Becoming More Like Elektra
Aug. 8th, 2006 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllSafe From Harm - Massive Attack
LDN - Lily Allen
Ya Shosla S Uma - Tatu
Can You Forgive Her - Pet Shop Boys
You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve - Johnny Boy
Matinee - Franz Ferdinand
Metal Mickey - Suede
Shut Up (And Sleep With Me) - Sin With Sebastian
Hounds Of Love - Kate Bush
Rio - Duran Duran
Tainted Love - Soft Cell
Come On Eileen - Dexys Midnight Runners
May well all be sold out by now, but: Alan Moore. Melinda Gebbie. Interviewed by Stewart Lee about Lost Girls. Thursday, October the 12th, 7pm at the Logan Hall, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL. Yes, of course I'm going, even if the book's been banned by then and they try to round us all up. OK, especially if the book's been banned by then and they try to round us all up, because I can think of few better causes to which to be a martyr than Alan Moore.
So last week I was looking at the story about that guard dog which went mental and attacked loads of expensive teddies, and down the side it's got related stories. And it has that escaped Dalek from earlier in the summer, but there's also one from April, headed "RSPCA Criticises 'Rabbit Wedding'". And so I look at that, and there's a picture of a massive bloody rabbit in a bowler hat which is clearly today's Best Thing Ever In The World Ever, and now I've gone right off the RSPCA, previously a charity I held in some regard. There may be a moral to all this, but I'm damned if I know what it is.
I think Love Remains is the second Glen Duncan book I've read. You see, the first possible candidate was I, Lucifer, and while that has Duncan's name on the cover, it's narrated by the Devil, temporarily inhabiting the body of a writer named Declan Gunn (do you see?), and Gunn himself only contributes an epilogue. And I can easily believe that Duncan only wrote that epilogue, because Love Remains is an utterly different book. Where I, Lucifer treats such epic material as the Creation, War in Heaven and Fall with a determined (if dark) lightness of touch, Love Remains treats the ordinary stuff of human love and human betrayal with an unrelenting weight and seriousness. That makes it sound like a pretentious and rather sixth-form novel, which I don't think it is, though it would be easy to parody as such. But...not many British writers write books like this; I would say it feels French, except that most modern French writers seem to be pale imitations of their forebears (yes Houllebecq, I'm on to you) whereas this is very much its own book. If it has a fault, it's that it could almost have been two books; about halfway through we leave the unflinching account of the everyday terrors of the heart for an (equally well-written, equally terrifying) step into more unusual ground. The two are intricately connected, but perhaps not integrally so; still, it's not often that I complain about a 'realistic' story being turned up to 11, so that's a point of interest in itself.
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Date: 2006-08-08 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-08-09 04:48 pm (UTC)Much credit to you - I didn't even realise that Love Remains existed, but will now be buying it on the way home.
What was the first Glen Duncan book you read?
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Date: 2006-08-12 10:06 am (UTC)NP
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Date: 2006-08-14 01:10 pm (UTC)