Perhaps because I've been planning the writing of my first novel (which at this stage is just a treatment and a lot of online research), I've allowed myself a detour from the usual steady diet of non-fiction these past couple of weeks and read two works of fiction by two of the biggest names on either side of the Atlantic. As it happened, although I treated myself to both in hardback, which do look lovely on a shelf, neither was very long.



On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
I have only read one Ian McEwan in full before, and that was Saturday, which I was drawn to because it was set on the day of the big anti-war march in London, which like thousands of others, I was on. I had attempted A Child In Time and Atonement and given up with both very early on, so something went right with Saturday. I really enjoyed it. The ridiculous detail about squash and neurosurgery, for instance, which struck some as showing off, really worked for me. On Chesil Beach also had associations for me, as I've been to Chesil Beach on a number of occasions, all connected with Billy Bragg, who lives near there. I read the inevitable extract in the Guardian, fell in love with the beautiful photographic cover, and paid my 12.99 (with three pounds off in Borders). It's a bold concept: just the story of one wedding night in the late 60s, on the Dorset coast, that manages to form a sort of monument to the shifting sands of British society at a pivotal moment in its development from postwar to post-postwar (we're spending the evening with a couple who haven't, cough, done it before, and therein lies the struggle between expectation and reality). Again, you have to admire McEwan's prose. He really gets inside the heads of this couple as they wrestle with, well, everything but each other. Their past. Their future. The bad things that happened in their childhood. It's a swift read, but a full-blooded one. I didn't, but you could read it in one sitting, easy. That's probably the best way. It unfolds in real time, virtually. Wait for the paperback though. There's not a lot in here for a tenner.




Falling Man by Don DeLillo
I have only started one DeLillo before - inevitably, Underworld, which hooked me in at the baseball game, but lost me thereafter. I admit, I have to be pretty intoxicated to get into a novel. There was a time, in my twenties, when I went through the likes of Stephen King, Martin Amis and Kurt Vonnegut like a dose of salts. I couldn't stop reading fiction. I did all the obvious cool novels: Salinger, Kerouac, Heller, Reinhart etc. I'm glad I did. But something changed in the 90s, and non-fiction turned my head. I suddenly had no time for the fripperies of made-up stuff and wanted to learn. This, I think, was my way of atoning for the substandard way I was taught history at school. Or something premillennial. Anyway, to Falling Man. Again, the extract in the Guardian, again the beautiful photographic cover, but this time, there was an actual compulsion to read it, as it's about September 11, which, as you know, I am obsessed by.

DeLillo has, I understand, written on these themes before, but this is what you get: a bunch of highbrow characters speaking dialogue that nobody would ever say in real life as they come to terms with either directly surviving the collapse of the Twin Towers, or just living in the shadow of that event. It's a tough book. You feel you could drop it down a lift shaft and it would be OK. DeLillo deliberately keeps back key information, like names, for instance, and forces you to live with his characters, as the narrative skips about between them and work it out as you go along. I got bored two thirds of the way through, which may have been something to do with all the poker, and I felt that Martin Amis had made a better job of getting inside the head of the one of the hijackers. These terrorist flashbacks were entertaining, and a relief from all the Upper West Side navel-gazing, but It was a bit like DeLillo having his 9/11 cake and eating it: doing the aftermath, and then sneakily going back in time to do the preamble with the flight school and the praying to Allah. Make your mind up. Is it a before or after novel?

I was actually glad when it was over. Not because I was disliking reading it that much - in fact, I'm glad I stuck with it, as there is a rhythm to his prose that pays back over a longer period - but because he finally used his powers to describe what it was like for his main character to be in the Tower when the plane hit. Saving the best bit till the end, eh? (This is not a spoiler - there's nothing to spoil. It starts with September 11 and ends with it, and in between there's a lot of poker, talk about art and talk about talk.)

I expect people to now implore me to read Underworld or Atonement. Maybe I will. The covers of these books remain beautiful, and both will look nice on the shelf next to all the books about military history and eating.