well, really I'm arguing for a type of device used in literature that I find interesting and using history to support it. Or I am overthinking everything and writing tedious blog posts, and trying to justify my use of direct address, like 'you' and 'fool!'. Not that this fiction. Because I really think you should read Jane Eyre and agree she is not a feminist, or only a pseudo-feminist, and that maybe you should read The Historian because it's long but fun and engaging. There's even an audio book. Would the consequence of the direct address be the same in speech? Hmmmmm...