Books we like ... and books we're not too fussed about
John Freeman (Editor)
Granta Publications 2010
Sod's law ensured that it was this that I was halfway through when I went on my recent holiday. I was therefore in the embarrassing position of being observed with my nose stuck in a book called Sex sporting a highly suggestive picture of an open purse (pink) on its cover as I sat at airports and on planes across Europe. The hotel chambermaid probably also drew her own conclusions. A shame, because this edition, apart from some pretentious French soft porn and a few mildly risqué photos, is scarcely titillating. In fact, as is often the case with Granta, much of the material appears to have little connection with the theme at all. Not that I’m complaining: once again, this is another strong outing for a magazine that a year or so ago seemed to be in turmoil. What I liked: Mark Doty’s account of the life of a married gay man, Natsuo Kirino’s desert island fantasy, Brian Chikwava’s memoir of post-independence Zimbabwe, Tom McCarthy’s short story of sexual awakening in an Eastern European spa, and, most of all, Jennifer Egan’s tale of a washed-up record industry executive, which pulls off the difficult trick of being both very sad and very funny. I also enjoyed reading about Michael Symmons Roberts’ time with trappist monks, Victor LaValle on phone sex, Chris Offut on blue collar love, Adam Faulds’ gay vicar, and Rupert Thomson’s time selling books in Bryant Park in New York in the early seventies. I didn’t understand Dave Eggers’ drawings of various animals “contemplating sex”, nor Yann Faucher’s photos of naked people sitting in and on wardrobes, and I gave up on Jeanette Winterson’s and Herta Muller’s offerings. The French soft porn was very French and very silly. Overall, though, as Meat Loaf said, two out of three ain’t bad, and here the proportion is actually a bit better than that. Pity that everybody in Croatia thinks I’m a sleaze bag though.
1st May 2010
http://www.granta.com/
Click here for other issues of Granta
|
|
