Books do furnish a room

Butterfly Burning by Yvonne Vera I read The Stone Virgins last year and was so impressed that I decided that this one should not be too far behind. I think Vera is an important and under read writer; for a bit of background, follow this link; https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writers/ This novel is set in Bulawayo; Vera’s home town, in the late 1940s. It concerns a young woman called Phephelaphi who lives with an older man, Fumbatha, a construction worker. They live in one room; concrete and asbestos. Phephelaphi, however, is not satisfied with just being and has ambitions to be a nurse; this is beyond Fumbatha’s comprehension. The language is lyrical and poetic, the whole is beautifully written. It could be argued that the poetic language makes some of the difficult and challenging passages less sharp. However I think the poetic language adds to the power of the writing. It is important not to forget that this is set within the context of colonialism and an Imperial power occupying Zimbabwe. We see early on a hanging in 1896; Fumbatha’s father and the effects of this can be charted throughout the book. Vera, though, focuses on gender because women have to fight for their own space and bodies; but there is a backdrop of a lack of employment and social cohesion. Portraying the African nation as feminine is not new; as Grace Musila points out: “nationalist discourses constituted the African nation as the feminine victim of an aggressive colonial master; the prostitute’s body became a convenient index for the degraded postcolonial nation” Vera is reacting against this; Phephelaphi resists the appropriation of her own body. Vera is concerned in all her work about the role of women in colonial and post-colonial contexts; looking at “women in the shadows”. At one level we are looking at the outworking of a universal storyline. A possessive man unable to allow his partner to develop and be herself for fear of losing her. Vera refracts the story through the prism of colonialism. This is clear from the beginning; “In the air the sound of a sickle cutting grass along the roadside where black men bend their backs in the sun and hum a tune, and fume, and lullaby”; and its Kwela music—”Kwela means to climb into the waiting police Jeeps. This word alone has been fully adapted to do marvelous things. It can carry so much more than a word should be asked to carry; rejection, distaste, surrender, envy. And full desire.” And in relation to the setting, Bulawayo; “Bulawayo is not a city of idleness. The idea is to live within the cracks. Unnoticed and unnoticeable, offering every service but with the capacity to vanish when the task required is accomplished. So the black people learn how to move through the city with speed and due attention, to bow their heads down and slide past walls, to walk without making the shadow more pronounced than the body or the body clearer than the shadow. It means leaning against some masking reality—they lean on walls, on lies, on music” Indeed Fumbatha feels that Phephelaphi’s need for more than him is a compromise with colonialism; “Fumbatha does not encourage her, instead, he reminds her of what they share. “We are happy together. I work. I take care of you. It is not necessary for you to find something else.” He insists on her unwavering loyalty. He mistrusts the city which does not understand the sort of triumph a man and a woman can find and share in their solitude. Does no one know that he is willing to die on the palm of Phephelaphi’s hand?” The backdrop of the rhythms of Kwela music link to the rhythms of liberation. The shocking ending embodies another type of liberation. There is a cathartic quality about it all and this is a powerful novel. 8 out of 10 Starting One Hundred Shadows by Jung Yewon

Felix Holt by George Eliot One of the least read of Eliot’s novels; sitting in the middle of her output. I found it had a surprising resonance for today. It was published in 1866 but was set in the time of the Great Reform Act in 1832, when the vote was extended (not by much, the electorate increasing from about 500,000 to just over 800,000). As Eliot was writing the Second Reform Act was being promulgated. The landed classes and aristocracy were bringing on board some of the wealthier middle classes. The plot centres around an election in a Midlands town in 1832; probably modelled on Eliot’s home town Nuneaton; the riot in the book is very like the one in Nuneaton in 1832. The voices of the Tory side are as you would predict. On the other side is Harold Transome, a wealthy landowner just returned from abroad a widower with a son. He returns to find his estate is causing some concern and shocks his mother and friends by announcing he is standing as a Radical. Felix Holt is an educated, but poor Radical who has also returned from journeying (in Scotland) to stay with his mother and work as a watch repairer. Meanwhile the Rev. Rufus Lyon (a dissenting minister) and his step-daughter Esther make up the other main protagonists. There develops a sort of legal and electoral thriller with some twists relating to birth and inheritance and a significant riot on Election Day. Inevitably there is a love triangle involving Esther, Felix and Transome and Eliot works it all out in an interesting way. All the lawyers are corrupt and self-serving and true to type. The working class characters are a little less convincing. There are some interesting lines of thought. Eliot looks at the situation of older women in the form of Mrs Transome and Mrs Holt, the mothers of the male protagonists. Both feel helpless in the face of their strong-minded sons who barely tolerate them: Contrast the very sympathetic relationship between Esther and her father, Rev. Lyon. Another major theme is of course political change and the book (often in the form of Holt) asks difficult questions. Does the electorate always get things right? That brings us straight to the US and UK today! The political landscape in the novel is out of joint and all are aware of it and there is a good deal of anger at the grassroots level, often without direction. Holt himself is not arguing for extending the franchise; he believes in gaining power for the working class by building a movement from the bottom based on education. Partial change at the top was no change. Holt, of course was right, as there was now a larger electorate to bribe, so you had to be even richer to enter politics. Of course there is a love story going on, but I was much more interested in the parallels with Trump and Brexit. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting Albertine by Jacqueline Rose

She Done Him Wrong by Mae West I never realised Mae West was a writer, but she wrote several novels and plays. This started life as a stage play, then became the film of the same name (co-starring a very young Cary Grant) and also this novel; now republished by virago. West’s life is well documented as is her persona and the famous one-liners (and there are plenty in the novel). West started on the stage from an early age and left school at 12. Her experience was gained in Vaudeville and music hall performing all sorts of guises including a male impersonator. Eventually West began to pen her own material, which was often risqué and frequently got her into trouble and even jail (ten days for “corrupting the morals of youth” in 1927 for the content of her first play). Her first play was entitled Sex and later she wrote The Drag which considered homosexuality and cross-dressing; West was a long standing supporter of gay rights. West was renowned for her one liners (“Climbing the career ladder wrong by wrong”, “Between two evils I always pick the one I never tried before” to name two that are not quite as well known) and the novel is full of them. The plot is very similar to the 1933 film when West played the main character Diamond Lil. Diamond Lil is a woman who measures her men by how many diamonds they can give her. The physical description of her very much matches that of West herself. Her lover has been jailed for theft and she has moved her attentions to Gus Jordan (this is set in New York in the 1890s) who is well off, owns a bar and has a number of shady business interests. Jordan also has political ambitions, but a toxic secret in that he is part of a group who sends (sells) women into prostitution in South America. There are plenty of others around who would like to depose Jordan. In all of this mix is a Salvation Army captain; Captain Cummings who Lil finds that she is rather attracted to. The police are also alleged to have someone undercover and Lil’s ex-lover breaks out of jail vowing revenge. Stage set for lots of mayhem. This is not what you would call a literary masterpiece, but it reads very easily. Although there is a certain neatness and predictability about it, there are some twists along the way. West writes quite openly about Lil’s motivations. She isn’t in love with any of her man; she uses them for what they can give her without sentimentality. Even when she seems to fall for the Salvation Army captain, you can sense her winking over her shoulder. When she briefly enjoys a fling with a young Brazilian paramour she quite happily writes about a moment of “exploding stars and bursting suns”. The is a down to earth zest for life here which is refreshing; West and her protagonist both had to learn how to make their way in a very masculine world. 7 out of 10 Starting Blow Your House Down by Pat Barker

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson What to make of this? It was a Booker winner in 2010. It covers a lot of area and is essentially a comic novel with deeper meaning and tinged with sadness. There are three main protagonists; Sam Finkler (a journalist and TV pundit), Julian Treslove, an old school friend and former BBC employee (now Brad Pitt lookalike) and Libor Sevcik; a former teacher and friend. Finkler and Treslove are about 50; Finkler and Sevcik are Jewish. Treslove thinks of all Jews as Finklers, hence the title. The book is about what it is to be Jewish in 21st century Britain, but it is also about the great debates about Israel and the holocaust; not to mention being male and having a mid-life crisis, bereavement and losing a partner, fidelity and betrayal and friendship. Finkler and Libor have recently lost their wives, although Finkler has always had mistresses and continues in this mode. Treslove has a somewhat chequered history with women and cannot work out why women never seem to want to stay with him. The book takes as its starting point a dinner the three have to mark that they are all now alone. On the way home Treslove is mugged by a woman. She says something to him whilst relieving him of his valuables, which sounds to him like “You Ju”. Treslove then becomes obsessed with being Jewish and all it entails. Although there are moments that are quite funny and Jacobsen does have a mordant wit and a good line in satire and self-deprecation, the whole did not work for me. One of the problems is that sometimes Jacobson does not know when to stop; he stretches an idea out until it is overdone, this is a description of Treslove: “He was a man who ordinarily woke to a sense of loss. He could not remember a single morning of his life when he had woken to a sense of possession. When there was nothing palpable he could reproach himself for having lost, he found the futility he needed in world affairs or sport. A plane had crashed—it didn’t matter where. An eminent and worthy person had been disgraced—it didn’t matter how. The English cricket team had been trounced—it didn’t matter by whom. Since he didn’t follow or give a fig for sport, it was nothing short of extraordinary that his abiding sense of underachievement should have found a way to associate itself with the national cricket team’s. He did the same with tennis, with footballers, with boxers, with snooker players even. When a fly and twitchy south Londoner called Jimmy White went into the final session of the World Snooker Championship seven frames ahead with eight to play and still managed to end the night a loser, Treslove retired to his bed a beaten man and woke broken-hearted. “ There is a streak of nastiness present as well. The character of Tamara Krausz is a very thinly disguised Jacqueline Rose (a feminist psychoanalyst who is very critical of Zionism, whilst being Jewish herself). This is how she is described; “never appeared in public looking anything other than an executive of a fashion consultancy, at once businesslike and softly feminine…a woman whose quiet authority commanded respect not only in England but in America and the Middle East, wherever anti-Zionists—Finkler would not have gone so far as to say anti-Semites—were gathered. “ Finkler imagines what would happen if they ended up in bed together; “He knew what would happen if by some mischance or mutual misunderstanding they ended up in bed together and she screamed the dialectic of her anti-Zionism in his ear—he would come into her six or seven times and then kill her. Slice off her tongue and then slit through her throat. “ I know this is imagination, but it still feels like Patrick Bateman territory. There are other examples, as when Finkler is out with a mistress, here is a description of her; “Other than her décolletage, which was bigger than she was, there was little to observe on Ronit Kravitz’s person. Under the table she wore high-heeled shoes with diamantes on them, but these were not visible. And though her hair was a beautiful blue-black, catching light from the chandeliers, it too, like every eye, fell into the boundless golden chasm which she carried before her as a proud disabled person carries an infirmity. The Manawatu Gorge was how Finkler thought of it when he wasn’t in love with her, as he wasn’t in love with her now. “ There was too much of this, to go along with the philosophizing and the debates about what it is to be Jewish today. There is plenty to spark debate; “How dare you, a non Jew -- and I have to say it impresses me not at all that you grew up in awe of Jewish ethics, if anything your telling me so chills me -- how dare you even think you can tell Jews what sort of country they may live in, when it is you, a European Gentile, who made a separate country for Jews a necessity? ... Only from a world from which Jews believe they have nothing to fear will they consent to learn lessons in humility. Until then, the Jewish state's offer of safety to Jews the world over -- yes, Jews first -- while it might not be equitable cannot sanely be construed as racist” Jacobson reflects all sides of the debate, but there is a certain irony about reflecting on Anti-Semitism whilst perpetuating stereotypes about gender and disability. This was also too long and the last couple of hundred pages wandered a little. Despite most of the critics raving about this I really didn’t like it. 3 out of 10 Starting The Drowned World by J G Ballard

In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin This is my first foray into Bruce Chatwin. I have always been wary of travel writing of a certain type when it drifts into literary colonialism. It is too easy for wealthy white travellers to go to foreign lands in search of the interesting and exotic. There is a good deal of myth surrounding Chatwin and even this book. The whole books starts and finishes with a fossilised piece of skin which Chatwin says he remembers from his childhood. Family myth said it was from a dinosaur, but in actuality it was from a Giant Sloth. It was found by a relative of Chatwin’s in Patagonia and he had always wanted to go there. The book is divided into very short chunks, 97 of them in total; Chatwin described the structure in artistic terms as cubist. It isn’t a traditional travel narrative as it is quite disconnected. Chatwin gave up his job with a newspaper to go to Patagonia and left in 1974; allegedly sending a telegram of explanation to his editor simply saying “Gone to Patagonia”. A recurring theme of Chatwin’s writing is the nomadic life and this is no exception. What Chatwin does do is spend a good deal of time recounting tales of those who have left their mark on Patagonia; mainly European types who settled there in the nineteenth century. He visits the Welsh community and remnants of communities from other European nations. Chatwin chases up those who remembered these characters, now often very old. He also has an interest for significant events like strikes and riots and those who recall them. This leaves the reader wondering about the Patagonia of the time which Chatwin appears to neglect. He does have the ability to describe the backdrop well and there are compelling accounts of the landscape. What we don’t know is whether this is meant to be fact or fiction. Many of those Chatwin spoke to complained bitterly that he had misrepresented them or even lied; Chatwin admitted that he rearranged events and conflated characters. There is a little travelogue, but there is as much myth and history. This makes the whole less easy to define. The reader discovers very little about Chatwin himself and how he relates to those he meets. There are plenty of cowboy myths (Butch Cassidy et al) and tall tales and I did wonder what was the point of travelling just to look for traces of people from Europe and the US. This is not really about the people of Patagonia and especially not about the indigenous peoples who Chatwin ridicules in numerous stories. Their oppression and persecution seemed of little moment to Chatwin. I was left wondering what the point of it all was and on reflection I much preferred Patrick Leigh Fermor. 5 out of 10 Starting Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf

Thank you Chrissy Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison This is a series of lectures by Toni Morrison focussing on literary criticism and American literature. Morrison discusses the “Africanist” presence in classic American literature. She analyses how the sense of whiteness, freedom, individualism and manhood depends on a black presence and population and also reacts to it; and projects fears and emotions onto it. Morrison turns her eye onto Poe, Twain, Cather, Melville and Hemingway and does it very effectively. She looks at Jim in Huckleberry Finn, Wesley in To Have and Have Not and Nancy in Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl, amongst others. The silent unnamed figures are also considered. Her considerations are very telling and the analysis of To Have and Have Not sheds new light on what Hemingway was doing and how he perceived maleness and whiteness. Morrison has talked about the pervasive influence of race: “The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language, so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There is always one more thing.” The focus here of course is on the white literary imagination and how it manages, controls and silences anything that is other, but particularly African Americans. Morrison provides a way of critiquing the literary canon. The arguments are succinct and nuanced, but this is an easy read and quite focussed. The scope is narrow, but these are lectures and have that feel about them. Morrison’s insights are original and interesting. This is worth reading for the analysis of Hemingway alone. 8 out of 10 Starting Butterfly Burning by Yvonne Vera

Thanks Frankie and Pixie; she's well worth looking out for; I read another of her collections about a year ago. Cullum by E Arnot Robertson This is Robertson’s first novel and was published in 1928 when she was 24 and is another virago read. The theme is obsessive love; the sort that happens the first time someone falls in love and finds it all-consuming. The protagonist is 19 year old Esther Sieveking, a country girl who lives in rural Surrey with her father and sister. Her father trains difficult horses and Esther is also a keen rider and hunter; with aspirations to write and be literary. Esther is a bright, intelligent and initially likeable character and her beloved object is Cullum Hayes a writer a little older than she is. He is charming, attractive and intelligent and treats Esther as his equal. He is also unable to help himself moving from one woman to next; completely sincere in announcing his undying love as he had to the previous. Cullum was considered by some reviewers to be a little risqué and outspoken and Robertson’s powers of observation are quite sharp at times, such as when Esther first meets Cullum at a dinner party and she manages to outrage her hosts: “Mrs. Cole enquired with a simulated shudder of horror whether that huge dog of mine had ever bitten anyone. "I was petrified when the creature rushed for me," she said. "Simply petrified, I was!" "Justice is too old and fat and good-natured to hurt a fly," I told her, "unless she sat on it by mistake." "What a curious name for a dog," Mr. Cole observed. "Why do you call him 'Justice'?" "Justice isn't a 'him,' but a bitch," I answered without thinking. "Originally her name was Sheila, but she's called Justice because she has had so many miscarriages." There was a moment of heavy, tense silence, before Mrs. Cole said, "Oh, really?" in a forced voice” There are several contradictions which are reflected in Robertson’s own life; she was a writer, film critic, radio and early TV personality and yet she felt a woman had need of a man; taking her own life following her husband’s death. The end of the novel is very melodramatic, overly so and I found it unconvincing. The novel does have psychological depth and Robertson’s exploration of first, obsessive love is interesting. She pushed boundaries and this description of Cullum was, for the day, unusual: “Cullum, stripped, was an unusually fine human creature. His body was one of those entirely beautiful things whose loveliness hurts. He was lithe, and the moulding of the long arms, lean and muscle-grooved, was splendid. Wide shoulders tapered down to narrow hips, set over narrow, deep thighs, and his fair skin held an almost transparent sheen.” One reviewer comments: “It is all very well to be outspoken, but there are some things which are better left unsaid and Cullum is full of them.” There are discordant notes, which remind you of the class system in 1920s England, such as the scene where Esther is determined to ride one of her father’s more dangerous horses and threatens the groom (who she has known all her life) with the sack unless he helps. There are parts of this which irritate and delight in equal measure. 6 and a half out of 10 Starting She Done Him Wrong by Mae West

Thank you Anna, Bobbly, Pixie, Frankie and Athena. I hope you all have great reading years as well. The Fat Black Woman's Poems by Grace Nichols I do make periodic efforts to read more poetry and I’m already a fan of Grace Nichols, having read another collection of her poetry and a novel. Nichols is Guyanese and her poetry reflects Caribbean culture and rhythms. These poems have more playfulness and humour than some of Nichols other works. Nevertheless they make serious points: “Shopping in London winter is a real drag for the fat black woman going from store to store in search of accommodating clothes and de weather so cold Look at the frozen thin mannequins fixing her with grin and de pretty face salesgals exchanging slimming glances thinking she don’t notice Lord is aggravating Nothing soft and bright and billowing to flow like breezy sunlight when she walking The fat black woman curses in Swahili/Yoruba and nation language under her breathing all this journeying and journeying The fat black woman could only conclude that when it come to fashion the choice is lean Nothing much beyond size 14” Nichols is obviously questioning the traditional aesthetic concerning female beauty and creating a non-conforming heroine. The title of the book immediately raises three social stereotypes; fat, black and female. Nichols also considers the role of female labour as the poems move between Britain and the Caribbean; The daily going out and coming in always being hurried along like like ... cattle In the evenings returning from the fields she tried hard to walk like a woman (...) O but look there’s a waterpot growing from her head These portrayals of women are not monolithic and there is a nuanced exploration of female identity, but all of the poems have a great vitality about them because of the way Nichols expresses herself. She describes her own purpose in writing this: “Although The Fat Black Women's [sic] Poems came out of a sheer sense of fun of having a fat black woman doing exactly as she pleases, at the same time she brings into being a new image--one that questions the acceptance of the "thin" European model as the ideal figure of beauty. The Fat Black Woman is a universal figure, slipping from one situation to the other, taking a satirical, tongue-in-cheek look at the world” And “The fact that, I mean, all of our cultural "things" were denigrated and looked down upon while the European "things" were the ones celebrated in every way, even in terms of physical beauty. So there is always going to be that tension because some of these things still exist even today. So some of your writing will be a kind of reaction against that, impacting against it and at other times there is synthesis.” The fat black woman remembers her Mama and them days of playing the Jovial Jemima tossing pancakes to heaven in smokes of happy hearty murderous blue laughter Starching and cleaning O yes scolding and wheedling pressing little white heads against her big-aproned breasts seeing down to the smallest fed/ feeding her own children on Satanic bread But this fat black woman ain't no Jemima Sure thing Honey/Yeah Again here there is a warmth, but it is also satire as it reflects on a US advert for pancakes from the mid-century. This is a good collection of poetry and Nichols makes her points with great grace and humour. 9 out of 10 Starting Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison

Starting the year with the following on the go Felix Holt by George Eliot Coercive Control by Evan Stark The Long Song by Andrea Levy Cullum by E. Arnot Robertson In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson The Fat Black Woman's Poems by Grace Nichols

The Travelling Bag by Susan Hill I have a sort of annual ritual at this time of year, when I read Susan Hill’s latest ghostly offering and this year is no exception. This time Hill has produced four short stories; The Travelling Bag, Boy Number Twenty-one, Alice Baker and The Front Room. Hill is a ghost story writer in the traditional mode; she concentrates on the psychological aspects of those involved rather than blood, gore and non-stop action. They concern everyday life and everyday occurrences. In my opinion the quality of these stories is variable. The second two being better than the first two. The title story concerns a psychic private investigator spinning a yarn at his London club and is set in the Victorian era. An eminent physician develops a debilitating illness and his assistant steals his work. The tale concerns betrayal, revenge, a travelling bag, a few moths (well, a lot of moths) and the upshot of the revenge with a nice twist. It is a bit of a pastiche of other stories in the genre, but betrayal and revenge are universal. Boy Number Twenty-One is the least convincing story. It is about a solitary boy at a boarding school who finds a friend when a new boy arrives. The boy’s sudden disappearance and reappearance are not really explained and the plot becomes rather clunky. With Alice Baker we move into more modern territory and the setting is an office and we are in the 1950s or 1960s. A new office worker sets in motion an unusual chain of events. Part of the building tension relates to an olfactory illusion/phenomenon. There is a small twist towards the end which doesn’t really fit with the rest of the story, but the tension does build well and there is an interesting exploration of someone at the margins of society. The Front Room is set in modern times and is pure wicked stepmother fairy tale with wicked stepmother well in the ascendant. The “let’s be good to everyone liberals” don’t come out of this well; an act of kindness is repaid in a way which is very unpleasant and goodness does not overcome evil. A rather pessimistic reflection on our own times. This collection was certainly better than last year’s offering and a couple of the stories are pretty good. 6 and a half out of 10 Starting The Fat Black Woman's Poems by Grace Nichols

Daddy was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether This is Meriwether’s first novel and chronicles the lives of a poor black family in Harlem during the Depression in the 1930s. It is written from the point of view of Francie Coffin, the twelve year old daughter of the family. Although it is a novel there are elements of autobiography and the virago edition has an introduction by James Baldwin. Meriwether is still active and has received an award for social activism in 2011, this is a flavour of her speech; “I am a writer, and also a dedicated activist and peacenik. In New York City in my twenties I was chapter chairman of my union, marching in May Day Parades and having rotten eggs thrown at my head. In Los Angeles I was arrested in a sit-in against the racist Birch Society and sentenced to five years’ probation. In Bogalusa Louisiana I worked with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); back in New York I was instrumental in keeping Muhammad Ali, then world's heavyweight champion, from fighting in South Africa and breaking a cultural boycott. In Washington, D.C., I was arrested in 2002 in a protest against the disastrous policies of the World Bank and the IMF. Back in New York I was active in several forums breaking the silence about the rampant rape in the Congo and the multinational corporations and countries involved. Last year I helped set up a forum at Riverside Church on the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.” It takes place over the period of about a year, 1934-1935, it is located in a particular time as the Joe Louis/Max Baer fight takes place during the novel. Francine is a very engaging narrator, which is just as well because the story is one of an unremitting struggle against poverty and injustice. Francie has the usual twelve year old concerns about family, friends and school. But there is the backdrop of little work, occasional riots and the humiliation of welfare. There are also the numbers, an illegal type of lottery and Francine’s father is a small cog in this, being a number runner. Francine also has to cope with routine sexual harassment from assorted adults; shopkeepers, men in the cinema and others. There is little choice for any of those growing up; for the boys it’s either gangs or poorly paid menial work if there was any work, for the girls prostitution, marriage and babies or laundry/cleaning work. It is a powerful and brilliant evocation of a time and place; portraying the ups and downs of everyday life; the characterization is also very good. Baldwin sums it up well: “shhhhhhh, says Francine, sitting on the stoop as the book ends, looking outward at the land of the free, and trying, with one thin bony black hand to stem the blood which is beginning to rush from a nearly mortal wound. That monosyllable resounds all over this country, all over the world: it is a judgement on this civilization rendered the more implacable by being delivered by a child. The mortal wound is not physical, the book, so far from being a melodrama, is very brilliantly understated. The wound is the wound made upon the recognition that one is regarded as a worthless human being.” Well worth reading. 9 out of 10 Starting The Long Song by Andrea Levy

Murder in the Dark by Margaret Attwood This is a collection of Attwood’s shorter fictions and some of it is very short pieces indeed; prose poems, or as one critic put in; flash fiction. There is quite a variety of fictions; childhood reminiscences, gender, men, some speculative fictions and food and cookery! These are more clearly feminist than some of Attwood’s other work. There are several recurring motifs, one being; “Is this the man through whom all men can be forgiven?” The title piece “Murder in the Dark” is based on the childhood game and Attwood plays with it in quite a clever way. “Simmering” is a brilliant twist on gender relations where the men stay at home and do the chores and cooking and women go out to work. Inevitably the kitchen becomes the domain of men who become competitive about their recipes and the sharpness of their knives. So perhaps the issue with gender isn’t roles but rather the nature of men! “Women’s novels is a clever analysis of the nature of male and female novels done in a satirical and amusing way in a series of brief vignettes; “Men favour heroes who are tough and hard: tough with men, hard with women. Sometimes the hero goes soft on a woman but this is always a mistake. Women do not favour heroines who are tough and hard. Instead they have to be tough and soft. This leads to linguistic difficulties. Last time we looked, monosyllables were male, still dominant but sinking fast, wrapped in the octopoid arms of labial polysyllables, whispering to them with arachnoid grace: darling, darling.” “Happy Endings” takes a sideways look at plot and the problems and limitations the novelist has and is a delight to read. It starts from the simple premise “John and Mary meet. What happens next?” Then there are six outline plots which cover most of literature and finally a limiting end point: “John and Mary die?” Death being a limiting factor for most plots. It’s clever and enjoyable and I think I like Attwood better in short form than long form. 8 out of 10 Starting The Travelling Bag by Susan Hill

Fenwomen by Mary Chamberlain History has always been my first love and so this book has a great appeal. It falls within the tradition of oral history and concerns the lives of women in the remote fenland village of Isleham. The fens are a very flat area of Eastern England, the part in Lincolnshire I am familiar with, this area in Cambridgeshire, much less so. This book also has the merit of being the first book published by virago in 1975. It is a series of interviews with village women split into chapters about girlhood, school, marriage, work, religion, politics, recreation, outsiders and old age. The edition I have was published in 2009 with an updated introduction and some stunning photography. Mary Chamberlain was a member of the Women’s Report Collective and she had moved to Isleham in 1972. The idea was to look at the lives of women living in a fairly remote rural area and produce a feminist version of Akenfield. At the time it was felt that women’s history really did not exist and feminist historians had to pursue new courses and use new methods. The result is a fascinating picture of the life of rural women in the early twentieth century. There is no rural idyll here; the women describe the poverty and isolation, the lack of opportunity in a harsh landscape. It is an excellent piece of work and if you are interested in this sort of history, a must read. Chamberlain lets the women speak for themselves and pulls the whole together very expertly. 9 out of 10 Starting Murder in the Dark by Margaret Attwood

A pleasure Pixie! The Ventriloquist's Tale by Pauline Melville This won the Whitbread Award for first novel in 1997 and is set in Guyana. The narrative is in three parts; beginning in contemporary Guyana and then moving back for the major portion of the novel to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the final portion is back in modern day Guyana. The book follows one family over this period; there are elements of magic realism, not over-used. The novel is broad in scope and the themes are suitably sweeping, centring on the clash between Native American civilisation and culture and European culture. There is also the tension ever present between city (in the form of the capital Georgetown) and the bush, the jungle and savannah. There is also their colonists and their relationships with the Native Americans. In the early twentieth century the colonists are a Scottish freethinker, Alexander MacKinnon, who settles in a savannah village with two local women and begins a family; a Catholic priest, Father Napier determined to convert all the villages in the area and likes a coterie of young men around him; Evelyn Waugh, the novelist, visited Guyana and greatly disliked the Guyanese wilderness, writing a story and a novel using his experience. Melville does a bit of revenge taking here. The colonizers in the late twentieth century are a different breed. They tend to be academic researchers like Rosa Mendelson, in Guyana to research Waugh’s visit, who has an affair with Chofy MacKinnon, a descendant of Alexander and whose aunt Wifreda met Waugh. They are also represented by oil company operatives who are prospecting. The novel is character driven and there are doomed love affairs, a long running battle between the superstitious and the rational, which neither side wins. The narrator is Macunaima, a ventriloquist and shape-shifter, who is not easily categorised: “As for my ancestry, it is impeccable. I will have you know that I am descended from a group of stones in Ecuador. Where I come from people have long memories. Any one of us can recite our ancestry back for several hundred generations. I can listen to a speech for an hour and then repeat it back for you verbatim or backwards without notes. Writing things down has made you forget everything.” “Grandmother swears by the story of the stones in Ecuador, although sometimes she might say Mexico or Venezuela for variety's sake -- variety being so much more important than truth in her opinion. More reliable, she says. Truth changes. Variety remains constant.” The narrator is also located in the modern world: “Rumbustious, irrepressible, adorable me. I have black hair, bronze skin and I would look wonderful in a cream suit with a silk handkerchief. Cigars? Yes. Dark glasses? Yes -- except that I do not wish to be mistaken for a gangster. A black felt fedora hat worn tipped forward? Possibly. A fast-driving BMW when I am in London? A Porsche for New York? A Range Rover to drive or a helicopter when I am flying over the endless savannah and bush of my own region? Yes. Yes. Yes.” The narrator’s elusiveness is seen to be part of the cultural backdrop and I noted the influence of Wilson Harris, although Melville goes her own way and uses a basically linear sequence. The western interventions; even those with benign intentions, are disruptive. Harris has argued that the religious and cultural practices of Caribbean colonized peoples have been suppressed by colonial and post-colonial discourses and calls for a counter-discourse. In this novel Melville answers that call. The novel is intoxicating and very well written. Salman Rushdie wrote; “Pauline Melville writes with an unusually dispassionate lushness that is both intellectual and sensual … I believe her to be one of the few genuinely original writers to emerge in recent years” There is a great deal to this novel, much more than one review can cover. 9 out of 10 Starting In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin

Singin' and swingin' and gettin' merry like Christmas by Maya Angelou This is the third of Maya Angelou’s series of autobiographies. It covers the years 1949 to 1955 when Angelou was in her 20s. It covers her forays into the world of work to support her son. Angelou marries a Greek sailor and she charts the course of the marriage until its end. There follows Angelou’s development as a singer and dancer, working in a variety of night clubs. Finally she tours Europe with a production of Porgy and Bess. It is well written and easy to read. Race is still a central subject. Angelou recounts how she came to mix with whites who did not come from the South and her difficulties in trusting them. She notes the different forms racism takes in continental Europe where African Americans are welcomed and feted but Africans are treated in a similar way to African Americans in America. Angelou’s love of music and dance shines through and is the thread that holds the whole together. The descriptions of bars and night clubs and those who work in them give a flavour of the times. The writing has a musicality to it; rooted in the blues. The touring company with Porgy and Bess provide some lively and amusing moments; amorous encounters, problems with hotels and travel and cultural misunderstandings. Maya Angelou is immensely engaging and this is an autobiographical series well worth reading. 8 out of 10 Starting Daddy was a number runner by Louise Merriweather

Walter Sickert: a conversation by Virginia Woolf This is a pamphlet/essay on the painter Walter Sickert. It is in the form of a dinner party conversation. It is a discussion about painting, about colour and about the links between painting and writing; most specifically about Sickert’s painting. The conversation implies that Sickert is a literary painter and the painting now in the Tate Gallery entitled Ennui is given as an example; “You remember the picture of the old publican, with his glass on the table before him and a cigar gone cold at his lips, looking out of his shrewd little pig’s eyes at the intolerable wastes of desolation in front of him? A fat woman lounges, her arm on a cheap yellow chest of drawers, behind him. It is all over with them, one feels. The accumulated weariness of innumerable days has discharged its burden on them. They are buried under an avalanche of rubbish. In the street beneath, the trams are squeaking, children are shrieking. Even now somebody is tapping his glass impatiently on the bar counter. She will have to bestir herself; to pull her heavy indolent body together and go and serve him. The grimness of that situation lies in the fact that there is no crisis; dull minutes are mounting, old matches are accumulating and dirty glasses and dead cigars; still on they must go, up they must get.” Painting as realist novel. Sickert described himself as a realist painter. Woolf draws some parallels between the two; “Let us hold painting by the hand a moment longer, for though they must part in the end, painting and writing have much to tell each other; they have much in common.” Woolf looks at the strengths of each medium. As Hermoine Lee points out; “…there is a ‘silent land’ which painters go into where they are talking about blocks of colour and textures and shapes, where the writers can’t follow. She is wistful about that silent land. She’d quite like to go there, but she has to use words.” Woolf goes on to argue that painting (colour) is more transient and primitive than writing (narrative). It is an interesting essay and I assumed at first, an insubstantial one, but interestingly when Hermione Lee was asked by one interviewer to recommend five works by Woolf she picked this along with To The Lighthouse, The Years, On Being Ill and Selected Diaries. 8 out of 10 Starting Cullum by E. Arnot Robertson

MrCat it is very much about race and gender and about culture. Of course all works are set within their historical contexts that's a given. However the odds are stacked against a person if they are born female/ non-white/ not English speaking and that isn't at all controversial in terms of getting into the literary canon. I think your linking of being a feminist with not being smart is an insult and has no rational basis. Storytelling is part of being human in most languages and cultures and there are many great stories to be found all over the world. Limiting our intake to the literary canon and what is available in the "west" is rather narrow-minded.

MrCat: I disagree with you about Sadaawi. Just look at the Nobel lists for literature and see how many women there are and how many there are from the continent of Africa. A Sea Grape Tree by Rosamond Lehmann This is the sequel to The Ballad and the Source, written over 30 years later in 1976. It is set in the early 1930s and concerns Rebecca Landon, now an adult and recovering from an affair with a married man. It is set on an unnamed Caribbean island and the ex-pat community there. The other link to the previous novel is Sibyl Jardine the focus of that novel. Rebecca discovers that Sibyl spent her last years on the island and died there a couple of years previously. The feel and tone of this novel is very different to the first one. In 1958 Lehmann lost her daughter Sally very suddenly and this heavily influenced her thought. She began to believe in other worlds and levels of reality and experience. Lehmann felt that she knew that we survived death. This makes for a different type of writing and the critical reception was not positive at the time. The prose is more stream of consciousness style and the narrative shifts backwards and forwards from third to first person. The prose is distinctive: “Stereoscopically vivid in the powerful lens, the sea-grape tree reared up, its pale trunk twisting smooth and serpentine, its branches carrying a canopy of glaucous blue-fleshed leaves and pendant clusters of green berries, sterile and hard as stone. Beneath the tree the hut: a sort of Cottage orné set up on stilts, with a high-pitched roof of rosy shingles, its walls stuccoed a deep shade of tawny pink; ornamented with shell encrustations: silvered-bronze shells, pearl, honey-coloured, milky flushed with rose and violet; shells of all shapes and sizes in convoluted patterns. A clumsy tarred old rowing boat was pulled up close to the front step, its oars propped against the tree. In the lambent twilight between lingering end of sunset and rise of the full moon every detail was still sharply defined. The close of day suffused the images in a dramatic darkly rose-gold light, defining every detail. Next moment all was blotted out. A long low whistle, an owl’s hoot twice repeated floated up from the direction of the hut. Who was the inhabitant?” The ending is left open; apparently because Lehmann intended another novel. There is a postscript in the virago edition where Lehmann sketches out the plot for the final novel. The plot here is fairly thin and mostly based on the peccadilloes of the expatriate community and the amusing behaviour and superstitions of the black community who provide the maids and servants (sigh). There is the mandatory gay couple, drunken ex-army types with their longsuffering spouses, a psychic and a handsome ex fighter pilot who has physical and emotional scars called Johnny. Rebecca and Johnny fall hopelessly in love. Rebecca also has a late night encounter with the late Mrs Jardine, who dispenses her usual wisdom. The novel is about hope, healing and romance. I did struggle with a good deal of this. Being a bit of a sceptic I struggled with the other worlds stuff. With a ghost story you know what you are getting, but this wasn’t a ghost story. The plot was almost non-existent and the characterisation was for me, unsatisfactory. This was especially true of the servants who were mostly portrayed as avaricious and primitive. The prose was good and had a certain limidity to it. You do need to have read The Ballad and the Source before this or it will make even less sense than it does. 5 out of 10 Starting Walter Sickert: a conversation by Virginia Woolf

A Saturday Life by Radclyffe Hall This is the first time I have read anything by Radclyffe Hall and this is an oddity, published in 1925. Spoilers ahead. The protagonist is Sidonia and we follow her from about eight years old until her mid-twenties. Her father is dead and her mother (Lady Shore) is a well-known Egyptologist who is buried in her studies and finds her daughter a complete puzzle. Lady Shore has a friend Frances who has a great deal to do with Sidonia’s upbringing. Sidonia is a child and later young woman who goes through phases of having passions for particular pastimes in a very single-minded way. These pastimes include dancing, painting sculpture and singing. Sidonia has talent at all of these and progresses very well; her teachers believing she has enough talent to go far. There is a strong comedic element in this as Sidonia is as irritating as Frances is wry and sardonic as she attempts to parent Sidonia (Lady Shore having become very bemused by it all). Eventually Sidonia and Frances go to Florence after Sidonia wins a travel prize for her sculpture; it is here she meets the Ferrari family and takes up singing. She spends a couple of years in Florence and then returns to England for a serious audition. She meets David, a rather wealthy and very traditional young man and gives up her singing to marry him. Sidonia suddenly becomes a conventional upper class wife and bears her husband a son and heir. The obvious conclusion should be that only by marrying and having children can a woman be fulfilled. I’m sure it is not that simple. The character of David is so much of a caricature and so much of a contrast to the rest of the book that it feels for me like an elaborate joke. Go with convention and you will sacrifice all your creativity. There is also the thought that Sidonia may get bored with being a wife and mother if she stays with type. This is the origin of the title of the novel. Frances finds a book in Florence which describes a personality type which moves from one activity to another staying with none for too long. These people have been reincarnated seven times and have little new to learn. This type of person is said to lead A Saturday Life. Hall is not pushing belief in reincarnation (she was a Catholic), but inviting the reader to consider the nature of time and its link to morality. Sidonia’s mother prefers to spend her time in ancient Egypt. The singing teacher Miss Valery believes she is the reincarnation of a Greek courtesan. Unfortunately she is unable to cope with Sidonia deciding it is very much better to dance without clothes and other parents are scandalised. There are also other messages and the character of Frances is fascinating. There are lots of clues to indicate that she is partially modelled on Hall. The teaching of Havelock Ellis about sexual inversion were very current and the clues are there. Hall asks questions about artistic endeavour and the difference between talent and genius. The ending is enigmatic; Sidonia sees her husband through the eyes of love, but Hall shows the reader the real person. The reader also sees that by the end of the novel David has been replaced in Sidonia’s affections by her son. There is a rather irritating sense of middle class superiority about it all and the faithful servant is a caricature, but the whole is funny. 7 out of 10 Starting The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

Everything Belongs to the Future by Laurie Penny This is Penny’s first foray into fiction I think. I am already a fan of her blogging and political writing. This is a dystopian novella set in Oxford in 2098. As one reviewer has aptly put it; it is “a tale of pharmadystopian, immortal gerontocrats.” The idea is a simple one. In the early 21st century a drug is developed that maintains youth. It is very expensive, so only the rich can afford it. It is available with some job packages and the wealthy company owning the rights give it to some writers and artists. Society is more divided, the rich being richer and the poor much poorer. The main protagonists are a bunch of activists and anarchists who share a house; Nina, Alex, Margo, Fidget and a few others. They attempt to steal the youth giving drug and give it out mixed in free food for the poor and homeless. They meet Daisy, a disillusioned scientist who helped to develop the drug and who wants to make amends. Action is planned, but what the reader knows but the activists do not is that Alex is working undercover for the drug company. This is an easy read and could be read quite comfortably in one sitting. Penny has the ability to create believable characters quickly. They all have flaws and are all believable. Penny also uses characters who are transgender in a way which feels natural and unforced. Penny raises the sort of issues you would expect, given her politics; macro issues like climate change, scientific ethics, class, poverty and issues related to gender identity, sexuality, aging and individual responsibility. The prose and the pacing are good. At times the plot can appear clunky and disjointed and this highlights the main problem for me; the book needs to be longer, much longer. There is plenty of content here that would allow a full length novel and with that sort of space the characters could be given more space to develop and the plot not rushed. A sharp and thought provoking read. 8 and a half out of 10. Starting Fenwomen by Mary Chamberlain

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe This is Poe’s only novel; published in1838. I haven’t read any Poe for many years, having read some of his poetry and his short stories in my teens. This is an odd novel. Arthur Gordon Pym and his friend Augustus are teenagers in search of adventure. Augustus’s father is a sea captain. A voyage is in the offing and Augustus contrives to enable Pym to stow away. A series of adventures ensues; each more farfetched than the previous. There is a bloody mutiny, followed by a shipwreck with Pym and a small number of survivors left on the wreckage of the ship. A long period of floating around leads to cannibalism, an encounter with a ship floating aimlessly with only corpses on board and finally rescue by another ship. This ship is on a fur collecting expedition and it continues to slaughter lots of seals. It sails into the Antarctic regions, which prove to be surprisingly warm. Poe attempts to invent lots of new species of bird and when habitable islands are reached invents a few mammals as well. Inhabited islands are reached populated by “natives” who are primitive but appear friendly. They prove to be unfriendly and most of the crew are killed and the ship destroyed. Pym and three others manage to escape in a canoe and head for the South Pole as the descriptions become increasingly surreal. The ending gives a nod to Reynolds and the hollow earth theories popular at the time. On the surface this reads like one of many nineteenth century adventure novels by writers such as Haggard, Stevenson and Kipling; comparisons are also drawn with Moby Dick. This being Poe, of course, there is more going on; indeed there is a whole industry of interpretation. There are clearly allegorical and autobiographical elements and there are also elements of cryptography (an interest of Poe’s). Some of the allegorical elements are said to be religious (not convinced by that). The novel was obviously written in haste and there are lots of continuity errors. Poe is also a bit of a geek about the sea and sailing and there are long descriptive passages about navigation, climate, latitude and longitude, which although well written can be irksome. However it is on lots of best novel lists; Borges rated it and Freud was fascinated by it as he felt it explored man’s unconscious desire for annihilation. However you analyse and break down this novel (and it is well written with some interesting and experimental aspects), there is an issue which stands out and that is race. Poe was from the South and this was written when slavery and everything that went with it was still in place. Poe’s biographers have pointed out that Poe did not approve of the abolition and believed that black people were inferior. It is noteworthy that one of the principal mutineers was the black cook who portrayed as a monster with no redeeming features; “The bound seamen were dragged to the gangway. Here the cook stood with an axe, striking each victim on the head… In this manner twenty-two perished.” The stereotypes keep coming. The islanders who are amazed at the white skins of their visitors are portrayed as primitive and almost sub-human; they are also treacherous. Poe describes them thus; “In truth, from every thing I could see of these wretches, they appeared to be the most wicked, hypocritical, vindictive, bloodthirsty, and altogether fiendish race of men upon the face of the globe.” You could blame the times Poe was writing in, but this isn’t good enough. Poe in his article “The Philosophy of Composition” argues that writing (both poetry and prose) should show truth and meaning. The meaning here is that black is bad and white is the opposite. Toni Morrison has forcibly made this point; “Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; nor repulsive, but desirable. Africanist idiom is used to establish difference or, in a later period, to signal modernity.” Matt Johnson’s novel Pym is an interesting counterpoint where a good black protagonist encounters white savages in the Antarctic; and the point is made; “You want to understand Whiteness, as a pathology and a mindset, you have to look to the source of its assumptions. … That’s why Poe’s work mattered. It offered passage on a vessel bound for the primal American subconscious, the foundation on which all our visible systems and structures were built.” I wanted to like this, but I’m with Toni Morrison on this one. 3 out of 10 Starting Everything Belongs to the Future by Laurie Penny

The Virago Book of Women and the Great War edited by Joyce Marlow This is an anthology of women’s writings during the First World War edited by Joyce Marlow. It is arranged by year and is very varied, including diaries, letters, newspaper articles, extracts from novels, autobiographies and much unpublished material. It includes women nursing at the front and elsewhere, those at home, professional women, women now working for the first time because of a shortage of men as well as professional writers and journalists. Most of the material is British, but there are pieces from France, the US, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Russia. It includes women of all ages and classes, some very much in favour of the war, others very much against it. It also charts the suffragist movement and its activists over the war years and the book ends with the vote in parliament giving women the vote. There are well known voices as you would expect, but it is the lesser and unknown voices which are most interesting. Unfortunately I now have yet another list of interesting authors on my tbr list. The diaries of Sarah MacNaughton look very interesting, as do the writings of Olive May Taylor (which seem to be impossible to find). Many of the extracts are moving; such as the Prime Minister’s wife (Margot Asquith) writing about the death of her son. The accounts of the frontline nurses are particularly powerful, as is the writings of pacifists on all sides. It is very easy to dip in and out of and the editor has provided potted biographies of many of the women. There are gaps and this is acknowledged. It is heavily weighted towards the Allies and though this is 400 pages long, I suspect it could have been much longer. Voices from Africa and India are largely absent and would have been an interesting addition. Nevertheless it is an important source of a variety of writings about the war which are not normally in the mainstream. 8 out of 10 Starting Felix Holt by George Eliot

I'll look out for it Anna The Ballad and the Source by Rosamond Lehmann This is my first reading of Lehmann and was probably not the best place to start. Lehmann came from a Liberal family (her father was an MP); her brother was a publisher and her sister an actress. Lehmann wrote several novels and many short stories. This novel was published in 1944. It is written from the point of view of ten year old Rebecca. It revolves around the figure of Sybil Jardine, an older woman and one of the great literary creations. The back of the virago edition sums up; “Ten-year-old Rebecca is living in the country with her family, when Sibyl Jardine returns to her property in the neighbourhood. The two families – once linked in the past – meet again, with the result that Rebecca becomes drawn into the strange complications of the old lady’s life.” The novel is a series encounters/conversations Rebecca has concerning Sibyl Jardine. These encounters take place just before and after the First World War. The story ranges from mid Victorian times to about 1918. Rebecca pieces together Sibyl Jardine’s story, first of all from Tilly, a sewing maid/family servant, then from Sibyl Jardine herself (the major part of the book). There are also encounters with Mrs Jardine’s granddaughter Maisie and with a couple of other characters. The novel is quite complex and the story unfolds slowly like a jigsaw puzzle, looking at the different facets of a life and personality. Sibyl Jardine is a compulsive character and Rebecca is initially drawn to her, but the picture becomes much more nuanced because Jardine is a powerful and dominant character who uses people for her own ends. The story revolves around love and betrayal over generations as Sibyl abandons her child to live as she pleases and years later her own daughter does the same thing to her children. This is no heartwarming tale, there is hatred, treachery, violence and despair. The ballad is the novel and the source is Sibyl Jardine; charming, generous and tender, but a manipulative liar as well. There are elements of Greek myth here as well; Demeter searching for her daughter Persephone. It’s a great piece of writing, but I had some reservations, about aspects of the novel. I wasn’t wholly convinced by the use of a ten year old girl as the repository of complex adult actions and emotions. Rebecca really does not feel ten most of the time. The treatment of Ianthe’s character is also problematic. She is Sibyl Jardine’s daughter; abandoned by her mother and in her turn abandoning her children. She turns up at the end of the novel and is portrayed as having a significant mental illness. I found this part entirely unconvincing because the portrayal is far too melodramatic and stereotypical, the attempt at a Scottish accent for Aunty Mack is a caricature and doesn’t work. The cockney Character Tilly also feels a little stereotypical. It is an interesting novel despite the faults and Sibyl Jardine is a powerful and flawed creation. 6 and a half out of 10 Starting A Sea-Grape Tree by Rosamond Lehmann

Spring Cleaning by Jean Binta Breeze I always find reviewing poetry a challenge and especially so here as Breeze’s poetry is really meant to be spoken. Jean Binta Breeze began as a dub poet in her native Jamaica; she is recognized as the first woman to write and perform dub poetry in what was a very masculine arena. Her work has developed and moved on and is very varied (including writing scripts, choreography, directing and dancing). Breeze deals with difficult topics and highlights injustice, but she does so in quite an oblique way. She looks at the experience of black women in a more subjective and experimental way. Breeze is very clear about what she thinks though; she doesn’t like the word colonialism: “Let’s not call it colonialism, that is an academic term. Let’s call it what it is – international theft of resources and robbery of people’s land. Colonialism doesn’t say that.” She talks about the debt of poorer countries in a similar way: “All our countries are in debt to the World Bank and the IMF. We are in debt to the very ones who stole from us in the first place.” Her range in her poetry is very wide and forward looking: “There is this suggestion that we are all there trying to deal with our colonial heritage, instead of actually being at the forefront of what is happening politically in the world today.” Some of the poems here are particularly striking; “Riddym Ravings (The Mad Woman’s Poem) is an exploration of the experiences of a homeless black woman, informed by Breeze’s own mental health history. The title poem “Spring Cleaning” is about Breeze’s mother and is intertwined with the hymn “The Lord’s my Shepherd” and is very moving. I enjoyed this collection and there is plenty of footage of Breeze reading her poems on you tube; take a look. 8 out of 10 Starting Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas by Maya Angelou

Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne This is the first I have read of Roma Tearne. She is a Sri Lankan artist and writer whose family moved to Britain in 1964. Tearne had a Tamil father and Sinhalese mother and the long-running civil war was very immediate to her and runs through her work. This book is a family saga with a dual setting; Sri Lanka and London. The novel revolves around Alice Fonseca and her family; at the beginning of the novel she is nine and living in Sri Lanka; she has a Tamil father and Sinhalese mother. The first half of the book takes place in Sri Lanka and has the feel of an idyll at the very beginning. Alice spends a good deal of time with her grandfather Bee, collecting on the beach and watching him in his studio, learning a love of art. However the storm clouds do begin to gather. The civil war gets closer and more dangerous, Alice’s mother loses a child at birth owing to the negligence of a Sinhalese doctor (further alienating Alice’s Tamil father). Bee and his wife assist Tamil refugees and put themselves in danger. The descriptions of light and place clearly mark Tearne as an artist and this is one of the great strengths of the book: “Words were not his thing; explanations were best done with brushes. The colour of a place, the angle of the light, a tree, these spoke volumes”. Tearne also writes with a sense of musicality, hence this description of the civil war: “The war began drumming again. After months of silence it marched in two-four time; a two-conductor orchestra without direction”. Alice and her parents move to London where her parents’ marriage breaks up and her father spends much more time with working for the Tamil Tigers whilst her mother gradually withdraws from life. Alice survives because of her art which provides her with a way of expressing herself. Alice marries an Englishman and has a child. This relationship does not last and Alice moves her mother in to live with her and her son and names the house Brixton Beach. Tearne’s description of Alice’s mother’s dementia is well written and coherent and done with a light touch. Towards the end of the novel Alice begins a new relationship. The novel begins and ends with the 7/7 bombings in London. As a plot device it is a little forced, but provides a link between the terrorism provoked by western involvement in the Middle East and the very bloody, but ignored, civil war in Sri Lanka. Tearne does not spare the readers emotions and the female characters are very strong. However, apart from Bee (who holds the whole thing together), the male characters are rather two-dimensional and there are some rather trite moments as well. Despite the faults the novel reads well and the descriptions of Sri Lanka are vivid and the strongest part of the whole novel. The point is also made that the obsessions of the west are not the only things that are happening in the world and that British imperialism had a good deal to do with the working out of events as well. 7 out of 10 Starting The Ventriloquists Tale by Pauline Melville