Matthew De Abaitua's 'The Red Men' and Harry Matthews' 'Cigarettes.'

Are the two books I've been reading. Finished The Red Men last week and enjoyed it thoroughly. It's imaginative and ambitious as well as being very British, which was great. There's an obvious love/ hate thing with Hackney going on - mainly love - which I enjoyed too. My only criticism was that the characters didn't talk like people, but more like manifestos, or writers. For a man that spent a period as Will Self's amanuensis though, that's probably to be expected.

Harry Matthew's 'Cigarettes' is a work of genius. I've read 'My Life in CIA' and 'The Sinking of the Ondradek Stadium' previously, and I think this is the best of the three (although I haven't finished it.) Matthews was (is?) the only American member of the Oulipo, a great friend of Georges Perec, and a tirelessly experimental writer. The book tells the story of a set of well to do (on the surface) Americans in New York between the 30's and the 60's. It does so via a series of overlapping chapters exploring the relationships between a particular pair of these characters.

The writing is so fluid and compelling, and the characterisation so masterful and deep, that you forget that a tremendous amount of plotting and planning must have gone into the book's structure. I really admire the subtle, restrained writing of the relationship between Phoebe and Owen, as their relationship descends into something horrifying, sinister and damaging. On the other hand, the explicit, unflinching account of Lewis' sexual predilictions is equally brilliant. Not many writers have confronted the desire to be physically and ritually abused and humiliated, at least not in the form of actual crucifixion.

The consummate ease with which this novel works is both inspiring and shaming for me currently. I've started a new project with an experimental structure and I'm finding it increasingly difficult. It takes a certain mind and a certain love for complex, puzzle-like plots to write these things. I've never been one for giant sheets of paper all over the walls with lines between characters etc etc. Still, I persevere. At the very least I might be able to hack a straight novel out of it anyway.