The question asked by homo sapiens looking up, down and around is what is the meaning of it all? Priests and scientists make a stab at the answer, as do philosophers and astrologers, intellectuals and mystics _ none satisfactorily. Which brings the query back to us.
A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks 294pp, 2013 Vintage paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 325 baht
What have our emotions, thoughts, action, experience taught us? Is the answer in there _ in us _ somewhere? Is our life planned in advance and we follow the heavenly script? Is having faith the key? Is there a key? Does growing older mean growing wiser? Or does growing older make life more a mystery than less?
Novelists writing on this theme ask these questions in their books, then answer them. In A Possible Life British scribe Sebastian Faulks presents five stories in 294 pages. They are set in the UK and France, the UK and the US. Each is different. All are depressing.
His view of life is that it is incomprehensible and unpredictable. Only rarely do our hopes and dreams come true. And when they do the results are disappointing. Our parents are our worst enemies. Their other interests take priority. Even when dad doesn't lose his job and mom doesn't abandon the family.
Faulks is best at describing lovers, made for each other. Only to have something happen. One dies or goes away or rivals for their affection enter their lives. Later they wed others, or one does. There's the English language teacher who is trained as a spy, dropped into France during World War II, is captured and spends years in SS death camps.
Perhaps saddest is the boy sent to an orphanage by the parents that can't afford to feed him. What he goes through during his decade there is told in infuriating detail. Charles Dickens couldn't have described it more vividly. And the man torn between two sisters, not choosing the one he made pregnant.
The most interesting story is the last: A Door Into Heaven. But only music buffs will fully appreciate it. Anya, a North Dakota runaway from her abusive family, takes refuge on an Indian reservation and finds that she has the ability to write songs, words and music, and plays then to audiences on her guitar. She has a torrid affair with a British pianist. But it isn't to be.
A character in every story wonders out loud about the meaning of life. Faulks shrugs as if to say: It beats me. This reviewer, a freethinker, agrees.
The Power Trip by Jackie Collins 517pp, 2012 Simon & Schuster paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 325 baht
Sex front and centre
Brit Jackie Collins _ sister of actress Joan Collins _ found her niche as an author by penning racy novels about Hollywood. She's spent a good deal of time there over several decades and no one is more familiar with Tinseltown. Though she seldom uses real names, from her descriptions, we know who they are.
To hear Jackie tell it the actors, actresses, directors, producers, cinemoguls, wannabes are on a perpetual sexual merry-go-round. Marriage is a cover-up for husbands and wives _ straight, gay, lesbians, perverts to do their thing. Now and again jealousy raises its ugly head and there's a scandal.
Time was when censors insisted that coupling in stories be represented by dots, the act left to the imagination. And readers have vivid imaginations. Nowadays, however, coupling is spelled out, all but diagrammed, and the mechanics don't turn us on. It's like watching a plumber at work.
The author tried to tickle our libido delineating boobs, bums, organs, throwing in bimbos, nymphomaniacs, oversexed men, rapes, incest. Which must appeal to horny fans of both genders, as she has so many of them. Not to mention those of her works adapted to the big screen.
The Power Trip under review offers the same ingredients. The beautiful people _ Jackie's milieu _ not the jets et this time around but the luxury yacht set _ are invited by Russian billionaire Alexandr on a cruise. Half her 517-page, 99 chapters plus epilogue tale gives a capsule background of the guests and crew, with lots of sex. What Alexandr doesn't know _ but the reader does _ is that he has an enemy in Russian drug tsar Sergei, who means to have the yacht hijacked, its celebrities (including a US senator who can't keep his zipper closed) held for ransom. To this end, a Mexican bandit recruits a bunch of Somali pirates.
The baddies quickly enter the sexcapade. Can the unarmed guests get the best of the Uzi-toting nogoodniks? Bodies pile up on both sides in their attempts to do, one while coupling. Jackie throws in a speedboat chase for good measure. Ultimately, the US Coast Guard shows up.
The plot has more holes than a sieve and is overlong, yet it holds our interest. This reviewer didn't recognise any of the characters, yet may be certain that she had actual persons in mind. Adding illustrations to the coupling scenes would be a boon. Just a thought.
