Curt's Read-Bag: The Ghost
Title: The Ghost
By: Robert Harris (Simon & Schuster, 335 pp.)
Concerning: A professional ghostwriter takes on the job of completing the memoirs of an English Prime Minister recently voted out of office when the previous writer dies - under mysterious circumstances! Any resemblance to Tony Blair is purely intentional.
Quote: “And so we swapped memories for hour after hour, and I will not say we began to concoct a childhood for Lang, exactly - I was careful not to depart from the known historical record - but we certainly pooled our experiences to such an extent that a few of my memories inevitably became blended into his. You may find this shocking. I was shocked myself, the first time I heard one of my clients on television weepily describing a poignant moment from his past that was actually from my past. But there it is. People who succeed in life are rarely reflective. Their gaze is always on the future: that’s why they succeed.”
Verdict: As much as I liked Harris’ Roman historical novels that I read earlier this year, Imperium and Pompeii, and intrigued though I was by the stories about Harris’ relationship with and disillusionment with Blair, I found the novel a bit disappointing. Initially there’s a compelling, persuasive portrait of Ex.-P.M. “Adam Lang” and his entourage adjusting to life out of power, and there’s some surprisingly interesting details about the procedures of professional ghostwriting. But the sleuthing and conspiracy plot feel both familiar and preposterous, and when Harris spends seemingly endless pages describing Martha’s Vineyard as a deserted winter wasteland, or follows his narrator as he conducts his investigation by Google, the novel feels like a missed opportunity - I wanted more of the Adam Lang character. It’s unmistakably angry at Tony Blair and his relationship to United States, Iraq and the War on Terror (there’s a long definition of “waterboarding”), which gives it some authenticity, I guess. But of all the genre books I read in a given year, this is one of the rare ones that strikes me as “trashy.”
By: Robert Harris (Simon & Schuster, 335 pp.)
Concerning: A professional ghostwriter takes on the job of completing the memoirs of an English Prime Minister recently voted out of office when the previous writer dies - under mysterious circumstances! Any resemblance to Tony Blair is purely intentional.
Quote: “And so we swapped memories for hour after hour, and I will not say we began to concoct a childhood for Lang, exactly - I was careful not to depart from the known historical record - but we certainly pooled our experiences to such an extent that a few of my memories inevitably became blended into his. You may find this shocking. I was shocked myself, the first time I heard one of my clients on television weepily describing a poignant moment from his past that was actually from my past. But there it is. People who succeed in life are rarely reflective. Their gaze is always on the future: that’s why they succeed.”
Verdict: As much as I liked Harris’ Roman historical novels that I read earlier this year, Imperium and Pompeii, and intrigued though I was by the stories about Harris’ relationship with and disillusionment with Blair, I found the novel a bit disappointing. Initially there’s a compelling, persuasive portrait of Ex.-P.M. “Adam Lang” and his entourage adjusting to life out of power, and there’s some surprisingly interesting details about the procedures of professional ghostwriting. But the sleuthing and conspiracy plot feel both familiar and preposterous, and when Harris spends seemingly endless pages describing Martha’s Vineyard as a deserted winter wasteland, or follows his narrator as he conducts his investigation by Google, the novel feels like a missed opportunity - I wanted more of the Adam Lang character. It’s unmistakably angry at Tony Blair and his relationship to United States, Iraq and the War on Terror (there’s a long definition of “waterboarding”), which gives it some authenticity, I guess. But of all the genre books I read in a given year, this is one of the rare ones that strikes me as “trashy.”