The Dancer Upstairs - Nicholas Shakespeare

By




I have read three Nicholas Shakespeare novels in recent years, and have found each one to be intriguing - novels with plots, which I like, novels about troubled men and mysterious women. Call me old fashioned, but I like that combination as well.

I read the novels all out of order in terms of when they were published, not that this probably matters very much. Inheritance (2011) appealed to me with the premise of the failed writer who inherits millions by chance and has all the distrust to deal with that comes with that. There's an Australian mining story behind the money and a search for the truth in events of the past. I really enjoyed Snowleg (2004) and its evocation of East Germany before the wall came down; two cities I know well enough feature in the story - Leipzig in the East, and Hamburg in the West. The protagonist, Peter, falls in love in Leipzig but the authorities get in the way and he leaves with profound regrets, guilt and uncertainty about his actions which plagues him for years. Again, a search in the past for the truth creates narrative interest.

The Dancer Upstairs is a modern terrorist novel, a genre which ought to be very important in the contemporary age, if done well (and this one is). It gives insight into the elusive, intellectual guru Peruvian leader Ezequiel; our police protagonist tells the story to an English journalist and reveals his love for a dancer, an idealistic young woman, as well as the rural setting where the revolt draws strength and represents Rejas's past. Like Snowleg, the novel also gives the reader insight into the corrupt and powerful state. Technically, there's a lot of dialogue in the novel; setting up a conversation scene that carries the plot forward is not easy and students of fiction writing (like yours truly) might be wise to study a few pages to see just how Shakespeare does it. Shakespeare. What a burden to carry! No wonder his novels are full of dark ideas, with empty male characters struggling with demons in a world of deception and distrust. Enjoy!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Grimmish

By
Image
  A self-published novel making the Miles Franklin Award shortlist was a first, and a wonderful story. Author Michael Winkler and his agent had tried it everywhere, and no one was interested, so Winkler made the painful decision to print his own copies. I am not sure if it was gumption or a smart agent, but the book ended up being read by some of Australia’s best novelists (J.M. Coetzee and Helen Garner) and things took off from there. The shortlisting means that Grimmish is now published by Puncher & Wattmann, and in the UK by Peninsula Press. The man must be kicking himself. What to make of the novel? The story, as such, is a retelling of Joe Grimm’s 1908-09 tour of Australia, where he seems to have continued his form of being a boxer famous for being able to absorb punishment without the ability to land the killer blow himself. Winkler has done a lot of research, and much of this appears in footnotes written in a playful, academic tone. Some notes explain allusions to other t
Read more

Bluebird

By
Image
I read Malcolm Knox’s Bluebird quite slowly. Reading slowly was partly because it is a big book (485 pages) and – if I am being honest – 2022 seemed to be a tough year and I was often nodding off quickly when I read in the evenings. Let’s say that this is more of a Gates problem than a Knox one.  The book is set in a beachside suburb called Bluebird Beach. It’s near to Ocean City, but far away enough to be able to see its smoggy horizon. Bluebird is “OC’s last secret, the land that public transport forgot” (p.4). Geographically it doesn’t really work with actual Sydney suburbs, but it feels like Palm Beach, perhaps located across Broken Bay about where Killcare sits. The Bluebird folk are down-to-earth types but every house in the suburb is suddenly worth a bomb, and this means change is in the air, and Gordon (our main guy) isn’t happy. He lives is The Lodge, and he sees it as his "mission" to preserve its integrity: The community, like the newspaper and the old Bluebi
Read more

Sweet Tooth

By
Image
  I am not sure if I needed to read S weet Tooth , but as a literary spy novel (not quite a thriller) it entertained me well enough. One thing Ian McEwan seems to manage – I say this without proper qualification – is to write a novel from the point of view of a young woman quite convincingly. There’s a bit of a twist on this premise at the end, which you are most welcome to guess at. Serena Frome is a bishop's daughter. The bishop seems a decent man but clearly not close to his family, and embarrassed by anything he can’t sort out from behind a desk. She heads to Cambridge to study Mathematics, being good at it, but sadly not a genius. At university, she starts to write a column on her reading of literature in what one imagines are well-phrased but not necessarily wise reviews. She meets her first boyfriend, and then falls for a married professor – an MI5 man – and so her secretive career begins. It is the 1970s and the Cold War is in full swing. Frome’s conservative beliefs, c
Read more