Oxygen

Rating:
Summary: What was the point?
Review: A friend highly recommended the book, partly because - since I'm Hungarian - one of the characters is an aging Hungarian playwright in Paris who'd once fought in the '56 revolution.

Miller's writing style flows beautifully.

But it flows nowhere. There are two distinct stories - bridged by the the play Oxygene. In one story, the Valentine sons gather to be with their mother, Alice, who is dying of lung cancer (she was a smoker you see). One of the sons, Alec is also translating the play Oxygene (written by the aging Hungarian in Paris).

As Alice lies dying, Laszlo the Hungarian playwright is enjoying life in Paris with his young lover, rubbing facial cream into his skin to rejuvenate it, and mourning his lack of bravery during the revolution when he failed to save a dear friend.

Oxygen is presumably the symbolic bridge that connects the two parts of this book since there's absolutely no other connection between the Valentines' story and Laszlo's story. We breathe oxygen you see to live. Alice is dying because she can no longer breathe. And so forth. A somewhat strained metaphor.

The journey through a tale is made exciting and meaningful by an emerging character arc: there was next to none for the characters in this book.

Maybe I"m old fashioned. I like a story. And I think I'm tired of reading books about dysfunctional families, and the failed 'average man'. No matter how nice the writing style.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Andrew Miller's Oxygen is a wonderful novel, one that seamlessly shifts from one story to the next and then back again, one that focuses on human needs--from oxygen, to love, to family, to reconciliation. The novel focuses on the people surrounding (some directly, some indirectly) Alice Valentine, a dying woman in Great Britain. Her older son, Larry, is trying to save his marriage and his finances, while ruining his acting career through porn movies. Her younger son Alec is trying to see which portions of his life are worth saving, while at the same time trying to help his mother in any way he can. He is a translator of plays by Laszlo Lazar, a Hungarian exile living in Paris. The novel also focuses on Lazar's attempt to reconcile his current life, with the life he left behind in Hungary. All the novel's characters are real people, with real stories. Well done.

Rating:
Summary: Subtle and Beautiful
Review: By the time I finished this book, I really wondered what the connection was between the two stories of the story: the story of the Valentine family grappling with the death of the family matriarch, Alice, and the story of Hungarian playwright Lazlo who's caught up in some sort of political intrigue. Then, as rarely happens, I understood that the connection is in Lazlo's play, where at the end the miners underground begin to try tunneling up while someone above ground begins trying to tunnel down to save them. In this case, I'd say the two sides tunneling towards each other are Alice's son Alec (who's also translating the play into English) and Lazlo, but I might be wrong. The play ends ambiguously and so does Miller's book.

Ordinarily I would have panned this book because when it ends, there is no resolution, but understanding the metaphor (or hoping I do), it makes sense to me. So I can understand why Miller ended the novel where he did. Still, as a reader I prefer concrete endings that resolve the issues being brought up in the book.

My problem, another rarity, is that the book is too short. I was just getting to understand the characters and then the book is over, I'd have liked more time to flesh them out better. The other problem is that not a lot of interesting stuff happens. There's no action, there's not even a lot of dialogue, it's more about people THINKING about things, which while it gives us insight into the characters, does not make for an interesting story. Give me some love scenes, some car chases, a barroom brawl, SOMETHING other than characters contemplating the sad state of the universe.

Anyway, what anyone reading this is wondering by now is: should I buy this book? I'd say yes, but only if you've nothing else to read. Miller's writing is good, the characters are decent, and all the contemplating does make you think.

Rating:
Summary: Rises to the challenge
Review: In his third novel, Andrew Miller leaves behind the 18th-century England of his previous work and gives us a story set in the summer of 1997. Miller deserves credit for taking action to avoid being typecast as only a writer of historical fiction: he clearly excels at much more.

In "Oxygen" Miller sets himself the challenge of scripting a novel that incorporates several different plot threads, some of which eventually intertwine, some of which never do. The story comes alive thanks to a cast of credibly flawed characters: in California, washed-up British actor Larry Valentine is battling debt and drugs in what seems a doomed effort to save his marriage, while back in England his mother Alice, in the last phase of terminal cancer, is being cared for by her other son, Larry's weak-kneed younger brother Alec. Still struggling to find direction in his life after romantic failure and a breakdown of his own, Alec is engaged in translating "Oxygène", the latest play by celebrated Hungarian exile László Lázár. In Paris, Lázár himself hosts dinner parties with his lover Kurt and a handful of old friends, blissfully unaware that his life is about to be turned upside down.

I felt "Oxygen" to be a novel about challenges, about promises kept and unkept, about people who find courage within themselves to an extent that would surprise all who knew them, and about people who let others down when they least expect it. Before the story is over all of Miller's characters have been challenged in some way or another - and their reactions are often surprising, but sometimes, sadly, just what we would expect of them. Adept at characterization, Miller makes his cast live and breathe to a degree few authors can match, and his talent for travel writing was an unexpected treat: whether narrating Lázár's movements across Paris or Larry's hilarious commuter plane flight in California, he makes you feel like you're there. A novel about challenges, then, that was itself a challenge to create - one the author has met admirably.

Rating:
Summary: Intense and painful, full of regret and guilt
Review: Oxygen is the story of a family struggling to come together around the pending death of Alice, the mother, at her home in the lovely English countryside.
There are two sons. Larry, a former TV soap opera star who is sliding into the sleazy world of porn flicks in order to earn some much-needed money and salvage his dissolving marriage, is the more gregarious, outgoing brother. Alec is the shy and bumbling one who has never really left Mum, working as a translator and being jealous of his successful brother. He's presently at work translating a play by Laszlo Lazar, a Hungarian exile who's living the good life - but is haunted by his betrayal of comrades during the 1956 uprising when he was a member of an underground group of activists. Laszlo's parallel story, in which he's given an opportunity to atone for his past, runs alongside that of the English family and intersects it in odd ways.
Shifting between several locales - England, Paris, California, and Budapest - the author manages to hold it all together to create characters we really care about, even when they are not behaving well to each other. At the back of it all is Alice, watching while she's dying, and it's agonizing to live the story thru her eyes. This is a wise, warm, painful, and utterly engrossing novel.

Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking
Review: The book, you see, was on sale when I bought it, seventy-five percent off. A bargain, I thought to myself, and a Booker Prize short-list as well. The second reason, the book being a nominee of the prize, is probably the main reason why I bought the book, but to tell you the truth, I can't remember now.

Remembering the past, and rationalising the consequences of certain past deeds are two significant themes of this breathtaking novel. It, OXYGEN by Alex Miller, is not a disappointing read. Laszlo's story is a heartbraking melodrama of a once beautiful life that is now, although one could still consider as productive if not desirable, shattered. The re-collection of his past is unforgettable. Painful. Intelligently written. The Valentines' are also characters of substance, but reading their stories can be frustrating at times. Like reading a Faulkner.

This is one book that should remind you why we, the public, should continually support good writers like Miller. This is a book that reminds me of Ishiguro's THE ARTIST OF THE FLOATING WORLD. Subtle, beautiful, breath-taking.

Rating:
Summary: Eloquent and emotionally resonant
Review: The ink from Andrew Miller's pen flows with such natural grace and ease there's a hushed sense of intimacy in the rhythmn of his prose. The experience is not dissimilar to tuning into a confession. But don't read the blurb and jump to the conclusion that you're dealing with some overhyped angst ridden family drama belonging to that genre much beloved by British book critics. "Oxygen" is exceptional because its writer is not only gifted with an uncommon eloquence, he has the rare intuitive ability to connect with the reader in a manner suggesting a dangerous knowledge of the human heart and that is what makes the difference. Alice Valentine is dying of cancer. Her two sons, Larry and Alec, return to Brooklands to spend her last days with her. The family is not estranged but separated, Alice in the loneliness of her terminal illness, her golden boy Larry in the shameful aftermath of his collapsing marriage and career in America, and the listless Alec in his own sense of failure as he struggles on with his translation work for a Hungarian playwright. They harbour truths about themselves they're barely able to recognise let alone confront or articulate, so Alice's death scene becomes the perfect occasion for them to come together, resolve their differences, exorcise their demons and settle the score. This they do, but quietly - strictly no histrionics - and in ways you least expect. Lazslo's story may be linked with Alec's by a thin narrative thread but he shares with Larry and Alec the same need for courage and redemption. Whilst Larry's release comes unexpectedly one evening after Alice suffers a fall, Alec digs deep to find the resolve to perform the ultimate act of heroism. For Lazlo, he sheds the burden of guilt for letting his lover die in enemy hands during the 1956 Hungarian uprising when he agrees to act as courier for a political cause. By using contrasting settings (domestic and bohemian) for his two stories, Miller universalises the issues and achieves an impact far beyond his contemplation. "Oxygen" is hugely deserving of its Booker Prize & Whitbread Prize nominations and the many accolades heaped upon it. A minor masterpiece.

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Rating:
Summary: Astonishing Talent
Review: There are books notable for their story, those notable for their writer's style and the rare book notable for the author's facility with language and grammar. This book is all three. The book tells the story of a group of disparate characters united superfically by their families, in one case, by work in another but much more profoundly by their shared humanity and attempts to survive their own weaknesses. One character tries to atone a much earlier failure when he let a lover die and another family tries to ease their mother's terminal illness while trying to come to terms with all they and their relationships to her are not.The plot hurries ominously onward but the fluidity of the writing finds you reading more slowly so to give its almost poetic quality its due. This is the sort of writing that I hope to be doing a lot more reading of in years to come.