Fantastic Metropolis

Some more suggestions

1. Pirates of the Drowned World

While it is difficult to know how much input Ballard himself put into this sequence, which promises to be a ten book series, John Norman’s clever explanation as to why Kerans changed his mind at the last minute and went East is brilliant. Norman has found his metier at last. In a recent interview he described his forthcoming sequel to other Ballard novels. These will include The Knout, The Atrocity Exhibitionist, Concrete Whipping Post, Bash, Slash, The Voices of Pain and Why I Want To Whip Ronald Reagan.

2. The Adventures of Felix Krull Vol. 2

Even funnier and sharper than Vol. 1. I have waited over fifty years for this novel and I must say the resolution is the finest thing Mann has written to date.

3. Return to the Castle

Although some people think Kafka’s long-awaited sequel only further confuses the issue, I found the character of Maisie Doyle, the loveable barmaid who reveals the plan of the castle, one of the best he has painted.

4. Only Connect, Please!

E.M.Forster’s other science fiction story, which takes a somewhat modernist slant on early computer problems is nonetheless far superior to his last novel, Maurice.

5. The Furry Wold

Morthven Pegasus’s thousand pager is a sequel to her lovely The Fuzzy Cuddles is remarkable for the fact that it it consists of a single sentence without a subject. The book now knocks Dennis Wheatley from Guinness Book of Records.

6. Fun with Your Hobbit

This excellent guide book, written by orcs for orcs, has some tremendous tips for extending your hobbit’s life as well as its legs, arms, toes, fingers and neck.

7. Titus Abroad

Peake had written this relatively short novel between projects and then decided he would write Titus Alone first, in order to make the transition from the closed world of Gormenghast to the whole Peakian planet. Mislaid, the manuscript came to light last year. Written at the height of his poetic powers, this is Titus in a stranger London than any you’ve previously read about.

8. My Life with the Squids

Lady Oona von Bek’s extraordinary account of how she learned to communicate with members of the encephalapod family in their native habitat. To give a flavour of the book I can only quote: “I cannot be the only person, swimming in warm waters, who has met with a member of the squid family and exchanged greetings, shaping my arms and hands into the familiar lyre posture of greeting and enquiry. I have not the range of vocabulary, of course, to change my colours subtly enough to qualify every statement of body language. To the loquacious cuttlefish I must seem almost mute. But his poers of communication do not make him a liberal humanist. His realities are not changed, as our sometimes are, by his desires.”

9. West

V. S. Naipaul’s life amongst the cowboys is as hilarious a satire as his wonderful ‘South’ in which he journeyed about the Southern states of America ‘getting to the truth’ by writing down all the stories the good old boys were willing to hand out to him and then offering it to his London audience as an authentic account of how people are down there. Here, I was particularly delighted by his straight-faced retailing of the story told him by a Texas cowboy. “The roping of the giant horned jackabuck is still a matter of a man and his rope, for this terrain is too rugged for even the most efficient four-wheel drive vehicle, so the ‘jackaroo’ as he is known is something of a hero in his own world.” He pulled it off once with South and my guess is that he’ll do it again with this one. I think this guy got the Nobel Comedy Prize this year and it’s well deserved.

10. Rabbit Enpied

The resolved resolution, a kind of reduction or perhaps re-invention, of the quintessential restatement in which a lait of poisoned, perhaps artificial, flowers garland the reader’s attention while deftly Updike puts his rabbit back in the (Hawaian) hat so that upon cutting the pie, we find it merely crust. This is genius.