Book Review - Another Country by JB

I read Another Country back when my school year was starting in 2024 and it kind of got lost in the haze of my life at the time *cough cough*. The themes certainly grabbed me but I didn't invest that much into the story, and gave it away at a book trade after I finished it. (cont.below)

I mentioned about the book to my sister and she told me she also had a JB novel she could give me. When we managed to meet he handed me a much more rundown copy of the same novel, Another Country. I took it in my possession and deigned to give it a reread without complaint. Come this summer break I broke it open this past month. It was a rough start, Rufus is a smooth operator, but aside from his small triumphs, JB's New York is just so damn depressing. Everything is just weighed down with this looming question. Meetings between friends, lovers, family, everything happens in this claustrophobic interrogation room of the human spirit.

This is certainly not a criticism, just an explanation for why this book was hard to get into. I can see why this novel lost me on my first reading, considering how hectic my internal and external life was at the time. But even then, when my distracted eyes glazed over the pages on what Rufus had done, what he touched on here about male sexuality really made me feel not alone about what I had done in my own life, nothing nice really. I read the words and saw my own life, written way back in the 1960s, I guess there isn't nothing new under the sun, only remixes.

So boy was I glad I got the chance to read Another Country again because this is a novel that rewards close reading with its full emotional weight. And boy is that weight heavy, it's just so damn mature and UGHHH. The characters are all in their late 20s to 30s and move around with a thin but practiced veneer of civility while their collective and personal past grind on their very souls, incessantly, with a few breaths of relief along the way. Also every other sentence they're sipping on a drink and/or lighting a cigarette. By Gen-Z standards they're all raging alcoholics, makes you wonder if they'd be so moody if they'd just let up on the booze right. 

I well definitely need a buffer or 2 before I dig a JB novel again. I'm thinking of reading The Buried Giant by Ishiguro next. But I'm looking forward to finding out what else JB can illustrate about the human condition, in the present analysis: god damn.