I’ve read The Hearing Trumpet, which was presented earlier on the blog by my cat.

The book is described as an “occult twin of Alice in Wonderland” but I don’t think it’s accurate. If it can be compared to any book at all then it’s probably a very drunk version of Narnia.

The author, Leonora Carrington, was an eccentric person. She would cover her feet with mustard while sitting in a restaurant and would serve her guests breakfast made of their own hair that she had cut off while they were sleeping. Thus, I’m not sure if Leonora needed the help of any substances to create this book or it came to her naturally.

The book feels like a lucid dream controlled by a fantasy loving person. The story starts with an old lady and cats but quickly progresses to a fairytale touched up by an apocalyptic approach. I’m not even sure if Leonora Carrington wanted to write the book or the book just happened accidentally while Leonora was having fun imagining her dream world.

The Hearing Trumpet has a hilarious main character and is very quotable. Here are some of the quotes:

• “The fact that I have no teeth and never could wear dentures does not in any way discomfort me. I don’t have to bite anybody and there are all sorts of soft edible foods easy to procure and digestible to the stomach. […] I never eat meat as I think it is wrong to deprive animals of their life when they are so difficult to chew anyway.”
• “If I remember correctly writers usually find some excuse for their books, although why one should excuse oneself for having such a quiet and peaceful occupation I really don’t know. Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody.”
• “It is impossible to understand how millions and millions of people all obey a sickly collection of gentlemen that call themselves ‘Government’. […] It is a form of planetary hypnosis, and very unhealthy’”
• “I’m sure it would be very pleasant and healthy for human beings to have no authority whatever. They would have to think for themselves, instead of always being told what to do.”

I still can’t suggest this book to anybody because I’m not sure it’s possible to enjoy the book without hitting a moment of occult overdose at some point.

The Third Policeman was written by a person called Brian O’Nolan under the pseudonym Flann O’Brien. It was written between 1939 and 1940 but was published only much later by O’Nolan’s widow. It was called a masterpiece, but O’Nolan never learned about this. During his life two publishers refused to publish his book. One of the publishers told O’Nolan to “become less fantastic”. O’Nolan then placed the manuscript in his kitchen where he could see it, but told his friends that the manuscript was lost when it flew out of his car, page by page.

The Third Policeman is surreal, absurd and funny. I listened to the audiobook which is not the best medium for this book. It should be read to be understood better. Still, it seems like at some places the book is supposed to be too absurd to comprehend.

The Third Policeman is like Alice in Wonderland where Alice is a one-legged criminal and the Wonderland is macabre and even more surreal.

The aftertaste of the book is dark and haunting but you will laugh a lot while reading it. I laughed so hard I disturbed people around me. At some places, though, the book gets so tedious it feels like toothache. It is boring for the same reason as it is genius. The book’s essence is in its dialogues and philosophy. There are many references to the works of a fictional philosopher called De Selby. De Selby has lots of peculiar beliefs. For example, one of his theories is that the Earth is not a sphere but a sausage. For each such theory De Selby provides a proof. It gets simultaneously boring and funny, you never know which one will happen next. De Selby as a creation was so successful that he was used in other books too, one of which was written by a different author.

The ideas of The Third Policeman were used for Lost TV series. Also, I can see the resemblance between the book’s ideas and the ones of Lucifer TV series.

The Third Policeman is an influential book. It might be disliked by readers who prefer more action, but it’s the right book for people with an unconventional sense of humor who wouldn’t mind to be puzzled by impossible ideas.

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Sometimes the word “a book” does not describe a creation well enough. All books are different but some books are just more than books. Apart from telling you a story, they bring a whole new world along with them. I don’t mean a world like the one with Tolkien’s hobbits, lands and languages. It doesn’t have to be that gigantic. But when you read it you start being aware of something that hasn’t been there before.

Everything Under is this kind of book. In no way is it just another story. In fact, the story itself is quite transparent. You can easily guess what’s going on if you read carefully (or if you google the book and get a major spoiler in the first lines of the description. Don’t google the book!)

Everything Under is a story about a river, a mother, a daughter. It has fantasies that merge into lives and become a reality.

The main treasure of the book is its language. It’s been a lifetime since I saw something so beautifully, intricately written. You can take a sentence and watch it as a separate piece of art. I read some of the phrases aloud several times just to see how beautifully they unfold.

If there were prizes for the best magic performed with words Daisy Johnson would be the winner. She doesn’t just give you descriptions. She lays out words that you don’t expect to see but then you watch them grow into a perfect construction conveying exactly what the author meant. When it’s getting late and the characters are near the river, the author doesn’t just say “it was getting dark”. She says: “The water had lost its colour”

The water had lost its colour… Precise and perfect.

I’ve marked a lot of phrases in the book. I go through them like through a gallery of beautiful paintings. There’s a whole collection now taken from one short book.

Everything Under will not be beautiful for everybody. You’ll have to savour the lines to see what they mean and how they unravel. Also, some moments in the book will make you cringe, although even my prude self shut up this time to let me enjoy the book. But if you like watching the beauty of the words put perfectly together, and you are looking for something special for your literary senses this book is for you.

Genre: magical realism
Stars from Goodreads: 4.04
Stars from me: 5
Available on Amazon

As soon as I opened the book, I recognised the sensation, the feeling you get when you are reading a book where something surreal is being presented as ordinary. Soon I became sure it was written by somebody who was copying Gabriel García Márquez. I usually despise the impostors. This time, though, I didn’t want the imitator to stop. It was good, authentic.

This is selfish but when Gabriel García Márquez passed away, my first thought was: One Hundred Years of Solitude will never happen again. I felt orphaned. But now, here it was, a mystical world, flowing from the pages, resurrected. The resemblance was so strong it made me want to cry.

I then did my research on the book and quickly discovered that I got the connection right, but mixed up the sequence. Juan Rulfo was not copying Gabriel García Márquez. He wrote Pedro Paramo long before One Hundred Years of Solitude even existed. Márquez got a copy of Pedro Paramo and loved it so much, he learned it by heart, “forwards and backwards”, as he said. That was Pedro Paramo that inspired Márquez to create One Hundred Years of Solitude. I was not reading an impostor but a predecessor. Gabriel García Márquez opened the doors that Juan Rulfo had found.

If you love One Hundred Years of Solitude, read Pedro Paramo and meet your beloved ghosts again.