Books Burn Badly

That is the title of a very odd novel by Spanish author Manuel Rivas. Set in Galicia in 1936, it follows a number of characters whose lives are changed by the emergence of Franco’s fascist government. I say ‘a number’ of characters, because it is virtually impossible to keep track of them all. Once you embrace the fact that you’re never really going to know exactly what is happening to which character, you can sit back and let the various intertwining stories wash over you.

In a small town, down by the quayside, the fascists are burning books. We meet the motley inhabitants of the town - a judge, a gravedigger, a boxer, a painter, a washerwoman – and are whisked away into their memories and stories. (If that sounds a bit contrived, it’s partly because I’m oversimplifying but also partly because it is. But no more so than any other collection of people sharing stories, say, on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, or whatever.)

Throughout the novel books are burned, buried, rescued, bought, sold and stolen. They are treated very interestingly by the author, who clearly regards them as a form of solidified – almost personified - knowledge. Polka, The superstitious gravedigger, remarks that the burning books gave off a smell like burning flesh. The ever-rational judge suggests that this is merely their leather bindings, but Rivas portrays the bonfire and its repercussions vividly in terms of human tragedy. Book burning and physical repression merge as Rivas deliberately conflates knowledge and humanity.

The author’s concern is with words being scattered and destroyed, and this shapes his narrative. It is chaotic, with most characters not being clearly introduced and several of them going by more than one name to add to the confusion. Polka is a standout character because he is witty and entertaining and, crucially, is fully developed by Rivas. Many others are not so well developed, and remain as shadowy names and ideas throughout, which can be frustrating if you let it get to you. Perhaps my expectations are too conventional.

In the way it is constructed, Books Burn Badly seems to have a lot in common with Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. They are both books full of surprising and beautiful sentences with some very interesting perspectives on mundane things. But neither of them feels like a novel. I thought that Calvino’s book seemed more like a collection of very short stories or a scrapbook full of ideas, and the same can be said of Books Burn Badly.

This is really a consequence of it lacking a central plot. Rivas has a theme – the impact of fascism – and although this affects various characters in various ways it doesn’t really bind the book together. This can sometimes make reading it a bit of a chore. Whereas Calvino’s Invisible Cities is a playful and thought-provoking 150 pages, Books Burn Badly clocks in at a meaty 550, and suffers as a result.

Rivas creates a bewildering experience for his reader, caught amid the charred fragments of dozens of separate stories. As I said, this can be difficult to follow, with the consequence that this unique book never quite draws you in or delivers all that the author is clearly capable of.

Fiction for the Unemployed: my five favourite charity bookstore bargains

1. Cervantes – Don Quixote

Although it has only featured indirectly in this blog, Cervantes’ weighty masterpiece was the fruit of one of my first visits to the Oxfam bookshop in Muswell Hill. It’s hard to underestimate Cervantes’ influence on countless later authors, including – glancing down this list - Eco and Burgess. And in terms of the sheer quantity of book for the price, this one is a winner. Don’t sneer; it’s an important factor.

2. Umberto Eco – Baudolino

I think Eco has gained a boost from the fact that I read Baudolino very recently. However, it is an excellent novel, and might even be credited with rekindling my enthusiasm for medieval history after my dissertation poured cold water all over it. Swashbuckling adventure and dusty manuscripts can sit comfortably alongside each other, as this novel proves.

3. Martin Amis – London Fields

This is a work in progress, a novel I’m reading at the moment, but it is pretty phenomenal. A murder story set in the seedy Portobello Road, where murderer and murderee are marked out from the outset. Keep your eyes peeled for a post on it in the near future.

4. Anthony Burgess – The Devil’s Mode

Anthony Burgess has very rapidly become one of my favourite authors. His novels are both witty and sophisticated, and his short stories share this excellent balance between serious learning and human life with all its bodily functions. This collection resurrects a host of characters from history, literature and music, and delivers them all in vivid, bite-sized stories.

5. Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities

If Cervantes won the prize for number of words vs. capital investment, Calvino’s slender tome is the exact opposite, but is nonetheless full of very interesting ideas. A light book, but containing some philosophically dense concepts of utopian societies, Invisible Cities really benefits from being viewed as a collection of short stories united by a broad theme, rather than a novel as such.

Well, there we go. I’m afraid this list is very Eurocentric, and it doesn’t really reflect a lot of great American literature. But Melville, Hemingway and Vonnegut would all be contenders if I’d actually got them from charity shops. I’d like to thank the Oxfam bookshops of Muswell Hill and Crouch End, and the upstanding and thoroughly middle class citizens of those areas who read so widely and pass their books on to a good cause: me.