Budget Deficit

The budget speech and articles in the Guardian which followed spoke of a mammoth deficit. This is not small beer by any stretch of the imagination.

If it came about because banks lent at high interest rates to people with no realistic means of repaying, we stand back and wonder. If these mortgages, sub-prime mortgages, were cleverly packaged with better fare and traded on, we sit back and wonder. If banks around the world invested in these bonds because they believed what it said on the tin, we sit back and wonder. If politicians now come along and blame the bankers, we should not sit back but ask how come the banks could lend as they did, sell the bonds they did and invest in the junk they did. Sure, they could have said no. But when everyone else was on the bank(d)wagon, it is brave man who stands on the side.

Surely the fault lies with those who allowed the creation of a banking world where all this could happen. Who deregulated? Brown was not alone.

The Handmaid's Tale

I doubt that there is a book which draws so much sympathy from its readers. The story is devastating, but that is only part of what Margaret Atwood does. The heart of the genius of the book is not a real fear that what she describes could happen, rather an uncomfortable acknowledgement that it is a metaphor for the oppression that does happen in so many different guises.
At a slightly different level it is one of those books which reminds a would be writer just why they sweat blood. The enterprise is worth every drop if there is a possibility of getting anywhere near this quality of writing.

G 20

The more you look at this whole business, the more obscene, but also the more complex it becomes. The headlines about bank bonuses talk to the protesters, but also to the thousands who have lost their jobs simply because borrowing, ordinary business borrowing, became so difficult; they talk also to the thousands more who lost their homes. Massive bonuses were wrong; but who was wrong?

As my character Ed puts it, in a University town which is the most popular pub? The one which doesn't chuck you out at closing time, of course; the one which has the loosest rule book. These tend to be the places where trouble is to be found. So too with banking, loosen the rule book and the bastards will push beyond even their wildest imaginings. The recent book City Boy would seem to confirm this in spades. It is Lord of the Flies, isn't it?

All this would be bad, but not horrific, were it not for two things. The impact is global and massive. It came about as a result of the policy of western governments to let markets govern themselves.

Surely in a civilised society we all need boundaries?

Trumpet by Jackie Kay

If someone dies and those around discover a secret which the deceased had kept closely hidden all their life, how best to tell the tale?

Jackie Kay offers each of those concerned their own voice. The deceased's spouse knew, well she couldn't not. But the deceased's son, the mother, the best friend? What of them? Kay throws in an investigative journalist for good measure and shows how the prospect of payment loosens or tightens tongues. It is tour de force in point of view.

The Crunch by Alex Brummer

The interested reader of the financial pages will almost certainly have some idea of the causes of the woes that have hit the world economy. We all knew that borrowing had hit crazy levels; we all knew that house prices were defying gravity.

Words like toxic debt and sub-prime have been the stuff of bar room chat, but Alex Brummer has drawn the strands together and produced a coherent narrative. It is deeply depressing. It makes the calmest of men don the witch hunt uniform.

What is probably the worst of all, though, is that the cream of a generation, the very best brains, have been engaged in what is really the most enormous fraud. It is breathtaking stuff.

Notes on a Scandal

This is a beautiful book, but as an exercise in point of view it is a masterpiece.

There is a first person narrator, but one who has such a strong agenda. You just know that each of her observations is going to be coloured.

I do believe that, at last, I can see the narrative as distinct from the story, and oh how it adds to the pleasure.

Who is the protagonist?

The story is about Sheba, the account of her downfall; this is how it seems, but then doubts begin to creep in. The narrator, Barbara, is, like any narrator, in control of how the story is heard. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, we begin to see her hand digging deeper than the narrative into the story itself, then deeper than the story into being the trigger for events (taking the three tiers expounded by Bal amongst others). The is much more than an unreliable narrator; this is a narrator who is affecting the characters so much so that Sheba, who began by ignoring Barabara, ends under her power.

There is perhaps an echo from Hotel de Dream where Emma Tennant paints a picture of an author finding her characters in open rebellion.

First person pov

I have been sifting through, trying to find a first person voice for Icarus.

John Banville writes The Sea as first person, but as a recollection of something that happened some time before. He is in the present and recalls the past and move from present to past tense accordingly.

Graham Swift writes The Light of Day in first person present tense, but again slips into past tense for recollections.

Engleby is first person past tense, but then this makes sense when at the end the first person narrator explains that the account is his diary. Sebastian Faulks cleverly keeps this secret so that the account feels more like the action as it happens.

In Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively moves between first person present tense and third person past tense as she switches between the narrative of the story teller and flash back.

Graham Green, in The Quiet American, has his narrator write about his friend Pyle in the first person past tense. You don't get any real sense of it being an account of something that happened previously; there is no nagging imperative to imagine just where and when the narrator is recounting his tale.