Requiems reviewed again . . .

[realthog]

The customer reviews on Amazon.com are frequently less Times Literary Supplement, more . . . well, lavatory wall, to be honest, but every now and then someone posts a review there that seems pretty professional. A reader called John L Murphy (who I see by clicking the relevant link has reviewed extensively on the Amazon site) has just given the full treatment to Requiems for the Departed (edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone and published by Morrigan, as if you needed telling).

Naturally everyone's agape to find out what he said about my contribution to the anthology, "The Life Business", so here we go:

Grant draws upon his [. . .] teenage stint as a British cadet to integrate disturbing and emotional reveries into his shape-shifting characters. "The Life Business" haunted me more than most previous ones, try as they might to shock or rattle. Grant, as a fantasy master, successfully conjures otherworldly senses into his narrative eerily.

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

The first novelist I knew, John Hearne, told me that several bits of his first novel came from his life experience. I'm not altogether sure which of them were the rude bits (which included a couple of women's thoughts on sex). He didn't, for example, describe having sex with a German woman during the Occupation in exchange for a bar of chocolate, though I do know that happened.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

several bits of his first novel came from his life experience

I think that inevitably stuff does, and any fiction writer who tells you otherwise is kidding themselves. At the same time, it's easy for us to assume as readers that great scads of the fictions we read are based on the author's own experiences (or worldview, etc.) when in reality the point of fiction is that you Make Stuff Up -- and most of it really is conjured from whole cloth.

having sex with a German woman during the Occupation in exchange for a bar of chocolate

Sorry: I find him pretty despicable for that.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to defend it. It was a pretty low thing to do.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Myself, I've always wondered how much of Stephen Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women was autobiographical. And there's a lot of Agnar Mykle's stuff that seems like lightly fictionalized sexual autobiography. Of course, Mykle was the better writer.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I haven't read either, sad to say.

I do know that V.S. Naipaul's Miguel Street is based on his childhood experiences living on Luis Street in Port of Spain, and A House for Mister Biswas is based on his father's life (the former comes from Patrick French's marvellous biography, the latter has been well-known for many years).

[realthog.livejournal.com]

To my shame, I've never read any Naipul.

*hangs head in self-loathing*

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

It's been known to happen. Biswas is absolutely worth reading. Though if you want to read the most underappreciated Trinidadian writer of the same period, I recommend Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, truly comic writing about immigrant life in the 1950s.