In the Ring

I’ve wrestled with two heavyweights this month – Elizabeth Gaskell’s Sylvia’s Lovers and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant. With the latter it felt as if I was in full Sumo mode – waddling through the prose with a monstrous chafing nappy, movement at times near impossible. I’ve loved Ishiguro’s work from A Pale View of Hills onwards so this was surprising as well as disappointing. Even accepting that giants, dragons, ogres and Arthurian knights are not my thing, this was Monty Pythonesque at times – but without the humour, at least not intentionally. For example,

“Your news overwhelms us, Sir Gawain. But first tell us of this beast you speak of. What is its nature and does it threaten us even as we stand here?”

The theme of memory and loss ( albeit in this novel a collective memory ) is the same one Ishiguro has explored with such great success in his other work. But here it is made literal – the mist produced by a she-dragon has obliterated the villagers’ sense of the past- and it just didn’t work for me. However, I guess if you are as bold as this writer then you will never please all the people all the time. Certainly reviews were very mixed.

With Sylvia’s Lovers the contest was not as intense but still heavy going. Incidentally, before my recent TV debut on Estuary News ( surprisingly I’m still waiting for the call from the BBC) wrestling was being broadcast. As I waited in the green room that wasn’t, desperately trying to balance the conflicting desires to swig water for my dry mouth and the urge to pee, I had a sudden flashback to Saturday afternoons spent in the company of Mick McManus and Giant Haystacks. Younger readers ( are there any?) need to appreciate that I am not recalling some rural romp. These two characters were well-known wrestlers on telly at the time.

Anyway, Sylvia’s Lovers is written almost entirely in eighteenth century dialect. Set on the east coast, the fictional Monkshaven being Whitby and with mention of Hull and Robin Hood’s Bay (as it happened, where I was reading the book ) this was, quite literally, a novel much closer to home. However, the dialect required a full headlock which I duly administered, emerging two days later needing a bucket of water thrown in my face. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy what is an interesting novel with nuanced characterisation and a satisfying blurred morality but it wasn’t the easiest read.

Two little gems to which I succumbed without a throw being…thrown were Penelope Mortimer’s heavily autobiographical The Pumpkin Eater and Stranger on the Train by Patricia Highsmith. Mortimer’s novel is a skilful exploration of an intelligent woman, Mrs Armitage, who is constrained by marriage to an unfaithful yet otherwise loving husband and children ( lots of them. She’s very fertile and seems to enjoy popping them out.) Yet her situation is one into which she has entered willingly and from which she gets a lot back. This is Jean Rhys territory: there’s a passivity about both writers’ female characters whose attitude towards men is generally one of acceptance, compromise and at times surrender. And although this can be frustrating to a contemporary woman reader, I’d be lying if I didn’t say there are twitches of recognition too…

I’d not read Patricia Highsmith before and in my ignorance though her a British writer in the Agatha Christie tradition. How wrong can you be! Strangers on the Train is an incredibly subtle psychological crime thriller – amazingly her debut novel in 1950, adapted by Hitchock as a film the following year. It starts with two men, Guy and Bruno, meeting on a train ( the clue’s in the title ) and ends with a double murder. Can’t say much more without doing a spoiler.

Both the latter novels are knockout ( or am I mixing my sporting metaphors and that’s just in boxing?)

Rip Offs

 

February is a stunted month – an adjective which also applys to my reading! I’ve only managed three books and despite the fact that one of them – Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins – is definitely on the chunky side, the slimline The Red Notebook by Antoine Lauraine balances that out. Pitiful, really, from one who claims to be a bibliophile. However, the most worrying thing is that I can’t remember why my literary intake has been so low while other consumptions ( food, drink, petrol ) have remained high. Though on reflection I guess there might be a link…

The blurb for The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett – my healthy reading matter in terms of being neither morbidly obese nor anorexic – proudly proclaims itself a rip off, boasting reviews that describe it as a cross between One Day, Life After Life and Sliding Doors. Or maybe I should be kinder and term this novel derivative. Anyway, you get my drift: there are three versions of the same relationship and the reader dips in and out of each. Without doubt the novel is very skilfully plotted: some things remain constant – for example the way Jim and Eva meet – while others change, some dramatically some subtly, depending on the version of life that is being enacted. Moreover, it has some interesting things to say about the impact of success at work on the dynamic of a marriage ( in one version Jim achieves renown as an artist, in another he is a frustrated Art teacher ) But I ended up getting confused about what version I was reading ( admittedly I tend to be a greedy reader who can’t be bothered to slow down and digest the material properly) and as a result mentally took a step back from whichever story I was reading.

But having said that I loved Life After Life which employed the same kind of device. As ever, it’s all down to the writing: such is the quality of Atkinson’s it didn’t bother me. Indeed, I was eager to read A God in Ruins, assuming it to be a kind of sequel. If she was cashing in on the success of the first book then so be it. In fact she calls A God in Ruins a ‘companion’ book in that it sits alongside the other one, taking a minor character from the first book, Teddy, and placing him centre stage. It’s a really great read with the descriptions of Teddy’s WW2 night bombing raids unbelievably vivid. It also has one of the most hideous creations ever of motherhood in Viola, Teddy’s daughter.

Like a rip off watch or handbag on a market stall, The Red Notebook pretends to be something it isn’t. With a nod to Amélie, Sleepless in Seattle and Notting Hill*, at heart this is a Mills and Boon romance in which you know from the start that Laurent, trying to trace the identity of the woman whose stolen handbag he retrieved from a rubbish bin, will fall in love with aforementioned woman, Laure ( even her name is derived from his – they must be meant for each other! ) She’s in a coma after being mugged which hinders his pursuit but, surprise surprise, he does find her and she falls for him too. It feels clunky, often the way of translations, but that doesn’t account for the needless repetition. If I read again about a pot-de-feu or her ruddy cat I thought I’d scream. Just because the book is set in Paris and has a chic cover doesn’t mean the writing is sophisticated. C’est terrible!

* with thanks to my lovely friend Kate from whom I ripped off these references!

Tradition demands that…

If every family is unhappy in their own way, as Chekhov famously claimed, then every family does their happy times differently too. Presents before or after Xmas dinner ( or even maybe on Xmas Eve?) Stockings or pillowslips? Handed out individually or a free for all? A visit to the pub a vital part of the Day’s routine or a complete no no? And within each family’s chosen structure, like a set of Russian dolls, there will exist more esoteric customs. ( for example, only those part of my inner circle will understand the significance of a farting reindeer)

A seasonal tradition I established with these blogs was doing an annual review of books. It’s not going to happen this time. I could blame the chest infection which, at the time of writing, has laid me temporarily low but the truth is I can’t really be arsed. If you are a regular reader of these blogs ( thanks!) you’ll know what I rated and slated; if a new reader ( welcome!) you’d maybe prefer to hear about some of my recent reading.

Kate Morton’s The Lake House is a 600+ page stonker of a book and for about 550 pages I was well hooked. But there’s a reveal near the end ( no spoilers here) that I thought was plain ridiculous and, in retrospect, dented my enjoyment. It was like having a new friend, with whom you think you have a lot in common, and then finding out they support UKIP. NO! IMPOSSIBLE! BUT I THOUGHT…. Not only does it make you question your own judgement but you end up resenting all the time you invested in what had promised to be a fruitful relationship.

By contrast The History of Loneliness by John Boyne is a wonderful book: dealing as it did with the historic abuse of boys by Roman Catholic priests in Ireland and its subsequent cover-up this was never going to be a barrel of laughs but the handling of the first person narration by the decent but self-deluded priest, Odran, is totally awesome.

Apologies for the use of the latter phrase but I’m still so into YA fiction that its expressions creep in. Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne and The Act of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson about, respectively, a girl will OCD and a boy who is transgender, are both, like, really cool.

I’ve also just finished Get Carter by Ted Lewis – partly because of the Barton connection but also because it’s been on my To Read list for some time. The reason I didn’t love this book is simply down to its genre: I seem to have difficulty in relating to a macho world of crime where little seems to be felt beyond physical pain ( for example being blasted in the buttocks by a shotgun) and the women are only victims. Carter, rather like Lee Child’s Reacher, is not what I would term a character. Yet without doubt I did admire the tautness and economy of the writing and the book’s strong sense of time and place, made more resonant because of its familiarity.

If there was to be a Book of the Year ( I said I wouldn’t, I know, I know, but tradition has a way of elbowing in…!) it would have to be All the Light we Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Please just read it.
Words -wise, 2015 was a good one for yours truly. I read 70 novels but a lot of other stuff too, co-wrote a show about Winifred Holtby and had several stories and a pamphlet published.
I hope 2016 is a good year for you in whichever way you want it to be.

xx

What a coincidence!

If I wanted to know the mathematical probability of two books, both of which I recently bought blind, turning out to be about Japan then The Co-Incidence Authority by JW Ironmonger would be the novel to read. Its protagonist, Thomas Post, is a lecturer in applied philosophy and spends his time engaged in statistical puzzles about coincidences, most of which I couldn’t follow. But that didn’t matter much because essentially the story is about the relationship between Thomas and Azalea, a young woman who as a child was abandoned in a fairground and whose life has been full of coincidences: members of her family keep getting killed on the same date, at 10-year intervals, and two men who might be her biological father have both lost their sight. Wanting to explore this happenstance Azalea comes to consult the expert Thomas. ( Coincidentally, earlier on she and Thomas have both been involved in the same tube accident) Ironically, because that’s what writers from Shakespeare to the Eastenders scriptwriters do – ie contrive and then manipulate events to form a narrative – the substance of this novel necessarily becomes an examination of its mechanics: it’s like one of those exploded diagrams designed to show you something’s inner workings.

In stark contrast to the mundane present day scenes set in London, Azalea’s back story is that her mother having been abducted and murdered she was whisked away to live in Uganda with missionaries. There, after being kidnapped by Joseph Kony, she was rescued by mercenaries and then later adopted by medical students. This is a seriously strange book. One of the features of the plot is that Thomas runs a website where people can predict possible coincidences. I’ve googled it and it actually exists www.thecoincidenceauthority.com though I haven’t as yet dared to register, for fear that I will be drawn into some quasi fictional parallel universe ( not that I’d mind that with some books – Heathcliff! It’s me, Cathy! – but not this particular one)

And those two books about Japan? A YA novel by Sarah Benwell The Last Leaves Falling and Playing Foxes a 1998 novel by Helen Dixon. I though the latter was dreadful – apparently I kept giving snorts of disgust as I read it. According to the Amazon blurb: This story centres on the relationship between a young widow, left with financial problems and the education of her two children, with her new lodger, a Japanese student from the local college. In learning to cross the cultural gap between them, she gradually comes back to life. It just didn’t do it for me: the plot creaked as badly as my joints in the morning and any moments of tension were instantly dissipated ( unlike my own when reading ) Thankfully, I can’t track down any other fiction by Dixon. By contrast, Benwell’s novel was a pleasure. Here the Japanese setting provided a natural backdrop for a story which is about a dying teenage boy. Although much of the interplay amongst him and his two friends was done in chat-room format, characterised by many Heys!! Yays!! and emoticons – there were also moments of lyrical poignancy. Despite its subject matter, The Last Leaves Falling ( what a beautiful title) is a novel which celebrates living.

Dead Skin

For me reading non-fiction is like exfoliating: something I should do more often, something else to feel guilty about; yet although it does have its own satisfaction ( all that dead skin being sloughed off!) I do sometimes wonder what real difference it makes ( surely it must fall off of its own accord, otherwise you’d get very thick arms and legs?)

Finding out ‘facts’ ( leaving aside the thorny issue that what is one person’s fact is another’s misperception) can be useful. I want to climb Everest ( I don’t. This is meant to be illustrating my point ). I come across a book that claims to be a ‘true story’ of someone who has climbed Everest. If I read it, this might well help me manage my Sherpas and my oxygen tank or whatever. It might even make me look inwards and examine whether my character is one best suited to mountain climbing. Oh no, I’ve just realised I don’t like heights! ( That bit’s true.) But reading about history ( I’m thinking here not so much social history but kings and queens and wars and so on) seems to me pointless – unless it helps to alter the way you act or think or behave towards others in the here and now. So this is by way of me trying to work out why my preference ( and I suspect most women’s but for once I’ll sidestep gender issues!) is for fiction.

Except that I am now going to discuss a non-fiction book – well hardly a book, more a booklet – In Flanders Fields, the story of John McCrae, the WW1 poet who wrote the famous poem of the same name and to which is attributed the wearing of the poppy ( although apparently the way poppies grew in places where battles had raged was noticed as early as The Napoleonic Wars ). Maybe it’s the conciseness of the publication that appeals: no endless footnotes, index of names and places, detail about early life that’s arguably designed to show off the research skills of the author rather than reveal more about their subject; maybe it’s the quiet discretion employed by the author ( in fact, it’s a translation, the original being written by a Dutchman, Herwig Verleyen ) that is so different from much of our contemporary diet of sensationalism: for example, McCrae is described as ‘…a romantic and sensitive man, a friend to children and animals, and a bachelor.’ ; maybe it’s simply the fact that I bought it in Ypres after doing the battlefield tour, the latter led by a young Belgian woman who continually referred to the fallen as ‘ boys’ which of course most were. ( McCrae, a doctor, actually lived longer than most: he died at the age of 45). The irony is that this booklet, and the context in which it was purchased, brought me up close to real events which I tend to keep at arm’s length though I’m happy to read WW1 based fiction by writers such as Sebastian Faulks (in Ypres, crassly, the Belgian beer I chose to sample was called Remembrance.) A further irony is that McCrae was probably not a very good poet. According to one critic, ‘ his work lacked a personal style and command of language…it particularly missed those distinguishing characteristics which are the mark of good poetry.’ But is it better to be remembered for fifteen lines rather than nothing, as was the case for an inconceivable number of other boys and men, even though at the time the poem was used both as propaganda by both those advocating pacifism and those urging patriotic sacrifice?

I have read some other good stuff this month, in particular Double Vision, a 2003 novel by Pat Barker ( also, of course, famous for writing The WW1 Regeneration trilogy ) but nothing that’s left its mark like the above. So perhaps it’s best if you forget about the first two paragraphs in which, on reflection, I appear to have talked a load of bunkum ( nothing new there then!)