Girlfriend in a Coma

Karen is 17 years old in 1979 when she suddenly falls into a deep coma. The night before, she gives her boyfriend a letter, telling him to only open it if something happens to her. In the letter, she talks of her fear of the future, her terror at what the world will become, from what she has seen in her dreams.

It is hard to write a review of this book without dropping huge spoilers, and as I always hope that some people will read the books that I review, I had better not!

So maybe I can talk about the world in 1997, and after, which the second part of the book covers. Within 18 years from 1979 when Karen goes to sleep, the world changes drastically. Perhaps more drastically than any other short period of time before that, in terms of consequential changes and irreversibility.

People spend all day in a virtual realm of computers and television. There is very little in the way of real ‘free time’, by which I mean really talking to someone, really experiencing something. People work more than ever, to buy what? There are hundreds of time-saving appliances and conveniences, but where does all the time we save actually go?

These are all questions raised in a very probing and innocent way in the book, with a real sense of shock and dismay at the way things have turned out. It is to Coupland’s credit that the questions that he raises are never infused with a sense of injustice, that people were promised a bright and beautiful future and the universe failed to live up to it. It is always the fault of the people, which of course is the truth. It is no one’s fault but ours that things are a terrible mess. We’ve poisoned everything; ourselves, everything around us. Coupland’s solution to the problem of our collective stupidity is beautiful and poetic and impossible, but ultimately very simple. In short, (but the long version is much better) to wake up and stop being idiots and take responsibility. In short.

This is a very wonderful book and everything it examines (14 years ago) is relevant now, but infinitely more urgent. On a day of strikes in the UK when people are standing up for something, it feels appropriate to recommend a book like this.

The Philosopher and the Wolf

Photo copyright Ryan McGinley

The wolf ran alongside him, flowing along perfectly, and the man, lumbering and sweating next to him began to understand that the believed supremacy of human beings was all a strange fiction that we tell ourselves. How can we say that we are better than animals? When our running is stumbling and awkward, and the wolf’s is full of grace and beauty… That is the broad question that Mark Rowlands seeks to answer in The Philosopher and the Wolf, what is our basis for thinking we are superior?

As well as a funny and engrossing memoir of his time spent with a wolf that he raised, which you should read if you like animals, I think you should also read it if you like to ask questions and have your foundations shaken.

Rowlands makes an interesting case against his perception of the arrogance and sheer stupidity/(at times) evil of human beings. He starts simply. He divides the human character into ape and wolf.

The ape is who we are descended from. Apparently our brain development occurred from a complex social structure within apes, as well as the possibility in that structure of lies and deceit. He uses an example of a group of apes walking along a track, and one ape catches sight of a branch of ripe fruit that none of the other apes have spotted. She sits down on the path and pretends to groom herself, while the others walk past, so she can have the fruit to herself. So what we have there is a demonstration of forward thinking: The other apes will want this fruit, so that is predicting the feelings and desires of others. Deceit is demonstrated in the act of pretending and hiding for a selfish purpose. From this and other examples, the point is made that our entire species, all of our civilization, is built upon lies. This is what allowed our brains to develop to the extent they are at now.

This might sound very depressing, he also says that without that, we would not have literature, music, art, etc.

The other element is that of the wolf. The wolf, in nature and in our own selves, represents everything that the ape is not. Joy, loyalty, honesty, love.

I am not going to lie, at times it was a very gruelling read, as it forces you to explore things that you would rather, in your heart of hearts, leave untouched. But ultimately it makes you want to be kinder and more human, which is a great deal different to all the books out there that promise to make you happier, richer and more magnetic. Some of the most difficult reading are in the chapters where the author outlines the many examples of human cruelty and evil. You might think of calculated evil here as the real example of human capacity for destruction, but, and I agree with this, what is worse is evil by proxy, or unacknowledged evil. He gives the example of the famous Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures, which is very clearly outlined here, if you don’t know about it already. And it forced me to ask myself, would I do it? Would I electrocute someone for no reason? Even if someone wearing a uniform told me to? Even if it was just three months after the trial of Adolf Eichmann?

No, I sincerely believe I would not, and by saying that, I am not marking myself out as special or some kind of distributor of morality, but that is why I think books like this and others are important, because after reading them and opening some doors in your mind, you start to become the kind of person who would not, ever.

A wolf, in other words.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters/ Seymour ~ An Introduction

There are certain books that I can steam through, creasing the spine and rolling through the pages, and these books can affect me deeply. But there are certain books that I feel the need to unpick slowly, every single sentence needs to be individually held. This was how I felt with Seymour ~ An Introduction, the second story in this book. I think I learned so much more about Salinger from this book than from The Catcher in the Rye. This story needs to be read slowly, I think, not only for the purpose of savouring it, but just so each page gets a lot of attention. Kind of like when you become obsessed with one song and listen to it about 30 times in a day, that’s the kind of attention I mean, where you learn all the words and know the starting riff. Where you realise the complexity of a perfect 3 minute song that appears so simple. This is all because what we have here is a very tuneful tale. It is all about poetry, really, with many simple but breathtaking examples of what it means to be an innate poet. It is written by Seymour’s younger brother Buddy, some ten years after Seymour’s suicide (see A Perfect Day for Bananafish, in For Esme ~ With Love and Squalor, one of the most faultless short stories ever written).

There are just such tremblingly lucid observations about Seymour. It’s so difficult to put into words how I felt when I read them. I guess I just sighed inwardly at how luminous they were but also how clean and infinitely recognisable. One demonstration of Seymour’s poetic-ness is a story from their childhood that Buddy retells, when they are allowed to come and see the very end of a party their parents are giving, at which there are about 60 guests. Seymour and Buddy watch all the guests and Seymour offers to get everyone their coats back as they leave, which have been thrown all over the apartment. Despite not seeing anyone arrive, Seymour then proceeds to find everyone their coat and doesn't make a single error, just from looking at each person in turn.

Or there is the example of a letter from Seymour to Buddy, ostensibly to comment on one of his stories, where he tells Buddy that he recently wrote a letter in which he found that he sounded like Buddy and…

‘It occurred to me that if things were switched around and you were writing a letter that sounded like me you’d be bothered… One of the few things in the world, aside from the world itself, that sadden me every day is an awareness that you get upset if Boo Boo or Walt tells you you’re saying something that sounds like me. You sort of take it as an accusation of piracy, a little slam at your individuality. Is it so bad that we sometimes sound like each other? The membrane is so thin between us. Is it so important for us to keep in mind which is whose?’

I think that wonderfully illustrates the turbulently complex relationship between siblings. A tangled, heavy concoction of awe, resentment, admiration, jealousy, respect, suspicion… the list could go on. I remember when my sister was first starting to become friends with my friends and I was really shocked by my feelings, which were totally unexpected. I expected to feel jealous of her, that she was taking away my friends, but instead I was jealous of my friends getting to know my sister, because she was My Sister and I didn’t want to share her. Weird eh?

Does anyone know of where I can get/read any of his other stories? I fear I may have read everything I can find now. Any help would be much appreciated!

One Day

by David Nicholls

A good read about two very flawed people that sees them on the same day every year for eighteen years, while the author spins a ‘will they, won’t they’ web that draws you in. Once in a while I will read a book that's hugely popular, like this one, just to know what it's like, it's not as if my taste is particularly snobby or high-brow, it's just I don't seem to naturally go for the bestsellers...Although with this one I think the cover is a bit off-putting, it reminds me of an easyjet advert.

Anyway, Dexter and Emma are an ‘everyman’ and ‘everywoman’ for Generation X, who came to adulthood in the late eighties/early nineties.

I’m not sure if anyone has examined this one particular stand of the book, so I will try.

The most interesting thing about the book, I thought, was a buzzing undercurrent of political engagement and then, increasingly, disassociation.

Emma, the more politically engaged one of the main characters is described, in the late eighties as the book begins as ‘always boycotting something’, she goes to demos and reads difficult Russian and Scandinavian plays. She wants to be a writer (secretly) and ‘to change not the whole world, but the world around her, in a small way’. Her most exciting moment was ‘being struck by police baton’ in the poll-tax riots. The only thing is, it’s more about appearances than actual action, with Emma. It’s like this with most people, of course, we can’t all be Che Guevara, but it’s a very fine line from ranting on about everything that is in fashion, to thoughtfully living your life and trying to apply certain ideas to your reality. (I haven’t figured out where this line is myself, I know, so I am trying to not be shockingly hypocritical.)

What follows, is, in my mind, a perfect illustration of the state of Great Britain, in particular, and the political imagination of its people.

Emma moves to London, has to get a crappy job, which she stays at for two years out of fear, or ennui, becoming increasingly desperate and frustrated. Sound familiar? (I found myself becoming irritated, on Emma’s behalf, by it being hard for her ‘in the current economic climate’!)

Dexter, the other lead character, meanwhile has a decadent few years travelling and ‘teaching English’, roaming through Thailand, Italy etc etc.

The brassy glamour and excess of the nineties is vividly realised by David Nicolls and  is described by Dexter as ‘a huge relief from the gulag of the late eighties’, where people can finally ‘have fun’ and let off some steam, be young and free and careless.

However, it is with hindsight that we have now realised that these manic, pill-popping, boom years laid the foundations for what came to pass in the last two or three years, the recent financial breakdowns. The sagging of the grinning face of capitalism.  The nineties were the years of the slow extrication of the importance of politics from the minds of the British people.

There is a very telling argument that Dexter and Emma have towards the end of the book, in 2002, just after the 1million strong march against the Iraq war. Their opposing opinions are, I believe, representative of the two main bodies of thought on this abstract word: ‘politics’, which has lost almost all of its meaning.

Emma begins by bemoaning the fact that there was no opposition to the Iraq war after that large rally, surprised at the fact that the students are not more engaged/enraged. Dexter sighs inwardly and gets defensive, saying he has no interest in politics, that no-one cares, that it’s ‘over’. Emma tells him that ‘politics is people’, then Dexter reminds her that the fact that she isn’t doing anything, means that she doesn’t care, and maybe no else does either.

I really think that this was so relevant before these last three months. But now, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a whole new generation of students and young people has become radicalised. The new wave?

The monumental changes in Tunisia, and hopefully Egypt have given us a glimmer of hope that huge things are possible with action.

Maybe the kind of argument that falls between Dexter and Emma won’t be possible in popular fiction, won’t even be conceivable in reality, in the future. Maybe.

Never Let Me Go

*spoiler alert *

You can’t go two steps without bumping into a devotee of this book. I understand everything the devotees say — that the book is a meditation on the slow burn of friendship and love and the steadfastness of humanity… yawn. I understand that it’s meant to be a demonstration of people’s ability to get used to any sort of situation if they think it’s inevitable, plodding on indefinitely. The book’s subject of cloning and organ donation is rendered very plausible and I think Ishiguro did a great job there, but while the story is being told through the central character’s (Kathy) tunnel-visioned, uninformed narration, I would have liked to know more about the social implications of this alternate reality.

The characters are quietly resigned to their fate as farmed organ donors (free range).

But isn’t that sad? I want to read books about people that fight, people that shout in the streets, not people that shrug their shoulders and sigh.

I think some people will say, though, that this is the reason why the book is so tragic, ‘the heartbreaking acceptance of a sad fate’ and all.

But, I think that that is exactly the kind of thinking that epitomizes the state of mind of so many people, myself included sometimes, which seems to me incredibly negative. To not leave any room for rebellion (a dirty word in today’s times), resistance or indeed any strong emotion? I think that is much more heartbreaking than a colourless submission. Fighting and losing is to me more tragic than accepting and losing. The only part of the book with any extreme feeling was when Ruth confesses to Kathy and Tommy that she had kept them apart for many years, and Kathy breaks down in tears, but then it’s all back to ‘…we didn’t talk about it much afterwards…’ Gah!

I understand though, that in the long run if your future is mapped out for you so exactly then why should you protest? It is better for you if you get used to the idea, but I just didn’t feel like their futures were that inevitable (even though they were taught to think that way almost from birth), I felt that it was just too unbelievable that nobody in the book had any seed of wanting things to be different.

Well, I guess in the end I feel cheated when I can’t care about the characters. Maybe it’s because by trying to make them so hyper-realistic, Ishiguro actually ends up with characters that are strangely unreal, oddly cold.

Have a read of the book, it is well written and you do want to finish it (for better or worse!), would love to know what people think of it…

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

If you’re feeling a bit blue and under the weather, like I was the other day, this book is the perfect tonic. It’s the literary equivalent of a large hot chocolate with clouds of whipped cream followed by a hug from your boyfriend/ girlfriend/ cat.

It’s an unashamed makeover/Cinderella story, but one that is so gloriously light and deftly written you get swept along in a sea of ‘strong stares’ from men with ‘powerful builds’, silk dresses, fur and warm baths.

I am glad I happened to read this when the cold weather hit as a 1930’s set romp through glamorous (but still rainy!) London makes you appreciate this frustrating and yet lovely city.

Miss Pettigrew is such a wonderful character as Winifred Watson perfectly taps into a an emotion everyone has at some point – of feeling inconsequential and lost – and you really feel so desperately sorry for Miss Pettigrew, for she has never had any fun or frivolity in her life, that you realise that those two things, which are so often scorned and looked-down-upon, are clear and purely joyous, and that everyone should have a bit of jaunty flounce every so often.

While this book is not exactly a beacon of feminist thought, it deserves its respect as an unusual portrayal of middle age, where Miss Pettigrew’s life isn’t over because she is forty, which is a subject very few books had dealt with at that time.

But enough critical analysis. I think: drink it up in a day (it’s quite short), gasp with delight, have a warm and happy glow about your person afterwards! Sigh.

Solaris

Image from here

Ok, so no reviews for absolutely ages, I haven’t read anything in a while that has really inspired me to write about it.

Until…. Solaris! What a mind trip… I have to prepare myself mentally when I am about to embark on the next few pages when I pick it up again (it’s another slow burner). The atmosphere is so heavy in this book it feels like the author (Stanislaw Lem) has cast a creepy spell making it feel as if you are in outer space with the protagonist, Kelvin.

The book begins with Kelvin landing on a space station on the planet Solaris. He is there to join a pre-existing team of scientists and researchers. Straight away, there is something that isn’t quite right. The men he meets there are sinister and don’t answer his questions. So far, so creepy. However, the most genius thing of the book is the planet’s only inhabitant.

The ocean. No two scientists can agree whether this massive entity is intelligent or primeval. They know it isn’t a cellular structure, but what they don’t understand is how it can possibly think for itself and create activity and phenomena.

This sets up Lem very well for what begins to be seen as a sadly beautiful picture of grief and suppressed dark desire. This isn’t really a science fiction novel in the contemporary canon, but of the older kind where a setting in space seemed also about an exploration of philosophical ideas.
All the inhabitants of the space station are haunted by their own private ghosts- manifested into flesh and blood hallucinations.
Kelvin feels responsible for the suicide of his wife 10 years previously. She comes back to him at the station, and he can’t reconcile himself with her death, repeatedly swerving between extremes of familiar recognition and sickening guilt. At first he tries to get away from her – just a copy of the real girl he loved – but after a while he begins to be reconciled to her presence in strange ways, but she becomes slowly aware of her transience and is in agony as a result...
In a way, it is wonderful that Andrey Tarkovsky made the film adaptation of Solaris, you only have to look at this wonderful book of his polaroids to understand that he knew something about loss and longing.
Give it a try, even if you usually give science fiction a miss. There are some undervalued gems in this genre.

Moon Tiger

Claudia Hampton, infirm in old age, lying in bed, sets out to write a history of the world, and her own history in the process.

This book is about memory. The mystery of it, the way it develops and transforms over time. The way it can be deceptive, painful, vivid and generous all at once.

The narrative shifts between time and place effortlessly and fluidly. The narrative also shifts into the point of view of the other characters, telling one memory from the recollection of several people, illustrating perfectly how experience and subsequent memory of an event is only ever personal and always different according to whom you ask.

Penelope Lively writes wonderfully and the way that the book shifts is never uncomfortable.
It is very easy to follow, because of, not despite its fragmented nature. There are parts that are like a flash of an image, like some memories can be, there are parts that are remembered for an unexplained reason, parts that are richly detailed (particularly those parts where Claudia is in WW2-time Egypt), parts that are hazy and sparse. It is because of this fragmented nature that the book is not difficult. Instead, it is familiar, because this is the exact same way that most people remember.

Side note: if you are interested in films about memory, watch 'Amarcord' by Federico Fellini, filmed in a similar way to how this book is written, but about the director's childhood in a small town in Italy.

There was also a small but very interesting vein running through the book, that of collective memory. Claudia Hampton is a historian, so she mostly deals with this. Those facts and accounts that have become something everyone thinks of when they think of something they have not experienced for themselves. This is particularly relevant when she writes about the war in Egypt: from a human perspective, very biased.
That is something that collective memory can never be, violent and hot. Strangely enough when we talk of a memory of a people, wars and invasions in particular, the collective 'memory' is dulled and ground to the gray dust of numbers and impersonality.

I think this book is incredibly successful with its experimental style, I have never, until now, read a book that attempts so many stylistic devices and carries them off. It took me about three weeks to read, as sometimes I had to put it down because I had to think about what I'd just read (and I don't normally do this! Also I don't mean to sound horribly pretentious- just a bit maybe!).

This is a part that I particularly liked:

'...truth is tied to
words, to print, to the testimony of the page. Moments shower
away; the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial
than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring
than reality. Pierre on the field of battle, the Bennet girls at
their sewing, Tess on the threshing machine - all these are
nailed down for ever, on the page and in a million heads. What
happened to me on Charmouth beach in 1920, on the other
hand, is thisledown. And when you and I talk about history
we don't mean what actually happened, do we? The cosmic
chaos of everywhere, all time? We mean the tidying up of this
into books, the concentration of the benign historical eye upon
years and places and persons. History unravels; circumstances,
following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled.'

Moon Tiger is also, by coincidence, being covered by the Guardian book club, if you wanted to read a bit more about it (better yet though, read the book!).

The Rights of the Reader

Recently I started reading 'Madame Bovary' by Gustave Flaubert.
I found the title character to be annoying.  I felt a great deal of irritation toward her.
Madame Bovary is pathetic and limp. She is also very realistically written. I could very clearly recognise some of her qualities.
She leaves you cold and weary, she is always complaining, never grateful. She longs for grandeur, sophistication, riches, things her country doctor of a husband cannot provide her. She sees no beauty in her surroundings of the French countryside, which here are described as very beautiful and splendid.
All her days are spent in dreams of passion and great love, herself becoming too embittered and poisonous to ever experience these things.
So, I am not trying to say this is not a great novel, or belittle Flaubert's achievement in conjuring up a person so devoid of any sympathy that the reader him/herself grows to resent the hours spent in her company. I think his work has been a little too successful. I did not finish this book.
I did not care what happened to Madame Bovary in the rest of the novel. I only knew that I did not want to spend more time with her.
Which can happen sometimes. I have stuck books out before and sometimes found great rewards at the close, sometimes not.
In the past not finishing a book has for me been like an eyes-downcast admission of failure. There is something furtive about laying a book down gently at the half-way point, slotting it back into your bookcase and starting another. You want to give the author a chance, sometimes you want to see what the fuss is about when the book is a Classic or has had fawning praise poured all over it, sometimes you are just determined.
But! Look to the 'Rights of the Reader'. You can do whatever you want... there is nobody sitting on your shoulder saying; "Tsk... another one gone unfinished? You never finish what you start..." etc etc.
Books are there to be read, but not when reading them feels like wading through icy swamps with no clothes on (unless you like that sort of thing...) So, with that, I am now going to leave you with Daniel Pennac's 'Rights of the Reader', as introduced to me by Federico Campagna, as illustrated by Quentin Blake.

Please follow this link to download the picture (can't reproduce it here in good quality): http://www.walker.co.uk/bookshelf/the-rights-of-the-reader-poster.aspx

The Drunken Forest

Rainforest

If you’ve read ‘My Family and other Animals’ by the same author, you will know that Durrell has a fantastic ability to make his hair-raising anecdotes of encounters with animals both hilarious and informative. ‘The Drunken Forest’ doesn’t disappoint on that count. There’s a few in particular that could be published as short stories in them-selves.
As a self-proclaimed collector Durrell, with the help of his wife sets out to Argentina and Paraguay to bring home animals for his zoo and preservation trust in Jersey. This is all set in the early 1950’s.
What I found difficult in some parts was the idea of collecting animals for a zoo, sometimes taking fledgling chicks away from their parents. The idea of zoos though, has undergone a drastic change in the last 50 years, with many becoming a huge resource for the study and care of animals. Indeed, many animal species only exist in zoos now. Gerald Durrell definitely belongs in more in the ‘preservation collector’ category rather than the ‘stick pins through insects and mount them’ type!
This book is a joy to read and I will relay one story of a grey pampas fox…

‘Foxey’s… interest in cigarette butts amounted to almost an obsession.
Whenever he found one he would pounce on it and devour it,
with the expression of utmost loathing on his face. Then he
would spend an uncomfortable half an hour coughing violently,
have a long drink of water and be ready for the next butt-end.
One awful day, however, Foxey learnt his lesson. Carelessly I
had left a nearly full packet of cigarettes within his reach, and
before I had discovered it Foxey had eaten the lot. To say that
he was sick would be a vast understatement. His stomach per-
formed the emesis of all time, and every last shred of paper and
tobacco was returned to the light of day, tastefully mixed with
Foxey’s breakfast. He was so exhausted by this effort that he just
lay and let a chicken walk right past him, and never even twitched
an ear. By evening he had recovered enough to eat a couple of
pounds of meat and two raw eggs, but the offer of a cigarette
caused him to back away, sneezing indignantly. Never again did
he sample tobacco in any shape or form.’

Brooklyn

Ellis Island

Just finished this book, by Colm Toibin and I had to write straight away whilst my impressions are still fresh. 'Brooklyn' has featured many times in various 'Best of 2009' lists and I can see why.
The feelings you have when reading this book are no less and sometimes more than a constant, edge-of-tears lump in your throat. Toibin so accurately describes feelings of homesickness that you start to be really glad if you are at home when reading this.
Eilis is an Irish girl in her early twenties who sets off to Brooklyn just after WW2. When you think about the kind of girl who may have done this, Eilis is not the sort of character you imagine to give everything up for a new life in a new country. She is reserved but not shy, very cautious and quiet. She seems so young, you start to really worry about her, but not in an annoying way.
She is such a well formed character in the truest, purest sense. She seems to let things happen to her at the beginning, and the reader begins to worry that she lets other people make decisions for her and goes along with it. For example, her journey to Brooklyn is something she is pushed into. As someone who at times finds making decisions horribly paralyzing, I can really sympathise with this, as I'm sure most people can. The choice of one thing over another, always terrifying, is ultimately liberating for most, but not for Eilis, who always decides for duty, which as is the way, seems to always be at war with personal freedom and intuition.
Toibin writes masterfully of duty. Eilis is so strongly tied to her duties she always puts them above her own happiness. This is heart-rending stuff for the reader, as you read played out in front of you a life you can tell will not end up being the one the person chose. Well, the one they chose, but while believing they did not have another choice.
A bit rambling, this review!
The story moves slowly, meditatively almost. It is really strange reading about the life of a girl my own age, spooky almost. As Eilis gets older in the two or so years that this book is set, she gains so much strength. However, this ultimately means that she is strong enough to do her duty, and to deny herself an uncertain and elusive happiness.
Utterly brilliant.

Eve Green

photo

One of the most beautiful books I have ever read. One that I go back to again and again when I need to be reminded that the world is a fantastic place. When I need to taste the countryside in my sometimes stifling urban environment. I mentioned this book in an earlier review of 'When the Earth Hums in B Flat', as that one was also set in rural Wales. Here it is written of in Summer also, when I think it is most bewitching and unexpected, as Wales is never really thought of without greenness and dampness as its definition.
Of course, love is here too. Eve Green is a girl born of a hushed love-making, her mother dies very young whereupon Eve is brought to Wales.

'...Did I cry? No. But a
secret part of me unfurled up on the ridge that afternoon.
My loss billowed out before me, snapping at itself and
pulling me with it, streaming out over the sheep hills like
a funeral flag caught in the strong Welsh wind.'

Susan Fletcher's writing is alluring and poetic. She was young when she wrote this book (it won the Whitbread First Novel Award) and the language is sometimes a bit self-conscious, but this really suits the book, it feels like Eve Green is so real. Some phrases are heart-stoppingly lovely, but have a strangely shy air to them, as if these are words that Susan Fletcher saved for a long time and reluctantly decided to share.
I am very glad she did. This is also a book of grief, and the universal truth that time passes, and wounds heal, and if they scar, that they don't hurt any more.
Highly recommended, I know that Rebecca at Teacups, Cupcakes loved it too.

Eva Luna

Dear readers,

I have finally got the internet back, and I am settled in my new house... it is lovely to feel so safe and warm while outside there are fireworks... so... time for a new post!

I thought I would try something new this time. I am still reading Eva Luna by Isabel Allende. I thought I would write about beginnings, as this is a time of many new beginnings for me. Isabel Allende is an author that is fantastic at beginnings, over the past month or so, I have read four books of hers, and right from the start she weaves a web in your imagination peopled by such gorgeous characters, Rosa the beautiful with her green hair like a mermaid, Eliza who tastes freedom by escaping to California during the Gold Rush, the tyrannical and lonely Esteban.

Eva Luna has grabbed me more than any other of Allende's books, which are essentially sweeping, unsentimental love stories, in the most generous and rich tradition. Eva is the product of lovemaking between an orphan found wandering in the jungle and an Indian bitten by a snake that she takes pity on... Eva begins her life in the house of a scientist who is trying to invent the elixir of life, and on the other side of the world, Rolf is born in Austria to a terrifying father, the worst sort of man, who thinks the only way to turn his son into a man is to enforce extreme cruelty... Allende always gives a lot away about the plot of her books before things happen, I think because she really believes in fate, but the result is, although most of the time you know who is going to end up together before they do, finding out how things happen is even more delicious, like reading a recipe and eating the fragrant meal at the same time.

I think this best sums up Allende's story-telling:

'My mother was a silent person, able to camouflage herself against
the furniture or disappear in the design of a rug. She never made the
slightest commotion; it was almost as if she was not there. In the
privacy of the room we shared, however, she was transformed. When
she talked about the past, or told her stories, the room filled with light;
the walls dissolved to reveal incredible landscapes, palaces crowded with
unimaginable objects, faraway countries that she invented or borrowed
from the Professor's library. She placed at my feet the treasures of the
Orient, the moon, and beyond. She reduced me to the size of an ant so
I could experience the universe from that smallness; she gave me wings
to see it from the heavens; she gave me the tail of a fish so I would
know the depths of the sea...'

A Study in Scarlet

I went to secondary school about 500 metres away from Baker Street, the famous residence of Sherlock Holmes, so that meant growing up seeing constant hordes taking pictures of themselves by his larger than life statue. Up until quite recently, they had a rather handsome tall man dressed up as the great detective walking about posing for Japanese tourists.
So, in my mind, Sherlock Holmes was most shockingly over-exposed. Well I guess sometimes book characters are famous for a reason, wait, maybe they're always famous for a reason, that reason being that they are supremely well written.
Then, a happy accident occurred when the news-agent near my work was throwing out some free-books-from-newspapers, and there was old Sherlock, lying dejectedly upon the floor. I can't ignore a book in pain, so I picked him up, dusted him off, and made off with him. I decided to give the book a try, and I'm so glad I did, my ignorance of the Holmesian glory has been banished!
Such elegant, gripping writing, too spare to be called thrilling. Sherlock Holmes is a fantastic invention... well, what can I say? I am now thoroughly hooked, already reading the next mystery, and I beg my lovely readership (I love all four of you) to forgive me for my lack of reviews over the next week or so, as
a) I am moving house this week (funeral march here) and
b) more Holmes action is on the cards.

But, every cloud has a silver lining, so I promise not to rhapsodise any more about Arthur Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes and his incredible skills of deduction (except for that last bit).

My Ántonia

I had a bizarre experience recently, when I started reading a copy of 'National Geographic' and there was a brilliant article about recent attempts to conserve North America's tall-grass prairie, which once covered a massive proportion of the Mid-West. I felt such sympathy for the plight of these beautiful meadows, and such a strong love for all the people trying to stop the urban spread. I was then clubbed rudely over the head when I realised, upon looking at the cover of the magazine, that it was from 1982. Well, you'll be happy to know, as was I, after frantically reading about more recent developments on Wikipedia, that thankfully, the prairie is still around in some areas. Phew!
The point is, since then, I have cherished a strange glowing feeling whenever I think of these meadows, probably because the part of Russia where I am from is very near to the epic steppe lands so beloved of Anton Chekhov. So when I picked up 'My Ántonia' by Willa Cather, I was hooked. The book is set in the late 19th/ early 20th Century, when North America was still vast swathes of wilderness, when people worked hard on their land and built small prosperous towns. The Ántonia of the title is a Bohemian girl (from what is now the Czech Republic), the narrator, a boy called Jim Burden meets when her family move to Nebraska. Ántonia comes to symbolise a bright light of life for Jim, her vivacity and hunger for laughter and love is drawn wonderfully by Cather. Even when she is middle-aged and worn from hard work,

'...I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered -
about her teeth, for instance. I know so many women who
have kept all the things she had lost, but whose inner
glow has faded. Whatever else was gone, Ántonia had not
lost the fire of life. Her skin, so brown and hardened, had not
that look of flabiness, as if the sap beneath it had been
secretly drawn away.'

Ántonia seems to me like a beautiful, strong tree, at first a resilient, bright, colourful sapling, then a rich, fertile bearer of fruit, then brown and rough, but still sturdy and unbeaten.
Willa Cather is extremely gifted with her ability to let you visualise a character, planting them very firmly in your imagination.
For example, the beautiful sleepy-eyed, 'a little too plump' Lena Lingard, 'always kissed one as if she were sadly and wisely sending one away forever.' Isn't that wonderful? and don't you somehow know exactly what she means?
Or the fearsome Mrs Cutter, a minor character, still looms large in my mind...

'...She was a terrifying-looking person; almost a giant-
ess in height, raw-boned, with iron-grey hair, a face always
flushed, and prominent, hysterical eyes. When she meant to
be entertaining and agreeable, she nodded her head inces-
santly and snapped her eyes at one. Her teeth were long and
curved, like a horse's; people always said babies cried if she
smiled at them. Her face had a kind of fascination for me: it
was the very colour and shape of anger. There was a gleam of
something akin to insanity in her full, intense eyes...'

*shiver* What a scary lady...

But we must not forget about this prairie, definitely one of the stars of the book, rustling, ever changing.
I will leave you with this; a sunset over the prairie, and urge you to read this gentle but at the same time, gorgeously thrilling book:

'As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red
grass were drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer
than at any other time of the day. The blond cornfields were
red-gold, the haystacks turned rosy and threw long shadows.
The whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fire
and was not consumed. That hour always had the exultation
of victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero's death - heroes
who had died young and gloriously. It was a sudden transfigura-
tion, a lifting-up of day.'

The Earth Hums in B Flat

Ever since I read 'Eve Green' by Susan Fletcher, (a heart-breakingly beautiful book - let down by it's chick-litty cover) whenever I pick up a book about a childhood in Wales, my mind thinks 'oooh'... This book has a gothic tone and a murder as it's backstory, but is really more about growing up in a tiny community and the pressure to live a quiet life and not arouse the attention of the neighbours.
Gwenni, the 12-year-old narrator, is strangely unlikeable, however, even though the author tries to make her sound whimsical and imaginative, she does not get developed enough to make her a fully rounded teller of the story, as this voice has to be very strong in a novel. But, somehow, this does not detract too much from the book. Gwenni's mother is the strongest character here, a woman with secrets that burden her, that make her a little too angry when her daughter acts 'dollaly', snappish, severe and caught up with what people think of her. I really wanted to find out why exactly she was so bent on getting the acceptance of the community and having a normal family.
I have never experienced first-hand what it is like to live in a tiny community, maybe that is why I am fascinated by books like this, as it may as well be describing living on the moon, with the feeling of 'otherness' I get from it. My mother talks frequently about the anonimity she cherishes while living in London (having lived until she was 28 in a tiny town in Russia), the feeling you can do what you want, go anywhere and nobody will be any the wiser. It must be a strange feeling to be so...well, known, I suppose. I think I would feel partly very safe but very watched too...
Anyway, back to the book!
Just to let you know, the ending does not dissapoint, everything unravels faster than a badly knitted sweater and it is a great relief to know the secrets, which is a glorious feeling...
Wales as a setting is perfect for this kind of story, and the author describes lusciously the damp greenery, the bright blue of a lost budgie's wing in a gloomy haze of rain.
I would read this book again I think, but only pay attention to the attention to detail displayed here and the vivid imagery, not the plot!

The Girl with Glass Feet

An assured first book from a very young writer (I think he is 24).
Ida McLaird's feet are turning into glass... At first, I thought that this would mean magical realism, but Ali Shaw chose a rather more unexpected route. He writes of Ida's illness acceptingly, so each character doesn't have to go through the whole tiresome rigmarole of disbelief, but instead the book focuses on her relationship with a lonely and cripplingly awkward photographer whom she meets as she returns to the island where her illness first manifested itself.
But (and this is my only but) the story begins in a dream-like way, so when suddenly Midas (the photographer) prints off pictures from his digital camera, it's very jarring and you have to re-assess your preconceptions about the book. Perhaps the author meant to do this, if so, it's a very clever device. I don't think that the book's cover does it any favours, as it prepares you for a very whimsical (dare I say it, girly) read. It isn't that at all.
St. Hauda's Land, where the book is set, is rendered stunningly by the author. He conjures up a marshy, misty land of snow and monochrome colour, which is starkly mirrored in what is happening to Ida. She comes back to the island to find a cure, to contact the only person she met when she last came. Henry Fuwa is a biologist studying miniature moth-winged cattle, which he desperately tries to keep a secret.
There is quite a complicated love-through-the-generations scenario, of Henry Fuwa having once been in love with Midas' mother. The story also intercuts with scenes from Midas' childhood with his cold, unaffectionate father, who he blames for his current inability to connect and sustain relationships with people.
Ida persists with Midas, however, constantly offering the refrain that she has no time, as the glass is rapidly spreading through her body. This becomes Midas' salvation, as he cannot wallow in self-pity and seclusion any longer.
'The Girl with Glass Feet' is very insightful and gives a different perspective on doomed love. It also helps you to understand human fear in relation to other people as something very universal, as there are so many cringe-worthy moments where Midas acts horribly, regretfully awkward, it feels incredibly true to life.
I can't wait to read more by this author, who very cleverly manages to avoid first-novel archetypes.

Corvus

From the Journal of Antiques

A most beautiful book, recommended to me by the lovely Sara.
A woman gets a rook, she observes it, her thoughts about this rook called Chicken and other Corvids, including a magpie and a crow, make up this fascinating volume.
Part memoir, part philosophy, part natural history, Esther Woolfson's writing is very eloquent, particularly on the subject of the differences between birds and humans.
The order of Corvids, which include those birds mentioned above and also jays, ravens and jackdaws, are believed to be the most intelligent of all birds. The interesting point the author makes is how flawed our judgement of intelligence really is. Firstly, we are quite cagey when it comes to defining intelligence in humans. Secondly, just because birds have not checked all our boxes of intelligence, the only thing this proves is that we do not understand them. I think that humanity has many many catastrophic errors in categorising intelligence and dismissing everything else. Our systematic destruction of native and 'primitive' culture is enough example, I imagine.
The author makes another interesting point in that, because we do not understand birds, as they are so very different to us, the seemingly unavoidable response is one of suspicion and, in most cases, fear.
The Corvid family, ravens and crows in particular, have a long history in Western Europe of persecution, appear in mythology as harbringers of death and have been long regarded as ugly and sinister. This book argues convincingly for their cause. The rook named Chicken is a constant source of fascination and surprise, displaying a myraid of brilliant behaviours, many of which can be paralleled to our own, indeed there are so many examples of percieved emotion (from Chicken basking in the sun joyously, to a positive response to a specific type of music, to fear and anger at the sight of a black pair of bathing shorts seemingly mistaken by Chicken to be a fellow rook, dead) that it is clear that people's superstitious attitudes towards these birds deserve to be altered.
A great, rich read, I enjoyed it immensely, I loved the geeky particulars and studies on animal behaviour, but I think the book has so much more to offer in questions about ourselves and our interaction with the natural world than any book I have read.

For Esmé ~ with Love and Squalor

A lapping sense of desperate hopelessness and melancholy suffuse this book.
The title story is the most beautiful, of a shell-shocked soldier writing a story for a little-girl-grown-up that he once met in a tea shop. Salinger has much sympathy with the soldier, perhaps drawing on his own experience as a soldier in WW2, although there are very few adults in the collection that he seems to have much time for.
Most of the people in the stories are ones that have successfully closed their eyes to the helpless banality (in Salinger's view, I think) of their lives. The people that he writes sympathetically of are those with their eyes open, all of which seem to meet a terrible end, almost as if they cannot bear what they have seen and prefer to end their suffering. This feeling that runs throughout the stories is best explained with the fact that Salinger now lives as a recluse, with hardly any contact with the outside world.
Children are written of with much grace and beauty in these stories though, it seems as if Salinger cherished their insight and lack of pretense.
One of the most heartbreaking stories is the final one, called 'Teddy', it is about a precocious ten-year-old, who, when asked how he would teach children, says;

'"Well... I'm not too sure what I'd do," Teddy said. "I know I'm pretty sure I wouldn't start with the things schools usually start with." He folded his arms, and reflected briefly. "I think I'd first assemble all the children together and show them how to meditate. I'd try to show them how to find out who they are, not just what their names are and things like that... The same thing with grass, and other things. I wouldn't tell them grass is green. Colors are only names. I mean if you tell them the grass is green, it makes them start expecting grass to look a certain way - your way -... I'd want them to begin with all the real ways of looking at things..."

One thing that strikes me as particularly sad about the stories is that they they are just such a keen of lost hope. You feel very depressed after reading them because Salinger is capable of creating great beauty, but it is clear he feels it is a bit worthless. That is why it's such a shame he hasn't published anything else for 40 years. He has written many things, apparently, but has just given up on the world. That is what is so sad, I suppose, the defeat in the stories, the surrender.

Year Of Wonders

Written by a journalist, Geraldine Brooks, 'Year of Wonders' has a reportage flavour to it.
This book chronicles two years in the life of Anna Frith, a woman living in a remote Derbyshire village, from the time the bubonic plague arrives (1665) to claim its first victims, to when it departs, having ravaged the town, reducing the population by two-thirds.

The narrator is a poor woman taken under the wing of the village rector and educated to read and write by his wife. She is flawed but clear of vision, not turning her head from the terrors in store for her.
The basic story is a true one, of one village's noble attempt to halt the spread of illness by shutting itself off from the world for one year, but Brooks deftly captures a larger story of isolation, loss, loneliness, and fear. The heroine's grasp of the fragility of hope and her desperate hold on reasons to carry on make for often anguishing reading, but written with such clarity and precision that this is never a struggle.
At times, the descriptions of the plague are so raw and grisly that I kept finding myself on buses with my mouth gaping in horror.

Brooks has an amazing way with words and there are certain passages that beg to be re-read often, one example follows:

'It is a strange prospect, our main street these days. I used
to rue its dustiness in summer and muddiness in winter,
the rain all rizen in the wheel ruts making glassy hazards
for the unwary stepper. But now there is neither ice nor
mud nor dust, for the road is grassed over, with just a
cow-track down the centre where the slight use of a few
passing feet has worn the weeds down. For hundreds of
years, the people of this village pushed Nature back from
its precincts. It has taken less than a year to begin to
reclaim its place. In the very middle of the street, a walnut
shell lies broken, and from it, already, sprouts a sapling
that wants to grow up to block our way entire. I have
watched it from its first seed leaves, wondering when
someone would pull it out. No one has yet done so, and
now it stands already a yard high. Footprints testify that
we are all walking around it. I wonder if it is indifference,
or whether, like me, others are so brimful of endings that
they cannot bear to wretch even a scrawny sapling from its
tenuous grip on life.'

Somehow, this book encapsulates perfectly the feeling of life being so fleeting, to know that you might be next and to thank your lucky stars that the Black Death is now treatable (there are plenty of things that are not treatable, but luckily this one gruesome disease is almost out of the picture).
I don't want to be one of those people, that when there is a bit of a 'crunching of the credit' (as one friend's grandmother so delicately put it), to suddenly start reading and recommending lots of books that make you 'appreciate your life' and think 'there's always others that are worse off', but I will recommend this one, as it makes you want to be someone who is strong and can pick out glistening specks of beauty from the dirt in which it lies.