I have a confession to make. For this week’s book, “Tales of the Jazz Age” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I didn’t manage to read it all. Boo. It is entirely my own fault, and nothing to do with Mr F. Scott’s writing or anything like that. My social life got the better of me and I ended up trying to read the majority on Sunday evening, under pressure. I’m not very good under pressure, so I found that I read about twenty pages and then fell asleep. Whoops.
However, I only have about forty pages to go, so I have decreed that it’s enough to review and I’ll try to finish the rest in the next couple of weeks.
“Tales of the Jazz Age” has been published under a variety of titles. More recently, it’s been published as “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. Go figure. For those of you who have seen the multi award winning film, it might surprise you to know that the story is a mere twenty nine pages long. Evidently, the writers extrapolated a lot. I don’t want to compare it too closely with the film, but suffice it to say that there are a few crucial differences, along with many additions. The main one for me is that Benjamin is born as an old man – physically and mentally. In the film, he looks old but is mentally young. This is an important distinction which colours your view of either the book or the film. As far as the film goes, it gets them out of sticky ‘paedophilia’ situations and allows for a romance to grow that does not happen in the book.
The fact that Benjamin is born as an old man means that he dies as a baby. His world gets smaller and smaller, reducing from his career in the army to college at an Ivy League to being looked after by his son to being looked after by his grandson’s nurse and so on. His memories deteriorate gradually and peacefully, so he does not miss what he can’t remember. Apparently, the story stems from a quote which pondered why all the good stuff in life is at the beginning, when we don’t have the maturity to appreciate it.
F Scott Fitzgerald has a distinctive tone in his writing which always makes me think of languid summer days filled with Long Island Iced Teas and hi-balls full of gin. Maybe that’s why I fell asleep while reading…
His characters are never particularly likeable but are always human.
Out of the other stories I read, the one that sticks out the most is one about a cut glass bowl. This bowl is described as three and a half foot wide and was given to the protagonist of the story by an unsuccessful suitor. He curses the bowl, which sits in the story like a silent, malevolent villain who watches while the bad luck unfolds. It’s so oppressive that the mother’s feeling of being trapped within the confines of the crystal are not kept to the pages, but envelop the reader too.
The beauty of the short story is that it contains a novel in twenty pages. Characters are painted with wide brushstrokes, leaving the reader to fill in their own gaps. A well written short story isn’t a truncated novel, but a condensed one where nothing is lost. That probably explains why there are so many films that started off as short stories, including Stephen King’s collection “Different Seasons”, where a staggering three out of four stories have been made into films.
Are there any other collections you go back to? I like Roald Dahl’s numerous contributions – adult and absorbing with that air of macabre present in all of his books.
Thursday, 19 February 2009
E is for Elizabeth Goudge: The Little White Horse
Elizabeth Goudge’s “The Little White Horse” is one of my favourite books. I picked it up when I was about ten in a Waterstones, chiefly because it had a unicorn on the front cover and I was obsessed with them.
It was first published in 1946, but is set in the late 1800s. Newly orphaned Maria Merryweather, her governess Miss Heliotrope and spoilt spaniel Wiggins travel to Moonacre Manor in the first chapter. It’s a long journey from London to deepest Cornwall, in a rickety carriage far removed from Maria’s comfortable life in London. The first chapter is a fantastic introduction to Maria herself, who gets through the long, uncomfortable and boring journey by taking solace in her new boots. A girl after my own heart, then.
When they finally arrive in Moonacre Manor they are introduced to Maria’s second cousin, Sir Benjamin. The picture that Goudge paints of all of the characters is so vivid you can almost touch the scene. The gardens of Moonacre Manor, bathed in moonlight and full of menacing yew trees in the shape of cockerels and knights, roll out in front like a film. Everything is so well described that there are characters everywhere – the house itself, the valley of Silverydew and the menagerie of animals that make up a large part of the cast.
This is a large part of what makes the book so charming. The Merryweather family, as we find out with Maria, have a long history of being bold, passionate and stubborn. They have driven out friends, family and made enemies of their closest neighbours, the so-called Men of the Woods. Maria concludes that in fact, the only people to have any sense are the animals in the family – the little white horse in the title, the dog Wrolf, the pony Periwinkle, Zachariah the cat and Maria’s addition – Serena the hare. Goudge artfully gives the animals personality and communicates their feelings without resorting to cheesy manufacturings like telepathy, or Maria imagining what they feel like. Zachariah in particular is a very clever, very large cat who gives messages to the rest of the house by drawing hieroglyphics in the hearth ash – simple drawings which don’t require a huge leap of faith to believe that Zachariah drew them. Add that to the fact that the cook, Marmaduke Scarlet, laments Zachariah for eating all of his birds, and he’s simply a cat who can draw.
Even the house itself is a character, and is definitely the best house ever. It’s described basically as a castle, complete with towers. Maria’s room is in one of the towers, and is just big enough for a thirteen year old girl – she has sugar cookies in a box given by a mysterious benefactor, and clothes laid out for her every day.
Although it’s set in the 19th century, it’s still relevant today as Maria struggles with her family temper and other vices such as greed, pride and selfishness.
I wasn’t going to mention the film, but I think I should. The plot for imdb says that Maria has to save Moonacre before it falls into the sea, on the five hundredth full moon. This is not what happens in the book. Apart from anything else, Ioan Gruffudd as Sir Benjamin is all wrong, along with Natasha McElhone as Loveday Minette. The problem that Goudge wrote for herself is that her characters are so detailed (right down to their buttons) that the film makers either had to follow it to the letter, or make their own way. After reading the cast list and the plot summary, I think they chose the latter.
“The Little White Horse” is a lovely book – well-written, well-rounded and one I can read time and time again.
It was first published in 1946, but is set in the late 1800s. Newly orphaned Maria Merryweather, her governess Miss Heliotrope and spoilt spaniel Wiggins travel to Moonacre Manor in the first chapter. It’s a long journey from London to deepest Cornwall, in a rickety carriage far removed from Maria’s comfortable life in London. The first chapter is a fantastic introduction to Maria herself, who gets through the long, uncomfortable and boring journey by taking solace in her new boots. A girl after my own heart, then.
When they finally arrive in Moonacre Manor they are introduced to Maria’s second cousin, Sir Benjamin. The picture that Goudge paints of all of the characters is so vivid you can almost touch the scene. The gardens of Moonacre Manor, bathed in moonlight and full of menacing yew trees in the shape of cockerels and knights, roll out in front like a film. Everything is so well described that there are characters everywhere – the house itself, the valley of Silverydew and the menagerie of animals that make up a large part of the cast.
This is a large part of what makes the book so charming. The Merryweather family, as we find out with Maria, have a long history of being bold, passionate and stubborn. They have driven out friends, family and made enemies of their closest neighbours, the so-called Men of the Woods. Maria concludes that in fact, the only people to have any sense are the animals in the family – the little white horse in the title, the dog Wrolf, the pony Periwinkle, Zachariah the cat and Maria’s addition – Serena the hare. Goudge artfully gives the animals personality and communicates their feelings without resorting to cheesy manufacturings like telepathy, or Maria imagining what they feel like. Zachariah in particular is a very clever, very large cat who gives messages to the rest of the house by drawing hieroglyphics in the hearth ash – simple drawings which don’t require a huge leap of faith to believe that Zachariah drew them. Add that to the fact that the cook, Marmaduke Scarlet, laments Zachariah for eating all of his birds, and he’s simply a cat who can draw.
Even the house itself is a character, and is definitely the best house ever. It’s described basically as a castle, complete with towers. Maria’s room is in one of the towers, and is just big enough for a thirteen year old girl – she has sugar cookies in a box given by a mysterious benefactor, and clothes laid out for her every day.
Although it’s set in the 19th century, it’s still relevant today as Maria struggles with her family temper and other vices such as greed, pride and selfishness.
I wasn’t going to mention the film, but I think I should. The plot for imdb says that Maria has to save Moonacre before it falls into the sea, on the five hundredth full moon. This is not what happens in the book. Apart from anything else, Ioan Gruffudd as Sir Benjamin is all wrong, along with Natasha McElhone as Loveday Minette. The problem that Goudge wrote for herself is that her characters are so detailed (right down to their buttons) that the film makers either had to follow it to the letter, or make their own way. After reading the cast list and the plot summary, I think they chose the latter.
“The Little White Horse” is a lovely book – well-written, well-rounded and one I can read time and time again.
Monday, 2 February 2009
D is for Diablo
I love Juno. This is relevant because Diablo Cody wrote the sublime view of the teenager I wanted to be in a situation I could never imagine being in. It’s sweet without being saccharine, funny without being stupid and the soundtrack is just the right side of cool, without being pretentious. Well, overly pretentious, anyway.
“Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper” is a memoir (operative word here, people) about her time as a stripper. My own pre-conceptions tripped me up here, as I expected her stripping to be a necessity for survival, rather than a life choice. It was a bit of a shock for her to give up her stable job (where she does reasonably well) to strip, especially as she’s a new step mum to her new boyfriend’s little girl. I think I got defensive at this bit because she consciously rejected what is, essentially, my life.
Still, that’s me being all judge-y and I try not to do that. I guess I just didn’t understand why she wanted to strip. She has huge insecurities over her body but still manages to run around naked from practically the first night without any qualms. While stripping, she didn’t really enjoy it that much but she not only continued, she ‘graduated’ to a sex shop where she masturbated in a glass box for customers.
Basically, the main problem I had was that I expected the Juno writer to be like a friend I never had. Cool, quirky but generous and fun to hang around with. This character was way too cool for me, didn’t explain her life choices and liked bragging about her ‘day job’.
Nevertheless, the intricacies of stripping are fascinating. Some titbits I knew already, such as the fact that pole dancing gives you thighs of steel. Others were more surprising, like the way the strip clubs do not sell alcohol. Then you get into the murky underworld of her customers: foot fetishes, nun costumes, panty dances, curtained rooms and the person who licked the plastic booth clean of you know what.
Another thing I got defensive over was Diablo’s assertion that girls look down on strippers. Personally, if anyone has the focus to do so much stuff to themselves, top to toe, they should be applauded. The job itself – not something I’d want to do right at this moment, but I don’t look down on/get jealous of/hate girls or boys who do. It’s a bit like that time where I watched a TV programme about Jordan, who I’d been ambivalent about up until the point where she said “Girls don’t like me because they’re jealous”. If I recall correctly, she was wearing something in a shocking shade of pink which revealed her veins and lipo scars. She also had approximately three tonnes of make up, all in unflattering shades. I don’t dislike her because I’m jealous, I dislike her because she’s so arrogant she thinks everyone wants to look like her.
This book made me want to read a book about Diablo as a real person, rather than a stripper tourist who swings from loving it to hating it extremely quickly.
In summary, if you want to read an explicit book about the sex trade, read “The Secret Diary of a Call Girl” – she loves it, and when she stops loving it, she stops. Now, Belle would be a cool lady to hang out with.
Also, as I wikipediaed Diablo before writing this review, I found out that Diablo is not a birth name (pretty obvious, when I think about it) but neither is it her given name – it’s a pen name! However, she has published as Diablo so that’s what I’m using.
My E book is Elizabeth Goudge's "The Little White Horse", soon to be known as "The Secret of Moonacre", the film starring such national treasures as Ioan Gruffudd, Tim Curry and Dakota Blue Richards in the title role. Fancy reading with me?
“Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper” is a memoir (operative word here, people) about her time as a stripper. My own pre-conceptions tripped me up here, as I expected her stripping to be a necessity for survival, rather than a life choice. It was a bit of a shock for her to give up her stable job (where she does reasonably well) to strip, especially as she’s a new step mum to her new boyfriend’s little girl. I think I got defensive at this bit because she consciously rejected what is, essentially, my life.
Still, that’s me being all judge-y and I try not to do that. I guess I just didn’t understand why she wanted to strip. She has huge insecurities over her body but still manages to run around naked from practically the first night without any qualms. While stripping, she didn’t really enjoy it that much but she not only continued, she ‘graduated’ to a sex shop where she masturbated in a glass box for customers.
Basically, the main problem I had was that I expected the Juno writer to be like a friend I never had. Cool, quirky but generous and fun to hang around with. This character was way too cool for me, didn’t explain her life choices and liked bragging about her ‘day job’.
Nevertheless, the intricacies of stripping are fascinating. Some titbits I knew already, such as the fact that pole dancing gives you thighs of steel. Others were more surprising, like the way the strip clubs do not sell alcohol. Then you get into the murky underworld of her customers: foot fetishes, nun costumes, panty dances, curtained rooms and the person who licked the plastic booth clean of you know what.
Another thing I got defensive over was Diablo’s assertion that girls look down on strippers. Personally, if anyone has the focus to do so much stuff to themselves, top to toe, they should be applauded. The job itself – not something I’d want to do right at this moment, but I don’t look down on/get jealous of/hate girls or boys who do. It’s a bit like that time where I watched a TV programme about Jordan, who I’d been ambivalent about up until the point where she said “Girls don’t like me because they’re jealous”. If I recall correctly, she was wearing something in a shocking shade of pink which revealed her veins and lipo scars. She also had approximately three tonnes of make up, all in unflattering shades. I don’t dislike her because I’m jealous, I dislike her because she’s so arrogant she thinks everyone wants to look like her.
This book made me want to read a book about Diablo as a real person, rather than a stripper tourist who swings from loving it to hating it extremely quickly.
In summary, if you want to read an explicit book about the sex trade, read “The Secret Diary of a Call Girl” – she loves it, and when she stops loving it, she stops. Now, Belle would be a cool lady to hang out with.
Also, as I wikipediaed Diablo before writing this review, I found out that Diablo is not a birth name (pretty obvious, when I think about it) but neither is it her given name – it’s a pen name! However, she has published as Diablo so that’s what I’m using.
My E book is Elizabeth Goudge's "The Little White Horse", soon to be known as "The Secret of Moonacre", the film starring such national treasures as Ioan Gruffudd, Tim Curry and Dakota Blue Richards in the title role. Fancy reading with me?
C is for Charles
I have a confession to make. I’ve never read a Dickens novel. My stockings were always filled with abridged versions of classics, partly because I loved reading, even then, but mostly because it kept me occupied when I woke up at stupid o’clock on Christmas morning. There were a couple of Dickens in there and I definitely remember getting Great Expectations one year and maybe Oliver Twist too. I read all of them but as the abridged version, all of the tough stuff was taken out.
I tried reading “A Tale of Two Cities” a couple of years ago, but ended up carrying it round in my bag for a couple of months and reading magazines instead. So, as part of the book challenge I decided to read “A Christmas Carol”. I love Christmas like a little kid loves Christmas, and I get more excited every year. That means that I get more disappointed every year when it only lasts one day. Reading this meant that I got to prolong Christmas for a bit longer and, as some sort of omen, I got a Christmas present that week as well!
Everyone knows the story. Reading it, for me, was like coming home and settling into your favourite saggy armchair with a cup of tea. Actually, it was probably more like settling into your favourite armchair only to find that a spring has broken free and poked you on the bottom. Either I didn’t understand it as a child and skimmed over it, or the more gruesome parts were left out of the abridged version. The encounters Scrooge has with the spirits were more vivid, scarier and altogether more tense than I remember. There was a bit with the first spirit where Scrooge jams the candle extinguisher onto his head, putting out the light completely. Another with Marley where he unravels his bandages and his jaw falls off. For me, by far the most stark section was the one where the rag and bone people were discussing how much they’d get for Scrooge’s belongings, and the woman confesses to not only stealing his curtains, but his nightshirt and even the ferryman pennies. I don’t remember reading that as a six year old.
The story is so well known and so entrenched in our Christmas culture that some of the phrases have entered into common parlance. As Bill Bryson says (thank you, book B) Shakespeare donated a staggering amount of words and phrases, which perhaps is indicative of how influential an author is. “God bless us everyone” is obviously Tiny Tim’s mantra, along with Scrooge’s catchphrase of “Bah, humbug”, instantly recognisable. Scrooge himself has transformed from a man to a personality trait, especially around Christmas.
This can be a blessing and a burden. What people expect is not necessarily what the story actually is. When I was reading the Dickens version, I couldn’t get the picture of Michael Caine, Kermit and Gonzo out of my head, which was a bit distracting!
Aside from the well-known story, Dickens’ prose is rich and powerful. It conjures up a Victorian Christmas with ease – the people, the food, the presents and the goodwill to all men (I think we have Dickens to thank for that too, but don’t quote me on that) are all as clear as when you watch The Muppets’ version, but with fewer strings. I loved his approach to conversation too – he avoids massive sections of quotation marks by describing what’s being said sometimes. On other writers, this might not work but with Dickens his characters are painted so brightly that you can still hear their voices in your head, word for word or not.
Everyone should read a proper Dickens – he’s still around a couple of centuries later, because he’s brilliant. I think I’ll read Oliver Twist next – there won’t be that many differences from the abridged, children’s version, will it?
I tried reading “A Tale of Two Cities” a couple of years ago, but ended up carrying it round in my bag for a couple of months and reading magazines instead. So, as part of the book challenge I decided to read “A Christmas Carol”. I love Christmas like a little kid loves Christmas, and I get more excited every year. That means that I get more disappointed every year when it only lasts one day. Reading this meant that I got to prolong Christmas for a bit longer and, as some sort of omen, I got a Christmas present that week as well!
Everyone knows the story. Reading it, for me, was like coming home and settling into your favourite saggy armchair with a cup of tea. Actually, it was probably more like settling into your favourite armchair only to find that a spring has broken free and poked you on the bottom. Either I didn’t understand it as a child and skimmed over it, or the more gruesome parts were left out of the abridged version. The encounters Scrooge has with the spirits were more vivid, scarier and altogether more tense than I remember. There was a bit with the first spirit where Scrooge jams the candle extinguisher onto his head, putting out the light completely. Another with Marley where he unravels his bandages and his jaw falls off. For me, by far the most stark section was the one where the rag and bone people were discussing how much they’d get for Scrooge’s belongings, and the woman confesses to not only stealing his curtains, but his nightshirt and even the ferryman pennies. I don’t remember reading that as a six year old.
The story is so well known and so entrenched in our Christmas culture that some of the phrases have entered into common parlance. As Bill Bryson says (thank you, book B) Shakespeare donated a staggering amount of words and phrases, which perhaps is indicative of how influential an author is. “God bless us everyone” is obviously Tiny Tim’s mantra, along with Scrooge’s catchphrase of “Bah, humbug”, instantly recognisable. Scrooge himself has transformed from a man to a personality trait, especially around Christmas.
This can be a blessing and a burden. What people expect is not necessarily what the story actually is. When I was reading the Dickens version, I couldn’t get the picture of Michael Caine, Kermit and Gonzo out of my head, which was a bit distracting!
Aside from the well-known story, Dickens’ prose is rich and powerful. It conjures up a Victorian Christmas with ease – the people, the food, the presents and the goodwill to all men (I think we have Dickens to thank for that too, but don’t quote me on that) are all as clear as when you watch The Muppets’ version, but with fewer strings. I loved his approach to conversation too – he avoids massive sections of quotation marks by describing what’s being said sometimes. On other writers, this might not work but with Dickens his characters are painted so brightly that you can still hear their voices in your head, word for word or not.
Everyone should read a proper Dickens – he’s still around a couple of centuries later, because he’s brilliant. I think I’ll read Oliver Twist next – there won’t be that many differences from the abridged, children’s version, will it?
Friday, 23 January 2009
A is also for...er...A
Somewhat belatedly, book number one in my alphabetical literary journey is A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly.
I’d like to tell you that it was a recommendation from a close friend that moved me to buy this book. That, or maybe a knowledge of the author and her work. Possibly a desperate love of semi-fictionalised historical fiction for teenagers? I’d like to be able to say that any of those things were true, but unfortunately I can’t. No, the first thing I saw on picking up a copy of A Gathering Light in Waterstones was this quote from the Sunday Telegraph:
This book is better than George Clooney. That’s what the reviewer at the Telegraph told me, and though in my opinion, there are several other things I would count as better than George Clooney (mulled wine, snow, dark chocolate digestives), I was curious. So I bought it, read it, and found that I absolutely agreed with this bold, dare I say controversial statement.
Mattie Gokey is a girl desperately trying to keep everyone happy; her father, who needs her help to run the family farm after her mother’s death and her brother’s disappearance; her best friend Weaver, who intends to study law on day but can’t seem to stop getting into fights with people who call him a nigger; her school teacher, who has read some of her stories and has persuaded her to apply to college in New York; and Royal Loomis, the handsome boy from the farm one over, who has taken her out driving and suddenly seems to be imagining a future for the two of them.
The story opens as Mattie is working as a waitress at the Glenmore Hotel, where a woman has been found drowned in the lake. Everyone assumes that it was simply a terrible accident, but Mattie is beginning to suspect differently. The man who went out on the lake with her is nowhere to be found, and in Mattie’s apron pocket is a bundle of letters, thrust into her hands earlier that day by the drowned woman with the desperate plea to burn them.
The novel alternates between this thread of the story, based around a real murder that took place at the turn of the century in New York state, and a thread set months earlier, which follows Mattie as she attempts to be everything to everyone, looking after her father and sisters, worrying about her impoverished neighbours and trying to figure out exactly what Royal sees in her, while also secretly harbouring dreams of her own to write and to get a proper education. It’s only really when the two threads of the story meet that Mattie finally figures out what to do and takes action.
Based in part around real events and places, A Gathering Light recreates in amazing detail what life was like for people like Mattie in turn-of-the-century rural America. The extent of Jennifer Donnelly’s research really shows, not least in the three page bibliography at the end, and yet it manages not to fall into the old “I spent all this time researching; let me tell you EVERYTHING I’VE LEARNT” trap. Never having written a historical novel, I may be talking out of turn, but I imagine that this must be really hard to do. You want to research enough so that you don’t get your editor, or worse, your readers pointing out the fact that your heroine couldn’t have flown to New York because planes hadn’t been invented yet, but neither do you want to give the impression that your story has taken place in the middle of a Simon Schama documentary. The little details, however authentic, shouldn’t overshadow the story, but in this case, Mattie’s story is just so interesting, and the writing is so light and beautiful that it’s only once you get to the end that you realise how much you’ve learnt.
One of the things I love most about this novel is the fact that the letters, which Mattie reads in a desperate attempt to find out who the drowned woman was and why she died, are the actual ones written by Grace Brown, who died in Big Moose Lake in 1906. Discovered, in reality, in her hotel room after her death, the letters paint a terribly bleak picture, but in giving them to Mattie, and allowing her life to be changed by them, Jennifer Donnelly has given Grace’s story something of a happy ending.
I suppose that honestly, I chose this novel to begin with because I had read it before and knew I loved it. I hope that I shall read many books for the first time this year, but wanted to start, like Miss R, with an old friend. As I read it though, it occurred to me that it was a good book to start with for more reasons than that. It’s about someone who loves words, and writing and reading. It’s about someone who dreams of being something more than they are. Most of all, it is, after all the sadness and intrigue, an incredibly hopeful book, which seemed like a fitting way to begin the year.
I’d like to tell you that it was a recommendation from a close friend that moved me to buy this book. That, or maybe a knowledge of the author and her work. Possibly a desperate love of semi-fictionalised historical fiction for teenagers? I’d like to be able to say that any of those things were true, but unfortunately I can’t. No, the first thing I saw on picking up a copy of A Gathering Light in Waterstones was this quote from the Sunday Telegraph:
If George Clooney had walked into the room I would have told him to come back later when I had finished.
This book is better than George Clooney. That’s what the reviewer at the Telegraph told me, and though in my opinion, there are several other things I would count as better than George Clooney (mulled wine, snow, dark chocolate digestives), I was curious. So I bought it, read it, and found that I absolutely agreed with this bold, dare I say controversial statement.
Mattie Gokey is a girl desperately trying to keep everyone happy; her father, who needs her help to run the family farm after her mother’s death and her brother’s disappearance; her best friend Weaver, who intends to study law on day but can’t seem to stop getting into fights with people who call him a nigger; her school teacher, who has read some of her stories and has persuaded her to apply to college in New York; and Royal Loomis, the handsome boy from the farm one over, who has taken her out driving and suddenly seems to be imagining a future for the two of them.
As I stand here on the porch of the Glenmore, the finest hotel on all of Big Moose Lake, I tell myself that today – Thursday, July 12, 1906 – is such a day…
…I believe these things. With all my heart. For I am good at telling myself lies.
The story opens as Mattie is working as a waitress at the Glenmore Hotel, where a woman has been found drowned in the lake. Everyone assumes that it was simply a terrible accident, but Mattie is beginning to suspect differently. The man who went out on the lake with her is nowhere to be found, and in Mattie’s apron pocket is a bundle of letters, thrust into her hands earlier that day by the drowned woman with the desperate plea to burn them.
The novel alternates between this thread of the story, based around a real murder that took place at the turn of the century in New York state, and a thread set months earlier, which follows Mattie as she attempts to be everything to everyone, looking after her father and sisters, worrying about her impoverished neighbours and trying to figure out exactly what Royal sees in her, while also secretly harbouring dreams of her own to write and to get a proper education. It’s only really when the two threads of the story meet that Mattie finally figures out what to do and takes action.
Based in part around real events and places, A Gathering Light recreates in amazing detail what life was like for people like Mattie in turn-of-the-century rural America. The extent of Jennifer Donnelly’s research really shows, not least in the three page bibliography at the end, and yet it manages not to fall into the old “I spent all this time researching; let me tell you EVERYTHING I’VE LEARNT” trap. Never having written a historical novel, I may be talking out of turn, but I imagine that this must be really hard to do. You want to research enough so that you don’t get your editor, or worse, your readers pointing out the fact that your heroine couldn’t have flown to New York because planes hadn’t been invented yet, but neither do you want to give the impression that your story has taken place in the middle of a Simon Schama documentary. The little details, however authentic, shouldn’t overshadow the story, but in this case, Mattie’s story is just so interesting, and the writing is so light and beautiful that it’s only once you get to the end that you realise how much you’ve learnt.
One of the things I love most about this novel is the fact that the letters, which Mattie reads in a desperate attempt to find out who the drowned woman was and why she died, are the actual ones written by Grace Brown, who died in Big Moose Lake in 1906. Discovered, in reality, in her hotel room after her death, the letters paint a terribly bleak picture, but in giving them to Mattie, and allowing her life to be changed by them, Jennifer Donnelly has given Grace’s story something of a happy ending.
I suppose that honestly, I chose this novel to begin with because I had read it before and knew I loved it. I hope that I shall read many books for the first time this year, but wanted to start, like Miss R, with an old friend. As I read it though, it occurred to me that it was a good book to start with for more reasons than that. It’s about someone who loves words, and writing and reading. It’s about someone who dreams of being something more than they are. Most of all, it is, after all the sadness and intrigue, an incredibly hopeful book, which seemed like a fitting way to begin the year.
Monday, 19 January 2009
B is for Bill
hello dear readers,
This week's book is "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson.
I think that choosing a non-fiction book for my second week was a mistake on my part. Firstly, I do want to make it clear that I love Bill Bryson, in a fatherly/grandfatherly way. In fact, in an uncle-like way. He’s the cool one who lives hundreds of miles away but would give you presents/alegandawing/money when he saw you twice a year.
Mother Tongue deals with the origins of the English language, the reasons it’s become so powerful internationally, and the places it’s going in the future. According to Bill, the answer to all of these is “America”. Okay, I’m being a bit flippant. After all, even I couldn’t read a couple of hundred pages where the word “America” was repeated over and over, and I read Marian Keyes. It comes pretty darn close though.
Bill liberally sprinkles the tome with amazing factoids such as explaining that the reason we call the live animal (cow,sheep,pig) and the meat (beef,mutton,pork) different things is to do with the peasant language of Anglo-Saxon versus the court language of French, i.e. boeuf, mouton and, erm. Porque? *Checks google* Apparently, it’s porc. So there. Anyway, I thought that was pretty cool and solved a niggle that I’d had for a while.
There are others, such as the Japanese renderings of some words which were originally English but now sound Japanese. These weren’t particularly amazing, but it did give me the opportunity to say things in an hilarious accent. Of course, the fact that the book was written in the late eighties doesn’t help the vaguely uncomfortable finger pointing that Bryson does throughout, including the entire chapter he devotes to what can be called, for ease, as ‘engrish’. He does make a good point in this, which is that there are a lot of people who would class themselves as English speakers, but actually cannot string a sentence together and lack the skills to articulate their basic needs, desires and wants. It struck me as I read that this description (or, at least, Bryson’s hinting at this) could very well apply to so-called “English patriots”. A quick perusal of facebook sites with names such as “I’m English forever and if you don’t like it/aren’t white/don’t have the St George tattooed on your arse go home even if you were born here and your parents were and your grandparents and in fact you are more English than I am” or something to that effect, will reveal a staggering low literacy level among the members.
That was definitely something that I expected from Mother Tongue, and never got. I wanted a study of the so-callled decline of literacy – is it real? If it is, should we be bothered or is it simply the evolution of language, as it’s been evolving for the last 2000000000 years (give or take)? There was a chapter on Shakespeare-isms. Bill said about four times that Shakespeare himself didn’t even know how to spell his own name. He also says that the OED spells it Shakspear, but no-one listens to it. There was also a chapter on silent letters and various Americans who tried to change the spellings of some words (dwel was one, I think) and succeeded in changing some others: catalog, program and so on. He spends an awful lot of time on this, which iI thought was strange as he is now not only a self-confessed Anglophile, he also lives somewhere around Wymondham (not exactly bustling and cosmopolitan, it has to be said) and is the Green Sherriff of East Anglia, or something. In Mother Tongue, he comes across as positively Anglophobic. There’s a lot of that classic defence tactic: “they started it”, which obviously means that he’s allowed to be downright mean about some parts of the world that aren’t American.
Another thing is that I felt like he bends the rules. At one point he writes down a long list of American words that a Briton wouldn’t know what to do with. He even invites the reader to cover up one side and try to identify the other. Shamefully, I did it. Some of the words are now easily recognisable, such as diaper and sidewalk. Some have fallen out of use altogether – I watch a lot of American TV and don’t remember a seesaw ever being referred to as a ‘teeter totter’.
There are other instances where Bill asserts that ‘no language apart from English has swear words’, or something along those lines. They’re just wrong, and that makes me doubt the fun “isn’t that amazing? I never knew that before!” moments elsewhere in the book. Just like that time that you found out your favourite uncle has a gambling habit, not a petting zoo. You just can’t trust anything else he says, and it makes you uncomfortable.
Next week it's Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"
This week's book is "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson.
I think that choosing a non-fiction book for my second week was a mistake on my part. Firstly, I do want to make it clear that I love Bill Bryson, in a fatherly/grandfatherly way. In fact, in an uncle-like way. He’s the cool one who lives hundreds of miles away but would give you presents/alegandawing/money when he saw you twice a year.
Mother Tongue deals with the origins of the English language, the reasons it’s become so powerful internationally, and the places it’s going in the future. According to Bill, the answer to all of these is “America”. Okay, I’m being a bit flippant. After all, even I couldn’t read a couple of hundred pages where the word “America” was repeated over and over, and I read Marian Keyes. It comes pretty darn close though.
Bill liberally sprinkles the tome with amazing factoids such as explaining that the reason we call the live animal (cow,sheep,pig) and the meat (beef,mutton,pork) different things is to do with the peasant language of Anglo-Saxon versus the court language of French, i.e. boeuf, mouton and, erm. Porque? *Checks google* Apparently, it’s porc. So there. Anyway, I thought that was pretty cool and solved a niggle that I’d had for a while.
There are others, such as the Japanese renderings of some words which were originally English but now sound Japanese. These weren’t particularly amazing, but it did give me the opportunity to say things in an hilarious accent. Of course, the fact that the book was written in the late eighties doesn’t help the vaguely uncomfortable finger pointing that Bryson does throughout, including the entire chapter he devotes to what can be called, for ease, as ‘engrish’. He does make a good point in this, which is that there are a lot of people who would class themselves as English speakers, but actually cannot string a sentence together and lack the skills to articulate their basic needs, desires and wants. It struck me as I read that this description (or, at least, Bryson’s hinting at this) could very well apply to so-called “English patriots”. A quick perusal of facebook sites with names such as “I’m English forever and if you don’t like it/aren’t white/don’t have the St George tattooed on your arse go home even if you were born here and your parents were and your grandparents and in fact you are more English than I am” or something to that effect, will reveal a staggering low literacy level among the members.
That was definitely something that I expected from Mother Tongue, and never got. I wanted a study of the so-callled decline of literacy – is it real? If it is, should we be bothered or is it simply the evolution of language, as it’s been evolving for the last 2000000000 years (give or take)? There was a chapter on Shakespeare-isms. Bill said about four times that Shakespeare himself didn’t even know how to spell his own name. He also says that the OED spells it Shakspear, but no-one listens to it. There was also a chapter on silent letters and various Americans who tried to change the spellings of some words (dwel was one, I think) and succeeded in changing some others: catalog, program and so on. He spends an awful lot of time on this, which iI thought was strange as he is now not only a self-confessed Anglophile, he also lives somewhere around Wymondham (not exactly bustling and cosmopolitan, it has to be said) and is the Green Sherriff of East Anglia, or something. In Mother Tongue, he comes across as positively Anglophobic. There’s a lot of that classic defence tactic: “they started it”, which obviously means that he’s allowed to be downright mean about some parts of the world that aren’t American.
Another thing is that I felt like he bends the rules. At one point he writes down a long list of American words that a Briton wouldn’t know what to do with. He even invites the reader to cover up one side and try to identify the other. Shamefully, I did it. Some of the words are now easily recognisable, such as diaper and sidewalk. Some have fallen out of use altogether – I watch a lot of American TV and don’t remember a seesaw ever being referred to as a ‘teeter totter’.
There are other instances where Bill asserts that ‘no language apart from English has swear words’, or something along those lines. They’re just wrong, and that makes me doubt the fun “isn’t that amazing? I never knew that before!” moments elsewhere in the book. Just like that time that you found out your favourite uncle has a gambling habit, not a petting zoo. You just can’t trust anything else he says, and it makes you uncomfortable.
Next week it's Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
A is for Audrey
Book Number One is….
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
I thought I’d ease myself in gently to the Book Challenge ’09, by starting with one of my favourite books. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read it, but it must be closing in on a dozen times. Every time I read it, something new pops out at me.
It reninds me of an argument I once had with a thankfully now ex-colleague. When I said I was in the process of re-reading Watership Down, he snorted derisively and said “Why bother reading a book more than once? Bloody English students”. His reaction really surprised me – coming from a family of self-confessed (or should that be self-obsessed? Arf) readers, it never crossed my mind that other people only enjoyed a book once. My answer was “Why not? Would you listen to a CD once?”, which I thought was pretty quick, even if I do say so myself. I find myself gravitating towards certain books time and time again – the aforementioned rabbit saga, A Proper Little Nooryef, Phillip Pullman’s saga, Black Beauty and a couple more that I’ve forgotten.
Each time I read them, there’s something new. Re-reading a book for me is like welcoming old friends in and enjoying a classic song. It’s like coming home, in the cheesiest way I can think of.
Is it just me that reads good books countless times? Don’t get me wrong, I also read lots of new books. If you do re-read them, what books do you go back to?
Anyway, on with the review.
The Time Traveler’s Wife tells the story of Henry and Clare. Theirs is an epic love story spanning nearly a hundred years. It involves difficulties experienced by countless people all over the world, and difficulties that only Henry and Clare encounter. Henry is a time traveller. He finds himself inconveniently naked in different places at different times. Sometimes he ends up with Clare at various points in her childhood, whereas sometimes he’s running for his life after being accused of theft/burglary/bestiality.
As the blurb on the back of the book says: Clare and Henry first meet when Henry is 42 and Clare is 6. So far, so paedophilia. I’ve been thinking about this lately, especially in the last time round, as a couple of people have mentioned this aspect. Is it grooming to spend your wife’s childhood with her? Bear in mind, they meet in the present through chance – Henry never tells Clare his last name, birth date or anything that can identify him. Is that Niffenegger telling us it’s okay? The arguments and the friction felt between Clare and Henry when they first get together in ‘their’ time (as opposed to hers) is telling – Henry is not the Henry Clare knows, but a younger, rougher model. In reality Henry is eight years older than Clare.
Personally, I think that the way they are together is recognisable in every couple you meet. Sometimes you wonder why they keep going, why they torture each other on a seemingly daily basis. But love is something which cannot be explained in a novel, a film, a pop song. That’s why humans have been trying to capture the intangible for the last dozen centuries – the fascination draws them in.
There are other players in this story – their best friends Gomez and Charisse, where Gomez loves Clare and is apparently biding his time until ‘something happens to Henry’. Lesbian wannabe Celia Attley adores Henry’s ex-girlfriend Ingrid, who colours his view on life and himself. In a pleasing twist, Celia and Clare become friends – something that pops up on a couple of occasions.
It’s hard to describe the story without it sounding twee and trite. Essentially it’s boy meets girl/girl and boy fall in love/boy time travels to girl’s childhood. But it’s so much more. Niffenegger deftly explores the themes of loss, union, families and the struggle of life alongside different ideas of fate, religion, art and poetry. One of my favourite sections is when Clare and her sister Alicia are watching It’s a Wonderful Life. Somehow Niffenegger manages to interweave the most ridiculous points of It’s a Wonderful Life into the narrative of The Time Traveler’s Wife without missing a beat. In fact, the first time I read it I had never seen It’s a Wonderful Life, and was adamant that it was Niffenegger’s fanciful re-drawing of it – how does she expect me to believe that Donna ends up naked in a bush while George Bailey threatens to sell tickets?
Beneath the love story runs a dark vein of chaos, anarchy and a feeling that life sucks, then you die. This is helpfully illustrated by the punk devotees, including Clare and Henry. Henry is not always a great guy, as Clare is not always a great girl. Henry beats people to a pulp and Clare orders the kidnapping of a classmate without regret. This again comes up for criticism – how are we supposed to like Henry when he’s a womanising drunk who likes beating the shit out of people? In my own opinion, this reaction comes from someone who either didn’t have time to read the whole book, or has forgotten that real people aren’t 100% nice or nasty. This is another of my favourite things about the book – Clare and Henry are the loved-up couple, torn apart through no fault of their own but destined to be together. But their romance is harsh, physical and, at times, brutal. Romance here doesn’t come from Jane Austen or Mills & Boon (although there is a place for each of them, elsewhere) but instead from the world we know, where people fight and play and shout and cry and experience life from beginning to end and sometimes something inbetween.
To prepare for this review I perused Amazon’s entry. I found no less than eight hundred and thirty nine reviews. All of them are written honestly and baldly – six hundred and two are five stars, forty five are one stars and the rest are spread out between the rest. What does that say? That there are over six hundred right people and forty five wrong ones? That lots of readers want to jump on Richard & Judy’s bandwagon?
To my dismay, I found myself reading the one star reviews. Many of them make good points – the first person narrative makes it difficult sometimes to tell who is speaking i.e. Henry or Clare. It’s true – on occasion it is hard to tell who has taken over the literary reins, but perhaps that’s because Clare and Henry are connected on a molecular, intimate level. Clare as a six year old is certainly easy to pick out, along with Clare at sixteen. Other comments are just strange – along the lines of Henry conveniently never travelling to somewhere he doesn’t know, or that he is the only time traveller. Firstly, Henry explains that he thinks his time travel is contained within his sub-conscious, which means that as he has never gone abroad, he doesn’t time travel abroad. Secondly, why criticise a book because he is the only time traveller? That sounds like the reviewer expected a literary adaptation of Jumper or Tru Calling, and is marking accordingly. Again, the prose explains that Henry has always felt lonely because he expected to meet someone else like him and never has. If it’s constrained by your own consciousness, why would you travel to someone else’s memories? Given that Henry faces daily problems around hiding his ‘disease’ from those around him for fear of being carted off to a mental hospital, why would another time traveller advertise it?
I love this book. It touches me on levels I cannot explain, and do not wish to. If you enjoy an easy to read, multi layered novel about life and death and union and separation with a million other things mixed in, read this. Don’t think it should be more than it is and please, don’t expect Dostoyevsky. That’s not fair on Dostoyevsky…
On a side note, for those of you averse to reading (I appreciate your time but really, you may be on the wrong blog) the Hollywood re-make's looming at some point, possibly this decade : imdb entry.
Book Number two is: Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue.
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
I thought I’d ease myself in gently to the Book Challenge ’09, by starting with one of my favourite books. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read it, but it must be closing in on a dozen times. Every time I read it, something new pops out at me.
It reninds me of an argument I once had with a thankfully now ex-colleague. When I said I was in the process of re-reading Watership Down, he snorted derisively and said “Why bother reading a book more than once? Bloody English students”. His reaction really surprised me – coming from a family of self-confessed (or should that be self-obsessed? Arf) readers, it never crossed my mind that other people only enjoyed a book once. My answer was “Why not? Would you listen to a CD once?”, which I thought was pretty quick, even if I do say so myself. I find myself gravitating towards certain books time and time again – the aforementioned rabbit saga, A Proper Little Nooryef, Phillip Pullman’s saga, Black Beauty and a couple more that I’ve forgotten.
Each time I read them, there’s something new. Re-reading a book for me is like welcoming old friends in and enjoying a classic song. It’s like coming home, in the cheesiest way I can think of.
Is it just me that reads good books countless times? Don’t get me wrong, I also read lots of new books. If you do re-read them, what books do you go back to?
Anyway, on with the review.
The Time Traveler’s Wife tells the story of Henry and Clare. Theirs is an epic love story spanning nearly a hundred years. It involves difficulties experienced by countless people all over the world, and difficulties that only Henry and Clare encounter. Henry is a time traveller. He finds himself inconveniently naked in different places at different times. Sometimes he ends up with Clare at various points in her childhood, whereas sometimes he’s running for his life after being accused of theft/burglary/bestiality.
As the blurb on the back of the book says: Clare and Henry first meet when Henry is 42 and Clare is 6. So far, so paedophilia. I’ve been thinking about this lately, especially in the last time round, as a couple of people have mentioned this aspect. Is it grooming to spend your wife’s childhood with her? Bear in mind, they meet in the present through chance – Henry never tells Clare his last name, birth date or anything that can identify him. Is that Niffenegger telling us it’s okay? The arguments and the friction felt between Clare and Henry when they first get together in ‘their’ time (as opposed to hers) is telling – Henry is not the Henry Clare knows, but a younger, rougher model. In reality Henry is eight years older than Clare.
Personally, I think that the way they are together is recognisable in every couple you meet. Sometimes you wonder why they keep going, why they torture each other on a seemingly daily basis. But love is something which cannot be explained in a novel, a film, a pop song. That’s why humans have been trying to capture the intangible for the last dozen centuries – the fascination draws them in.
There are other players in this story – their best friends Gomez and Charisse, where Gomez loves Clare and is apparently biding his time until ‘something happens to Henry’. Lesbian wannabe Celia Attley adores Henry’s ex-girlfriend Ingrid, who colours his view on life and himself. In a pleasing twist, Celia and Clare become friends – something that pops up on a couple of occasions.
It’s hard to describe the story without it sounding twee and trite. Essentially it’s boy meets girl/girl and boy fall in love/boy time travels to girl’s childhood. But it’s so much more. Niffenegger deftly explores the themes of loss, union, families and the struggle of life alongside different ideas of fate, religion, art and poetry. One of my favourite sections is when Clare and her sister Alicia are watching It’s a Wonderful Life. Somehow Niffenegger manages to interweave the most ridiculous points of It’s a Wonderful Life into the narrative of The Time Traveler’s Wife without missing a beat. In fact, the first time I read it I had never seen It’s a Wonderful Life, and was adamant that it was Niffenegger’s fanciful re-drawing of it – how does she expect me to believe that Donna ends up naked in a bush while George Bailey threatens to sell tickets?
Beneath the love story runs a dark vein of chaos, anarchy and a feeling that life sucks, then you die. This is helpfully illustrated by the punk devotees, including Clare and Henry. Henry is not always a great guy, as Clare is not always a great girl. Henry beats people to a pulp and Clare orders the kidnapping of a classmate without regret. This again comes up for criticism – how are we supposed to like Henry when he’s a womanising drunk who likes beating the shit out of people? In my own opinion, this reaction comes from someone who either didn’t have time to read the whole book, or has forgotten that real people aren’t 100% nice or nasty. This is another of my favourite things about the book – Clare and Henry are the loved-up couple, torn apart through no fault of their own but destined to be together. But their romance is harsh, physical and, at times, brutal. Romance here doesn’t come from Jane Austen or Mills & Boon (although there is a place for each of them, elsewhere) but instead from the world we know, where people fight and play and shout and cry and experience life from beginning to end and sometimes something inbetween.
To prepare for this review I perused Amazon’s entry. I found no less than eight hundred and thirty nine reviews. All of them are written honestly and baldly – six hundred and two are five stars, forty five are one stars and the rest are spread out between the rest. What does that say? That there are over six hundred right people and forty five wrong ones? That lots of readers want to jump on Richard & Judy’s bandwagon?
To my dismay, I found myself reading the one star reviews. Many of them make good points – the first person narrative makes it difficult sometimes to tell who is speaking i.e. Henry or Clare. It’s true – on occasion it is hard to tell who has taken over the literary reins, but perhaps that’s because Clare and Henry are connected on a molecular, intimate level. Clare as a six year old is certainly easy to pick out, along with Clare at sixteen. Other comments are just strange – along the lines of Henry conveniently never travelling to somewhere he doesn’t know, or that he is the only time traveller. Firstly, Henry explains that he thinks his time travel is contained within his sub-conscious, which means that as he has never gone abroad, he doesn’t time travel abroad. Secondly, why criticise a book because he is the only time traveller? That sounds like the reviewer expected a literary adaptation of Jumper or Tru Calling, and is marking accordingly. Again, the prose explains that Henry has always felt lonely because he expected to meet someone else like him and never has. If it’s constrained by your own consciousness, why would you travel to someone else’s memories? Given that Henry faces daily problems around hiding his ‘disease’ from those around him for fear of being carted off to a mental hospital, why would another time traveller advertise it?
I love this book. It touches me on levels I cannot explain, and do not wish to. If you enjoy an easy to read, multi layered novel about life and death and union and separation with a million other things mixed in, read this. Don’t think it should be more than it is and please, don’t expect Dostoyevsky. That’s not fair on Dostoyevsky…
On a side note, for those of you averse to reading (I appreciate your time but really, you may be on the wrong blog) the Hollywood re-make's looming at some point, possibly this decade : imdb entry.
Book Number two is: Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
