A Book Blog by Books do Furnish a Room 2014

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The Natural Order by Ursula Bentley

Ursula Bentley is not a name that springs to mind when asked to name British writers of the twentieth century. And yet in when Granta in 1983 produced its first list of the 20 best young British novelists, Bentley was on it; as were Rose Tremain, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, William Boys and Pat Barker. Shortly before she died, in an interview for the Guardian she recalled the oddness of the list and remembered the group as being very driven and there being a very masculine feel to it; she was writing a different kind of narrative. Bentley only wrote four novels (this was the first); her career being interrupted by serious illness, depression and single parenthood.
This novel is a comedic satire laced through with Bronte analogies. It is the tale of three friends who meet at school; each of whom represents a Bronte sister; Anne, Charlotte (the narrator, Carlo for short) and Demaris (who represents Emily).  They are brought up in London and become inseparable. After a hiatus at university for two of them, they all end up in their early 20s working in a Catholic boy’s grammar school in Manchester (two of them are teachers). As might be expected Bentley has great fun portraying adolescent boys in large numbers in a place they don’t really want to be. All of the characters are dysfunctional in one way or another and the male teachers are wonderfully drawn as a mixture of virtual psychopaths, sadists, inadequates, alcoholics and sex pests. As it is a Catholic school there is also a smattering of monks. The satire is heavy and misanthropic and our three heroines chart the waters of living in awful accommodation, falling out over men, uncontrollable classes and the other staff. Then there is Shackleton, a talented 6th form boy; who at 18 is about to leave and with whom they all fall in love with hilarious results. The Howarth Parsonage makes an appearance in a very funny passage towards the end; look out for the damaged male ego after the sex scene; excruciatingly amusing.
It is reminiscent of Decline and Fall and at the time Bentley was compared with Beryl Bainbridge. A sisterhood redevelops towards the end which draws the whole book together and makes for a much more powerful whole. It’s wonderfully eccentric and I think, underrated. It’s a must for those at school in Britain in the 1970s; there were so many character types that I remembered (pupils and teachers)
7 and a half out of 10

Starting Tail of the Blue Bird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes

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Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

Often touted as a classic of gay literature, and I think quite rightly; this is a heartbreaking analysis of love, attachment and the struggle between what society expects and what is felt. Baldwin treats complex relationships with some warmth and no easy or comfortable answers. There is debate as to whether Baldwin is focussing on bisexuality, but you have to look at the context and the sense that the two main characters are on a journey of self discovery with varying degrees of acceptance.
The two main protagonists are David and Giovanni. David is an American currently living in Paris. He has a girlfriend, also an American, who is spending some time in Spain. David goes out for a drink with a gay acquaintance and meets Giovanni who is working in a bar. A passionate affair ensues, focussed on the room where Giovanni lives and where David spends much of his time. This idyllic, but doomed state of affairs continues until David’s girlfriend returns from Spain and decisions have to be made. Some of the novel is told in flashback and so the reader already knows the denouement; the point is the journey; the how. Considering this was written and set in the 1950s, it is a brave book with a clear battle between different value sets and a debate about what love is and isn’t. I wonder whether like Death in Venice we are looking at the Apollo/Dionysius split. Giovanni representing the passionate and unreasoning: David representing Apollo, more reserved, cerebral with the repression of emotion and denial of feeling. David feels like almost a detached observer of his own life. He has a very brief sexual relationship with a girl he meets, knowing it means more to her and knowing that for him it means very little. He detaches himself and is at a distance from his involvement and there is no care or concern for the needs, wants and feeling of the other. David does this with all those he relates to. He cannot accept his own self and this makes him very dangerous and damaging to others. To an extent, all the characters settle for what they don’t seem to be.
You could say that love doesn’t conquer all, but I’m not sure this is really about love at all; apart from Giovanni, who is destroyed by betrayal. It is about society’s expectations and about battles with identity and roles. A great novel creates debate, uncertainty and differing opinions and this is a great novel.

8 and a half out of 10

Starting The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
 

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The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns

This is one of Barbara Coymns’ later novels. It is based on the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm of the same name; you know then that this isn’t going to be an easy read. The plot is very similar until about the last quarter of the book. Comyns reinterprets the ending in a more feminist way; to say more about that would give too much away. 
Comyns weaves the fairy tale into a normal domestic life in a very subtle way. Bella is estranged from her mother, has a scar on her face courtesy of the idiocy of a previous boyfriend who was very controlling and has a child as a result of a one night stand. The father we never meet, but his ethnic origin comes into play several times in the book at telling moments which act as turning points.
From the first paragraph the fairy tale element is very much to the fore:
“I noticed a beautiful fair woman standing in the courtyard outside her house like a statue, standing there so still. As I drew nearer I saw that her hands were moving. She was paring an apple out there in the snow and as I passed, looking at her out of the sides of my eyes, the knife slipped, and suddenly there was blood on the snow. She turned and went into her house before I could offer to help”
Bella gets to know the woman, Gertrude and her husband Bernard and becomes part of their circle of friends, almost family. The Juniper Tree is in the garden and plays an important role, as do the magpies that nest within. Revolving around the main characters are a whole variety of others creating a tension of nationality, gender and even class all contained in what appears to be a gentle slow-paced story narrated by Bella. Yet there is an almost imperceptible undercurrent which builds. Like the fairy tale it is macabre and disturbing. It is beautifully written and quite unexpectedly good. I’ve had it on my bookshelves for years and I should have read it sooner. It explores the nature of friendship, single parenthood, mental health (and its treatment) and many of the sinister undercurrents of human interactions. It’s all centred around a musty antiques and bric-a-brac shop with lots of cups of tea and walks in the park. Very English, but with a real edge and fairy tale quality.

8 and a half out of 10

Starting The Europeans by Henry James
 

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The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein

I struggle with Gertrude Stein, as I struggled with this novel. I don’t think this work is typical of Stein as she wrote it very quickly with the idea of being commercial as she needed money; not a problem in itself, but it meant she was also ambivalent about it. It is a novel written as though Stein’s partner Alice Toklas is writing an account of Stein’s life in Paris before and after the First World War. It is also an account of those many famous and not so famous writers and artists who passed through their home: Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, Braque, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, the Sitwells, Appollinaire, Eliot and many others.
My issues with Stein relate to her support for Franco in the 1930s. She was also a vocal supporter of Petain, even when he was deporting Jews to Auschwitz. There is a certain political naivety and possibly, being a Jew in Nazi occupied France, some self preservation. There is a point in the novel where Paul Robeson visits Paris. Suffice it to say he received a much warmer welcome from the coalminers of the Welsh Valleys. However Stein was a pioneer in terms of writing about same sex relationships; writing some very early coming out short stories. Stein was also one of the first to use the term gay in her writing. I haven’t read enough Stein to make a judgement about her work and feel I need to read much more. She was an early experimenter with stream of consciousness. Modern critics have tended focus on Stein’s limited breadth; she was politically quite right wing and that is a limiting factor for me. And yet this novel does draw you in.
The writing is interesting and managed to offend a fair few of those mentioned (including Hemingway). Jeanette Winterson has argued that this is a development of the type of writing Woolf did in Orlando. This is really an experimental novel. It isn’t clear whether Stein writing as Toklas is expressing the views of Stein or Toklas, or both. Reading it is slightly confusing and you have to think on your feet at times: sometimes it feels as though you are watching Stein as described by Toklas until you remember Stein is writing as Toklas, observing herself. It is also very formally written; Stein is always referred to as Gertrude Stein, never as Gertrude. There is no analysis; it is really a description of domestic manners; dinner parties, buying paintings, moving around France, meeting people etc.
I enjoyed the novel. In itself it isn’t ground breaking and I still feel I need a more rounded appreciation of Stein; and I still have some uncertainty about Stein herself. So it’s a bit of a work in progress and I think I will try to look out a decent biography and put The Making of Americans on my tbr list, as well as her short stories.

7 out of 10

Starting Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
 

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The Tail of the Blue Bird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes

A classic whodunit detective novel set in Ghana, with a literary flavour, written by a poet, with a sharp and perceptive use of local dialect. It focuses on Kayo, a forensic scientist trained in Britain and who had worked for a British police force. He has returned to Ghana and is working for a company doing mundane forensic work for a private company and hoping for something better.
The girlfriend of a minister finds something that may be human remains in a village in the interior. There are wheels within wheels and Kayo is made an offer he can’t refuse by a corrupt police officer and finds himself investigating the circumstances with orders to get the right result.
There are two narrators; Kayo and a hunter from the village, Opanyin. Kayo even finds himself a sidekick, Constable Garba and in many ways this is a traditional whodunit looking at the tensions between science and superstition, tradition and modernity. The setting is away from modern metropolitan life and transplanted into Africa.
Kayo is not a traditional detective hero; he lives with his parents, is not alcoholic or a drug addict, respects his elders and treats women with respect and has no disturbing personal habits. Despite his forensic skills the mystery is not easily soluble and Kayo has to listen to traditional storytelling methods of solving the problem. There is mystery and a little magic realism. Traditional labels are twisted as in Parkes’ poetry; Kayo uses non-western wisdom and the poetic story of the hunter to solve the problem (although not perhaps in a traditional sense. In doing so he also exposes the role of domestic violence in traditional relationships; holding a light up to positive and negative in traditional wisdom. There is a good sense of humour running through the whole and the ending suitably blurred. There are glossaries around for some of the dialect words.
It’s a well told tale, written with a certain lyrical intensity and you can certainly tell Parkes is a poet. The tension lies between Kayo’s western forensic education and the traditional wisdom of the village and neither have all the answers.

8 out of 10

Starting Noir by Robert Coover
 

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Regeneration by Pat Barker

The first volume in Pat Barker’s First World War trilogy; and what an excellent start and a brilliant weaving of fact and fiction. I already knew about Craiglockhart and the hospital for those with “shellshock” and breakdown with the pioneering psychologist Rivers. Siegfried Sassoon’s stay there  is well documented in Max Egremont’s excellent biography. He is a central part of this novel and his interactions with Rivers and Wilfred Owen (whom he encouraged to write poetry). Robert Graves also pops up; he tried to shield Sassoon from the results of his declaration. Sassoon was highly decorated (he had a Military cross), but he was disillusioned with the war and sent a declaration to The Times;
“I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realize.”
It is worth quoting in full and Barker starts the book with it. Sassoon’s friend Graves realized that Sassoon was heading for a court martial and applied to the medical board (Sassoon had been wounded) to persuade them that Sassoon was suffering from shellshock.
Barker tells Sassoon’s story; his homosexuality is hinted at and his talks with Rivers are well imagined. Owen and Graves are minor characters but add a great deal to the novel. As do the fictional characters who are brilliantly drawn, especially Prior.
Barker makes some interesting points about what we now call PTSD. Women had long been pigeonholed as being prone to “hysteria” in its many forms and the men who suffered from the same type of ailment were handled very differently and quietly. The First World War with its horrors and sheer brutality produced men suffering from PTSD and it was the sheer numbers that meant the issue could not be ignored. Barker contrasts the humane and modern approach favoured by Rivers with other more brutal approaches. Barker presents many of the ideas in flux at the time and what is most prescient is the very modernity and relevance to the present conflicts we have been contending with in our generation.
There is a myth that the Great War changed everything and people woke up to the nature of war; we know it isn’t so unfortunately. Barker manages to make it quite difficult to disentangle the strands of fact and fiction she sets up; but she does a very good job of conveying the horrors of war in a subtle way; this is not boring history or historical fiction; it is a mirror for humanity to look into and see the obscenity of war.

9 out of 10

Starting The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker

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The Bridge of San Luis Rey

This is a brief novella which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928 and is often mentioned in lists of the greatest novels. It is set in Peru and is centred on the collapse of a rope bridge which killed five people. A Franciscan witnesses the collapse and sets out to find out why those five people died and not others. Brother Juniper feels that the mind of God must be logical and knowable and there must be a scientific method of working out why those particular people die. He therefore sets out to find out all he can about the five who died and their stories are the bulk of the book.
Brother Juniper sets out all his information and is unable to come to any firm conclusions. Unfortunately the Church takes a dim view of his work and he and his book are burnt. Wilder said that his work was a reflection on arguments he had with his father, who was a strict Calvinist. Wilder was asking “Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual’s own will?” It isn’t about why bad things happen to good people there are no conclusions, only ambiguity. I am going to be predictable and quote the same passage everyone else does, because it hits the nail on the head in relation to what Wilder was saying;
“But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and then forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”
It is indeed all about love. Whatever other philosophical and religious questions are being pondered, this is the point; the real bridge is not physical but in and of the heart.
This is why the novel is so often quoted and well remembered. Novelists and writers as varied as David Mitchell, Ayn Rand, John Hershey and Stephen King have referenced it. There have been three films (one starring Kathy Bates, Robert De Niro, Gabriel Byrne, F Murray Abraham and Geraldine Chaplin amongst others). There has even been an opera! Tony Blair quoted it at the memorial service for the 9/11 attacks.
It isn’t sentimental or maudlin (well perhaps just a little), but it is about the links between people rather than links between humans and some cosmic schoolmaster reckoning scores and meting out “accidents”.

8 out of 10

Starting Goodbye to all That by Robert Graves
 

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Noir by Robert Coover

My first Coover; and where to start? Well the title does give it away; it is an exploration of the Noir genre; send up, satire, tribute, a general culling of tropes. This is written in the second person which fits the type and the protagonist Philip M (M for Marlowe perhaps) Noir is suitably sleazy, drunk and beaten up on a regular basis. He has a smart secretary and a mysterious, veiled female client. The City is dreary, run down and mainly experienced at nights; there is a docks (obviously); there are corrupt police officers; there is a Mr Big; there are bars and eating houses that are suitably seedy; there are mysterious tramps; there are sultry singers who seem to find Noir irresistible. As well as playing with the genre I think Coover also indulges in a little teenage wish fulfilment; more of that later.
Coover, when it comes to creating ambience, words and sentences is clearly a craftsman. Much of noir is very cleverly done. It is difficult to work out timescales. The novel takes place over the period of about a week. Time is rather fluid and there are nods to Greek myth with the labyrinth underground where Noir spends a rather hazy amount of time. The plot itself is also rather hazy with plenty of gaps. However one of the characters does rather sum up the point of this technique:
“I have found, Mr. Noir, that if you make a story with gaps in it, people just step in to fill them up, they can’t help themselves”

Noir himself is not likeable; a concoction of cynicism, ignorance and the inability to detect himself out of a paper bag! He gets hit on the head and half-killed several times. The female characters all seem to want to put him back together and to bed him; and not just the real women. The scene with the mannequins just about sums up Noir:
“In the dusty penumbral light, there's an eerie sensuality about them with their angular provocative poses, their hard glossy surfaces, their somnambulant masklike faces, features frozen in glacial eyeless gazes. In short, not unlike most of the women you have known.”
The female characters vary between those who look after/mother Noir (Blanche), even to the extent of dressing and feeding him, and 'ladies of the night' (some of them are caregivers as well when he has been beaten up). The little, though not unexpected, twist at the end just confirms that the female characters are the ones with warmth and intelligence. As always with Coover there is a caveat; the fate of Michiko, although only a minor character, sums up the objectification and possession of women with the subsequent abandonment and destruction once past youth and usefulness. I would like to see how he addresses gender over a series of books; the Noir genre was always going to be atypical I suspect.
There are a great many nods towards film; the mannequins are straight from a Kubrik film and the mirror shoot out from Orson Welles. The convoluted plot is pure Chandler. The review in the Spectator points out that the effect of Noir is very similar to the Robert Montgomery film “Lady in the Lake”. In the film Marlowe is effectively played by the camera. The effect here is very similar.
Summing up is difficult, partly because I think Coover is a writer who cannot be summed up in one book and this is tenuously the last in a trilogy; and he is playing serious and thought provoking games. What I haven’t decided yet is whether Coover in his exploring genres is just giving the impression of the flaws in the order of things and cracks in establishment, or is he putting those impressions into something more concrete in terms of ideas. I can’t assess that from one book. Reviews have tended to be positive and I have seen it described as Dieselpunk (whatever that is) and I can see it will attract fans of Noir fiction. I think I may have started at the wrong end of Coover’s work and as he is someone who has worked in many genres, judging from one alone is impossible.

6 and a half out of 10

Starting The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin

[pontalba]

Excellent reviews!  I loved the Regeneration trilogy. and am very intrigued by Noir.  Thanks.

 

Added in Edit.....I just found out that I actually already have Noir on the shelf, or so Amazon tells me.   

Edited July 20, 2014 by pontalba

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Thanks Pontalba; Noir is good fun!

The Europeans by Henry James

A brief novella, which is effectively a comedy of manners, in which, on the surface, little happens. It reminded me of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. The plot is simple; Felix Young and his sister Eugenia are the Europeans. Felix is a painter, who lives a bohemian lifestyle. He is incessantly (nauseatingly) cheerful. His sister Eugenia is in a morganatic marriage and her husband’s family want a divorce. They lead a wandering, essentially frivolous lifestyle. They decide to visit their American cousins, the Wentworths. Head of the family is their uncle Mr Wentworth. He has two daughters, Gertrude and Charlotte. Charlotte is very serious and religious, Gertrude is restless and uncertain what she wants. Their younger brother Clifford has just been suspended from Harvard for drinking. Throw into the mix Mr Brand, a Unitarian minister who wants to marry Gertrude and the Actons and you have the lot. Robert Acton is a friend of the family who has been to China and made his fortune and is supposed to be worldly wise. His sister Lizzie makes up the main players. The Wentworth’s are New England Puritans of a certain moral tone and life is a serious business.
This is often portrayed as James having a swipe at Americans; however it isn’t that simple as Felix and Eugenia are American as well. The employment of an omniscient narrator means James is able to remain entirely neutral in telling his tale. He analyses a Puritan morality, contrasting it with a more “modern” reliance on feelings, emotions and the self. A type of individualism compared to the communal stiltedness of Puritan New England.  Gertrude knows she does not wish to marry Mr Brand but does not know how to go about expressing it. Felix and Eugenia are more self-confident. James is critical of the Puritanism of the Wentworth’s, but it is tempered with an underlying affection as he also finds much to admire.  Mr Wentworth is not the tyrannical father he could have been; he just does not understand the approach to life of his European cousins, though he does try. The real villain is Robert Acton who seems more modern and aware, but proves not to be.
A fairly light confection, with a little more going on than meets the eye, but a good introduction to James.

7 out of 10

Starting The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Murial Spark

This is another one of those books I’ve been meaning to read for years; seen the film several times. Having also read The Ballad of Peckham Rye recently and been impressed by Spark, I thought it was time to finally read this. It is brief, but very cleverly put together, employing a flash forward technique, so Spark reveals the plot and the eventual ending bit by bit and in a varied order. Spark also makes good use of some neat aphorisms; “I am in my prime”, you are the crème de la crème”.
Miss Brodie is a primary school teacher of unorthodox method who takes certain pupils under her wing to influence them; they become her “set” and remain so, even after they leave her direct sphere of influence and start senior school. Miss Brodie reads them poetry, takes them to the theatre, points them away from Maths and Sciences and generally tries to direct their lives; identifying a “famous for” or notoriety for each of them. Early on we discover one of the six members of the set betrays Miss Brodie to her greatest enemy, the headmistress. About halfway we discover who, but the how is left to the very end. We follow the set from the end of primary school, through senior school and into glimpses of their later lives and sometimes deaths.
Despite the fluid language Spark limits what she gives the reader about Miss Brodie; we are never alone with her; her presence is mediated by someone else; one of the set usually. Spark is playing with the nature of knowledge, epistemology; as a Catholic convert Spark would have known about that. Here we see nothing of Miss Brodie’s interior life. The character is based on a teacher who inspired Spark, but there are some twists here. Miss Brodie is a great fan of Mussolini; there is also an element of living through others and an edge of cruelty. Spark doesn’t provide us with particularly attractive characters and all the set have obvious flaws; as for the men ... Miss Brodie (who lost her fiancé in the war; we are in the early 1930s) is attractive to the Arts and Music masters and has a relationship with one of them; both are rather insipid. Interestingly the author dispenses judgements and fates with godlike omniscience and Spark is making Brodie behave in an authorial way to explore the limits of authorial power. It’s good stuff and Spark has been compared with Christine Brookes-Rose for this reason.
The character of Sandy in the novel has been compared to Spark and she too moves to Catholicism. Given the events of the novel the name she has as a nun Sister Helena of the Transfiguration is an interesting choice given the novel’s consideration of knowledge and the nature of authorship.
It’s a great tragic-comic novel with some nicely sinister undertones. As forward thinking as she appears to be Miss Brodie is also at heart conservative and the parallels between Miss Brodie and her girls and Miss Brodie’s fascist hero and his followers are interesting. Spark is a great novelist.

9 out of 10

Starting The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
 

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The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker

The second book in the trilogy; just as good and it helps a great deal to have read the first. As previously Barker does an excellent job of weaving fact and fiction together.
We have moved on to early 1918 and the war is still in the balance. One of the fictional characters from Regeneration, Billy Prior, is also central to this novel. Dr Rivers is now in London (as is Prior) and we are plunged into a society struggling with the consequences of war and some of the hysteria that goes with it. Barker focuses on the maelstrom of opinion, debate and misinformation that comes with a society at war. She uses Prior, unfit to return to France, working for military intelligence and having affairs with men and women to take us round what is happening. Barker describes the lives of those opposing the war, pacifists and those sheltering deserters and those contemplating more drastic measures.
There is also a window on one of the more bizarre incidents which took place in Britain, which would be entirely unbelievable, if it wasn’t true. The varied attitudes towards because of the strains of wartime have been well documented. However one particular sensational libel case stands out. Noel Pemberton Billing (aviator and would be MP) was convinced that homosexuality was infiltrating society and damaging the war effort. He was convinced the Germans had a list of 47 000 prominent homosexuals who they could blackmail. He teamed up with Harold Spencer who was working for the secret services. They were convinced the Germans were trying to “propagate evils which all decent men thought had perished in Sodom and Lesbia”. Even Margot Asquith was publicly attacked. However they particularly disliked Robbie Ross and old friend and supporter of Wilde. He had organised a production of Wilde’s Salome with Maud Allen in the lead role. Billing published an article called The Cult of the Clitoris which accused Allen of being a lesbian. She sued Billing and lost. The strain told on Ross and he died before the end of the war. Barker weaves all of this into the novel very effectively via Prior and a new character Manning and builds the feeling of paranoia very effectively.
Again the descriptions of the nightmares, the effects of “shell-shock” and its varying treatment are very effective and one remains in no doubt about the horrors of war. Sassoon features again, fighting his demons with the help of Rivers; but it is Prior who takes centre stage. He is a complex character and Barker analyses his bisexuality and the effects trauma has on his psyche. It’s excellent stuff and well worth the effort of seeking out.

9 out of 10

Starting The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
 

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A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

This is a remarkable book; the account of an 18 year old who decides to escape England and walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. The year is 1933 and the Nazis have just come to power and he sets off just before winter starts. He had been expelled from school and wanted to write and he took writing materials with him to record his experiences in a journal/diary. Leigh Fermor has the optimism and enthusiasm of youth; but he also had good powers of observation and the ability to make friends easily. That he must have had a great deal of as many people put him up overnight without question. This first of three volumes starts in Holland and moves through Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and ends in Hungary.
The book captures a world about to be torn apart by the rise of Nazism and Leigh Fermor comes across them and they are generally unpleasant; in contrast with most of those he meets. He goes off on tangents on a regular basis to describe something interesting. His descriptions of the natural world are very good, especially the arrival of the storks in the spring in Hungary. Leigh Fermor also has a good eye for architecture and notes the changing nature of the buildings as he travels. He describes the people he meets, the generosity, and often in detail the food (and the drink). Laced through it all is Leigh Fermor’s love of literature and reading. Having had a public school education he has able to quote a great deal of what he had been taught. He records the amused reactions of people as he walked and acted out bits of Shakespeare or read poems and other bits and pieces that he recalled. It is a coming of age tale like no other and he maintained his zest for life until the end. The journalist Allison Pearson recalls when she was sent to Crete to meet him when he was 83 to write an article on him. She expected a frail old man she would have to “look after”. She just about remembers drinking more in 48 hours than she had for the previous 20 years and waking up under a bar. Pearson says that as they walked around Crete she could barely keep up with him and he was very much like he was in the book; observant of nature, breaking into song and poetry periodically and climbing things.
The sheer zest for life is infectious and the descriptions very sharp, for example;
“Snow had covered the landscape with a sparkling layer and the slatey hue of the ice was only becoming visible as the looping arabesques of the skaters laid it bare. Following the white parallelograms the lines of the willows dwindled as insubstantially as trails of vapour. The breeze that impelled those hastening clouds had met no hindrance for a thousand miles and a traveller moving at a footpace along the hog’s back of a dyke above the cloud-shadows and the level champaign was filled with intimations of limitless space..”
This is one of the great travel books.
9 out of 10

Starting Memoirs of the Forties by Julian MaClaren-Ross

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Goodbye to all that by Robert Graves

Another book in the series I am reading about WW1. It was interesting reading this in conjunction with A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor; I found Graves much less likeable than Fermor. However this is a very powerful description of the war and life in the trenches; it also covers Graves’s life before the war and until 1929.
Graves was half German and half Irish and had a German middle name. This meant he had a very difficult time at public school (Charterhouse) as war with Germany gradually became inevitable. What saved Graves at Charterhouse was learning to box and one of the masters, George Mallory (later to die on Everest) who came across as a good man and taught Graves to climb. Graves joined the army at the beginning of the war and remained in it throughout in a variety of roles. He was reckless at times; on holiday in Switzerland he decided it would be a good idea to ski down the skeleton bob run (he survived) and this showed at times in his approach to the war.
What Graves does excel at is describing army life in the trenches; the comradeship, tensions, the idiocy of senior officers (which he describes in cutting detail), the dangers, the squalor and the immediate risk of death. Forays into no man’s land, encounters with the enemy and with dead and decomposing bodies; some of the accounts are horrific; yet one feels even then that Graves holds back a little. What makes this account so good is Graves’s detachment. He describes leading virtually suicidal missions in a workaday way. He knew the generals were clueless. The daily interactions with the other soldiers are fascinating. Graves also describes the onset of “shell shock” and war weariness and this is also very interesting; the contrast between patriotism at home and the feeling of the insanity of it all which pervaded most of those at the front.
Graves suffered his share of injuries and was seriously wounded at the Somme, so badly that his family were sent a telegram announcing his death; he arrived in London shortly after the telegram. Graves also describes the condition known as shellshock and very matter of factly describes his nightmares and psychological disturbances. The lightness of touch and humour makes the description of the horrors even more powerful.
Graves describes his interactions with other poets; Sassoon, Owen, Blunden amongst others, which are always fascinating. His interactions with medical boards and senior officers are also illuminating. Graves’s detachment makes it difficult sometimes to locate him in all this and I suspect from his descriptions of his sufferings that this is a defence mechanism.
The post war reflections are less powerful, but a number of things stand out. Graves married Nancy Nicholson, daughter of the artist Sir William Nicholson. She was a feminist who kept her own name and ensured their children had her name. When they lived in Oxfordshire she used to cycle around the villages explaining contraception to the women (it was still illegal at the time). She was later a fabric designer. She struck me as someone whose biography I would like to read. When Robert and Nancy visited Thomas Hardy she mentioned that she had kept her own name, expecting him to be scandalised. However he thought it rather old-fashioned as he recalled that when he was a boy many women did keep their own name on marriage!
The other post war figure that stood out was T E Lawrence, who met Graves at Oxford. He was clearly damaged by his life experiences and avoided any physical closeness. But he was a man of great principle; he wrote about his experiences in the war in two bestselling books. He decided that he could not personally profit from the Arab revolt and ensured the royalties went to a variety of charities.
I was slightly ambivalent about Graves himself, but this is a well written and informative account of great horrors and the pointlessness of war; and Graves is an excellent and gripping narrator.
8 and a half out of ten

Starting What is Slavery to me? by Pumla Dineo Gqola

[Books do furnish a room]

The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin

                         At Boolavogue as the sun was setting
                          O'er the bright May meadows of Shelmalier,
                          A rebel hand set the heather blazing
                          and brought the neighbours from far and near.

 

Toibin’s writing is beautiful and lyrical and the title comes from the first verse of a song as recorded above. It recalls the Irish rebellion of 1798 which was brutally put down by the British (as usual).
The novel tells the story of Eamon Redmond an Irish High Court judge, alternating between past and present telling the story of his childhood and his later life. Remond is a leading member of Fianna Fail and we also see the changing nature of that party with real history intruding as De Valera and Haughey play minor roles.
The star of this novel is the Irish countryside; the land and the sea of the south-east coast, of Wexford and Limerick.  Redmond comes across as a rather cold character and we are taken through a couple of judgments he makes early in the book which make the reader tend to dislike him. His family, especially his wife Carmel, also find him distant and difficult to know.
We follow Redmond from his childhood and his relationship with his father, through courtship and starting out in law to legal eminence and widowhood. There is an epiphany at the end, but it is very late; too late for many of those who know him.
The troubles are in the background, but still a presence and there are some indications of Redmond’s family involvements in the uprisings that led to independence. Later as a judge the troubles forma backdrop, but they are secondary to the tale.
Communication is a key theme; Redmond’s inability to communicate on an emotional level, his father’s struggles to communicate after a stroke and the embarrassment Eamon felt when he was in his father’s class at school. The communication issues extend to his children as well. There are other juxtapositions as well. At the Redmond’s holiday home the sea is eroding the land; as a judge his decisions relate to the rights of society as opposed to the rights of the individual, Death is also ever present and as a child Redmond describes the death of relatives and the rites and rituals of the Catholic Church (also ever present). Irish history permeates the novel; Redmond is a pillar of the Fianna Fail establishment, his father was a message carrier for the IRA.
Although simply and lyrically written; there is a thread of complexity within because Toibin is examining the republican ideology of the Irish state and the social reality of its population and the tensions with the Catholic Church. It is a critique of the way the Irish state has developed, written in 1992, which seems even more pertinent today. But it is a critique from a position of support with a strong sense of the immersion in history and landscape. It’s really rather good. The only problem is that we spend all our time with Eamon Redmond and he isn’t that likeable. 

8 and a half out of 10

Starting Landscape for a Good Woman by Carolyn Steedman

[Books do furnish a room]

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

Last of an excellent trilogy and it does help to have read the previous two books as many of the characters run through them all and there are references back. You could read it as a standalone, but a good deal would be lost, especially the nuance.
We reconnect with characters from the previous books. There is very little of Sassoon and Owen is present in a small way; Prior and Rivers take centre stage. The narrative alternates between the two as they experience the last days of the war. We also go in flashback to the time Rivers spent in Melanesia with a tribe of head-hunters.
Prior is recovering and makes a deliberate decision to return to France, reflecting the same decisions made by Owen and Sassoon. The sex/death circle works its way through in Prior’s liaisons before and after he returns to France.  Rivers describes observing a tribe in Melanesia who had been banned from headhunting and other warlike activities. Their whole reason for existence had disappeared and as their culture was based on the rituals related to the gaining of heads the tribe was in decline and lethargy had set in. The contrasts with war in the west are neatly and obviously drawn.
We see Prior, despite his deprived working class childhood, developing his own voice and starting a diary. We also see over the trilogy what the war did for women, allowing them independence previously not possible and the chance of earning a wage. One character even says that August 4th 1914, when the war started was for her the day Peace broke out “the only little bit of peace I’ve ever had”.
I remember when this book came out one reviewer’s idea of praise was to say that it could have been written by a man (!!!). Barker had previously written about strong working class women; here she focuses on men, but also on the effects of war for women and the adjustments society had to make as it coped with “shellshock” and the thousands of men it affected. She is reflecting some of her own working class northern background and she has said herself that she decided to write about the war following some patronising reviews of her early novels about women. What a response! And, of course these novels are just as feminist and class centred as her earlier ones; just reframed.
The last chapter of the novel again emphasises the sheer futility of it all focussing on some of the last actions of the war, when everyone knew it was over and peace was days away. The troops, including Prior and Owen are sent over the top for the last time.
9 out of 10

Starting Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

[pontalba]

Great review, you've caught the trilogy beautifully.

[Books do furnish a room]

Thank you Pontalba

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Another one of those classics that I probably should have read years ago but didn’t. Written in around 1850 and set in Puritan New England in the mid 17th Century, the plot is well known, but if you haven’t read it there are spoilers ahead. Hester Prynne travels to New England; her husband is to follow later. She has an affair with the local minister Arthur Dimmesdale and a child results. Adultery is a major offence and Hester Prynne experiences jail and public humiliation and is forced to wear a bright red A on her breast. Dimmesdale does not come forward to accept his responsibility. Hester’s husband, Roger Chillingworth,  arrives in town just in time to see his wife’s humiliation. He also decides not to make himself known and befriends the minister and eventually guesses his secret. Hester lives alone on the edge of the community with her child Pearl. This situation goes on for seven years until there is a meeting in the forest and the two decide to leave together. This does not come to pass, as the strain has shown on the minister and he confesses his guilt and dies. Hester continues to do good works as she has done.
A great deal has been written about The Scarlet Letter and there is a good deal to say. It is, of course a satire/commentary on Puritanism and the legalism that goes with it. Attitudes to Hester Prynne change over time as she lives apart and does good books and earns money by sewing and she is looked on in a more kindly way; of course for a real Puritan good works and time do not erase sins! The novel is also allegorical and is a representation of the Fall, Hester and Arthur being Adam and Eve. Hester’s sin results in exclusion as in the Biblical version; however this is not the case for Arthur; the minister. He gains more insight into the frailties of his congregation and as a result people begin to see him as saintly, in contrast with Hester. Hester’s husband as a rather belated snake is an interesting concept.
The character of Hester Prynne, has, of course been much written about. She is the strong character in this novel. She is also independent of all male influence, a single mother who earns her own living, not tied to a husband, father or brother. She could have left and led an easier life elsewhere, but she chose to stay and she does not fit easily in to many of the usual female stereotypes. She is certainly not a virgin or a wife. She brings up Pearl, but not in the religious tradition of the Puritans; she brings her up to be a free spirit. The Scarlet Letter is turned from a symbol of sin to a symbol of strength. Of course, it has been argued for years that this is a feminist novel and that it reflects and criticises patriarchy. Although Hester is clearly independent, she is hemmed in by the decisions of men.
Both of the male protagonists keep their silence, one for the purposes of revenge the other through cowardice. Hester stands out strongly in contrast. She remains a free woman and lives out her life in marked contrast with the fate of the men.
For me, it was well written and I enjoyed spotting the symbolism; I understand why the novel has endured when others have not, because of the very strength of the main protagonist. I had some problems with the way Pearl was portrayed; the regular use of the words elf, elven and eldritch for me seemed to dehumanise her.
All in all it set me thinking and was worth the effort.
7 and a half out of 10

Starting Rasselas by Dr Samuel Johnson

[Books do furnish a room]

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I loved this book; even though it was long and essentially a romance, but there was so much more to it. It is also about race, gender and the nature of home. As the Guardian review points out, it is an exploration of structural inequality and types of oppression, but it is wrapped in a love story.
The novel revolves around Ifemelu and Obinze and their on/off relationship over time and distance. It starts in their teenage years in Nigeria and follows them around the world; Ifemelu to the US and Obinze to Britain and back to Nigeria. One of the delights of this is the way Adiche addresses and explores the complexity of relationships and the way we do things inexplicable even to ourselves; there is a great deal of warmth and I felt Adiche really cared for both of the characters she had created. There is an excellent supporting cast who slip in and out of the pages.
This quite conventional romance is used to explore a variety of oppressions. Race is explored, especially in the American context and via Ifemelu’s experiences and a very sharply written blog. Obinze’s experiences in Britain are more painful and Adiche captures the growing and irrational fear of asylum seekers and immigrants that is alarmingly growing in this country.
Relating to gender, Adiche has described this book as feminist (see her interview in the LA Times; if I was remotely computer competent I would provide a link, but I’m not so you’ll have to Google it!). Adiche addresses gender issues with a light but sure touch and was fascinated to read that she had inspired one of Beyonce’s recent songs (Flawless). It strikes me as I am writing this that one of Adiche’s gifts is to wrap some of the complex issues she addresses in a simple and easy to read story. I think it is un usual in a romance to get such a well balanced analysis of two characters in a relationship.
The return to Nigeria is interesting and addressed well with some satirically comic moments (the inherent comedy is one of the joys of this book). The whole in its scope and richness of character reminded me of Dickens (especially the scenes in the hairdresser).
It’s a good book. I’m reading Infinite Jest at the moment and this is half as long, easier to read, has no footnotes and there is a lot less tennis (definitely a plus).
9 out of 10

Starting The Late bourgeois world by Nadine Gordimer

[frankie]

Amazing reviews, yet again! I love it how you tell us about the background of some of the novels and you always have that little bit of extra information on the novel or the author or the time when the novel was written, and it makes your reviews that much more special to read
 
For example, I didn't know, Burgess's first wife was attacked! And I didn't know he was writing the book at a time when he'd been (mis)diagnosed and was expecting to die soon. 
 
As for the novel itself, I loathed the movie and would never ever watch it again. I expected to loathe the book, too, and I only read it for the 1001 Must Read Before You Die -challenge. I went in with no hopes of liking the novel, but it was truly great! I also think it's potential re-reading material. 
 
I had A Single Man on my wishlist after a friend recommended the novel to me. I then caught the movie but disliked it and didn't finish it, and I also deleted the novel from my wishlist. Your review is prompting me to add the book to my wishlist again  
 
 

The Five People you Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
.....
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.

 
I'm an atheist, and therefore shouldn't really believe in heavenly thingies. I think I haven't made my mind up about what the afterlife shall be like. But the idea I always go back to is the same as you've mentioned above: heaven is whatever you conceive it to be. It's different for everyone. I think your idea of heaven is rather similar to mine! I wonder if we shall meet up there some day  
 

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Booker prize winner in 2004, Hollinghurst writes about the 1980s and more particularly about Thatcher’s Britain and the onset of HIV/AIDS. It is the story of Nick Guest, a young gay man from a middle class background. He meets the son (Toby) of a rising Tory MP (Gerald Fedden) at Oxford and after graduating moves in with Toby’s family as a lodger.
The backdrop is London of the 1980s. Nick moves in glamorous circles and the line of beauty goes back to Hogarth’s s shaped curve in his book. It runs through the book via Henry James, (Nick is studying him at post-grad level) to cocaine; another beautiful line in the book and on to the concept of beauty in physical terms. For Nick this is male beauty. Against the glamour and the wealth is a political backdrop of the conservatives in power. The shadow of Thatcher is never far away as Gerald works hard to ingratiate himself and gain political power. Nick’s sexuality is also to the fore as we follow him through two relationships; with Leo who is black and working class and Wani who is very rich and Lebanese. The spectre of AIDS gradually grows as the book goes on, although it does not really affect the Fedden’s  and their political circles, nor the sections of the upper class they mix with. It’s all beautifully written and Hollinghurst captures an aspect of the culture of the time very well. Nick is an amiable narrator who seems to drift through the book without being too greatly affected by it all.
Inevitably comparisons have been made with other works. I can see the similarities to Brideshead Revisited, less so to Maurice. The more obvious comparison is to Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time series, but it doesn’t have the scope and depth Powell gave to his series.
There was, for me, hollowness at the centre. Nick is amiable, but for me his character is summed up by an incident near the end of the book. He goes into a bar and sees someone he had a relationship with earlier in the book. This someone is gaunt, very ill, and dying of an AIDS related illness. Nick avoids him and manages to leave without being seen. He manages to drift through the lives of the Fedden’s and their circle with few moral qualms. I do remember the 80s; I was living in the north of England, mostly in working class and mining areas; the Tories and Thatcher were the enemy. It was difficult to engage with any of the characters, apart from Leo; but it does capture a place and time.
6 and a half out of 10
Starting Minaret by Leila Aboulela

 
A great review! I don't know if you've noticed but we did a reading circle of the book in February. Here is the thread in case you're interested. I think you are spot on in that Hollinghurst has managed to capture the time and place very well (eventhough I'm too young and too foreign to have lived through it myself!), but the characters weren't really at all likable and I couldn't relate to any of them. Sometimes that doesn't bother me, and sometimes it bothers me greatly. I still don't know which one it is with this book!
 
 

The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
This is another of those books I should have read as a teenager, but never got round to. I hope my teenage self would have been just as irritated by it as I was. However I recognise feelings about this are mixed and friends on here seem to love and hate it equally.  It’s been one of the most regularly banned books in US schools for its language and “adult themes” and at one point for being part of a communist plot!
The plot and themes are well known; but it’s the voice of Holden Caulfield that marks out the book. The narrow timescale and scope put a heavy burden on the character of Holden, which for me the character couldn’t carry. He starts and ends the book as an irritating, self absorbed and whining brat and there appears to be little development and spending the whole book inside his head is a painful experience.
I need to move onto something entirely different.
4 out of 10
Starting Efuru by Flora Nwapa

 
 This book is mentioned a lot in the most overrated books thread, or something like that... A few members on here have wondered if it's a case of the age when you read the book: if you read it as a teenager, you love it, but if you get to it as an adult the first time, you'll dislike it.  
 

Textermination by Christine Brooke-Rose
This is a comedic satire that pokes fun at literary criticism. A large number of characters form literature congregate together in a Californian hotel for a conference/gathering. They meet to pray for their continued existence in the mind of the readers and therefore for their own existence. The list of characters is impressive with escapees from Austen, Dickens, Twain, Melville, Eliot, Flaubert, Hardy, Pynchon, Bellow and so on. The list is lengthy. After a particular piece of mayhem all the detectives wandering around are also fictional (the usual suspects), but also from film and TV. It was quite surreal having Columbo questioning major fictional characters. The book was written not long after the Rushdie affair and some of the characters from the Satanic Verses are also present. There are also one or two real characters like Goethe and numerous members of the classical canon (Aeneas, Odysseus etc). It’s fun to try to recognise the characters and novels and Brooke-Rose throws in one or two of her own; one of whom reads her name on a list of characters no longer read and promptly disappears. A wry comment about her own failure to become part of the literary canon. Of course the literary canon is now potentially so large that it is impossible to be familiar with it all and Brooke-Rose is playing with Leavis’s idea that one could be acquainted with all the literature that mattered. Here, of course you have to ask who decides what matters and a whole new debate starts.
There are some comic scenes/meetings: Becky Sharp talking to Friday, Rev Casuabon going to a lecture he thinks is about him, only to discover it’s about his namesake from Foucault’s Pendulum. There are philosophical discussions about Derrida, multiculturalism and many other things and to juxtapose them with the thoughts of JR about the temporary nature of TV fame is just hilarious. A comment on the mortality of everything apart from the all-powerful reader/watcher. There isn’t a great deal of plot, but you don’t really notice and its great fun. There is a serious point being made and lots of sharp one-liners; a must for any serious reader.
8 and a half out of 10
Starting The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein

This sounds really, really interesting and I have to add it to my wishlist, eventhough most of the names and novels and references will probably go way over my head

[Books do furnish a room]

Thanks for the comments Frankie; Textermination is fun and looking up the characters is part of it; anyone who says they don't have to is lying! I haven't made my mind up about Hollinghust yet. I too am an atheist, but if we end up anywhere I hope it's that library and I'll see you there!!

The Late Bourgeois World by Nadine Gordimer

This is my first Gordimer, and I thought it was about time, given her recent passing, that I read some of her work. This is a compact novella, set in one day (with plenty of flashbacks) that can easily be read in one sitting.
It was first published in 1966 and was banned in South Africa for ten years (from 1976). It focuses on Liz Van Den Sandt, a white South African on the edges of the struggle against the emerging apartheid system.
We follow Liz through a Saturday; she begins the day with her lover Graham, who is a lawyer and receives news that her ex-husband Max has committed suicide. This necessitates a visit to her son’s school to tell him the news. Later in the day, Luke a black member of the nationalist movement visits and Liz cooks a meal; he proposes that Liz help their cause by using a bank account to move money. That is pretty much the plot, but the plot isn’t the point.
The flashbacks chart Liz and Max’s relationship and their involvement with nationalism and with white society. Gordimer examines white liberalism and its approach to the growth of apartheid. There is a sense that for the white liberals this is initially something of a game, a serious game, but a game nonetheless. For their black comrades it is most definitely not a game. There is perhaps a sense that initially white liberal South Africans there was a feeling that the madness could not last.
We also see an exploration of identity as we see Liz as a wife (in flashback), lover, mother, white South African, political activist; but the roles are kept separate by the vignettes that make up the book and it is quite difficult to get a sense of her as a person. Her love affairs are a little half-hearted and there is distance in all her relationships. There is a sense of dislocation. Max, her ex husband had attempted to participate in the struggle in a rather amateurish way and had spent a little time in jail. This is post Sharpeville and there is a dawning realisation that the struggle was going to be long and bloody and the methods of combating it would have to change as well. I think Gordimer is exploring these issues through Liz. You can sense her asking; How are we going to do this? How can we beat them? What is my role as a white South African? She doesn’t find the answers and this is why the book feels inconclusive and uncertain. It has prompted me to read some of her later work to see the progression.
7 out of 10

Starting Whole of a Morning Sky by Grace Nichols

[Books do furnish a room]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

How to review a book like Infinite Jest? Adding to the massive volume of superlatives would seem superfluous and there is a virtual industry involved in the analysis of it. Would I dare to add a note of criticism in relation to the sacred and adored text?
Infinite Jest is certainly a literary masterpiece, well constructed and beautifully written. I can’t imagine how long it must have taken to write and keep the myriad cast of characters in the proper relationship.
It is nearly 1000 pages long, and yes there are footnotes, over 200 pages worth. Some of the footnotes are twenty pages long, and yes, some of the footnotes have footnotes. There are clever references throughout; Beatles, Shakespeare, numerous film and tennis references. There is even a scholarly article comparing the brothers Incadenza to the Brothers Karamazov!!
The novel is set in a semi-dystopian future and revolves around a tennis academy, a rehab centre and the search for the master copy of a tape called Infinite Jest, a film so compulsive and thrilling that those who watch it are totally absorbed by it and eventually die.
Many people  absolutely love this; I didn’t. It’s a great book, a literary and post modern masterpiece, but give me Pynchon, Gass or Gaddis any day.
Here’s what troubled me;
1)There’s way too much tennis in this for my liking! Any self-respecting post-modern masterpiece should avoid tennis.

 

2)I read it straight after reading The Recognitions and that didn’t help because I thought The Recognitions was better.

 

3)The comments about Linda McCartney towards the end were cruel and unnecessary.

 

4)The use of the N word. There may be some deep philosophical reason for this and meaning behind it; I didn’t see it. This isn’t the 19th century or even the 1950s and I wouldn’t accept it from lesser writers, so why should I from DFW, even though he is a genius.

 

5)I was also irritated by the phrase “Dworkinite Female Objectification Prevention and Protest Phalanx”. Again this may be a small point, but I knew the picture he was trying to paint and found it offensive.

 

6)Too many teenage boys (need I say more).

 

Despite the above it is a great book and worth going along for the ride. I also wonder whether being British, I missed some of the cultural nuances.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

Edited August 24, 2014 by Books do furnish a room

[bobblybear]

Infinite Jest has been on the periphery of my wishlist for ages (since the author's suicide). I've never looked too much into it as I suspect it wouldn't be my cup of tea. So many people rave about it, but also many don't like it....I suspect I'd fall into the latter category. Maybe if my TBR and wishlist piles come down (probably in about 20 years at the rate I'm going ), I shall look more into it. Nice review, too.

[Books do furnish a room]

Thanks Bobbly; reading it is quite a task!

Landscape for a good woman by Carolyn Steedman

I first read this when it was published in the 1980s and I still have the virago original paperback from that time; I decided to dig it out and re-read.
It is a partly autobiographical work which looks at the childhood of the author (1950s London) and her mother (1920s Burnley/Lancshire). Steedman uses the factual information to analyse female childhood (working class childhood) in feminist and psychoanalytic terms.
Steedman looks at the nature of patriarchy, how it is learnt, even with a father absent and what its theoretical limits are. There are discussions about legitimacy, the nature of childhood (using fairy tales to illustrate theoretical constructs), poverty, class, interesting critiques of Hoggart and Seabrook and a good section on reproduction. The book is about marginality, how to explain a patriarchal figure who is totally unimportant outside the household (the story about the bluebells is especially telling) and what about women who don’t want a child. Steedman throws her net wide in what seems a narrow subject, but it’s a telling analysis, especially when she looks at Freud and Dora.
There is an excellent bibliography and this is a book well worth seeking out; imbued with a particularly English radical tradition, but broad in scope and written with great compassion.

8 out of 10

Starting Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
 

[Books do furnish a room]

Rasselas by Dr Samuel Johnson

Dr Johnson’s foray into fiction is an oddity. The themes are similar to Candide and they were written at pretty much the same time. For different reasons.
Johnson famously said “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money”. His only novel was no exception. In January 1759 his mother became ill and Johnson needed money to support her and pay her medical bills. He wrote Rasselas in a week, in the evenings. He received one hundred pounds for it and it ended up paying for his mother’s funeral as well.
Like Candide it was meant to be a critique of the philosophy in vogue at the time; the general optimism that everything works out well. It is set in North Africa; Abyssinia and Egypt.
Rasselas is a prince of Abyssinia; his father the emperor has an infallible means of stopping rivalry for the throne by making sure all who challenge him live together in an enclosed valley. They live in absolute luxury and want for nothing. The catch is they cannot leave. Rasselas becomes inquisitive about the outside world and speaks to those who have lived out there. He spends time with a man of science (all needs are catered for) who speculates that they might be able to build something that will enable they to fly out. This enables Johnson to be prophetic about humanity conquering flight saying that it would be a disaster because of the implications of being able to move armies and arms around too quickly (got that one right Dr J!) The flight idea is a flop and eventually it is a philosopher called Imlac who works out a way of escape (geeks win again!). Rasselas and Imlac are accompanied by his sister Nekayah and her attendant Pekuah.
They wander around Egypt and explore the monastic life, life devoted to learning, wisdom and science, the pastoral life, poverty, power and rulers. There is a good deal of rather irritating philosophising and debate and some repetition (even for a short novel). Inevitably they find all ways of life have their drawbacks and everyone wishes they had picked a different track and everyone wishes they could be young again. They go round in circles for a bit and get absolutely nowhere and head back to their valley.
However there is a little off the wall conclusion as part of the last chapter. Each of them decide on an ideal course if they were able to do what they wanted. Imlac, the philosopher wanted to drift around the world examining all these different ways of life. Rasselas wanted a small kingdom where he could have enough control to ensure everything was justly run and his subjects happy. Pekuah wanted to join a convent and be a nun.  Rasselas’s sister Nekayah wanted to found “a college of learned women” where women could learn sciences and the wisdom of the world (didn’t see that one coming I must admit).
All in all a mixed bag; Johnson isn’t exactly fluent and you can tell it was written in a rush. However it was redeemed by some interesting ideas and speculations and Dr Johnson suggesting a university for women would be a good idea in 1759.

7 out of 10

Starting The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole.