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It is worth reading Athena; not at all like the movie

 

I Should Have Been a Hornby Train by Pat Arrowsmith

Hands up anyone who knows anything about Pat Arrowsmith; her novels, autobiographical writings, poetry, art. I thought not. I found this particular autobiographical work about her childhood and schooldays in a local second hand bookshop. I remembered hearing her speak at a public meeting when I was a student and bought the book.
Her life has been a remarkable one. Born to middle class parents (in 1930) and privately educated at Cheltenham Ladies College, Cambridge and then a Fulbright scholar. She was a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a lesbian and activist for gay rights, working for Amnesty International and campaigning for British troops to leave Ulster in the 1970s. All of this made her a fully paid up member of the awkward squad and she was not afraid of controversy or conflict. She has been to prison eleven times as a result of her anti-nuclear, anti arms trade and political protests (mostly in the UK, but once in Thailand and once in Greece); she was force fed whilst on hunger strike in 1960 in Gateside prison. She has been an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. She escaped from prison once and says she regrets not escaping more often. She refuses to pay fines for her protests at military bases and when arranging an interview with the Guardian in 2008 she asked the reporter to ring 3x as she was also expecting the bailiffs. She was the first person to “come out” in Who’s Who. Her father did not approve of her lifestyle and left a clause in his will to say she could only inherit if she married. She duly did; had the marriage annulled the same day and then gave all the inheritance away to causes she supported.
This book is autobiographical. The title comes from an incident just after she was born when her father told her two older brothers there was a surprise waiting for them in the living room. They were expecting a Hornby train set, but got a sister! It is a fascinating look at a middle class childhood in England in the 1930s and 1940s. The writing is based on extracts from Arrowsmith’s diaries at the time. She also draws on two unpublished novels which she had written by the age of 18, based loosely on her family and school life. Inevitably Arrowsmith did not fit in easily and was expelled from one school (Stover) and almost expelled from Cheltenham. Arrowsmith picks over familiar childhood themes and relationships and does so with a clear and perceptive eye. She examines sibling and parental relationships, living away from home, peer relationships/friendships, sport, passions, breaking the rules, schoolwork, teachers and so on. It is well written, even the material from her teenage years (she hasn’t changed the grammar or spelling mistakes).
A worthwhile read and I will certainly look for her novels and poetry. She has written novels about peace camps and about her time in a women’s prison. Arrowsmith is still politically active, but you won’t find the reportage in the mainstream press; since she helped to found CND and helped to organise the first Aldermaston March she has been outside of and opposed to the Establishment; too uncomfortable even for the Labour Party.
This is worth looking out for.

8 out of 10

starting Sowing by Leonard Woolf
 

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The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Atmospheric is a good way to describe this; it’s a bit like an old black and white film noir with soft edges. The language was lovely and draws in the reader. Genre is difficult to pin down. It is set in Barcelona in the 1940s and 1950s; but there is a story within the story that goes back to the 1920s and 1930s. The backdrop is the civil war and the Franco regime. There is an element of historical novel, coming of age, mystery/detective, mystical, love stories, family drama and probably a few more if I sat down and thought about it. There is a love of books at the centre (and libraries) and so a bibliophile is going to be attracted to it. It is witty, clever and has a touch of irony about it. The character of Fermin is a wonderful creation and worth reading the book for alone. I noted a touch of wistfulness and nostalgia in the novel and wasn’t surprised to learn that Zafon wrote this living in the US.
The first half/two-thirds of this book felt magical, but for me it lost its way in the last third. I’m not entirely sure why, but some of the plot devices were a little clunky and the letter from Nuria towards the end for me tied up too many loose ends. Fumero was just too unbelievable. Finally most of the female characters were a little too two-dimensional and done unto (even Nuria).
Nevertheless I did enjoy this and sometimes having all loose ends neatly tied is quite attractive and reassuring (but not too often!)
7 out of 10

Starting The five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Alborn

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Wow, you have been doing some major reading lately ! Good for you !   I read shadow of the Wind way back when it first came out, but want to reread it since I have the other ones in the set now . Maybe your review will give them a boost up the pile a bit !

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Thanks Julie and Athena!

A single Man by Christopher Isherwood

An astounding piece of work; a day in the life of novel. The day belongs to George Falconer; an English professor in his 50s (English by nationality as well) teaching in southern California. It is set in the early 1960s. George’s lover Jim has recently died suddenly and he is alone again. The novel takes us from waking to breakfast, to travelling to work and so on. This doesn’t have the grandiosity of Joyce; it is much more straightforward and focuses living each day because of life’s brevity.
The novel is about loss, but it is also about being an outsider (in this case gay, a foreigner, middle-aged, alone); most of all it is about being human and we share George’s day, his hopes and fears. The interactions with Charlotte and Kenny are wonderfully poignant (and very funny).
The prose is beautiful. Some stream of consciousness novels can be hard work, but this one just flows; it could so easily have become sentimental because of the focus on loss, but it does not. The everyday occurrences are well described; dinner with a friend, teaching class (George’s interior monologue is wonderful), a flirtation, swimming in the sea (admittedly only everyday if you live near it!) and the normal activities of all our lives; even driving a car.
Isherwood is really asking “How do we live?” “How do we get through life?” There are no answers but the ending is truly great and you will you a long way to find a better one in literature. Isherwood not only describes being alone well, he also captures being in a relationship with another;
“The perfect evening...lying down on the couch beside the bookcase and reading himself sleepy...Jim lying opposite him at the other end of the couch, also reading; the two of them absorbed in their books yet so completely aware of each other's presence.”
The descriptions of the physical geography of the house, as it is lived in alone and the contrast with two people living in the same small space is just brilliant.
This is just a great novel and I would urge everyone to read it. There is a certain level of melancholy, but there is warmth, hope and great humanity.
9 and a half out of 10

Starting Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

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Clea by Lawrence Durrell

The final part of the Quartet and it’s been a wonderful journey. Not quite as strong, I thought, as the other three. It is set about seven years later. Darley has been living on a Greek island looking after Melissa’s daughter (with Nessim). Balthasar arrives with information and writing from the late Pursewarden. Many of the aps from the previous novels are filled in.
Darley returns to Alexandria, reuniting Nessim with his daughter. He bumps into Clea and begins a romantic relationship with her. It is Clea  and her relationship with Darley that takes centre stage. The Quartet seems to hang together as a result of this novel and the prose is still wonderful. There were one or two ends that didn’t quite convince me (Justine for instance), but on the whole again Durrell has created a masterpiece. Darley is as short-sighted as ever when it comes to his romantic entanglements. The events of the war intertwine this novel and Alexandria is in the hands of the Free French. There are some neat comic touches; the late cross-dressing Scobie is now an unofficial saint and has his own feast day. All of the main participants take some sort of bow.
Durrell indulges himself in all sorts of meditations covering art, the novel and creativity, set within the outstanding writing and the Freudian allusions. The fragments from Pursewarden add a great deal and an edge of cynicism and weirdness. At the centre of it all though is the nature of love and more particularly how miserable it can make you! The whole thing is a look at modern civilisation and its decadence. I also think Durrell is looking at the nature of truth because he looks at events from several different angles and points of view making the reader question their original judgement.
The Quartet is a great achievement and the prose so beautiful it defies description. I enjoyed the first three slightly more than this one, but they stand alone as a whole.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Persuasion by Jane Austen
 

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The Five People you Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

(Apologies to those who loved it)

Not at all my normal fare, but it was a last thing at night read. I am a sceptic, so again this would not be a book that would attract me; it’s not that I like the idea of the cessation of existence at death, but I think that’s what happens. So how come I read this? Occasionally I buy books at auction because they can be very cheap; this came with assorted others, so ended up on the shelves.
It’s very brief and could easily be read in one sitting and is about a fairground worker called Eddie. It isn’t much of a spoiler to say that Eddie dies at the beginning of the book. He then meets five people all linked to his life in some way who help him make sense of it all.
Albom is an interesting character; I knew little about him prior to this, apart from the fact he has spent years grumbling about the Harry Potter books and films because he felt they made children stop reading other children’s classics. And here’s me thinking Harry Potter was just another English middle class, public school story! He has a column in the Detroit Free Press where he rants a bit about modern life (he also crosses picket lines, but that is a different story!)
Back to the book; the reviews are mixed and it appears to be loved and hated (possibly by Harry Potter fans!) in equal measure. I can understand why; there is a lot of sentimentality and cliché (all endings are also beginnings; holding anger is a poison) and Albom has a habit of explaining thought processes and ideas in great detail which can irritate. There’s not a great deal to say about it; some people will love it and will find it comforting (most people want to believe everything will be ok in the end and we will see our loved ones again) and others will find it sentimental and irritating. Atheists probably shouldn’t read books about heaven!
Anyway I’ve also heard it said that heaven is whatever you conceive it to be. Therefore here is mine. Heaven is a library with all the books ever published. Everyone subscribing to this heaven has their own personal space. Mine would have an open fire, be lined with books (of course), have a good armchair and there would be excellent food available at all times. There would be communal spaces to talk about books, watch film or TV if you wished and first class coffee. There would be a few other tweaks, but that is the essence.

5 out of 10

Starting The Line of beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
 

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I like your idea of heaven. :smile: I read The Five People You Meet In Heaven many years ago. I don't recall the details, but I remember being a bit disappointed with it. I had high hopes, due to the many positive reviews it has received.

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I'm not what you'd call a churchy type person myself ,so when I read the Albom book it wasn't that I took it to heart so much about the heaven thing . I think it meant a little something different for me . I have always felt that everything in life happens for a reason ,and things are interconnected with each other in ways that we sometimes don't even notice or pay attention to. I liked how this book sort-of hooked all the pieces together to show that theory ,so to speak .

 I think I like the Albom books ,not for the religious significance, but for the life lessons that they give me .

 

*And no apologies needed if you didn't enjoy it that much . :wink:  We don't all like the same exact things, thank goodness ! It'd be a boring place if we did .

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Sowing by Leonard Woolf; vol 1 of his autobiography

This is the first volume in Leonard Woolf’s five volume autobiography; covering the years 1880 to 1904 (childhood and university). Woolf wrote his autobiographies in his 80s (the 1960s). This volume covers his early childhood whilst his father was alive and the family was wealthy, the death of his father and the family having to move to save money, various public schools and finally Cambridge.
It is very interesting, but rather dry and analytical. Woolf clearly had a brilliant mind and the best parts of the book are where he describes his relationships with the other members of the Apostles at Cambridge; Lytton Strachey, Sydney Saxon-Turner, Keynes, Thoby Stephen etc. I would have to describe Woolf as sympathetic and perceptive but rather emotionally closed and pedantic. He does not go in to great detail about his home life and Jewish upbringing; he decided he was a sceptic very young and did not practise his faith or attend synagogue. Learning and books were what really motivated him.
Virginia and her sister Vanessa make an appearance later in the book. He describes the first time he saw them and it is worth quoting;
“ I first saw them one summer afternoon in Thoby’s rooms; in white dresses and large hats, with parasols in their hands, their beauty literally took one’s breath away, for suddenly seeing them one stopped astonished, and everything, including one’s breathing, for one second, also stopped as it does when in a picture gallery you suddenly come face to face with a great Rembrandt or Velasquez, or in Sicily rounding a bend in the road you see across the fields the lovely temple of Segesta”
That, I think, is an interesting reaction and an unusual way of describing attraction. It seemed to me to be more of an aesthetic than emotional reaction. The growth of Woolf’s political and moral views was illuminating and he was very clearly strongly influenced by the philosopher G E Moore. Woolf was also clearly influenced by Freud from the way he frames his reminiscences and he also explains that he and contemporaries were in revolt against a certain high Victorian moral sense. He has to explain this because when he was writing in 1960 it was pretty much beyond living memory.
I would recommend Victoria Glendenning’s excellent biography for a full picture of Woolf. However this is interesting background reading for those interested in Virginia Woolf.

7 out of 10

Starting A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

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Thanks Athena

Juggling by Barbara Trapido

I wasn’t sure about this one as I haven’t read any Barbara Trapido before; but it was actually rather good. It is a sequel apparently, but works as a standalone very well. This is all about Shakespearean comedy; which is to say it’s all rather tragic; in a light and comedic sort of way.
Trapido serves up twins separated at birth, a defrocked priest, misplaced siblings, coincidences that are Shakespearean in concept, switched and transposed parents, blurred genders, rape, incest, religion, English public schools, fathers and daughters/sons, finding your mum snogging your English tutor’s wife and Trapido juggles all these balls and more in a very adept way.
Juggling in this context has the Elizabethan meaning of to play tricks or deceive; a sort of sleight of hand. In the middle of a book one of the characters writes an essay on Shakespearean comedies which is reproduced in full and is brilliant: the point being;
“The Tragedies are Tragedies and the Comedies are Tragedies. The Comedies are a better sort of tragedy because they make us laugh and because the characters stay alive.”
And;
“In the conflict of gender, the women win the war of words, but the men will win the battle. The women win on points, but the men are the people who have the points. They have the last weapon against the last word. They have kisses and penetration.
Peace, I will stop your mouth
Women are made to bear and so are you.
The tragedy of the Comedies is that while sex draws men and women together, gender draws them apart. This is the terrible contradiction.”
Trapido’s plots plays brilliantly with all of this in what is essentially a coming of age tale. The plot is really too complex to try to explain, but is simply told and easily followed. It does help to have something of a grasp of Shakespeare’s Comedies because there are so many references and parallels.
I don’t really understand why Trapido is not better known; this is good stuff.

8 out of 10

Starting Eagle in the Air by Rose Robinson

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A good review, and see great quotes  :smile: .

I've never heard of Barbara Trapido, but I see that my local libraries have a handful of her books (but no Juggling), so I'll have some on my wishlist.

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Thanks Marie and Devi; I will be looking out for more Trapido as well!

Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones

Hefty historical novel set in fourteenth century Barcelona and revolving around the building of a cathedral (yes there are similarities to Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth). Unlike Follett’s novel this is very much woven around fact and an actual building and events and is based on a contemporary chronicle.
It is well plotted, but there is a certain predictability about it. The topics you would expect to come across are there; the inquisition, the plague, relationships with Jews and Moors, the guild system, money lending, serfdom and slavery, nobility, daily life, relationships between the sexes and so on. It is a saga based on the main protagonist Arnau Estanyol, his parents, his adopted brother Joan and his subsequent life and relationships. All the boxes are ticked and this makes for the predictability.
The novel is informative and as it is based on historical fact I did learn a good deal about the history of fourteenth century Barcelona. Some of the characterisation was a little contrived. In the first part of the book there were a few characters who were clearly in the way of where the plot was clearly headed and I thought to myself; “How is he going to dispose of them?” Along comes the plague, and of course, the characters in the way succumb, leaving the plot to roll along. The ending was also a little too cosy and predictable,
This sounds like I’m being rather harsh; the plot does move along at a good pace and there is certainly warmth to it that is endearing. It isn’t taxing and would make a good beach read (If I was into beaches!).

6 out of 10

Starting The World is what it is by Patrick French (biography of V S Naipaul)

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A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

A standard must read text based on Woolf’s lectures to the two Cambridge colleges which admitted women in 1928. It expresses a clear truth and clear injustice in very inventive ways. She describes her trials and tribulations in writing and researching the lectures using a skilfully woven skein of history, fiction, opinion and musings on the outrageousness of the place of women. The part about Shakespeare’s sister is brilliant.
Woolf is pointing out the importance of space and opportunity that have been denied to women (and also of course recognition; look at how many of the Nobel laureates for literature have been women). The simple exercise of pointing out the difference in the food at the male and female colleges says a great deal; as does the incident relating to the library. Woolf was accompanied by Vita Sackville-West when she delivered the lectures and there were coded messages throughout. She defended Rebecca West, who had been attacked by Desmond MacCarthy and talked quite directly (for the time) about lesbianism. This was pertinent because the furore over Radclyffe Hall was still quite recent and Woolf explains her own, more careful approach.
Brief, important and groundbreaking; this doesn’t need me to be waffling on about it; it just needs to be read!
9 out of 10

Starting Ice and Fire by Andrea Dworkin

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Thanks Athena

Eagle in the Air by Rose Robinson

I picked this book up in a local second hand shop that stocks lots of old penguin books. It was first published in 1969 and then by penguin a couple of years later. I had not heard of the book or the author and really did not know what to expect. The blurb on the back tells me that Rose Robinson was a black writer and that this was her first novel. In the front piece it indicates that Robinson was born in Chicago, sang with her sisters in a trio, was a professional dancer for a period, has a degree from the School of the Art Institute, had done some academic work for the University of Chicago, had taught in school and worked in community centres as a specialised activity teacher.It rather looks as though this was Robinson’s only published novel.
The title is a Biblical reference from the book of Proverbs (30:18-19). “There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand. The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.”
The book tells the story of Jean a young black woman at university in Chicago. It starts as she is taking part in a sit-in (it is the 60s!). She is expelled from college and moves in with a boyfriend. He turns out to be prone to drinking, losing jobs and a bully. Jean exits via the drainpipe and goes to her sister and brother-in-law. Her sister is having a breakdown and she cannot stay. She decides to head west to California to seek a new life. She has little money and so she hitch-hikes. Jean has a series of misadventures with racist and inappropriate men and is almost raped. She is rescued by Johnny, a one-armed man, travelling with a teenage boy (Kid) and she travels with them. There are tensions with Kid and some ups and downs on the journey.
The main characters are drawn well and the dialogue is sharp. Kirkus reviews rather unkindly draw parallels with “the Perils of Pauline” which is rather unfair. It is a decent first novel. It has been thought through and has clear parallels with “On the Road”; here though the road is a much more threatening place for a young black woman. There are also shades of Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men) with the two characters that come to Jean’s rescue. Robinson resists the obvious clichéd ending. Initially the last sentence felt like a bit of a letdown, but on reflection Robinson is making a point about the limited opportunities (and dangers) society holds for black women. Jean has no money and is working in a shop, having started in college; but her character has humour and resilience despite predatory power of the men she has met. The only sympathetic male character, the one-armed Johnny, has learnt through loss and suffering and he continues to learn through Jean.
A worthwhile discovery.

7 out of 10

Starting The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolano
 

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Ice and Fire by Andrea Dworkin

It’s a long time since I’ve read anything by Andrea Dworkin and this is the first fiction; having previously read her feminist writings. This was her first novel. It was, at times, difficult (uncomfortable) to read and is going to be difficult to review. It was panned by many critics who did not see beyond the difficult content and simply missed many of the points Dworkin was trying to make.
The novel is a first person narrative and has strong (but limited) autobiographical elements; there are significant areas of difference with Dworkin’s life. The childhood described is very similar to Dworkin’s; an adored father and a mother who was unwell for years. The narrator was brought up in a Jewish neighbourhood and describes the strict divisions between neighbourhoods and the changing nature of childhood games. The tone of the novel changes abruptly as it switches to adulthood with the narrator living with a girlfriend in New York’s Lower East Side. Both women are regular drug users; they earn money in a variety of ways, but mainly by selling themselves, to men and women. The men around them are predatory and they are beaten and raped at various times. The descriptions are bleak and often brutal. The descriptions of the surroundings in this novel are remarkably good and Dworkin does have a good descriptive mode; especially when describing squalor and bad food. The narrator also spends time in Europe (paralleling Dworkin’s time in The Netherlands). She writes and seems to start to find her voice, and meets and marries a man who is impotent. As he finds his confidence through her he becomes increasingly abusive and violent and she is seriously hurt. She manages to get back to the States and lives alone (we won’t mention the rats) in an apartment in the Lower East Side, where she writes. The end of the novel revolves around struggles to get published. It could not be described as an upbeat novel and a number of reviewers have focussed on the abuse and violence, missing inner meanings. I sat back at one point and the light suddenly came on (It took a while!) and realised what was going on.
I think some background is helpful here. Dworkin is usually conveniently dismissed as being at the extreme end of the feminist spectrum (a reviewer on here refers to her as a “nutbar”). This is too easy as there is a great deal of nuance to her thought. I first read Dworkin in my late teens and early twenties, when I was also reading stuff by Brownmiller and Firestone. Her works on Intercourse and Pornography are very powerful and even more prescient today. The arguments are complex and Dworkin is not easily quotable (and I’m not reviewing Pornography here) , but this passage is illustratve;

“Everything in life is part of it. Nothing is off in its own corner, isolated from the rest. While on the surface this may seem self-evident, the favorite conceit of male culture is that experience can be fractured, literally its bones split, and that one can examine the splinters as if they were not part of the bone, or the bone as if it were not part of the body. This conceit replicates in its values and methodology the sexual reductionism of the male and is derived from it. Everything is split apart: intellect from feeling and/or body. Some part substitutes for the whole and the whole is sacrificed to the part. So the scientist can work on bomb or virus, the artist on poem, the photographer on picture, with no appreciation of its meaning outside itself; and even reduce each of these things to an abstract element that is part of its composition and focus on that abstract element and nothing else -- literally attribute meaning to or discover meaning in nothing else. In the mid-twentieth century, the post-Holocaust world, it is common for men to find meaning in nothing: nothing has meaning; Nothing is meaning. In prerevolutionary Russia, men strained to be nihilists; it took enormous effort. In this world, here and now, after Auschwitz, after Hiroshima, after Vietnam, after Jonestown, men need not strain. Nihilism, like gravity, is a law of nature, male nature. The men, of course, are tired. It has been an exhausting perioed of extermination and devastation, on a scale genuinely new, with new methods, new possibilities. Even when faced with the probable extinction of themselves at their own hand, men refuse to look at the whole, take all the causes and all the effects into account, perceive the intricate connections between the world they make and themselves. They are alienated, they say, from this world of pain and torment; they make romance out of this alienation so as to avoid taking responsibility for what they do and what they are. Male dissociation from life is not new or particularly modern, but the scale and intensity of this disaffection are new. And in the midst of this Brave New World, how comforting and familiar it is to exercise passionate cruelty on women. The old-fashioned values still obtain. The world may end tomorrow, but tonight there is a rape -- a kiss, a fudge, a pat on the ass, a fist in the face. In the intimate world of men and women, there is no mid-twentieth century distinct from any other century. There are only the old values, women there for the taking, the means of taking determined by the male. It is ancient and it is modern; it is feudal, capitalist, socialist; it is caveman and astronaut, agricultural and industrial, urban and rural. For men, the right to abuse women is elemental, the first principle, with no beginning unless one is willing to trace origins back to God and with no end plausibly in sight. For men, their right to control and abuse the bodies of women is the one comforting constant in a world rigged to blow up but they do not know when.”

Extrapolating from this Dworkin  argues pornography is a very basic part of the structure of exploitation of women. In an interview with Michael Moorcock she put it more succinctly:
“Pornography is so important, I think, because of how it touches on every aspect of women's lower status: economic degradation, dehumanisation, woman hating, sexual domination, systematic sexual abuse. If someone thinks she can get women economic equality, for instance, without dealing in some way with the sexual devaluation of women as such, I say she's wrong; but I also say work on it, try, organise; I will be there for her,”
Dworkin has a particular complaint about De Sade and his approach to the world (“he embodies and defines male sexual values”). It has certainly been noted that Ice and Fire is a partial retelling of De Sade’s Juliett. However there are other elements. Dworkin herself said that Ice and Fire was an attempt to tell the truth about the intersection between poverty and sexual exploitation and it does this very well; the descriptive passages about poor housing are very powerfully written.
Towards the end of the novel the narrator is living alone and writing. Here is a woman in a room of her own, writing, without money and in poverty; rats in the walls and no one taking you seriously, but the writing is everything. Each chapter begins with a quote from literature; some of which Dworkin uses to pose questions and illustrate attitudes. Like the one from Dostoyevsky, “Our women writers write like women writers, that is to say, intelligently and pleasantly, but they are in a terrible hurry to tell what is in their hearts. Can you explain why a woman writer is never a serious artist?”
There is also a meditative passage on the Kafka quote “Coitus as punishment for the happiness of being together” which is profound and moving. It ends with the famous quote from Dworkin herself, “I am a feminist. Not the fun kind.”
This novel is about degradation and survival in the face of being powerless and in poverty. It is powerful and uncomfortable, but it is brilliant with lots of hidden references, many of which I am sure I have missed. Dworkin is not easy and is much maligned and misunderstood. However the more I look at the internet the more I feel that her arguments about pornography may be fundamentally right.
Dworkin was passionate about writing and feminism; “I've always considered writing sacred. I've come to consider the rights of women, including a right to dignity, sacred. This is what I care about. I don't want to give up what I care about.” (From her interview with Michael Moorcock).

8 and a half out of 10

Starting The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector

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Juggling was good Janet; it was the first I had read, hopefully not the last.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

It’s a long while since I read any Austen and this is one of those books which has appeared on my “which classics have you never read list” for years. I think everyone probably knows the plot through the book and the TV and film adaptations. The writing is, of course, great; the plot well constructed, focussed on the area around Bath. There isn’t a great deal of action on the surface, but, as always with Austen, there is much going on under the surface. Austen writes about what she knows and here she reflects the state of middle class society just as the Napoleonic wars ended. A great many youngish men were leaving the navy having made some money and gained some status and glory and were looking to settle with wives and property. As always Austen describes the delicate manoeuvres between the sexes and generations with an assured and confident pen.
The setting of the West Country surrounding Bristol was also in economic flux at the time. The slave trade had recently been abolished and although there were still strong links between the area and the plantations in the West Indies (made much clearer in Mansfield Park), there had been some economic impact on upper middle class families in the area and some changes in lifestyle were required. Much has been written about Austen’s attitude to the slave trade and slavery (Edward Said being particularly critical), but its impact on her was probably limited because of her father’s occupation and economic circumstance; Austen was much more of an observer and a sharp one.
I think Persuasion is a little more bittersweet than some of Austen’s earlier novels; the heroine is a little older (27; makes me feel ancient!!) and it’s about second chances, being true to your feelings. I would probably have been bored by it in my teens when I was reading Sartre and Camus, but now I appreciate the subtleties more. Austen wasn’t an author my parents had in the household and so I didn’t discover her as a child; Mansfield Park came along at school. Anyway I enjoyed this in a restrained sort of way!

8 and a half out of 10

Starting The Poorhouse Fair by John Updike

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