False starts and photographs

After another false start at Oh, Play That Thing! by Roddy Doyle (more of which later) I started The Rain Before It Falls this morning on the tube.

I loved The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle, and thought I might have found my newest new favourite author in Jonathan Coe, but the farce of What A Carve Up put me off. The Rain Before It Falls comes with much recommendation, and the setup intrigues me: the main narrator is Rosamund, an elderly woman describing on tape for her blind long lost relative a series of photographs and associated memories.

I've been thinking a lot recently about photography, memory and history, how death of a family member can make someone's context easily lost to them... I'm looking forward to see how Coe tackles these ideas. It's something I'd like to write about myself if I had the necessary skills.

On the Doyle front (that phrase makes this sound like a war despatch. "Allied forces made good gains in McEwan territories, but were held back on the Doyle front"), I'm not sure why I can't get further than thirty pages or so into Oh, Play That Thing! I love Roddy Doyle. Usually his books grab me and don't let me put them down until I've hurtled my way to the end, even when I'm rereading them for the nth time, such as The Commitments or The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. A Star Called Henry, the first book in the Henry Smart series, is an epic, gritty tale of one man's experience of the Dublin slums and the Republican movement. It both gives you a sense of the sheer drama of the historical period and the real people caught up in said drama: Henry Smart is a Dubliner as real as Jimmy Rabbitte. And lots of great details: a wooden leg as a weapon, a rebel schoolteacher, a granny who'll give information for books. So when Oh, Play That Thing! came out, I thought great, he's got Henry Smart and music in this one, I'm going to love it. I've picked it up twice now and each time I'm still stuck in New York with Henry as he carts his sandwich boards around until another book coaxes me to take a peek at it... and then I'm gone. One day, I'll get to meet Louis Armstrong with him, but for now I'm leaving New York for 20th century Shropshire. Sorry Henry.