Review of ‘White Horse’ by Alex Adams

‘White Horse’ by Alex Adams

Acknowledgement: The review copy of this novel was provided by Simon & Schuster Australia. They posted it on Facebook here

Reviewed by C P Howe

At first glance White Horse, Alex Adams’ first novel, would seem to be part of the current surge in post-apocalyptic fiction. However Adams has created something that stands out from the crowd.

Alternate short sections throughout the book are labelled ‘date: then’ and ‘date: now,’ and using this simple structure Adams skilfully reveals, over the course of nearly 300 pages, the reasons why the main character, Zoe, leaves home and the outcome of her journey. Both sections are told exclusively in the first person by Zoe and Adams’ use of the present tense in both creates considerable tension and drama. We see the story unfold before us without any expectation on Zoe’s part that she will survive. She is not telling us the story from some point in the future; she is telling us what happens as it happens.

At times I was reminded of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Both Zoe, and the unnamed man and boy in The Road, are travelling in in a future where money has no value and other people can’t be trusted. Adams doesn’t flinch from graphic descriptions of the brutality and violence that are a consequence of the disease – White Horse – that has been unleashed on humanity. She gives us just enough detail that we can understand the complexity and despair of what is going on, but we are at as much of a loss as Zoe to explain it. Adams isn’t tempted to give us a convenient, knowledgeable, character who might allow the reader and Zoe to complete the picture. Zoe doesn’t know what’s going on, so we can’t know either, and this is a brave and ultimately successful decision by the author. When revelations do come, their source is as much a surprise to Zoe as to the reader, as is Zoe’s own role in the unfolding of the bigger events going on around her.

Zoe’s ability to survive some of the violence she encounters borders on the incredible. Adams stretched my trust to breaking point, but in the end the depth of character she built up for Zoe means I believed her. Adams’ ability with details, from the doorman in her building to Roma gypsies in Italy, allows the creation of an entirely credible world. Her descriptions of a rapidly depopulating city are utterly convincing, weaving together violence and despair with the everyday challenges of people losing their jobs, or food shortages in the shops.

Adams has a tendency to succumb to cliched metaphors throughout the book which I could have done without although, because the whole story is Zoe speaking, the metaphors are hers which to some extent excuses the author. Nevertheless lines like ‘roads that hug the landscape like a pair of favourite jeans,’ and ‘my daughter’s life is worth as much as a foam cup,’ didn’t sit well with me. I felt Zoe would have been too busy thinking about the challenges she was facing in the present to be distracted by inner metaphoric reflection.

I’m glad to have been asked to review this book. It’s not, perhaps, something I would normally have picked up, but it is imaginative and skilfully written. Readers will know from the outset that it is the first of a trilogy, because it says so on the cover, and this immediately narrows down the kinds of outcome that might be in store for Zoe. What actually happens at the end of the book isn’t something that should be revealed in a review, but I will say that it was both surprising and satisfying. It also sets things up very nicely indeed for the next installment, with an almost perfect combination of resolution and uncertainty.

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Review of ‘Floundering’ by Romy Ash

‘Floundering’ by Romy Ash

Reviewed by C P Howe

You can also read and comment on this review here.

Ash’s first novel, set in Australia, is distinctive and memorable. Whether it does enough to gain the widespread support that some early commentators seem to think it deserves is another matter. The story is centred on Tom, his older brother Jordy, and their mother Loretta. Their ages are not disclosed, but Jordy is probably in his early teens. Tom is a little younger. Loretta is most likely in her late twenties.

Michael Laws would undoubtedly categorise Loretta as ‘feral,’ and Ash does everything she can to re-inforce this perception. Loretta collects the two boys from her parents’ house and they head off on a road trip. Loretta doesn’t have a clue what the boys need, drives a car that is falling apart and full of rubbish, and seems to not have much money. She feeds them junk food from time to time, which she may or may not have stolen. Constantly hot and thirsty, the boys appear glad to be with their mother, as far as we can tell.

And that’s the problem with this book. Told exclusively by Tom, in the first person and the present tense, the novel is at the same time compelling but flawed. Writing convincingly from a child’s point of view is difficult. The circumstances Tom finds himself in are conveyed with an immediacy and directness that’s hard to capture any other way. We see what Tom sees, as he sees it. We feel what he feels, at the time he feels it, because he is telling us all this as it happens. Mark Haddon, in his book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time did the same, but with a level of humour and dramatic tension that Ash doesn’t quite achieve.

We don’t know what Loretta and Jordy see, feel, or think, and that’s fine. Plenty of books stay with one point of view. But by going for the first person narrative in the present Ash needs to write Tom as a twelve year old, with a twelve year old’s world view, experience and knowledge. That is, she needs to write with a limited perspective. We can expect Tom to know he’s thirsty, or he misses his grandparents, or he’s worried about missing school. We don’t expect him to suddenly come out with a metaphor about the sunset, or describe the ‘electric blue of the late afternoon,’ or know the word ‘mewling.’  He may be exceptionally poetic, but most of his account doesn’t lead to that conclusion. Ash drops in childish language to show us that it is Tom speaking. This, again, would be fine if it were consistent, or limited to dialogue, but it’s not. Mostly we have perfect sentences – remember, this is Tom speaking to us – but then we read ‘…them kids…’ or ‘…I ain’t going… .’ I found these attempts to persuade me that I was actually listening to Tom speak achieved quite the opposite. They jolted me out of his world. And the thing is, the book doesn’t need them. As readers, we know and accept that Tom isn’t actually speaking to us, here and now, and we go with it.

In her portrayal of the harshness of rural Australia, and the people who inhabit it, Ash doesn’t flinch. It is unbearably hot. Drivers of utes and trucks are always somewhat threatening. Attendants at remote filling stations are suspicious. Neighbours in caravans appear seedy, and in fact turn out to be so. In other hands, these characters might seem stereotypical but Ash, through Tom, reports a world that we recognise as real, and it is very convincing. This is where the child’s eye works very well. Ash is unspecific about the precise locations, and I wanted to know a little more about where in Australia they were supposed to be, but I accepted that Tom was telling the story and he simply wouldn’t know. With no drawing back from the immediacy of Tom’s experience, no wider perspective, and virtually no reflection on things that happened in the past (the exception is a brief episode, early in the book, where Tom remembers Loretta leaving them at her parents house a year earlier,) the book works almost like a film.

Ash’s real strength is in the skilful way she leads us inevitably into a scenario in which the boys are in danger, in multiple ways, without any single big external event as the cause. I felt I could see, smell and feel their car, the hot blacktop, and the cramped caravan where they end up, thanks to Tom’s straightforward observations. The scene which gives the book its name is truly frightening, but it starts off with Loretta simply trying to do something with her boys that they’ll enjoy as a family. The ending wasn’t a surprise but it also wasn’t predictable. Neither did it tie everything up neatly, which is to Ash’s credit.

I read ‘Floundering’ in two quick sessions. The book is divided into two parts of almost equal length, although there’s nothing really to justify the break. At just over 200 pages, with generous spacing, it is not a long book. Despite my misgivings about the tense and the point of view, I found several of Tom’s experiences jumping back into my mind for days after I’d finished reading, and I also found myself wanting to know what happens after the book finishes. Both are good signs; this isn’t a book that you forget when you put it down. In the end, though, I think the simplicity of both the plot and the narrative isn’t quite enough. I think Ash has more to say, and I’d certainly pick up her next novel, when it arrives, to see what she does next.

Review of ‘Imagine: The Science of Creativity’ by Jonah Lehrer

‘Imagine: The Science of Creativity’ by Jonah Lehrer

Published by The Text Publishing Company, 2012

Reviewed by C P Howe

You can also read and comment on this review here.

Imagine: The Science of Creativity, by an implausibly young Jonah Lehrer (he was just 30 when this book was published,) taps into the increasingly popular genre linking science with popular culture and the arts. Lehrer pitches himself somewhere between Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast, and Slow) and Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Outliers.) Gladwell is even quoted on the cover of Imagine praising Lehrer’s scientific and authorial expertise. Lehrer’s book takes a similar line to Outliers, with its use of well-known people as examples and case studies. With chapter titles like ‘Bob Dylan’s Brain,’ and ‘The Shakespeare Paradox,’ Lehrer is to a certain extent playing down the complexity of the content in order to not scare off readers who might be daunted by more scientific language.

Anyone who has tried to dream up a new product, or write a poem, or put paint on a canvas, knows all too well that the circumstances in which creativity happens are hard to define and predict. Lehrer acknowledges this in his introduction. In a few short pages he promises (in a breathless, fast moving and rather too clean a run through of the way a major US corporation changed the face of floor cleaning products) that his book will tell the ‘real’ story of how we imagine. I was hooked by his introduction, and I think most readers would be. But would the rest of the book deliver on his grand promise?

What Lehrer has tried to do, with some success, is construct a framework to help us understand the kinds of circumstances in which creativity thrives. If we know what these circumstances are we can use them to help us, and the people around us, be more creative. Lehrer says that self-knowledge about the way creative thinking happens is vitally important to ensure we are using the tool inside our head – our brain – to its maximum capacity.

The first part of the book, headed ‘Alone,’ looks at five concepts of solo creativity, and the second part – predictably called ‘Together’ – looks at three concepts for being creative in groups. Inevitably, as with any kind of classification, there will be criticism about forcing people or ideas into boxes. Some will likely say straight away, ‘Only eight?’ or ‘I know of some creative activity that doesn’t fit neatly into one of Lehrer’s boxes.’ But I suspect most people will find themselves nodding in recognition and agreement. From the role of stimulants, to measures of social connectivity as a predictor of the success of Broadway musicals; from learning to let go, to the way Shakespeare’s success was as much about the times he lived in as his talent, it is hard not to find delight as well as inspiration in Lehrer’s account. Like many of the best concepts, they seem blindingly obvious now that Lehrer has turned them into highly readable material, with the added assurance of being backed up by real science.

Lehrer has developed a specific approach to his writing in this book, and he sticks to it. Snappy, short sentences start each section, often dropping a name. ‘Bob Dylan looks bored.’ ‘Mark Beeman was stumped.’ ‘Geoffrey West doesn’t eat lunch.’ ‘David Byrne loves bicycles.’ Lehrer draws you into each chapter with stories about creative breakthroughs that are often part of a shared canvas of popular culture; stories that are, almost, folklore. Once you’re safely in, he throws another, less well known example at you, usually from the world of business and then, when he’s sure you’re past the point of no return, he hits you with a serious look at the science that explains the particular aspect of creativity he’s just illustrated. This is a book that requires some attention; to his credit Lehrer doesn’t skimp on the technical details of the science. The structure of the book also lends itself to dipping in and out. Picking off specific chapters works very well, as they effectively stand alone, and there is an excellent index.

I suspect Lehrer has left out some of the grittier, less satisfying aspects of creativity. He acknoweldges the role of persistence and patience – as long as it pays off in the end – but one of the reasons he is easy to read is that he doesn’t let a great deal of conflict get in the way of his story. The word doesn’t even appear in the index. Lehrer describes a Pixar employee questioning Steve Jobs’ decision to ‘force’ people to interact by designing the new Pixar office in a way that meant people had to ‘bump into each other.’ But before the end of the paragraph we have that employee saying, ‘you know what, [Jobs] was right.’ Lehrer skips over most of what must have been considerable resistance, focussing instead on how Jobs’ ideas support Lehrer’s concepts about how creativity happens – in this case, the way informal interactions allow new ideas to flourish or, as Lehrer calls it, ‘The Power of Q.’ In fact the only real account of conflict happens in the same chapter, where Lehrer describes the Pixar team’s approach to achieving perfection, which involves sharp criticism in early morning meetings coupled with ‘plussing’ – their term for being constructive.

The anecdote about Steve Jobs and Pixar illustrates a specific shortcoming of the book. Although Lehrer includes a list of sources, they are not footnoted, but instead referenced by page number. (This is in addition to the index.) So when we read about the Pixar employee’s comments, we can’t tell where they came from. Did the employee tell Lehrer directly? Or is Lehrer reporting one of the many anecdotes about Jobs that have been published in recent years? If we want to find out, we have to skip to the back of the book, and skim through until we are in the vicinity of the page number. If the page is listed, then we have to read the reference to see if it is about the point we are interested in. Only by doing this can we confirm, or not, whether Lehrer has chosen to reference the point. Many of his sources, including direct interviews or telephone calls, are indeed referenced but some of them – including this one – are not, and I found that frustrating.

What Lehrer does exceptionally well is combine stories about creativity in business, popular culture and scientific discovery with explanations about the way the brain works. He doesn’t gloss over the science, and he writes well. All this makes for a good read and a serious account, as you’d expect from someone with Lehrer’s credentials – a Rhodes scholar at Oxford; a graduate of Columbia University; and a writer with two best selling books on the subject already under his belt. In my view, the first five chapters dealing with individual creativity seem to hold together better than the last three which, if boiled down, all have a similar message: interacting in a variety of places with a variety of people – some of whom we know, some of whom we don’t, some of whom think like us, some of whom don’t – leads to new ideas. Nevertheless, the detail Lehrer gives us in these last three chapters – including Pixar, Silicon Valley, New York, and Elizabethan London, amongst others – are fascinating, entertaining and remarkable.

Less satisfying is the lack of a critical assessment of the science of creativity. Lehrer has chosen examples in science, business and the arts that fit perfectly his eight categories. There are no square pegs here, although there must be in the real world. In this book no-one comes up with creative ideas that turn out to be artistic or commercial failures. Or at least, if they do, they are initial attempts, or exploratory ventures, and their proponents quickly move on to success. There is no acknowledgement, in a concluding chapter or afterword, that there might other categories of solo or group creativity yet to be identified, or that this book might not, in fact, be the last word on the subject. Lehrer concedes at the end that, despite all the studies and the evidence he has gathered, there is still something mysterious about creativity, something magical – and here he uses a story about the magicians Penn and Teller to make absolutely sure we get his point – about the moment when an new idea springs into a person’s mind.

Despite its shortcomings, and despite the fact that I didn’t warm to Jonah Lehrer on the page, this is a great book. Reflecting on my mixed reactions to it, I came to the conclusion that one of the reasons it succeeds is that the reader can live vicariously all the triumphs of creativity it describes – and there are lots of them. If only we had the option of retreating to a cabin in Woodstock, like Dylan, or designing Pixar’s new office, like Jobs, then we too could have been responsible for creating Highway 61 Revisited or Toy Story 2.  The people in this book start off with nothing – relatively speaking – and end up with extraordinary creations. This is a book that makes you believe in yourself and your potential to be creative, and that is perhaps its greatest achievement.

Imagine will entertain, impress and inspire you. You will wonder whether you could be the next Michael Ondaatje, Lady Gaga or Mark Zuckerberg by painting your study blue, taking drugs, or relocating to Greenwich Village. However on the question of which of his eight options you should choose he is virtually silent and, for that reason, I am quite sure this isn’t the last word we’ll hear from Jonah Lehrer on creativity.