David Harsent's collection Night has got to be one of the most densely packed, focused books of poems I've ever read, assuming I'm reading it the right way. One mood dominates: Noir with a capital 'N'. The title does not mislead. I'm not entirely sure I enjoyed it, and sometimes felt I wasn't living up to the demands being made upon me as I read. But I found a lot to admire and kept thinking there was much I needed to re-visit.
In contrast, John Christopher's The Prince in Waiting, the last of the novels for teenagers I brought back from KL last year as a way of reminding myself of kids' lit and what I've been missing since I don't really deal with this stuff in the classroom anymore, proved a quick and enjoyable read for the weekend. I suppose it sounds like faint praise to say a novel is well-crafted, but it shouldn't because such craft isn't easily achieved. I must admit though I don't intend to go on with the trilogy of which this is the first part (which would mean finding copies of the other two novels which I don't recall ever buying.) This is simply because I know I'll find myself admiring the plotting from a distance, as it were, rather than genuinely responding at a deeper level and I've begun to feel of late that I've been doing a bit too much of such cool appraising and not getting sufficiently swept up into the fictions I've been reading.
At some point soon I really must get down to some serious reading of the kind of thing that reconfigures the mind.
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