The Undertaking by Audrey Magee

I have never believed in allowing cultural context to validate acts of oppression or war, however Audrey Magee's novel The Undertaking illustrates to me how insidiously evil creeps up and becomes accepted by ordinary people.  This short, exquisite novel tells of a young couple in Germany during World War 2, he on the front, she at home with her parents.  They come together for wholly selfish but human reasons and fall in a sort of love.   The siege of Stalingrad, where Germany began losing the war at great cost to conscripts, challenges the main character's world view.  In Berlin, favoured families, loyal to the Nazi killing machine, move into homes owned by Jews, never asking or caring what became of their owners.  And yet, the reader feels for these characters with their simple wishes for life, which says a lot for Magee's ability to convey empathy.   The book is written mostly in dialogue that is precise and real in all its banality.  This novel is the reason that I read fiction.

Herman Koch

Summer House with Swimming Pool is Herman Koch's second book to be translated into English (from Dutch) after his wildly successful novel The Dinner.  Again we have the unreliable narrator, a physician who has committed an act placing him before the medical board where he is at risk of losing his licence to practice.  This we know from the start.  The action takes place against the idyllic summer house, also (tellingly) not without its own flaws.  Various assorted oily and vituperous people gather here, living the good life until it starts to crumble under the weight of their own despicable behaviour.  Not without humour, thankfully, but humour notwithstanding I still needed a (figurative!) shower after finishing this quick read.

Eyrie by Tim Winton

I am just getting the hang of this so bear with me.  My first post will be about Tim Winton's newest novel Eyrie.  With humour and staggering dialogue, Eyrie is about disgraced environmentalist Tom Keely.  As a result of his high ethical standards he has lost his job, home and his wife and is living in a colourless concrete building in Fremantle, Australia, where he has succumbed to addiction and loneliness.  This solitary man starts to connect with a desperate woman and her young grandson who live on the same floor.  Sounds grim but Winton is wickedly funny writer and Keely's struggle for redemption is rife with humour.  Read this book for the dialogue alone if for nothing else.