Books
The familiar and the strange
By Vivid writers: Andrew Begg and Frank O'Connor and Rupert Wolfe-Murray
A Brussels insider's view of the international pro-adoption lobby, a gripping novel set in present day Romania, the 2003 Booker Prize winner and George Orwell's first novel
Posted: 19/11/2007
Frighteningly familiar Bucharest
A review by Andrew Begg
Crossing Borders by S.D. Curtis
In S.D. Curtis's third and latest novel, Crossing Borders, straight away the reader is swept into the life of Caroline Winslow, a plain, honest, good English girl with an office job who meets and falls in love with Mihai, a Romanian doctor interning in a London hospital.
Jennifer, Caroline's boss, plans a business trip to Romania and after some time spent getting closer to her, she asks Caroline to accompany her. Discussing the proposed trip, Mihai is immediately defensive, as if harbouring a premonition that something could go wrong. As it happens, something does. Once in Bucharest, the officious Jennifer drags Caroline around and across the city to meetings with a number of dubious men; they end up returning to England as passengers in two trucks which are transporting human cargo. Caroline's gradual realisation that she is an unwitting accomplice in a people trafficking racket is very real
There can be no mistaking that this is Bucharest. Curtis obviously knows the city warts and all, and the graphic nature of her depictions of street scenes are painstaking reading, and painfully real. The Bucharest scenes are filled with insightful reflections that anyone who has been in the city should recognise. One of many examples: Caroline and Jennifer are thrown forward as their taxi comes to a screeching halt at traffic lights. "Very bad traffic today," the driver says.
"After that, he turned the radio on, blasting us with pop music punctuated with rapidly spoken Romanian and the easily recognisable jingles of advertisements. We were out of the centre now, following a long road flanked on either side by the now familiar dreary, grey blocks of flats. The suburbia seemed never ending, with concrete and asphalt stretching out in all directions ... The whole impression was one of neglect, as if nothing were maintained or renewed, but simply left to slowly degrade."
Similarly, her depictions of Romanians are graphic and accurate. A group of Roma pull an ancient, metal cart full of scrap iron along the pavement. Old people shuffle around cemetery gates with outstretched hands and lowered faces, as the raw side of life "spills over into every corner of society". The businessmen Caroline and Jennifer meet are poorly dressed, paunchy and like the sound of their own voices. Hotel staff are rude and begrudging. In London too there is little doubt that Mihai is Romanian. In a pub with friends he meets a drunken aggressive Englishman, and does not rise to his provocations - avoidance of conflict is characteristic of Romanians - their threshold for abuse and exploitation being somewhat higher than that of many other people. Though humble, Mihai's parents give Caroline a welcoming that is wholly Romanian.
Crossing Borders grips and doesn't let go. Many people who know Romania will find some of the scenes frighteningly familiar, yet a welcome addition to the body of fiction set in present day Romania; those who don't will read it for what it is, a highly readable, well paced thriller that we are happy to strongly recommend.
BookSurge LLC, 2006, pp 183, ISBN: 1-4196-5229-X, paperback, available for GBP 6.95 from www.amazon.co.uk or $13.99 from www.amazon.com
Style over substance
A review by Frank O'Connor
Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
If you took The Catcher In The Rye, pulped it, strained it, mixed it with amphetamines and then ate it, the result would be something like Vernon God Little: a lot of bright lights and pretty colours followed by a long period of confusion and finally withdrawal.
The story concerns an innocent trapped in a world of insanity, or a child in America, whichever way you choose to see it. The hero, in his early teens, narrates a tale of the funny, the phony and the down right fat, as he is accused of helping out with a mass murder in small town Texas. The adults, almost without exception, are corrupt and depraved to the point of insanity, and so the stage is set for a satire on meaning in today's USA.
Many reviewers have commented on DBC Pierre's use of language, and it fairly snaps, crackles and pops. But for me, the law of diminishing returns sets in quite quickly, and I began to long for some plain old fields of text to pace the clever stuff. The story mostly revolves around Vernon's guilt or innocence, and regularly features a device in which he tries to escape from his immediate surroundings only to be caught out by fate, accident or whatever.
Pierre was a one time drug addict and this book has the feel of an addict's work - in so far as it is tinged with a loathing for humanity in general and a sense that people will jump on any opportunity to screw someone over if they can. Vernon's innocence is the book's core redeeming value, though even this is called into question from time to time, and it tends to lurch into self-pity too.
The book features a great ending, though, which tops everything that came before and calls back a lot of stuff which was casually planted throughout the story before. It's certainly worth reading, but it is heavy going, a rich chocolate cake of words.
Faber and Faber, 2002 (this edition 2005), pp 277, ISBN: 0-571215165, paperback GBP 3.99 from www.amazon.co.uk
King and country
A review by Andrew Begg
Burmese Days by George Orwell
Burmese Days is George Orwell's first novel, published in 1934 after Orwell had returned to live in Britain after five years working as a policeman for the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, then a British colony. The plot revolves around John Flory and other British expats who dominate life in an upper Burmese (fictional) settlement called Kyauktada. Many of the British meet at the European Club, to drink themselves silly while badmouthing the local Burmese from a safe distance. It is very much a big-fish-small-pond syndrome, and many of them regret that life isn't what it used to be.
"The old type of servant is disappearing," agreed Mr Macgregor. "In my young days, when one's butler was disrespectful, one sent him along to the jail with a chit saying 'Please give the bearer fifteen lashes'. Ah well, eheu fugaces. Those days are gone forever, I am afraid."
There is an awareness that the sun is setting on the British Empire even as they speak. Flory, a bachelor with a string of desultory relationships with local girls behind him, is criticised and envied in roughly equal measure by his fellow Europeans for his quietly debauched lifestyle. What draws the most criticism from the dissolute Europeans however is his fraternising with locals, befriending them and making an effort to understand them.
A deeply sympathetic character, Flory is frustrated and lonely as only a young single man living in a foreign environment can be. When Elizabeth Lackersteen, an outwardly attractive, wispish English Rose type who loves hunting and killing animals descends on the settlement ostensibly to visit her aunt and uncle but in reality to find a husband, it is almost inevitable that he will fall for her, as he surely does. There are some excruciating scenes where he is torn between wanting her and remaining true to himself. For she is really nothing like him at all.
"How revoltingly ugly these people are, aren't they?"
"Are they? I always think they're rather charming-looking, the Burmese. They have such splendid bodies! Look at that fellow's shoulders - like a bronze statue. Just think what sights you'd see in England if people went about half naked as they do here."
"But they have such hideous shaped heads! Their skulls kind of slope up behind like a tom-cat's. And then the way their foreheads slant back - it makes them look so wicked."She ultimately spurns his perceived bohemianism, his equanimity and his liking of the locals - and probably he doesn't earn enough for her anyway. She chooses the dashing, caddish Verrall over him, who romances her then leaves her without a word. Flory is plunged into a depression with which the reader can surely empathise. The conclusion is tragic and heartbreaking.
As is often the case with Orwell it is the second string characters that he uses to stress the extreme nature of a situation. At the European Club, where it is king and country all the way and the last days of the Raj are like the fading embers in the fireplace, Mr Lackersteen is an odious, lecherous drunk who even makes regular sexual advances towards his own niece. Ellis is almost a caricature of a racist - he would be funny if he wasn't so appalling, and the sad fact is that everyone knows at least one person like him.
Dr Veraswami is perhaps the most likable character in the book - an utter gentleman, selfless and unassuming to the last, he is a complete anglophile and thinks that his race is inferior to the English. U Po Kyin, a scheming and corrupt local official who plots Flory's downfall in front of the other Europeans, is absurdly fat and grotesque, a wonderful parody of avarice and greed gotten from turning people over time and again.
Burmese Days works on many levels. The quality of writing is unflaggingly consistent, the observations of life in Burma richly descriptive, as if Orwell was taking notes the entire time. As a love story it is tragic and heartrending, with the reader hoping for Flory's happiness but knowing Elizabeth is hardly worthy of him, even while he worships the ground she walks on. As a stinging criticism of imperialism from the man who was once regarded as the social conscience of a nation, it is a precursor for what was to come in his better known, more politically strident later novels.
Penguin Classics, first published 1934 (this edition 2001), pp 320, ISBN: 10-0141185376, paperback GBP 6.74 from www.amazon.co.uk
The international adoptions lobby: an insider's perspective
A review by Rupert Wolfe-Murray
Romania - for export only, the untold story of the Romanian 'orphans' by Roelie Post
There are several unusual things about Roelie Post and her important new book on international adoptions. An employee of the European Commission, between 1999 and 2005 Post handled one of its most controversial dossiers: Romania's institutionalised children. She is one of very few EC insiders who has risked her career by publishing her experiences, in diary format. Whether one agrees with her or not, one has to admire this courage.
The book itself is not particularly fancy looking: it has a plain white cover and a title some would call clunky. Although such a cover may look out of place in a modern bookshop where cover designs are becoming increasingly sophisticated, I appreciate the clean and simple look as a sign of its seriousness. Despite these superficial drawbacks the book is very readable and engaging.
Post's story is compelling. In 1999 she was given the Romanian children dossier and as she gradually learnt about the issue she came to be one of the champions of the remarkable reform process that has resulted in the closure of Romania's large children's homes. To better appreciate this achievement it is essential to understand that Romania is the only country in Central and Eastern Europe that has managed to stop the practice of institutionalising children in need, and has set up alternatives such as foster care, daycare centres and family-type homes. The basis of the reforms are that families are the building block of society.
However, her job and the reform process are but a backdrop against which the real drama is played out; the relentless lobby for international adoptions from Romania. Much has been written about this shadowy and unaccountable lobby, but never before has so many details been revealed about their actions in the heart of Brussels, and their access to some of the world's top politicians.
During the 1990s the adoption of babies from Romania was a free-for-all. During the early 1990s a child could be adopted with a simple receipt from a local judge and before 1997 the records of how many were sent abroad are scant. The 1997 reforms were formulated by those in the pay of the lobby, and a free market in children was set up. The results were that the so-called ‘orphanages' became processing centres for the export of children, and corruption became rampant. By 2001 the practice was banned and since then the lobby has been desperately trying to prove that Romanian women are unable to look after their own children and international adoption is the only answer.
Not only did the Romanian government come under tremendous pressure from politicians in the US politicians and in some EU member states (namely, Italy and France) but Roelie Post was continually harassed in her job at the Commission. Her book is a blow by blow account of the main lobbyists in Brussels, with scandalous walk on parts from the likes of Silvio Berlusconi and Romano Prodi. For anyone interested in the intriguing international adoption story this book is essential reading.
2007; pp 272; 22.90 euros, available from www.romania-forexportonly.blogspot.com
Thanks to Barka Saffron for the loan of Burmese Days.
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