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!).

Today I wrote nothing

photo from http://jonathanshipley.blogspot.com/

There was a very interesting article on the Guardian's book blog recently. It was talking about lost books that are then found again only to be declared 'genius' and 'ground-breaking'.
It used some examples of Soviet literature that were not published until fairly recently (This and That). Also, John Kennedy Toole's 'A Confederacy of Dunces'.
One commenter said that he thought that perhaps sometimes these books are over-hyped simply because they were lost. There is something thrillingly romantic about forgotten authors being rediscovered. But also...

Why are we always so enthralled by the idea of posthumous (nothing to do with Greek/Turkish dips) success?

I am enthralled, like everyone else. But, when you really think about it, it is desperately sad. All those wide-eyed anecdotes of how these works were discovered are rolled out like glammed-up bodies, to prove what? Oh yes, so John Kennedy Toole killed himself and his mother got his work published after much perseverance. So, Daniil Kharms starved to death in the siege of Leningrad. So, Van Gogh never sold a painting. And so on and so on.

Perhaps we all want to imagine that even if people have had (at least in hindsight) a miserably 'unsuccessful', unmemorable life, they can still be remembered after the discovery of a lost/unpublished masterpiece. Perhaps it makes us feel better about wasted lives, makes us believe they never are wasted after all.

However, if it was up to me, I would rather have a less arresting anecdote but a much better time of it in return.

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).