Books do furnish a room

The Zealot's Bones by D M Mark This combines historical fiction and crime. It is set in a specific time and place. The city of Hull in 1849 at the time of a cholera epidemic which killed one in forty-three of the population. It also moves to North Lincolnshire as well. This is my area of the country hence the attraction. The plot is a little far-fetched (well quite a lot actually). It is rumoured that the bones of one of the apostles, a rather obscure one, Simon the Zealot, have found their resting place in North Lincolnshire. Seeking for these relics is a Canadian antiquary and academic Diligence Matheson. He has hired as a bodyguard Meshach Stone, an ex-soldier with a very colourful past and enough inner demons to run a small portion of hell. The search for the old bones becomes rather secondary as Stone discovers a quest of his own. Stone makes a connection with a prostitute in Hull. He returns to try to find her and discovers she has died, most likely of cholera. He goes on to discover that actually she has been brutally murdered and that there is a serial killer at work, murdering women of the lower classes (mainly prostitutes). Would it surprise you to find that the two quests become enmeshed? No, I thought not! This is not for the faint-hearted and there is certainly a gothic edge with a script that could have come from Hammer Horror. There is also a great deal of brutal violence and torture, quite graphically described. What the novel lacks is meaningful female characters. The women involved are all prostitutes (and most of them are dead) and mentally unwell (and there are only two of them). It’s a man’s world and men have to do what they have to do, usually in inventively gruesome ways. I like a bit more subtlety in my crime novels and this wasn’t for me. If you like your historical crime violent and brutal then this may be for you. 4 out of 10 Starting Riding Toward Everywhere by William T Vollmann

Sweet days of discipline by Fleur Jaeggy A fairly short novella set in Switzerland in the 1950s, it begins in a straightforward way: “At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell.” The reader may be tempted to think this is going to be yet another analysis of teenage adolescence and in some ways it is as Jaeggy writes this in a semi-autobiographical way. Brodsky makes the point that: “Dipped in the blue ink of adolescence, Fleur Jaeggy’s pen is an engraver’s needle depicting roots, twigs, and branches of the tree of madness, growing in the splendid isolation of the small Swiss garden of knowledge into full leaf until it obscures every perspective.” There are lots of literary references: Walser is invoked on the first page and of course he died in the snow in Appenzell in 1956. The mountain setting are suggestive of TB and Mann’s The Magic Mountain. There are Bronte references and suggestions of Jane Eyre’s boarding school. The plot is a simple description of life in the school and the narrator’s friendships. These are contrasting. There is Frederique, something of an austere relationship with some distance and coldness, yet very profound. Then there is Micheline, more open and spontaneous: “What Micheline wanted from life was to have a good time, and wasn’t that what I wanted too?” The contrast between Frederique and Micheline is central to the book. The narrator encounters Frederique later in life living in austerity: “I thought of this destitution of hers as some spiritual or aesthetic exercise. Only an aesthete can give up everything. I wasn’t surprised so much by her poverty as by her grandeur. That room was a concept. Though of what I didn’t know. Once again she had gone beyond me.” The austerity is a reflection of their austere relationship. One of the marvels of this book is that Jaeggy manages to write about the hothouse world of a boarding school in such a cold and austere way. There is a gothic quality to this and the award winning translation is excellent. Reviewers who have attended boarding schools have noted how well Jaeggy has captured the crushes (passiones), the rituals and teachers having favourites. The head of school Frau Hofstetter is reminiscent of Mme Beck in Villette. Jaeggy writes well and turns a good phrase. School lockers are described as “the dear little mortuary of our thoughts”. Boarding schools: “A boarding school is a strong institution, since in a sense it is founded on blackmail.” The language is often that of mental illness and there are plenty of premonitions and death and all that surrounds it are ever present. There is the sense that we are all dying, even as children, evoking Rilke who said that we carry our deaths within us. The narrative is intense and claustrophobic and there are gaps which the reader has to fill and mercifully there is no whiney teenage angst. It is a brief and sparely written novella and there is more to it than meets the eye. 8 out of 10 Starting Mill for Grinding Old People Young by Glenn Patterson

There are a lot of us around Madeleine! A Pin to see the Peepshow by F Tennyson Jesse This is a powerful and moving representation in novel form of a true crime in the 1920s. Published in 1934 by F Tennyson Jesse (great niece of the poet Tennyson) it is well written and the characterisation is strong. I must say at this point that there are inevitably spoilers ahead, although it is a bit like warning of spoilers at the beginning of a fictionalised account of the Titanic! The novel is based on the infamous Thompson/Bywaters murder case of the early 1920s. Edith Thompson was a married lower middle class woman having an affair with a younger man (by seven years). The younger man (Bywaters meets Thompson and her husband late one evening as they are returning from the theatre and murders Percy Thompson. Both were convicted of murder as it was felt that it was planned by both and they were hanged on the same day. A case that was notorious at the time and had a significant impact on the debate about the death penalty. It has resonated since: Sarah Waters’ novel “The Paying Guests” is based on the case as was Jill Dawson’s novel “Fred and Edie” and E M Delafield’s novel “Messalina of the Suburbs”. There have been several true crime books about the case, two TV adaptations, at least two plays, several TV documentaries, mentions in Agatha Christie’s novel Crooked House, a number of legal examinations of whether the trial and sentence were valid, a biography of Thompson, a novel by Molly Cutpurse (A Life Lived) speculating about what might have happened to Thompson had she lived, fiction based on the case has come from P D James, Dorothy L Sayers and Anthony Cox and last but not least James Joyce was fascinated by the case and used transcripts of the trial extensively in Finnegans Wake. The title of this novel comes from an incident when sixteen year old Julia Almond (Thompson in the novel) is looking after a class of younger children at her school. She is shown a peepshow by nine year old Leonard (later to be her lover): “Then she picked up the box. A round hole was cut into each end, one covered with red transparent paper, one empty. To the empty hole was applied an eye, shutting the other in obedience to eager instructions. And at once sixteen year old, worldly wise London Julia ceased to be, and a child an enchanted child was looking into fairyland. The floor of the box was covered with cotton-wool, and a frosting of sugar sprinkled over it. Light came into the box from the red-covered window at the far end, so that a rosy glow as of sunset lay over the sparkling snow. Here and there little brightly-coloured men and women, children and animals of cardboard, conversed or walked about. A cottage, flanked by a couple of fir trees, cut from an advertisement of some pine-derivative cough cure, which Julia saw every day in the newspaper, gave an extraordinary impression of reality and of distance. This little rose-tinted snow scene was at once amazingly real and utterly unearthly. Everything was just the wrong size – a child was larger than a grown man, a duck was larger than a horse; a bird, hanging from the sky on a thread, loomed like a cloud. It was a mad world, compact of insane proportions, but lit by a strange glamour. The walls and lid of the box gave to it the sense of distance that a frame gives to a picture, sending it backwards into another space. Julia stared into the peepshow, and it was though she gazed into the depths of a complete and self-contained world, where she would go clad in snow-shoes and furs, and be able to tame savage huskies and shoot bears; a world of chill pallor, of an illimitable white sky, both only saved from a cruel rigour by the rosy all-pervading light.” This novel is written with great humanity and intensity so the reader understands Julia Almond, despite her flaws and her fantasies. Almond is portrayed as a hopeless romantic wanting the sort of romance she found in novels. Her husband is portrayed as respectable, slow and plodding, expecting the sort of wife a lower middle class chap should expect and being surprised when he didn’t get it. The novel covers Julia’s life for over ten years and does portray how events can take on a life of their own. The last hundred pages of the novel are horrific, portraying the investigation, trial and time leading to the execution. The actual description of Thompson’s last days and execution are truly awful and should be enough to convince anyone that the death penalty should be opposed. John Ellis, the executioner, was so haunted by Thompson’s execution that he took his own life. The novel is well conceived and well written and the reader is taken along as events spiral out of control; an indictment of lower middle class values and mores: as one reviewer pointed out had the characters been upper class or working class events would not have happened as they did. It is also a pertinent check to remind one that the jury system is not perfect. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty

The Secret Life of Owls by John Lewis-Stempel I have always had a thing about owls. I have a mug with an owl on it, a few pottery owls, pictures, bookmarks and so on. So I had to have this little book, only ninety pages long. It is a combination of looking at the nature of owls, the different species that live in and visit the British Isles and some of the history and mythology of owls. The parts relating to anatomy and physiology are fairly brief, but the interesting parts are the mythology, poetry and history. This is the poet Edward Thomas writing during the First World War: Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved; Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof. Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest, Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I. All of the night was quite barred out except An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry Shaken out long and clear upon the hill, No merry note, nor cause of merriment, But one telling me plain what I escaped And others could not, that night, as in I went. And salted was my food, and my repose, Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice Speaking for all who lay under the stars, Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice. The owl reminds the soldier that although he is safe, warm and fed, there are those that are not. We Have owls as harbingers of death, wise owls, wol in Winnie the Pooh, owls as a symbol of sobriety (various parts of the owl, eaten, boiled etc were supposed to cure drunkenness), putting the heart and foot of an owl under your arm to cure rabies and other such interesting pieces of information. Owls have been kept as pets, Florence Nightingale had one. But nothing beats seeing an owl gliding across a frosty field at dawn or dusk. Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat inevitably gets in there (never really a favourite) as does the old nursery rhyme used to try to keep children quiet: A wise old owl lived in an oak The more he saw the less he spoke The less he spoke the more he heard. Why can't we all be like that wise old bird? There are stories about owls from around the world, China and a Native American tale and there are records of owls from cave paintings dating back many thousands of years. It’s a mine of owlish information, if a little too short for me. The book starts with The Owls by Baudelaire and it seems a good place to finish: Among the black yews, their shelter, the owls are ranged in a row, like alien deities, the glow, of their red eyes pierces. They ponder. They perch there without moving, till that melancholy moment when quenching the falling sun, the shadows are growing. Their stance teaches the wise to fear, in this world of ours, all tumult, and all movement: Mankind drunk on brief shadows always incurs a punishment for his longing to stir, and go. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting Sweet days of discipline by Fleur Jaeggy

I think you both are right and I will look out for more of her books! The Life of Rebecca Jones by Angharad Price This is a remarkable piece of work. Sometimes when you read a book it feels so familiar that you think you must have read it before. I felt this about Carr’s Month in the Country and about this book. The beginning of the Guardian review sets the scene: “In 1964, BBC Wales made a short film about three brothers, blind from birth or infancy, raised on a farm in the lovely and remote valley of Maesglasau, east of Dolgellau in Merioneth. Their genetic fate both closed and opened doors. Special education away from home meant that Gruff went to Oxford and became an Anglican clergyman. William – who returned to the farm – worked as a polyglot Braille editor. Lewis, the Benjamin of the family, would programme computers and, in retirement, become a prize-winning blind artist.” Rebecca Jones was their aunt and it is her life that is told here: part novel, part history, part portrayal of rural life. Her family have lived in and farmed the valley for over a thousand years and can trace their roots in the valley to 1012. Rebecca Jones was born in 1905. Angharad Price is the great-niece of the siblings, making her Rebecca Jones’s great great-niece. She is telling her own family story. The original is in Welsh. The landscape of the valley and its moods and climate are almost another character. Over the course of the book we are taken through the changes in the twentieth century. Jones is portrayed with great dignity and perception and with a good deal of warmth. If you are tempted to read this don’t read any introductions and don’t turn to the last page! This work is also profound and reflective. Rebecca reflects as she ages; “Continuance is painful. It is the cross onto which we are tied: its beams pulling us this way and that. A longing for continuance lies at the heart of our nature, and we lie at the center of those forces which pull us this way and that like some torturer. Our basic urge is toward continuance. Yet, we are born to die. And we spend our lives coming to terms with that paradox.” The language is poetic, even in translation: ‘This was a reversal of creation. The perfection of an absence. / Tranquility can belong to one place, yet it ranges the world. It is tied to every passing hour, yet everlasting. It encompasses the exceptional and the commonplace. It connects interior with exterior.’ There is a good deal of prose by Hugh Jones, a hymnodist but it is family and location that matter most: “Memories of my childhood reach me in a continuous flow: smells and tastes and sights converging in a surging current. And just like the stream at Maesglasau, these recollections are a product of the landscape in our part of rural mid-Wales at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its familiar bubbling comforts me. It was not really like that, of course. The flow was halted frequently. Indeed a stream is not the best metaphor for life's irregular flow between one dam and the next. I have not mentioned the reservoirs. In these the emotions congregate. I approach them with hesitation. I stare into the still waters, fearing their hold on my memories. In terror I see my own history in the bottomless depths.” This novel/history is simple and yet written with great profundity, set within a very specific and limited landscape and seeming to contain the whole world. The history of the family has its sadness’s with the loss of several children over the generations, two world wars, the coming of mechanisation and electricity. I would recommend this book to anyone who reads; it is quite brilliant. 9 and a half out of 10 Starting The Secret Life of the Owl by John Lewis- Stempel

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff This is Helene Hanff’s follow up to 84 Charing Cross Road and it is an account of her first visit to Britain in 1971, three years after Frank Doel’s death. It is in daily diary form. The visit combined some book promotion of 84 Charing Cross Road, meeting Doel’s wife and daughters and a number of other friends and acquaintances. As in the previous book Hanff’s personality and enthusiasm shine through. Her delight in visiting historical sites where some of those she admires first trod is also obvious, although she can be cutting about things that irritate her: “Nothing infuriates me like those friendly, folksy bank ads in magazines and on TV. Every bank I ever walked into was about as folksy as a cobra.” And this thought when walking in a park and greeting a dog with the owner close by: ” Please don’t do that!” she said to me sharply. “I’m trying to teach him good manners.” I thought,” A pity he can’t do the same for you”. And a very perceptive remark about being taken to lunch at the Hilton: “You look at the faces in the Hilton dining room and first you want to smack them and then you just feel sorry for them, not a soul in the room looked happy.” Hanff is great at the one liners although I did miss Frank Doel’s dry and reserved responses. This is a delightful tourist’s account of London and its surrounds told with Hanff’s zest for life. 8 out of 10 Starting The Zealot's Bones by D M Mark

The Nothing by Hanif Kureshi This is a rather brief novella and Kureshi has managed to create some of the least likeable characters that populate literature! Waldo is an aging film director with a colourful history who now has multiple medical conditions, is confined to a wheelchair and is impotent. His wife current Zee is just over twenty years younger. She seems (possibly) to be having an affair with Eddie, a sort of friend of Waldo. Eddie is an old style, public school, Soho raconteur, somewhat dissolute, debt-ridden and charming. Waldo tries to find out if the affair is taking place and plots revenge. As always with Kureshi, the first line is arresting: “One night, when I am old, sick, right out of semen, and don’t need things to get any worse, I hear the noises again.” Of course Waldo has to decide whether he is imagining his wife’s affair or not: “It is true that I imagine things for a living, and the imagination is the most dangerous place on earth.” The New York Times rather aptly subtitles this Requiem for the Male Libido and indeed there is a whiff of Roth, Updike, Marquez, even Edmund White about it. Waldo can no longer be a physically sexual being; it’s the end of an era/eros and Waldo is angry. However there is no real depth to this and most of the book is taken up with plots and counter plots. Waldo’s sex crazed ramblings become boring very quickly. There isn’t a great deal of narrative or plot apart from husband and wife trying to get one over on each other. Even the brief appearance of an old time Soho gangster doesn’t liven it up. Zee can’t decide what she feels about her husband; apart from willing him to die so she can spend the inheritance she veers between being loving and trying to smother him with a pillow. Waldo may be a tortured soul and Kureshi has lots of fun with different types of male gaze, but it doesn’t really go anywhere and takes over a hundred pages to do it. 5 out of 10 Starting The life of Rebecca Jones by Angharad Price

Elmet by Fiona Mozley A first novel from not too far from where I live and closer still to where I was born and I recognise the landscape. Elmet was shortlisted for last year’s Man Booker prize. The title itself is redolent of the area which used to be the old Celtic kingdom of Elmet, which covered much of what is now Yorkshire. The last remnants are now place names such as Sherburn-in-Elmet. There is also a nod to Ted Hughes’s work The Remains of Elmet. For a first novel this is very good and Mozley was also brought up in the area. She wrote the book on her daily commute and admits that it pulls in many ideas that interest her and are important to her, especially in relation to gender and oppression and she dedicates the novel to her partner Megan. The novel itself has been described by the reviewer in the Guardian as elemental and contemporary rural noir, both excellent summations of the whole. The novel is about a father and his two children. The father is referred to as Daddy throughout and the children are Cathy and Daniel, both early to mid-teens. They live on a patch of land where Daddy has built a house. There is a copse which they work and Daddy catches (possibly poaches) local game, Daddy is a prizefighter, one of the very best and he periodically disappears for a day or two, leaving the children to fend for themselves, which they are well able to do. There are some neighbours at a distance, one of whom, Vivien, occasionally looks after the children. Daddy also helps vulnerable members of the local community when the have problems with debt collectors and the like. The principal antagonist is a local landowner, Price and his two sons. At one time Daddy used to work for Price, but no longer. The whole of the novel takes place under the radar of the police and the established authorities and builds towards a violent climax. Some of the speech is vernacular, but still easy to understand. Mozley builds the personalities of the two children well. Cathy is very much like her father in approach to life and toughness whilst Daniel simply doesn’t aspire to traditional male roles. Cathy feels as though she is almost out of a Bronte novel and is a force of nature, “I’m angry all time, Danny. Aren’t you?” Her name, perhaps deliberately evoking Wuthering Heights and she becomes the major figure in the book and her role at the end is fascinating and disturbing at the same time. Mozley plays with gender identification throughout the book. Daniel says at one point, “You have to appreciate that I never thought of myself as a man,” and Cathy’s appropriation of some traditional male attributes makes the ending stark and shocking. The writing about the landscape and nature captures a sense of place and can be quite vivid: “The dawn erupted from a bud of mauve half-light and bloomed bloody as I woke.” The narrative is compelling and the prose alive and immediate and Mozley does capture the plight of the downtrodden and disenfranchised in the bleaker areas of northern England. As the Spectator review rather archly points out, it isn’t often a novel combines a spot of Leveller radicalism with a portrayal of gender privilege. As Daniel points out when his sister disrupts a boys football game: ‘Even if she played, and even if she played well, it would always be their game.’ There are plenty of nods to other writers and films here, but the violence at the end is gruesome and truly shocking. I think, despite some flaws this is one of my favourite novels of the year and I will certainly be looking out for more of Mozley’s work. 9 out of 10 Starting Queer City by Peter Ackroyd

We should all be Feminists by Chimamanda, Ngozi Adichie Very brief pamphlet based on a TED talk and about fifty pages. It is simple straightforward and to the point, a basic plea for gender equality. It outlines the basic problems relating to the way women are treated and how we bring up our children. It does state the obvious, but in an effective and understandable way: “Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change.” “Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.” “Some people ask: 'Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?' Because that would be ... a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.” “I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and my femininity. And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be.” It’s all good positive stuff. Those of you who know me will sense a but, and there is one. I did prefer Mary Beard’s recent brief work Women and Power. There is also a point at which Adichie is discussing hypocrisy about losing virginity where she talks about losing virginity being something that usually happens between two people of opposite genders. A couple of points, you can lose your virginity to someone of the same gender and gender is a much more fluid thing than we have recognised. Not two set points, more a spectrum. Working with those who identify as non-binary has certainly taught me that. Then I come to Andrea Dworkin, one of those writers I have great respect for. Look at these two quotes: “Male supremacy is fused into the language, so that every sentence both heralds and affirms it. Thought, experienced primarily as language, is permeated by the linguistic and perceptual values developed expressly to subordinate women. Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or against assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made credible or authentic by the power of men to name. No transcendence of the male system is possible as long as men have the power of naming... As Prometheus stole fire from the gods, so feminists will have to steal the power of naming from men, hopefully to better effect.” “A commitment to sexual equality with men is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered.” This is a great polemical pamphlet, maybe I’m suggesting it isn’t radical enough. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting The Nothing by Hanif Kureishi

Little Pixie; I'm already enjoying the follow up! Friends and Relations by Elizabeth Bowen This is the first work by Elizabeth Bowen that I have read. Bowen was an interesting character herself, her marriage was companionship rather than passion and she had relationships with both men and women. She mixed with members of the Bloomsbury Group and several generations of writers. As a writer Bowen was interested in change and transformation in ordinary and orderly life, in "life with the lid on and what happens when the lid comes off". Bowen looks at what might be just below the veneer of respectability. Friends and Relations is a well written novel that revolves around a group of families, the Tilneys, Meggatts, Thirdmans and Studdarts. Bowen examines the complex nature of human relationships. As a result not a great deal happens. The first part of the book charts the weddings of two sisters, Laurel and Janet Studdart. Laurel marries Edward Tilney and Janet marries Rodney Meggatt. A complicating factor is that in time past Edward’s mother Elfrida had an affair with Rodney’s father Considine. The novel then jumps ten years and there are children to both marriages. They all appear to have quietly contented lives, but Bowen explores the undercurrents, especially the ripples from the affair decades ago. It is clear that Bowen is also reflecting her own experience that passion isn’t necessary for a happy marriage and may even get in the way. There is a wry comedy present as well with all the entrances and exits, alongside gaps in the plots and shades of nuance. There is elegance and an understated examination of human emotions. It is well written and a delight to read, although part of me does wonder whether I really care about the domestic and amatory exploits of the English upper classes. All these drawing rooms, well-kept gardens and country houses are maintained by servants who are barely perceptible in the novel and the sense of entitlement can be an irritant. However it is entertaining and I will make a point to read more by Bowen, especially her ghost stories. 6 and a half out of 10 Starting We Should all be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff This book is a complete delight. It is not a love story or a romance, but a series of letters between two book lovers from the late 1940s to the late 1960s. Helene Hanff is a lively and outspoken New Yorker who is unable to get hold of decently bound books, especially older and slightly more obscure ones. She answers an ad and contacts Marks and Co at 84 Charing Cross Road. There Frank Doel, a very proper English bookseller responds and starts to find and send her books from the lists she sends. Hanff’s friendliness, outspokenness and sheer vivacity gradually breaks down Frank Doel’s reserve and a friendships develops. Hanff sends to London difficult to find items to London which was still in the throes of rationing (mainly foodstuffs, but also nylons for the female employees). Gradually we also hear the voices of some of the other employees, Frank’s wife Nora and their elderly next door neighbour. There is a warmth and humanity here and a solid friendship based on books; something which should warm all our hearts. There is also, of course, the film starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. My edition has a preface by Anne Bancroft (her husband, Mel Brooks, bought the film rights for her, so she could play Hanff) and an introduction by Juliet Stevenson. What is most moving of course is that Hanff and Doel never met and the book came along after his death in the late 1960s and was an immediate hit. There has also been a play and a TV adaptation. There is a new adaptation of the play touring the UK at present starring Stephanie Powers and Clive Francis. I really did love this, it’s a meeting of bookish minds, something done by letter, which we can now do much more easily on sites like this. Hanff keeps threatening to visit, but never makes it: “You better watch out, I’m coming over there in ’53 if Ellery is renewed. I’m gonna climb up that Victorian book-ladder and disturb the dust on the top shelves and everybody’s decorum.” Hanff’s wit and irreverence are a constant delight: “I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by a friend who had to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-own-choosing. “Which is all very well,” she said bitterly, “but the only essay subject you can find enough Early Anglo-Saxon words for is ‘How to Slaughter a Thousand Men in a Mead Hall’.” A comment on the arrival of a new book: “The day Hazlitt came he opened to “I hate to read new books,” and I hollered “Comrade!” to whoever owned it before me.” And on buying books in general: “It’s against my principles to buy a book I haven’t read, it’s like buying a dress you haven’t tried on.” One of my favourites! 9 and a half out of 10 Starting The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff

The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar This is a delightful little book, quite remarkable. It is based on a very simple idea and on a simple gift. A friend of El-Mohtar’s gave her a gift of some samples of different types of honey. With this gift she wrote a set of tasting notes and reflections for each honey; 28 in all. El-Mohtar is a poet and writer of speculative fiction and she puts her talent to good use. This is an example of one of the tasting notes: “Day 10 – French Rhododendron Honey Colour: The colour of sugar dissolving in hot water; that white cloudiness, with a faint yellow tint I can only see when looking at it slantwise, to the left of me, not when I hold it up to the light. Smell: Strange, it has almost no scent at all; it’s also crystallised, so it’s a bit difficult to scoop some out with the wand, but it smells cold with an elusive citrus squirt hovering about its edges. Taste: There is a kind of sugar cube my grandfather used to give my sister and me every morning when we were small, not so much a cube as a cabochon, irregularly rounded, clear and cloudy by turns. It was called sikkar nabet, which is “plant sugar.” This tastes like it. The honey taste is so pale, so faint, it really is almost sugar water. I’m reminded of maple sap in buckets, right at the beginning of the boiling process that produces maple syrup, where it’s still water enough to be used for steeping tea.” After each set of tasting notes is a piece of fiction or poetry. These are very varied: poems, gothic and unusual tales, some are very sensual and erotic, some are almost fairy tales and mythical. She drinks the light like lemonade, Sips it bit by liquid bit, Until the day falls dark and soft Licked slow as honey clean Her throat is wide as an open door Inviting. honest, full of song, And the light, it wants it, tumbles in Like a girl after a rabbit She swallows every now and then Licks her lips, parts them for more. Every now and then she sleeps While she does the Moonish man Builds his nets, chases his dog. She would take him by the hand, Look into his eyes and say. Love you should know better now The world is not for catching, love Not for having, not for keeping. The world is all for sipping, love So tilt back your head and drink. But he will never hear her, so preocuppied with precious plans. He has no willing ear to lend, While he mutters on and on. She wakes to quiet loneliness, Dresses, walks to her windowsill, And sip by sip, lick by lick, Draws night back home again. There are nods to Goblin Market, Angela Carter and more, but this is really very original stuff. Temptation, awakening, attraction, seduction and interesting undercurrents abound. The art work and illustrations are excellent. It’s very short and best read in small chunks, but the whole is a delight. 9 out of 10 Starting 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

On the Golden Porch by Tatyana Tolstaya A collection of short stories by Tatyana Tolstaya and yes she is a descendant of Tolstoy. The stories are as follows: Loves Me, Loves Me Not Okkervil River Sweet Shura On the Golden Porch Hunting the Woolly Mammoth The Circle A Clean Sheet Fire and Dust Rendezvous with a Bird Sweet Dreams Son Sonya The Fakir Peters A wonderful set of stories about ordinary people their hopes, fears, wants and illusions and as one reviewer put it, “bittersweet melancholy”. The stories are atmospheric and reminded me more of Chekov than Tolstoy. There is humour and warmth here as well even along with the disillusionment. The characters are well developed and drawn and there are sagas of the loss of dreams, unspoken love, loss of identity and the struggle to survive. There is also a touch of magic realism suffusing some of the stories, but it is a very Russian variety. In Rendezvous with a Bird a boy is waiting for the death of his grandfather. Death comes in the form of a bird, but Tolstaya’s touch is light: “The dark garden rose and fell like the ocean. The wind chased the Sirin bird from the branches: flapping its mildewed wings, it flew to the house and sniffed around, moving its triangular face with shut eyes: is there a crack?” The writing style is a delight to read, this is a description of a hairdressers: “..stiff green sabres grew hilt-down out of large pots, and photographs of bizarre creatures with unpleasant glints in their eyes stared from the walls under incredible hair - towers, icing, rams' horns; or ripples like mashed potatoes in fancy restaurants.” The stories are populated by the well-meaning people who often delude and deceive themselves with theirs hopes and dreams, trying to avoid mundane reality. People with bleak lives and rapturous imaginations. There is inevitably sadness and disillusion and some of the stories are in their own way heart-breaking. I really enjoyed these stories; they were moving and very human. 9 out of 10 Starting Reflections on Gender and Science by Evelyn Fox Keller

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck What to make of so famous a book; Pulitzer Prize winner and Buck went on to win the Nobel Prize, the first American woman to do so. There are study guides galore and Oprah revived interest in the book when she selected it for one of her book club reads. The plot is well known and is set in the early part of the twentieth century in agrarian China. It is a family saga and is the first of a trilogy. It tells the story of peasant farmer Wang Lung from day until his death, covering about 50 years. It tells of famine and hardship and of the rise of Wang Lung to be a wealthy man, all his wealth springing from the land and the soil. The plotlines encompasses many of the evils/problems in Chinese society: famine/plenty, opium, foot binding, the taking of concubines, infanticide (of daughters), but also the daily routines of agrarian life with its ups and downs. Buck was the daughter of missionaries and spent many years in China and was a keen observer of life. For many readers this was/has been an introduction to China, its people and culture and the endless notes provided by study guides illustrate this well. Celeste Ng makes a very good point about this: “I hate The Good Earth because, all too often, it’s presented not as a work of fiction but as a lesson on Chinese culture. Too many people read it and sincerely believe they gain some special insight into being Chinese. In one quick step, they know China, like Neo in The Matrix knows Kung Fu. Since its publication, the book has regularly been assigned in high schools as much for its alleged window into Chinese culture as for its literary value.” This raises the issue of whether a novel or work of fiction can ever be a guide or compendium of a country’s culture. Would we go to Zola to find out about nineteenth century France, Dickens for England, Faulkner for the modern US; I could go on. They might be illustrative, but not comprehensive or a cultural guide, a quite narrow perspective even for perceptive observers like Dickens or Zola. So why would Buck’s novel be treated like that? Even Buck points out there is much more to China than she portrays: “And when on another day he heard a young man speaking — for this city was full of young men speaking — and he said at his street corner that the people of China must unite and must educate themselves in these times, it did not occur to Wang Lung that anyone was speaking to him.” No book encapsulates an entire culture and it is typical of a western imperialist (or even post imperialist) mentality to begin to consider it can. The novel does clearly illuminate the position of women in Chinese society at that time. The focus on land and soil and personal progress tapped into middle class American values at the time it was written, helping to make it very popular and there is an interesting contrast with the role of Chinese immigrants in America at the time. There is, of course much more to be said, but reading Buck does necessitate an awareness of the society around her at the time. I did enjoy the novel and the character building is very good. It did remind me a little of Gone with the Wind (is that heresy?) 7 out of 10 Starting Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The Hidden People by Alison Littlewood I don’t remember buying this, but it found its way into the house somehow, given the subject matter perhaps there’s a more mysterious explanation! This isn’t horror, gothic may be a good description (nonsense may be another!). It deals with superstition and myth and is set in the mid nineteenth century. Albie Mirralls (the narrator, a rather irritating and pompous young man) meets his cousin Lizzie only once in 1851 at the Great Exhibition. Ten years later Lizzie is burnt to death by her husband who believes she has become a changeling. Albie travels to the Yorkshire village of Halfoak to arrange her funeral and try to find out what happened to her. A brief note to say the premise is that Lizzie may have been taken by the fairies (faeries or some other variation) who live under the hill near the village and a replacement put in her place. They live under the hill where it is always summer with lots of music and dancing. Now it is true to say that stories of fairies and changelings are part of English mythological tradition. Even when I was a child I was told such stories and the traditions go back a long way. The scene is now set so cue superstitious and surly locals, a wise woman living in the woods, Albie staying in the cottage where Lizzie was murdered (isolated and close to the fairy hill), midnight music, Albie’s wife turning up as a surprise, a secret journal, Wuthering Heights (remember the changeling themes in that and there are parallels), lots of mysterious doings with herbs, disappearing babies, marital strife, mysterious flutterings seen from the corner of the eye, a squire’s son who is a rake, jealousy, a hot and seemingly never ending summer in Halfoak and lots more written in a Victorian gothic style. There are some issues, the plot seems to lose its way during the second part of the book. The ending is not difficult to guess despite a couple of neat twists. The plot kept misdirecting in a particular direction which led this reader to look in the opposite direction. The dialogue and writing at times can be ponderous. Albie is annoying, but I am sure he was meant to be and it is clear that most of the time he has little clue what is going on. The atmosphere of a superstitious village is well captured as is the sense of unending summer heat. There are nods towards a number of genres, but no real satisfaction in any one of them. I think following the Wuthering Heights theme might have been more satisfying. I wanted to like this more than I did and I would read more by Littlewood as there were plenty of ideas here and the clash between rationalism and superstition is one aspect of the novel that does work well. 6 out of 10 Starting The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar

Thank you Pixie; the Mary Beard is worth reading. The Virago Book of Women's War Poetry This is a combination of two volumes; one about women writing poetry about the First World War and the other relating to the Second. There are brief potted biographies at the end which are illuminating, if a little too focussed on who they were married to. Many of these writers and poets are almost unknown now, unless one is interested in the area and well read. The only really well known writer here is Vera Brittain. That says something about the way women’s writing is perceived perhaps, especially in relation to the male war poets. The poetry, as you would expect, has a much broader scope than the male variety. There is lots about loss of loved ones and the fighting, but there is also the horror of air raids, rationing and food, the changes in the countryside, patriotism and pacifism and much more. Much of the poetry is protest against the war, particularly in relation to the First War (less so the second). Indeed poets like S Gertrude Ford, Winifred Letts, May Herschel-Clark and Mary Gabrielle Collins were writing protest poetry before Sassoon and Owen. This is from Winifred Letts: You gave your life. Boy. And you gave a limb: But he who gave his precious wits, Say, what regard for him? One had his glory, One has found his rest. But what of this poor babbler here With chin sunk on his breast? Flotsam of battle, With brain bemused and dim, O God, for such a sacrifice Say, what reward for him? This from S Gertrude Ford (Poet, feminist and suffragist; have you heard of her?) “Fight the year out!” the War-lords said: What said the dying among the dead? ‘To the last man!’ cried the profiteers: What said the poor in the starveling years? ‘War if good!’ yelled the Jingo-kind: What said the wounded, the maimed and blind? ‘Fight on!’ the Armament-kings besought: Nobody asked what the women thought. “On!’ echoed Hate where the fiends kept tryst: Asked the church, even, what said Christ? And in contrast also from Ford, Nature in War: The banished thrush, the homeless rook Share now the human exile’s woe. Mourns not the forest felled, which took Three hundred years to grow? Grieve not those meadows scarred and cleft, Mined with deep holes and reft of grass, Gardens where not a flower is left, Fouled streams, once clear as glass? And yon green vale where Spring was found Laughing among her daffodils… Wind sweep it now; a battle-ground Between two gun-swept hills. And brief, but powerful from May Herschel-Clarke, entitled Nothing to Report: One minute we was laughin, me an' Ted, The next, he lay beside me grinnin' - dead. 'There's nothin' to report, ' the papers said. There is much more like this, very few poems/writers who feel out of place and it strikes me that there are writers here who should be ranking alongside the best of the male war poets. Some of it is heart breaking: these two poems from Vera Bax about her two sons illustrate that well: To Richard, My Son (Killed in action, 17th August, 1942) I hide my grief throughout the weary days, And gather up the threads of life again, Remembering you ever gave your praise To those for whom fate’s hardest thrust was vain. Now, when I feel my courage flicker low, Your spirit comes to breathe it into flame, Until I lift my head, and smiling go, Whispering softly your beloved name. And yet to me it seems but yesterday You were a child, and full of childish fears; Then I would run to you and soothe away The loneliness of night, and dry your tears; But now you are the comforter, and keep, From out the shadows, watch, lest I should weep. To Billy, My Son (Killed in action, May 15th, 1945) Now comes, indeed, the end of all delight, The end of forward-looking on life’s way, The end of all desire to pierce the night For gleam of hope, the end of all things gay; The end of any promise Spring might hold, The end of praying and, O God, the end Of love that waited to be shared and told; Now, evermore, shall life with sorrow blend; That sorrow whose dark shape the months had fought, And strictly kept in confines of the will; Had held quiescent while each conscious thought Searched far horizons where joy lingered still; But, my beloved, fearless, gallant, true, Here is fair end of sorrow, now, for you. This last poem is by the much underread Ethel Mannin, written during the Spanish Civil War: I am purely evil; Hear the thrum Of my evil engine; Evilly I come. The stars are thick as flowers In the meadows of July; A fine night for murder Winging through the sky. Bombs shall be the bounty Of the lovely night; Death the desecration Of the fields of light. I am purely evil, Come to destroy Beauty and goodness, Tenderness and joy. This collection is well worth looking out for and highly recommended. 9 out of 10 Starting Elmet by Fiona Mozley

Silas Marner by George Eliot I didn’t read this at school and so managed to avoid the residual hatred that some have for certain classics as a result of poor teaching. The storyline and plot are well known. Silas Marner is a weaver in a Northern town and part of a religious congregation. He is falsely accused of stealing and his life falls apart. He moves to the village of Raveloe in the Midlands and lives alone on the edge of the community doing his weaving. Over time he builds up a substantial amount of money which becomes for him a purpose in life. One evening the dissolute younger son of the local squire steals the money and disappears. A while later on New Year’s Eve there is a party at the local Squire’s home. A woman with a young child makes her way through the snow towards the party with a view to making herself known as the wife of the squire’s elder son (unacknowledged wife). She collapses in the snow outside Marner’s cottage and dies. The child crawls into Marner’s cottage where he discovers her in front of the fire. Marner determines to keep and bring up the child. This alters his relationship with the local community and inevitably proves to be redemptive: "Since the time the child was sent to me and I've come to love her as myself, I've had light enough to trusten by; and now she says she'll never leave me, I think I shall trusten till I die." One thing that marked this novel out at the time it was published was the realism and the way Eliot made ordinary working class characters rounded parts of the novel. This was quite revolutionary at the time. Marner and the characters in Raveloe are not caricatures or walk on parts. Eliot mentions a number of issues current in mid-Victorian society; the rising use of opium, a crisis in religion centred on the conflict between strict religious practice and human ethics, the stirrings of a change in the role of women. The reader gets a sense of this with Molly Farren, mother of Eppie and unacknowledged wife of Godfrey Cass just before she dies in the snow. As this novel has been a school set text it has been analyzed and pored over ad infinitum. For me though it was a simple and rather touching parable of redemption which subverted traditional notions of parenting and gender roles and for once I didn’t really object to a happy ending. 9 out of 10 Starting The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry Rather brief and pertinent little book about the history, nature and future of masculinity wound around Grayson Perry’s own struggle with his masculinity. There are no references and Perry can be repetitive, but there is some great artwork as you would expect from one of our foremost artists. The best part of the book is when Perry talks about his own life, the abuse from his stepfather, his teenage self as a skinhead and skateboarder, his passion for motor biking and mountain biking, his transvestitism and his own struggles with masculinity. His analysis of the problem is pretty much spot on as you would expect; nearly all crime and violence can be laid at the door of men as can wars and the way societies are run. Men are often emotionally closed and distant. Perry writes all this pretty well: “Examining masculinity can seem like a luxury problem, a pastime for wealthy, well-educated, peaceful society, but I would argue the opposite: the poorer, the more undeveloped, the more uneducated a society is, the more masculinity needs realigning with the modern world, because masculinity is probably holding back that society. All over the globe, crimes are committed, wars are started, women are being held back and economies are disastrously distorted by men, because of their outdated version of masculinity.” Perry argues that genetics plays a very small role in this and conditioning and society’s expectations are the central problems and will hinder any solutions: “We need to firm up what it is to be a man in the 21st century, because other retrograde forces are happy to promote a seductive, familiar, easy-to-assemble package.” Perry’s solutions though tend towards self-reflection, men meeting in groups and talking: the solution being inside men’s heads. This may miss the point that our economic system depends very much on competition and division; all very much part of the male psyche. Interestingly Dave Ramsden’s review in Socialist Review makes the following point: “The author says he hates to use the word revolution. Instead he advocates individual self-examination rather than the therapy of mass engagement. The miners did not remove page three from their magazine during their strike following a process of intellectual introspection. They removed it because they were supported unceasingly and without preconditions by the women of the pit communities and beyond.” The analysis of the problem by Perry in the first half of the book is very much better than the solutions in the second half which is quite rambling. Perry is however quite funny and incisive; his musings about clothing are particularly funny; he refers to ties as “colourful textile phalluses” and “Men are into frippery as much as women, but they cloak it under spurious function.” (“pseudo-functional zips and buckles”). Perry’s new list of men’s rights at the end are fairly uncontroversial: The right to be vulnerable The right to be weak The right to be wrong The right to be intuitive The right not to know The right to be uncertain The right to be flexible The right not to be ashamed of any of these But his solutions are not radical enough. 7 out of 10 Starting Friends and Relations by Elizabeth Bowen

Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzu This book was quite a mixture, but despite some reservations I did enjoy it. There is a warmth and humanity about it and it tells a good story. Onuzo is still only 27 and is clearly a talented writer. The story concerns a group of misfits travelling to Lagos. Chike is an officer in the Nigerian army; he is serving in the Niger delta and fighting militants in the area. He is disillusioned and not sure he is on the side of right. He and his subaltern Remi desert and set off for Lagos. They soon come across Fineboy, one of the militants who also wants to travel to Lagos and become a DJ. Isoken, a sixteen year old girl who is fleeing from an attempted rape by militants (possibly including Fineboy) joins them. On a bus they meet Oma, who is fleeing from domestic abuse. They somehow become a rather motley unit travelling together to Lagos. The city of Lagos is another character almost and is drawn very vividly by Onuzo with its bustling busyness, sounds and sights, severe poverty and great wealth: “Lagos is no different from anywhere, except there are more people, and more noise, and more.” There is a richness and complexity to the story which could be described as Dickensian. The five survive on the streets and eventually find an abandoned apartment which they take over. The owner, a former Minister of Education turns up one day, on the run with a suitcase of money. They detain him and debate what to do next. Eventually they decide to use the money for its original purpose and start to find out what local schools need and purchasing it for them. At this point the plot takes a rather odd direction with the introduction of a local journalist, the BBC and a reporter in London, the last part of the novel doesn’t have the same power and vibrancy of the first two thirds. There have been criticisms of the novel that say it has too much of a feel-good factor and minimizes some of the issues it addresses by its instinctive faith in human nature. I think this may be something of a misreading as Onuzo does not shy away from challenging the effects of colonialism: “The whole of Nigeria’s fortunes rose and fell on what foreigners would pay for her sweet crude” The corruption, the death squads and the censorship are all there interwoven with the plot and the very likeable main five characters. I did really enjoy this novel, there are flaws and I struggled with the last third, but it is life-affirming and rather touching. 7 out of 10 Starting On the Golden Porch by Tatyana Tolstaya

Women and Power by Mary Beard This brief book is based on two lectures, one from 2014 and one from 2017 by Mary Beard. Beard is a classicist and historian, a very good one. The primary subject is female voice and silence and is very much concerned with misogyny and links to the abuse Beard and others have experienced on social media. Given the recent revelations relating to Harvey Weinstein and the current social media landscape it is a much needed wake up call. Beard looks at the origins of misogyny and being a classicist she takes as her starting point Greece, Rome and the Ancient world. In fact the starting point is Telemachus telling his mother Penelope to shut up in the Odyssey. It is essentially an analysis of the silencing of the female voice and the humiliation of those few females who dared to speak out. Beard knows her stuff and the examples from the classical era are penetrating and very apposite. She looks at the way the female voice is characterised, for example by the word whine. Beard also focuses on the famous Punch cartoon by Riana Duncan about “Miss Triggs”. It shows a woman at a meeting with five men in suits. The chairman is saying: “That’s an excellent suggestion, Miss Triggs. Perhaps one of the men here would like to make it.” Which neatly caricatures a particular attitude of mind. Beard throws in an analysis of Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Amazons myth. The first lecture is an analysis of why culture silences women and the second looks at how culture prevents women from achieving equality and looks at the nature of power. Beard expresses herself frustrated at gradualist solutions, although she does admit some progress has been made. She does make some very prescient points about what needs to happen: “I would like in the future to think harder about how exactly we might go about re-configuring those notions of ‘power’ that now exclude all but a very few women, and I would like to try to pull apart the very idea of ‘leadership’ (usually male) that is now assumed to be the key to successful institutions.” She is right about leadership theories and we need to look at more “feminist” ideas about leadership. Of course men need to get used to the idea that they need to give up power and think differently about public space. My only niggle is that these were lectures, I would like Beard to follow up with something longer and more detailed. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry

Beyond the Glass Antonia White This is the final novel in White’s quartet about her early life, covering her life when she was 22/23. The last book ended with Clara’s marriage to Archie coming to an end and Clara returning to live with her parents. Moving back to her parents leads her to difficult times with her parents. Clara’s relationship with her father and her religion are still central but the real heart of the book is Clara’s increasing mental fragility and this is woven in with a doomed love affair. White herself spent time in a public asylum, Bethlem (known as bedlam) and so the descriptions of Clara’s breakdown, subsequent certification as insane and time in different parts of the asylum system are powerfully written and feel very personal: “She lost herself again; this time completely. For months she was not even a human being; she was a horse. Ridden almost to death, beaten till she fell, she lay at last on the straw in her stable and waited for death. They buried her as lay on her side, with outstretched head and legs. A child came and sowed turquoises round the outline of her body in the ground, and she rose up again as a horse of magic with a golden mane, and galloped across the sky. Again she woke on the mattress in her cell. She looked and saw that she had human hands and feet again, but she knew she was a horse.” White does employ a good deal of imagery relating to glass and mirrors throughout Clara’s breakdown, incarceration and gradual recovery and there are links to Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass to describe the world Clara enters. That world also involves force feeding, hot and cold baths and long periods of incarceration in padded rooms. Clara still has the stigmatizations of the day as indicated by the following quote from her time in the asylum: “In vain Clara tried to explain the rules of croquet…But it was hopeless. No-one could understand. In the end she left them running gaily about the lawn, hitting any ball they saw and usually all playing at once…the next moment, it came to her. These women were mad. All the women she saw at mealtimes were mad. No wonder she could make no contact with them. She was imprisoned in a place full of mad people” Clara’s reliability as a narrator can also be questioned. Interestingly there is a certain sort of mentality that must follow the rules of a game and Clara with the religious structures that she lives within is of that ilk. The women she is with have the freedom to not follow the rules and to just enjoy the experience. This is a good depiction of the asylum system in the 1920s and a fitting end to the quartet 8 out of 10 Starting A Pin To See The Peepshow by F Tennyson Jesse

Thank you bobblybear and Madeleine and I agree Dark Matter was creepier! Wilfred Owen by Guy Cuthbertson I am certain that this is not the best biography of Owen around, but it is interesting despite a number of irrelevant by-lines and lines of thought. The book takes the reader through Owen’s life well enough; the influences, the unremarkableness of his early life, his relationships with his parents and so on. I think there are some interesting points to draw out. If you read Owen’s pre-war and early war poetry it is clear that without going to the front Owen would not have been a major poet. The early poems have nothing of the passion, anger and gut-wrenching in your face power of his late poems. Cuthbertson speculates that when Owen was wounded and concussed it may have sparked his poetic muse into life. I am not quite convinced by that, but his best poems were written at this time and whilst he was recovering from shellshock at Craiglockhart. Another interesting point is Owen’s sexuality. It is fairly clear that Owen was attracted to men; once he found his muse his friends included Sassoon, Robert Ross (one of Wilde’s lovers), Osbert Sitwell and C K Scott Moncrieff; all of whom were gay (or in Sassoon’s case bisexual). Cuthbertson argues that Owen was attracted to women as well but was essentially chaste. Again there is no real way of knowing, but I wasn’t convinced and his poetry is certainly homoerotic. His relationship to his mother was very important to him. Also significant was his relationship with his father. Owen’s father was impatient of his son’s poetic leanings and was always urging him to be more “manly”. Whatever there is to say about Owen, and there are better biographies (Hibberd) the poetry stands out; this is Disabled: He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark, And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey, Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, Voices of play and pleasure after day, Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him. About this time Town used to swing so gay When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees, And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,— In the old times, before he threw away his knees. Now he will never feel again how slim Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands, All of them touch him like some queer disease. There was an artist silly for his face, For it was younger than his youth, last year. Now, he is old; his back will never brace; He's lost his colour very far from here, Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry, And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race And leap of purple spurted from his thigh. One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg, After the matches carried shoulder-high. It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg, He thought he'd better join. He wonders why. Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts. That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg, Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts, He asked to join. He didn't have to beg; Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years. Germans he scarcely thought of, all their guilt, And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes; And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears; Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits. And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers. Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal. Only a solemn man who brought him fruits Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul. Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes, And do what things the rules consider wise, And take whatever pity they may dole. Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes Passed from him to the strong men that were whole. How cold and late it is! Why don't they come And put him into bed? Why don't they come? 6 out of 10 Starting Women and Power by Mary Beard

Mr Scarborough's Family by Anthony Trollope One of Trollope’s very last novels and this still has many of the elements of the usual Trollope recipe. The usual convoluted plot, chapters to introduce the major characters, ends well tied at the conclusion, strong female characters, male characters who are generally weak, bad or bumbling and a strong cast of supporting characters. The plot revolves around Mr Scarborough and his two sons. The older son, Mountjoy is an inveterate gambler who owes a great deal of money. The younger son, Augustus is a lawyer. Old Mr Scarborough has a terminal illness and will not be around long and when he dies the rather grand estate will go to the moneylenders. Scarborough announces to his lawyer Mr Grey that he and his late wife were unmarried when Mountjoy was born and produces paperwork to that effect. This means that Augustus will inherit everything and the moneylenders will get nothing. This plot and it’s working out meanders through the whole book and has a King Learish feel about it. The inevitable romantic turmoil revolves around Florence Mountjoy, cousin to the two Scarborough brothers. She has the misfortune to be fallen in love with by almost every single male in the book, most of whom seem reluctant to take no for an answer. Her decision is in favour of Harry Annesley, much to the horror of her mother and for reasons that would probably take the length of the book to explain. Annesley is heir to his uncle’s minor estate. It must be said that even though he is meant to be the most positive male character and is portrayed as rather likeable, he is completely useless when it comes to making a living. There are several groups of minor characters. The lawyer Mr Grey and his daughter Dolly (one of the strongest and most likeable female characters) and their extended family. The Annesley family and their uncle Peter Prosper whose run ins with Harry provide another plot line. The Thoroughbung family also provide interest and some comical moments. Another group are the moneylenders and this is problematic as Trollope portrays them as being Jewish and there is a good deal of caricature here. This is a later novel and the role of women was beginning to change and this is reflected in the female characters. Matilda Thoroughbung is very clearly demanding a pre-nuptial type agreement relating to what she expected from the marriage and how she is to retain her own money. Dolly Grey is very clear in deciding to remain unmarried, especially as she says she has met no man who she respects enough to marry; making a clear and positive choice for solitude and independence. At this time women’s property rights were being improved and the New Woman movement was gathering momentum. Not one of Trollope’s best and the caricature of Jewish moneylenders is unpleasant, but there are interesting moments and strong characters. 6 out of 10 Starting Silas Marner by George Eliot

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi This is an ambitious first novel with great historical scope and sweep, set over almost three centuries; it is also a set of 14 short stories. It starts in Ghana when it was known as the Gold Coast in the eighteenth century. The novel follows two strands of the same family. One strand remains in Ghana until the twentieth century and the other is in America in the slavery system. Each chapter looks at one character, seven from each strand from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century. That does mean that the reader only spends twenty or thirty pages on each character, although there are threads that run through the whole. Whether this works or not has been debated and I suspect it very much depends on the reader. If you want to relate to characters over the length of a novel, then this may be a problem. However the characters tell a story over time and Gyasi has stated her reasons for the structure: “At some point during the course of writing Homegoing I realised that one of the things that I was most concerned with was time itself, or more specifically, the ability to feel as though I was watching slavery and colonialism move and shift over a very long period of time. In order to do that, I felt that I need a structure that could accommodate the weight of as many years as possible, so I decided to tell the story generationally.” The issues covered obviously include the history and conditions of slavery and there are snapshots of Ghanaian history (Anglo-Asante wars, the introduction of cash crops). The growth of Harlem, Pratt City, civil rights and a range of other issues are covered, but necessarily not in great depth. Gyasi puts into the mouth of one of her characters, her own feelings about writing to this sort of history: “We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So, when you study history, you must always ask yourself, whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth?” There are some areas that for me provided illumination, I knew almost nothing about convict leasing and communities like Pratt City. I enjoyed the breadth of the book and it is a story that is very powerfully told and illuminates aspects of the history of slavery and colonialism that are not often examined. The rather neat ending was maybe a little too neat, but that is a minor quibble. There is also a brief bibliography in the afterword which looks rather interesting. 8 out of 10 Starting The Hidden People by Alison Littlewood

The Sugar House by Antonia White This is the third in a series of four which started with Frost in May and continues the story of Clara Batchelor, based loosely on White’s own life. As the series goes on comparisons for me are drawn with Richardson’s Pilgrimage series. Whilst White is good, Richardson is exceptional and this one feels a little like a link novel to the final part of the series. The first part of the novel sees Clara acting with a travelling theatrical troupe and in love with another thespian in a different travelling troupe. There is a portrayal of the life of a travelling actor in a variety of digs. Archie turns up again and when her lover betrays her she agrees to marry Archie. Clara and Archie Hughes Follett marry with Catholic pomp and move into a very small house in Chelsea, The Sugar House, because it reminds Clara of the one in Hansel and Gretel. Archie isn’t the person he was previously: “Archie had certainly changed. She remembered him as an odd creature, clumsy and kind, who did not fit into the grown-up world. Often he had sulked like a schoolboy but never had she seen him in this mood of aggressive bitterness. Tonight he had hardly smiled: in repose, his face was set in lines of angry discontent. She felt a pang of guilt.” White weaves a claustrophobic picture of the marriage, Archie is clearly an alcoholic and they run into serious debt very quickly. The marriage is also unconsummated; an important detail if you are a Catholic. This is an account of White’s marriage to Tom Hopkinson and of her attempts to start to write. The second part of the book is a description of the disintegration of the marriage as Archie’s alcoholism becomes a factor as does their increasing debts. I can see why this is seen as the weakest of the four books; it continued the story, I felt it lacked a little focus; but the descriptions of the life of a travelling actor was interesting. 7 out of 10 Starting Beyond the Glass by Antonia White