Books do furnish a room

Afterwords; Letters on the death of Virginia Woolf edited by Sybil Oldfield This is rather an oddity. A book of letters written in reaction to Virginia Woolf’s suicide. You might think that this would only be of interest to avid Bloomsbury fans, but there is more of interest. Most of the letters are to Leonard Woolf, some to Vanessa Bell. Those to LW are split into four sections; VW’s friends, LW’s friends, joint friends and the general public. Oldfield also provides potted biographies of quite a number of the letter writers, which is very useful. A number of the letters ouch on a controversy shortly after VW’s death. The main suicide note was misquoted by the coroner. Here is the note; “Tuesday. Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.” The second sentence mentions “those terrible times”; the coroner read it as these terrible times and concluded the reason for her suicide was the war and its progress. This prompted a letter to The Times by Kathleen Hicks, wife of the Bishop of Lincoln; “Many people, possibly even more ‘sensitive,’ have lost their all and seen appalling happenings, yet they take their part nobly in this fight for God against the devil. Where are our ideals of love and faith? And where shall we all be if we listen to and sympathise with this sort of ‘I cannot carry on.’” This prompted reactions from many, including Leonard. It may be that it was more comfortable for some to believe that it was the war that was the reason for what happened. Obviously letters of condolence can be repetitive and there is an element of that and there are also letters from those closest to Woolf. There are also letters form many, including members of the public who are saying that they had suffered with mental ill health or had close family members who did. Many of the letters from the general public just simply say how much Woolf’s work had inspired them. There was great eloquence and compassion. There was also a chance to glimpse figures that I knew little about, feminists and socialists somewhat lost to history whose writings may well be worth looking for. For example the Argentinian writer and feminist Victoria Ocampo, who translated Woolf into Spanish, wrote “The dead whom we love dwell in us”. What struck me most was the different narratives about depression. The establishment narrative reflected the views expressed in The Times, but those who knew Woolf and those who suffered in a similar way establish a different narrative. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting Coercive Control by Evan Stark

Hope you enjoy it Bobblybear. I know what you mean Anna; there are plenty of things in my country's past and present that bother me! Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison Ever wanted a Tolkeinesque saga with a female lead? Look no further this is it, and from someone close to Tolkein who proof read Lord of the Rings before it was published. This was published in 1952, before Lord of the Rings in 1954. This really ought to stand alongside The Hobbit and Harry Potter and other such tales to be read as one grows up. For some reason it doesn’t and its remarkable author is not considered part of the canon. Mitchison lived to be 101 and her life and the scope of her interests and activities is quite remarkable. Part of the Haldane family, her early success was as a geneticist, she then volunteered as a VAD during the war. She was a lifelong feminist and campaigner for birth control, an active socialist and a very prolific writer. She published over ninety books including historical novels (one critic has described her as the greatest historical novelist of the twentieth century), science fiction, politics, sexuality, travelogue, fantasy, memoirs and numerous articles. Travel Light is the tale of Halla, born to a king but cast out to die, she is raised first by bears and then by a dragon. When she eventually returns to people she has the gift of languages and can speak to all people and animals. Halla has a particular dislike of heroes (especially because they tend to slay dragons) and is known as heroesbane for a while. There is magic here and lots of travel, an appearance from Odin Allfather (who advises Halla to travel light and keep moving), a Valkyrie who keeps popping up when heroes die to carry them off to Valhalla (which is definitely not what the heroes think it is), crooked princes and governors, duplicitous clerics to name but a few. Halla communicates with all kinds of animals and travels for a while with a group of men on a quest for justice. Halla deals deftly with the usual male desire to tie her to home and hearth and continues to travel light. It’s great stuff and Mitchison makes her moral points gently along the way. Halla is an interesting protagonist and is much more Gandalf than Bilbo Baggins. Although this is a fable, it does not have the usual fable structure. There are links to Beowulf; the Grendel family has a walk on part. The word hero is in this tale, a pejorative term for someone who makes their living from killing and murder. Established religion is corrupt and distinct from true belief which is important, but not to be held onto blindly. Mitchison is teaching respect, understanding and tolerance with a light touch. This is a book I wish I had read when I was younger. My main quibble is that it is too short. One reviewer, a writer of fantasy (Amal El Mohtar) has wondered what would have happened if she had read this as a child; “But, most crucially for me, I wonder: Where might I have gone if, instead of a middle-aged Hobbit enamored of his pantry, I had embraced a girl who lost three homes before choosing the open road?” Who knows indeed; this should be a classic. 9 out of 10 Starting A Saturday Life by Radclyffe Hall

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi I was hoping that Saadawi would win the Nobel Prize this time round; sadly it wasn’t to be. However I suspect she was not surprised, as she says; “I am still ignored by big literary powers in the world, because I write in Arabic, and also because I am critical of the colonial, capitalist, racist, patriarchal mind set of the super-powers.” However she is much more than just a novelist/writer; she originally trained as a doctor, then went into politics (Public Health). She lost her job because of political activism and spent some time in prison. Her political activism involves challenging FGM, arguing that women are oppressed by the patriarchal religions and highlighting a range of women’s issues. This novel is based on Saadawi’s meeting with a woman soon to be executed in prison in the early 1970s. She was so affected by the meeting that she wrote the novel in a week. Saadawi explores the issues she has written about over the years, but principally the role of women and their powerlessness in the society she was observing. In the novel Firdaus tells her life story from a level of childhood innocence, through FGM, abuse from a relative, the death of her parents, school, an arranged marriage to a much older man (whom she leaves when he abuses her), time with another man (starts well but ends in control and abuse), time as a prostitute in a brothel (well-paid but Firduas realizes that the woman cannot protect her), then as a prostitute on her own, then a menial job in a local office, falls in love and thinks it is reciprocated, Firduas is betrayed and goes back to prostitution, when a pimp moves in to try to control her she has to kill him. She has to kill him because the only way for women to liberate themselves from men is to kill them. This, Firduas says, is why she has to die. Firduas has lead a life where choice has been absent and this is the point; freedom is illusory, as Janis Joplin sang “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”. It may all sound quite grim and given the subject matter that is inevitable, but Saadawi does write lyrically as well: “It was clean, paved thoroughfare, which ran along one bank of the Nile with tall trees on either side. The houses were surrounded by fences and gardens. The air which entered my lungs was pure and free of dust. I saw a stone bench facing the river. I sat down on it, and lifted my face to the refreshing breeze.” However the crux of the matter relates to choice and control, the lack of choices women have and the control men have: “How many were the years of my life that went by before my body, and my self became really mine, to do with them as I wished? How many were the years of my life that were lost before I tore my body and my self away from these people who held me in their grasp since the very first day?” Saadawi gives agency to the voiceless and the reader is drawn into Firduas’s life and feels the inevitability of her action. The men, as set in the culture, have all the power and all the choices. The novel provides a powerful analysis of the nature of control and coercion wrought upon women by men. It’s also a well written novel. So why didn’t she get the Nobel? 8 and a half out of 10 Starting Spring Cleaning by Jean "Binta" Breeze

Journal of a Somerset Rector 1803-1834 by John Skinner Journal of the Rev John Skinner, Rector of Camerton near Bath (in Somerset), 1803-1834; with a very perceptive introduction by Virginia Woolf. I have read a few clerical journals in my time, including Kilvert, Woodeforde and Gilbert White. This is unlike them in many ways; it’s grim in places and Skinner is difficult to warm to. He is very much aware of his position in society and feels his position should be respected, he can be irascible and short-tempered. He is conservative, worrying about Methodism and the possibility of Catholic emancipation and fears they that are all out to do him out of his tithe (remember at this time some clerical income still came from tithes from local farmers and this was very much resented). He grows to heartily dislike his parishioners feeling they are a godless bunch who don’t pay him enough respect and way too many of them are Methodists. There is a coal mine in the parish and the colliers are worse than most. In turn his parishioners dislike him as well and are frequently surly and disrespectful and often downright rebellious. He had long running complaints about the Red Post public house, which Skinner feels is a den of immorality. I’m not really painting a good picture here! Many parsons at this time did very little work and spent their time hunting and generally wasting time. Skinner was an antiquary and journal keeper. He had a passion for Roman and pre-Roman history in Britain and did a good deal of excavation and recording. His journals included his studies and also his daily trials and tribulations. They run to some one hundred and fifty volumes, many of which were transcribed and bound by his brother. He was also competent at drawing and sketching. Skinner’s life was marked by tragedy. One of his brothers died in 1809, followed by a three month old daughter and his wife in 1812. He also lost a fourteen year old daughter and then one of his two sons in 1832, most of them from consumption. It seems clear to me, reading Skinner’s descriptions of his state of mind and mental health, that he was prone to depression. He also managed to fall out with his children as they grew up, banishing them from his house when they displeased him and they, in turn learnt to treat him with contempt. Skinner had a strong sense of duty; visiting the sick and dying are a constant and this is very important to him. He gives quite vivid descriptions of some of the industrial accidents that the colliers were prone to. He also describes the conditions of those living in severe poverty, especially the elderly. He assists those who he feels are deserving and others are referred to the parish as these are the days of the Poor Law. Skinner also expends a good deal of energy complaining about petty and corrupt officialdom. Woolf captures well the tensions Skinner and others felt; “Behind him lay order and discipline and all the virtues of the heroic past, but directly he left his study he was faced with drunkenness and immorality; with indiscipline and irreligion; with Methodism and Roman Catholicism; with the Reform Bill and the Catholic Emancipation Act, with a mob clamouring for freedom, with the overthrow of all that was decent and established and right” Skinner also had a number of run-ins with the Jarrett family who were the local family of importance; their wealth having come from plantations in Jamaica. He felt that their privileged position meant they had certain responsibilities, which he often felt they neglected. One interesting point was Skinner noting that there was a black worker at the colliery. He doesn’t seem overly surprised and indicates that around ports like Bristol there have been black communities going back centuries. This account ends in 1834 and Skinner took his own life with a pistol in 1839. The coroner’s verdict; "The Rev. gentleman's health had been declining for sometime and his mind had latterly been very much affected. On Friday morning, in a state of derangement, he shot himself through the head with a pistol, and was dead in an instant." I must admit that I didn’t really like Skinner, but I did feel sorry for him as all his certainties were eroded. There are lots of interesting snippets of social history and the people of Camerton come across very much as people everywhere at all times; they also appeared rather bemused by their often angry Rector. 6 out of 10 Starting The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe

Thank you Anna; I will keep an eye open for the two you mentioned. Black Poppies by Stephen Bourne “The near-total exclusion from our history books of black servicemen in the First World War is shameful…. Some black servicemen made the ultimate sacrifice … and like Walter Tull, died on the battlefields but with the passing of time, with the exception of Tull, the contributions of black servicemen have been forgotten” Part of my periodic reading concerning WW1; this fills many of the gaps in conventional histories. It charts the involvement of black soldiers in the conflict and the reactions to them by the army hierarchy and the lower ranks. Bourne charts their struggles and tells the story of a few of the individuals. He does much more than this; outlining the history of black communities in Britain, which goes back to the 1500s (possibly earlier). In 1914 there were approximately 10,000 black Britons and this had trebled by the end of the war. The book also looks at the home front and some of the women of the black community. Two in particular sparked my interest. Amanda Aldridge and Avril Coleridge-Taylor. Avril Coleridge-Taylor was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s daughter and as I am sure you are all aware, he was a well-known composer. What I didn’t know was that his daughter was also a composer. Amanda Aldridge was a singer and singing teacher. One of those who later studied with her was Paul Robeson. There is also a section on the 1919 anti-black riots in London, Liverpool and Cardiff. Bourne has done his research and has produced a very informative account which I am sure ought to be part of every school history curriculum. The history of black Britons is almost totally absent from British historiography and this books helps to begin to restore the balance. There is an excellent and moving collection of photographs included as well. There are also references to other important works, to diaries, novels and accounts that are too neglected. Bourne reports that he was affected by some of the information he researched; “For example, I was deeply moved by the tale of Private Herbert Morris, a sixteen-year-old Jamaican lad who joined the British West Indies Regiment but was traumatised by his exposure to the noise of guns on the front, where he stacked shells. Consequently he was executed for desertion, though pardoned in 2006. Also moving is the story of Isaac Hall, another Jamaican, working in Britain, who was imprisoned as a conscientious objector when conscription was introduced in 1916. He suffered bullying and horrific injuries during his internment at Pentonville Prison but was saved from his ordeal by the pacifist, Dr Alfred Salter.” Bourne describes himself as a community historian and this is a very competent introduction to Black British history. 8 out of 10 Starting Afterwords; Letters on the death of Virginia Woolf by Sybil Oldfield

The Ha-Ha by Jennifer Dawson I must admit that Jennifer Dawson wasn’t a novelist who was really on my radar; but thanks to virago here we are! She should have been on my radar as she writes about mental health and this, her first novel (which won the James Tait Black memorial prize in 1961) is mainly set in an institution designed to contain those whom society deemed to have a mental illness which necessitated removal from what we laughingly called normalcy. Dawson came from a Fabian family and stayed within a politically radical tradition; she was an early member of CND. Among a number of teaching roles and working for publishers Dawson was also a social worker in a psychiatric hospital in Worcester. I am always a little wary of those who write about mental health having known only the coercive, controlling and managing side of the spectrum. However Dawson, whilst she was at Oxford University was admitted to one of those hospitals (Warneford in Oxford) she later worked in following what was described as a breakdown. This does show I think and clearly the protagonist Josephine is partially autobiographical. She too is studying at Oxford and her interior world begins to intrude too much into her daily life. As Dawson herself said; "The story was really about a girl who did not have the knack of existing, and the images in it reflected my own preoccupations." Dawson wrote a perceptive afterword to the virago edition, giving a historical context, which is relevant. Dawson wrote the novel just after the 1959 Mental Health Act. As she points out it was just before the libertarian mental health movements of the 60s; before Laing, Szasz and Kesey had really started their critiques. Most importantly before writers like Sedgewick (in Psychopolitics) had begun to question the way society classifies mental health and linking it to the ills of capitalism. The novel also falls just before the feminist movement of the 60s. Dawson is eloquent bout the role of women at the time and Josephine is exposed to “women as objects” attitudes from a number of directions. The title is interesting. The website devoted to Dawson gives the classic definition: “A ha-ha is a turfed ditch used to keep grazing livestock out of a garden or estate whilst providing an uninterrupted view from within. The name "ha-ha" was given to the feature because, when walking towards it from the garden, the ditch only becomes apparent when the observer comes very close to it.” In the book the ha-ha is the place in the grounds where Josephine met with Alasdair, a patient in the male side of the hospital and it comes to have symbolism for them both. However the idea of an invisible divide, only obvious as you get near it is also symbolic of the contrived divide between the residents of the hospital and the outside world (including the staff). The writing itself is understated and quite descriptive of Josephine’s state of mind from her own point of view. Descriptions are often matter of fact, as with the use of ECT at one point. Initially the reader can be fooled into thinking there might be a love story in the offing, but it develops into a protest about mental health practices and as one critic noted there develops an “atmosphere of quiet terror”. Dawson also emphasizes the importance of small gestures and little acts (positive and negative). At times Josephine does interact with the boundaries of the clinic, even though at times these seem quite loose and even the often mild Josephine can react; “The committee? Regrade? I knew they graded eggs and milk, I did not know that they also had this word for humans. Regrade me?…As what?” In her afterword Dawson says this of her first novel; “If I could write The Ha-Ha again, I suppose I'd make it clearer at the end that the heroine's experience was sharpened and that she didn't just drift into the irrevocable madness of disrelation; that her surprise-response was quickened, not slowly closed down; that the silver dew on the spider's web glittered in the mornings, but did not blacken; that she became more open to receive. Greedy even.” This is an interesting and thought provoking novel, not nearly as well-known as it ought to be, but certainly worth reading and I will certainly look for more of Dawson’s novels. 8 out of 10 Starting Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin This novel is partially autobiographical and tells the story of a day in the life of 14 year old John Grimes and his preacher stepfather (Gabriel), his mother and his aunt with plenty of flashbacks to build the scene. It is centred on the life of the Pentecostal Church and its role in the African-American community. Baldwin was also the son of a preacher and this is written with great passion and eloquence. The backdrop is late 1930s Harlem; but we are taken back to the South for Gabriel’s complex history. Although Baldwin was sceptical about religion, he really does capture the sheer physicality of worship and the atmosphere of a gospel meeting. The book is the build up to John’s first religious experience and about the real tensions between him and his holy and rather violent stepfather. There are vivid descriptions of hellfire and damnation sermons which emphasize human sin, the need for repentance and the danger of hell. They are exactly the sort of thing I recall from my childhood. This isn’t Baldwin’s critique of religion (that comes in later work); here he really inhabits the character and tells it straight. Even though he does that Baldwin does give clues about the future. Baldwin evokes 1930s New York and the sights and feel of the city and John’s relationship to it; this is John in Central Park; “He did not know why, but there arose in him an exultation and a sense of power, and he ran up the hill like an engine, or a madman, willing to throw himself headlong into the city that glowed before him. But when he reached the summit he paused; he stood on the crest of the hill, hands clasped beneath his chin, looking down. Then he, John, felt like a giant who might crumble this city with his anger.” Baldwin is very clear about the issue of race and John’s anger is related to his exclusion because of his colour. There are also clues to what would come later in relation to sexuality with John’s relationship with another young leader in the Church, Elisha. Even when John is undergoing his conversion experience and “the Holy Ghost was speaking” John feels “a tightening in his loin strings” and “a sudden yearning tenderness for Elisha... desire, sharp and awful". As many others have said the novel is drenched in the King James Bible and the Blues. The character of Gabriel Grimes is mesmerizing in a horrific sort of way. His treatment of the women in his life contrasted with his religious life is stark. There is a strong sense of the importance of women in the community and in reality holding things together. John’s struggle can be linked to a Biblical reference; akin to Joseph in the Book of Genesis, trying to come to terms with the nightmare of his family. In terms of literature I have seen John Grimes compared to Stephen Dedalus and the narrator in Proust. That leads me to one of my few niggles; I wanted it to be longer! 9 out of 10 Starting Black Poppies: Britain's Black Community and the Great War

The Richer The Poorer by Dorothy West Dorothy West was a novelist and short story writer, best known for being part of the Harlem Renaissance in the late1920s and early 1930s. West wrote two novels, but a lot of shorter fiction and journalism. This is a collection of shorter fiction with some journalism. The collection ranges over sixty years form an early short story in 1926 to the late 1980s. West hailed from the middle class black community in Boston; she reflects and explains their attitudes whilst critiquing them as well. West also describes the black community on Martha’s Vineyard and she lived there for many years. West’s stories critique the attitudes she sees around her, but she does also address race and gender as well. There is variety in the collection and West employs a variety of narrative strategies. The writing is effortlessly charming and West has a way of making her points quietly and in an understated way; but still very effectively. The writing has a strong sense of place. It is slightly puzzling that West isn’t better known and she seems to be excluded from discussions about American Modernism and little mentioned in discussions of black female authors, because I found her writing very good. She is very good at seeing both sides of an issue whilst still being able to come to a conclusion. She explores the nature of class and poverty and the desire for education. West deals with the simple day to day realities of life and looks at the way the American Dream relates to those she writes about. For me, West should be more widely read and appreciated. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi

The diaries are certainly interesting Janet! Memento Mori by Muriel Spark This is Spark at her witty and acerbic best with a novel that is funny with a good dose of macabre. I sometimes think that Spark doesn’t really like her characters and here she really puts them through it. The title is Latin for “Remember you must die” and the book revolves around a group of elderly friends, a number of whom start to receive anonymous phone calls, where a voice says “Remember you must die”. The caller seems to know where people are as calls are received at the houses of friends and relatives as well and sometimes if the person isn’t available a message is left. The recipients of the messages are a group of upper middle/upper class English worthies. Company owners, a novelist, an ex-policeman, a Dame. All quintessentially English and they are all mercilessly satirised and exposed for what they really are. Their reactions to the calls are very different and Spark is a very good observer of human nature. Death is really the star, but is only given free rein to create to create havoc towards the end. The protagonists are in their 70s and 80s and Spark takes us round genteel nursing homes, long stay hospital wards, upper class dining rooms and into the realm of sometimes tyrannical servants. It is a world that even in the 1950s was beginning to disappear. But Spark livens up what may seem to be rather staid with a murder, a secret wedding, a fake death, a car crash, an irresponsible and wastrel son and an elderly man with a penchant for stockings. But then Spark picks out little details in life, as when the policeman’s wife is feeding her grandson: “Mrs. Mortimer [aged 74] was opening and closing her mouth like a bird. This was because she was attempting to feed a two-year-old boy with a spoon, and as he opened his mouth to take each spoonful of soft egg, she involuntarily opened hers. “ Then linked to that her husband talks to the group of friends receiving the calls: “If I had my life over again, I should form a habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.” There is also an interesting juxtaposition between the long stay ward where Jean Taylor; one of the servants now put out to pasture, resides and the rest of the novel; the discussion about whether the faithful family retainer should reside is telling: “Two years ago, when [Jean] first came to the ward, she had longed for the private nursing home in Surrey about which there had been too much talk. Godfrey had made a fuss about the cost, he had expostulated in her presence, and had quoted a number their friends of the progressive set on the subject of the new free hospitals, how superior they were to the private affairs. Alec Warner had pointed out that these were days of transition, that a person of Jean Taylor’s intelligence and habits might perhaps not feel at home among the general aged of a hospital. “If only,” he said, “because she is partly what we have made her, we should look after her.” He had offered to bear half the cost of keeping Jean in Surrey. But Dame Lettie had finally put an end to these arguments by coming to Jean with a challenge, “Would you not really, my dear, prefer to be independent? After all, you are the public. The hospitals are yours. You are entitled…” Miss Taylor had replied, “I prefer to go to hospital, certainly.” She had made her own arrangements and had left them with the daily argument still in progress concerning her disposal.” There are plenty of twists and turns in the telling and Mrs. Pettigrew makes an interesting villain. The minor female characters on the long stay ward are excellent and really add to the comic element (and the sinister as well). Spark has great fun bumping the cast off; a lesser author would have focused on who was making the calls and turned it into a crime novel and Spark resists that temptation. Funny, witty and a reminder that we are all mortal. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting The Ballad and the Source by Rosamond Lehmann

The World is full of Laughter by Dolly Sen This is a remarkable memoir from the even more remarkable Dolly Sen, from the inside of what passes for a mental health system in the UK. This is how she starts: “I’m self-hate surrounded by mirrors. Not the many glass ones I have shattered, ensuring I have no good luck for the next thousand lifetimes. No, the mirror of the eyes that constantly watch me. Mirrors with names, smiles, souls and lies. “You’ve got your Daddy’s eyes and your Daddy’s lies. Cut them out!” The voices tell me over and over again. Can memories turn into psychosis? These are memories that touch me with the insistence of a branding iron. Writing this memoir, I have to make sure it doesn’t turn into a suicide note,” Sen has an Indian father and a Scottish mother, adding the extra disadvantage of race to gender when it comes to navigating the mental health system. She tells her story frankly, with a lot of pain, some humour and irony. Sen’s story contains abuse and violence, primarily by an alcoholic father and outlines her experiences with the mental health system from about the age of 14. She is also very frank about the inadequacies of the care she has received; most, but not all of it being pretty grim. Sen has a great turn of phrase; “sometimes sanity touches my head like a razorblade pillow.” Speaking of her attempts to manage her illness; “I don’t doubt that I will be ill again; I’m just no longer going to wee gasoline on the psychotic fire.” Sen uses the energy she has as a result of her illness in an intense creativity; she writes poetry and novels, blogs, does photography, art, writes about mental illness, is active in performance and has a number of digital outlets. This was written in 2002 and much has happened since then and Sen has written and done much since then; including another stay in hospital. She writes well and I shouldn’t be surprised that she is so little known; she writes from a place that most publishing houses avoid. Dolly Sen doesn’t have easy answers or neat endings, but she lives with her condition and writes about it eloquently and with great fire and passion. I have learnt more about mental illness from Dolly Sen than from any textbook. 9 out of 10 Starting The Ha-Ha by Jennifer Dawson

So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba A brief, well-crafted novella in the form of a letter between two middle-aged friends. The writer is Ramatoulaye; her husband, has died suddenly and she is has to remain in seclusion for four months and ten days as per her religious strictures (Islamic). The recipient is her friend Aissatou. Both women have had husband problems. Aissoutou’s husband had taken a second, much younger wife. She had divorced him as a result and had left to make a new life in America. Ramatoulaye’s husband had five years previously also taken a second and much younger wife and moved in with her. She recounts and comments on the history of herself and her friend, setting out the role of women in Senegal pre and post-independence. It is beautifully written and is a testament to friendship. Ba is also analysing polygamy and the way men use religious tradition to gratify and justify their desires. The two women manage the problem differently, but both respect the others choices. Ba sets out the situation of the married women very clearly; “This is the moment dreaded by every Senegalese woman, the moment when she sacrifices her possessions as gifts to her family-in-law; and worse still, beyond her possessions she gives up her personality, her dignity, becoming a thing in the service of the man who has married her, his grandfather, his grandmother, his father, his mother, his brother, his sister, his uncle, his aunt, his male and female cousins, his friends. Her behaviour is conditioned: no sister-in-law will touch the head of any wife who has been stingy, unfaithful or inhospitable.” She clearly explained the effects of betrayal on Ramatoulaye and her children and explores the difficulties women can have. The end of the letter focusses more on the next generation and the way Ramatoulaye manages the tensions of a new generation with different expectations. Ba also focuses on how the traditional cycle can change and be broken, but in a way that reflects her own culture rather than importing western solutions. Ba also points to the importance of education to women; note this passage which speaks of Aissatou’s progress; “The power of books, this marvelous invention of astute human intelligence. Various signs associated with sound: different sounds that form the word. Juxtaposition of words from which springs the idea. Though, History, Science, Life, Sole instrument of interrelationships and of culture, unparalleled means of giving and receiving. Books knit generations together in the same continuing effort that leads to progress. They enabled you to better yourself. What society refused you, they granted: examination sat and passed took you also to France. The School of Interpreters, from which you graduated, led to your appointment into the Senegalese Embassy in the United States. You make a very good living. You are developing in peace, as your letters tell me, your back resolutely turned on those seeking light enjoyment and easy relationships.” There is an interesting juxtaposition here. The letter progresses from colonial to post-colonial times and Ba notes how for women to progress they to access education and there is a similar movement from oppression and towards freedom. The novella could easily be read in one sitting, it is full of human warmth and wisdom and well worth taking time to read. 9 out of 10 Starting Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne

Willoyd; I have a few others by Taylor on my and will soon be reading more. Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall This is Marshall’s first novel and is semi-autobiographical; set in New York (Brooklyn) and within the Barbadian community, struggling to survive and makes its way. The brownstones of the title are the houses which members of the community aspire to owning. It is a coming of age novel and revolves around Selina Boyce and her mother Silla; two wonderfully created characters who are the most memorable parts of the novel. Silla has very clear aims for her daughters and for her own life; owning a brownstone being a priority. For her daughters it is be part of the church (based around the Barbadian community), get good grades at school, get a good career (preferably a doctor), marry a good man from the community and buy a brownstone; very much in that order, and most of all don’t get pregnant and mess around with inappropriate men. Selina’s rebellion against this is the centre of the novel. Selina and her mother clash, in many ways because they are too alike; “Everybody used to call me Deighton’s Selina but they were wrong. Because you see I’m truly your child. Remember how you used to talk about how you left home and came here alone as a girl of eighteen and was your own woman? I used to love hearing that. And that’s what I want. I want it! Silla’s pained eyes searched her adamant face, and after a long time a wistfulness softened her mouth. It was as if she somehow glimpsed in Selina the girl she had always been.” Selina’s father Deighton tries in vain to hold a job, but moves from one thing to another and sticks at nothing. He is a great disappointment to Silla. He is charming but insubstantial. He wants to return to Barbados, but Silla has her heart set on staying and buying a brownstone. She gets her wish, but at a price. The novel directly looks at black immigration from the Caribbean to the US; the setting is the Depression and the Second World War. Race is a gradually dawning issue for Selina, as her boyfriend Clive says; “Who knows what they see looking at us? The whole damn thing is so twisted now, so deep seated; the color black is such a hell of a powerful symbol, who can tell…some of them probably still see in each of us the black moor tupping their white ewe, or some legendary beast coming out at night and the fens to maraud and rape. Caliban. Hester’s Black Man in the woods. The evil. Evil. Sin….Maybe our dark faces remind them of the all that is dark and unknown and terrifying within themselves and, as Jimmy Baldwin says, they’re seeking absolution through poor us, either in their beneficence or in their cruelty….But I’m afraid we have to disappoint them by confronting them always with the full and awesome weight of our humanity, until they begin to see us and not some unreal image they’ve super-imposed” This is a really good novel with strong female characters (another in my virago collection). I will leave the last word to Marshall, writing about the way in which women figure prominently in her writing: “I’m concerned about letting them speak their piece, letting them be central figures, actors, activists in fiction rather than just backdrop or background figures. I want them to be central characters. Women in fiction seldom are. Traditionally in most fiction men are the wheelers and dealers. They are the ones in whom power is invested. I wanted to turn that around. I wanted women to be the centers of power. My feminism takes its expression through my work. Women are central for me. They can as easily embody the power principles as a man.” 8 and a half out of 10 Starting Go tell it on the mountain by James Baldwin

I hope you both enjoy it! Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor This is my first Elizabeth Taylor and quite an oddity it is. Written and set just after the Second World War; it references more classic novels than you can shake a stick at. These comparisons are not subtle and there is a gothic edge to it. The setting is a decaying mansion and like Brideshead Revisited there is an analysis of the decline of the English upper classes. But the main references are to Austen and the Brontes. The main character is a newly orphaned governess called Cassandra Dashwood; references to Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park. During the book the film version of Pride and Prejudice is showing at the local cinema. Cassandra goes to work for a widower with a daughter. His name is Marion Vanburgh and he is quiet and bookish. We are now in Jane Eyre territory! His late wife Violet was a powerful personality and her portrait is prominent and the staff still talk about her; shades of Rebecca (published in the previous decade). There is also plenty of Bronte type atmosphere at times; particularly with cousin Tom who is an alcoholic and is having an affair with the local pub landlord’s wife. His sister Margaret is pregnant and there is some question whether her husband (entirely absent from the novel) is the father. Tom and Margaret’s mother Tinty is also present and there is also the housekeeper Mrs Adams. Cassandra is there to be governess to Sophy. The final member of the household is Nanny, who is rather elderly and bitter and misses Violet. Taylor seems to throw them all together in what initially seems a fairly formulaic way and the reader does wonder where it’s all going. Of course the novel does revolve around the relationship between Cassandra and Marion, but they are rather insipid characters and the real spark is provided by the rest of the cast. There is a very shocking event towards the end of the novel which changes everything and is totally unexpected; more Hardy than Austen here. So what is it all about? One perceptive reviewer has pointed out that Taylor is looking at issues like love and romance and marriage which may appear quite simple are actually in post war times quite complex: “His head felt as if someone were doing knitting in it. Nothing was simple. He believed that he loved Cassandra tenderly; but marriage is not simple. It brought with it, Nanny had reminded him, so many complications which were beyond his energies. Tinty stood before him, and Tom, Nanny with her talk of refrigerators and change, the thought of beginning a new life in that fast-crumbling house, of leaving a smouldering and rank corner of earth to sons, perhaps, and then engaging servants, spending money, laying down wine, planting and clearing. In the library last night, no one, nothing, had stood between him and Cassandra. Now so much interposed. She was a child merely, to be led into so dark, so lonely, a wilderness as his heart. For her, so much unravelling of people, so much sorting out of possessions would have to be done. He might draw her to him and ease the passion which lay under her silence, lead her into the circle of ice which encompassed him: but the obstacles were still outside, where the world was, and even within him, there was Violet.” There is a strong sense of the landscape in the novel and in that way it was a little like Woolf’s Between the Acts, which was written a few years earlier. It might also be argued that Taylor is marking the end of the country house tradition in English literature, it is no longer needed or necessary. In Pride and Prejudice, Darcy maintains Pemberley in magnificence and is benevolent. Contrast here with what Cousin Margaret says to Marion about his estate; “I always hated and despised the old Squires and their Lady Bountifuls with their meddling and condescension and their giving back in charity a mere hundredth of what they had pillaged. But you are worse. You keep the hundredth part, take no responsibility, show no interest, give nothing to the land even, but let the soil go sour and the grass rank. The people who once lived in this house would not have seen the land lying useless, or one of the villagers starve, or go without coal at Christmas, and if a girl was in trouble by a man, they’d damn well make him marry her.” It is worth recalling that Taylor was at this time a member of the Communist Party and her views are clear enough. The character of Marion Vanburgh does nothing of any use and has appalling parenting skills; he is rather absurd and disconnected and it is almost as though Taylor is saying that it’s all over for this way of life. It’s an easy read and it is fun trying to spot how many references to other novels you can spot. There are though some quite sharp and insightful comments, a shocking twist and some well-developed minor characters. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting The World is Full of Laughter by Dolly Sen

Beloved by Toni Morrison How to review a book like this, and it is a great book; I’m not sure I have the superlatives it deserves. Morrison based the novel on the story of Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who killed her child as she was being recaptured, to save the child a lifetime of slavery. The setting is around the time of the civil war. The plot and the storyline are well known. The writing is great and there is a strong sense of place; “And in all those escapes he could not help being astonished by the beauty of this land that was not his. He hid in its breast, fingered its earth for food, clung to its banks to lap water and tried not to love it. On nights when the sky was personal, weak with the weight of its own stars, he made himself not love it. Its grave-yards and low-lying rivers. Or just a house—solitary under a chinaberry tree; maybe a mule tethered and the light hitting its hide just so. Anything could stir him and he tried hard not to love it.” But it is a horror story (and I don’t mean the ghost), horror in the true sense of the word, slavery. It has been argued that Morrison is confronting and highlighting things not recorded or told by histories narrated by white historians. It isn’t comfortable and it is difficult to read; as it should be. I think this is also where some of the negative reviews come from; because the novel is not polemical and the characters have and enduring humanity with nuance. There are reviews saying this is the worst book ever, expressing hatred and loathing for the novel. Hatred and loathing; worst book ever! There are so many bad, bad books out there. This isn’t a bad book, I can understand difficult, I can understand not really liking magic realism or the use of the ghost motif. I don’t get the hatred. I wonder if it is being forced to look at something in the past, that is still in the present and that we are unwilling to face. It seems that slavery has now to be a topic studied in history; making it too real and present creates strong reactions. We still minimize and gloss over in the west the horrors we perpetrated on other parts of the globe. The European powers and the US killed far more than the Nazis did in the slave trade and we still have a problem calling it genocide. Morrison makes it all human and personal and brings it home. 9 out of 10 Starting The Richer, The Poorer by Dorothy West

Hope you enjoy it Anna My Left Foot by Christy Brown This is Christy Brown’s account of his early life, published in 1954 when he was twenty-two. Brown was the tenth of twenty-two children (thirteen of whom survived). Brown was diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy and his parents were told that they ought to put him into an institution and forget about him because he would be a “mental defective”. It was the determination of his mother, not giving up on him, that proved decisive. The story is well –known through the film starring Daniel Day-Lewis, but the book is well worth reading and Brown writes honestly and with some humour. The story is obviously one of struggle and persistence and there are also some good descriptions of family life in Dublin in the 1930s and 1940s. There is also a growing sense of sadness and frustration as Brown gradually realises how different he is from others and how important it is considered to be “normal”. There is a passage where Brown describes a growing friendship with a girl when he is in his very early teens. There is a moment when he realises the look she gives him is not attraction or even friendship, but pity. It’s very powerful writing. Brown describes his disability as a glass wall between himself and others. Brown eventually says “If I could never be like other people, then at least I would be like myself and make the best of it.” Brown also charts his growth as a writer. Initially his access to books was very limited and he read only Dickens. Reading was an awakening for him, however being limited to Dickens, his first attempts at writing were in a Dickensian vein. Combine the flourish and floridity of Dickens with a lad from Dublin trying to write about his life and you get the picture. Brown is brave enough to add a few extracts of these early attempts and honest enough to admit how bad they are! Brown is likeable and engaging and he tells his story well. Good as the film is, I think it’s a shame it has overshadowed the book; which has merit in its own right. I am currently making an effort to find and read literature from the disabled community and is certainly a good place to start. 9 out of 10 Starting Journal of a Somerset Rector by John Skinner

The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam This is the second in a trilogy, the first being “A Golden Age” and continues the story of the Haque family and is again set in Bangladesh. It can be read as a stand-alone, but it does help to have read the first one. This part of the trilogy focusses on Rehanna’s two children, Maya and Sohail. It switches from just after the war and independence to ten years later. It charts the very different directions the siblings take as a result of their experiences during the war. Maya becomes a doctor and helps women traumatised during the war, performing abortions for many who were raped; she then spends time in a village as a medic, having left her home. She returns at the death of her brother’s wife and the switching backwards and forwards gradually fills the gaps. Sohail has become religious; Islam is now his focus and he is a charismatic teacher and preacher. He has followers and sometimes travels to spread the message. Their very different takes on life creates tension between the two and their mother Rehana is oftencaught between the two. Sohail has a son, Zaid, who also plays a significant role. The story is told from Maya’s perspective. She is essentially a non-believer. There are no purely good characters and some difficult topics are covered including child abuse, torture and cancer. Anam is not afraid to chart her way through chaos and crisis. I think this is a more complex work than the first in the trilogy. During the civil war there was a goal and those with differing opinions could work together. Now the war is over there are different directions that can be taken, upholding the old maxim that war is easier than peace. Maya has learnt a good deal about her country’s patriarchal mind-set in her work as a village doctor and so she finds her brother’s solace in religion very difficult. Anam manages to be fair to both siblings and resists the temptation to go for easy answers and solutions; although her heart clearly lies with Maya. The whole is well written and I will certainly look out for the third in the series. 8 out of 10 Starting So long a Letter by Mariama Ba

I have a liking for the obscure Anna! Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata My first venture into anything by Kawabata; this novella centres on the tea ceremony. Kikuji has lost his father and mother; he is a young man and there is the question of his father’s two mistresses and the possibility of whether he ought to marry. There is a great deal of consideration, in an oblique way, of the importance of inheritance and the continuation of tradition. The novel is set in the 1950s in a time of great change in Japan. The prose is precise and describes well the sense of decay and degeneration, especially in relation to Kikuji’s garden and tea house. Subtlety and intricacy are two of the words that the reviews seem to throw up regularly. It is a novel about ideas and people rather than a linear plot; actually it could also be said that it is a novel about Kikuji’s love life! Loneliness and disorientation are themes, but it is impossible to avoid contempt Kikuji has for older women in particular; neither Mrs Ota nor Chikako ae portrayed positively. There is an extended description of a birthmark in the shape of a mole that Chikako has on her breast; this is early in the book and is designed to ensure the reader has it in mind whenever Chikako is present. I get a sense of women being demeaned and worshipped; the descriptions of the two younger women are in sharp contrast to the older women. Take note of what Kikuji thinks of himself when he has had a sexual encounter with Mrs Ota, "the conqueror whose feet were being washed by the slave." Quite. Whilst I can appreciate the intricacies of the tea ceremony, the discussions about pottery and the wonderful prose, even the analysis of a changing society. I also like the lack of ending, Kawabata didn’t like writing endings. All these are strong themes, but just as strong are the motifs relating to the women, especially Chikako and her birthmark, which seems to be a symbol of malevolence and Chikako’s character seems to be linked to it. But the issue is much more visceral; “Not that. No, the trouble would be having the child look at the birthmark while it was nursing. I hadn’t seen quite so far myself, but a person who actually has a birthmark thinks of these things. From the day it was born it would drink there; and from the day it began to see, it would see that ugly mark on its mother’s breast. Its first impression of the world, its first impression of its mother, would be that ugly birthmark, and there the impression would be, through the child’s whole life.” And “It was not just the fear of having a brother or sister born away from home, a stranger to him. It was rather fear of that brother or sister in particular. Kikuji was obsessed with the idea that a child who sucked at that breast, with its birthmark and its hair, must be a monster.” There is a link here that I almost missed; the pottery of the tea ceremony must be flawless and beautiful; lesser pieces and those that are flawed degrade the ceremony. Kawabata’s descriptions of the younger women’s flawless necks reminded me of some of his descriptions of the tea ceremony pottery. Too much objectification for me I’m afraid. 5 out of 10 Starting My Left Foot by Christy Brown

My Friend Says It's Bullet-Proof by Penelope Mortimer This is one of Mortimer’s less known novels and is out of print. Inevitably I have the virago edition. At one level the plot is straightforward. Muriel Rowbridge is a journalist/writer who works for a woman’s magazine. She has cancer which results in a mastectomy. The novels covers two weeks when Muriel is sent on a trip to Canada by her magazine with a group (all male) of journalists. There is a busy itinerary and lots to do. Muriel comes to terms with her life in a notebook, which she writes stream of consciousness style. Muriel is a bit of a cynic, but she is also coming to terms with the loss of a breast and how this affects her image of herself. She has just broken up with a married lover and becomes involved in different ways with three men. There is an exploration of sexual identity and a reaction to the male bravado of the other journalists. Mortimer experiments with seeing and being seen and with the nature of perception in relation to women. Muriel finds a new way of perceiving herself and the man who helps her to do this is one who has also been touched by tragedy. Muriel fins that no connection is straightforward, but eventually she has a sense of herself; “She had found, after all this time of searching, an image: myself as I am. I prefer myself as I am. The implications came crowding in on her with the impact of light, air and sound after a long imprisonment. Boldness and freedom were both available. She could do anything she wanted to do” The last chapter has a couple of interesting twists and turns that keeps the reader guessing until the last paragraph. The whole is an interesting novel and Muriel is a compelling character. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor

Arms and the Girl by Stevie Davies The only other review I have read about this novel sums the novel up thus; “The impact this novel makes is largely due, in my opinion, to the juxtaposition of some of the best prose by any living writer, describing a story of horrific abuse and victimisation”. Spot on. I am a great admirer of Stevie Davies in whatever area she writes in; whether it be her more comic novels, her work on the Bronte’s or Milton and deeply serious novels like this one. This is a novel about abuse; emotional, physical and sexual. It centres on the Cahill family. Hugh is in the army and the family live on an army base in Scotland. Hugh and his wife Mary have seven children and are Catholic. Prue and January are the two main protagonists; Hugh is the abuser. He is unpredictable and violent, especially when drunk and his wife and children bear the brunt of his rages and maudlin self-pity. Prue is bookish and keeps her head down, hiding in cupboards and quiet corners to try to avoid being noticed. January is the opposite; she is the outcast and scapegoat and becomes the focus of Hugh’s rage. As Frances Hill in the Times review says: “He sees in her the unloved, unlovable child he hates in himself. His character is masterly in its sporadic charm, self-pity, weakness, loneliness and evil.” Hugh is also propped up by the structures of the Catholic Church and the self-deception of confession. Juxtaposed to the Cahill family are the Gordons who live in the nearby Manse. Rev Gordon is a Calvinist Church of Scotland Rector, His wife Isla is perceptive and compassionate and their daughter Isabel (13) befriends Prue. Both Prue and to a lesser extent January find solace and support there. Isabel is a contrast to Prue and January; her security allows her to question and she is critical of the British abroad as represented by the army and is able to tell her God-fearing father she no longer believes in God. It is well written and the reader is drawn in to Prue’s world and feels the dread and horror she feels about what is going on behind this. Davies found this difficult to write and said: “During the seven months’ composition of this book, I lived in unnerving proximity to and even fear of implication in the evil of which I told.” January is a remarkable character; she is relentlessly cynical and hates and destroys; but she is strong independent and very determined. She has been abused since she was three, but she is more than a victim, although she often alone carries the weight of her father’s abusive behaviour. Davies does in a Catholic setting make links with the figure of Christ. It is powerful stuff and difficult to read. The last chapter shows how the threads of abuse spread through generations. No one really survives and everyone is damaged. Davies does not spare the reader and her outstanding prose drives the reader on. As always I am amazed that this novel is not better known and that Davies is not ranked among the likes of other English contemporary novelists such as Amis, Barnes, Mitchell, McEwan et al. I rank her above rather than among them. I will end with a quote where Prue is talking to Isabel’s aunt: “Isla sighs, she knots a new thread and draws the needle carefully through the cloth. “Had you noticed” she says, more to herself then Prue, “that there is a flaw at the centre of things?” “A floor at the centre of things” thinks Prue. A floor at the centre of things. She will want to turn that over in her mind. Beneath these unstable, shifting surfaces, a floor …yes, she can see it now, the floor at the centre of things, floating like a raft that holds steady in a weltering sea”. 9 and a half out of 10 Starting Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh Waugh’s second novel is a rather bleak comic satire on the “Bright Young Things” of the 1920s. It is a witty series of anecdotes, often rather disjointed. The title is from the funeral service and the style mimics Eliot and modernism. The pace is breathless and there is a line in a Disney song which runs “busy going nowhere”. Indeed there is an inscription from Carroll at the beginning “it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place”. The plot is fairly thin. It revolves around Adam Fenwick-Symes and his chaotic attempts to marry Nina Blount; or to be more precise, to get enough money to marry Nina. Most of the book follows a series of parties and happenings in the tradition of the real life Waugh is satirising. There are lots of ridiculously named people (the prime minister is Mr Outrage). Adam is a writer/journalist and writes (makes up) a gossip column following the suicide of the previous occupant of the role. There is a distinct change of tone in the second half of the book and this coincides with Waugh’s first wife leaving him; the comic bleakness becomes more marked and the ending is almost apocalyptic. Now, it must be said that Waugh can write and some of this is funny. He has been called the best prose writer of the twentieth century; that I don’t accept, not at all. He is inventive; remember the end of A Handful of Dust where the hero of the book is forced to read Dickens aloud for the rest of his life in a jungle prison. Now that is funny and inventive! The characters are shallow, transitory and throw-away and there is an obsession with the English upper classes. There is a brief section of entirely unnecessary racism; again not unusual for Waugh. What strikes me most about Waugh is his complete rejection of modern society with a nostalgia for time past, a world long lost. His conversion to Catholicism seems to me to be a part of this. I seem to be surrounded by reviews and reviewers who think Waugh is wonderful and I’m just not getting it. If you want to read about the English upper classes in a satirical and comic way in a world populated by ridiculous and shallow characters then read Wodehouse; he’s better. The “Bright Young Things” did not really need to be satirised; they managed to satirise themselves, consciously or not. Ok, this is amusing in places and the satire is sharp, but does not really better the real lives of the people being satirised and unfortunately Waugh’s contempt for the “lower orders” is also obvious. However there are some critics who are on my side here. Orwell wrote; “Waugh is about as good a novelist as one can be (i.e. as novelists go today) while holding untenable opinions.” Orwell’s further comments about not being able to be Catholic and grown up chime with Cyril Connolly idea of "Theory of Permanent Adolescence," whereby Englishmen of a certain caste are doomed to re-enact their school days. So I’m not alone in finding Waugh unconvincing. 5 out of 10 Starting Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata

Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo A clever satire on race and slavery. Evaristo, who is of Nigerian and British descent, generally writes poetry, but this is a novel about the slave trade. It is the slave trade in reverse; in Evaristo’s language the whytes are the slaves and the blaks are the masters and slave-owners. A number of reviewers have complained about time lines, geography and historical accuracy. My advice would be suspend that sort of judgement. This is a satire. It’s not fantasy, but nor has the historical timeline been smoothly switched, Evaristo does play with technological development and settings. Don’t try and work the geography either; just go along with the poetry of the language and the clever and sometimes funny (yes funny) switches. The story revolves around Doris, an English slave captured at the age of ten; we pick up her tale about twenty years later and the timeline loves backwards and forwards. At the start she is an educated slave with some privileges in a wealthy household in Londolo, the capital of Great Ambossa. She makes an escape again, is recaptured, severely beaten and sent to do manual work in a sugar cane plantation. Evaristo works hard to switch all the terms and culture. Whytes are called “wiggers” as a term of abuse. Doris hates the tropical heat and misses the cold, mists and rain of her homeland. She also misses the food, disliking Ambossan food and missing cabbage. Evaristo also switches some patois, usually to good effect. There are also plenty of references to be picked up; “Naturally, having a whyte skin was all the evidence the sheriffs needed to accost a young man and strip-search him”. There is a minstrel show where performers “whtye up”, they “whyte up and do Morris Dancing (yes really!); film adverts for “To Sir with Hate” and “Guess who’s not coming to dinner”. Some very neat satire focusses on brain size; “Over millennia, the capacious skull of the Negroid has been able to accommodate the growth of a very large brain within its structure. This has enabled a highly sophisticated intelligence to evolve.” And of the Europanes (whytes) “The narrowness of the skull denotes a brain that is a bit, as we laymen would say, squashed up”. There are a lot of what ifs and Evaristo weaves in the Maroons, some free working class whytes, slave rebellions, the horrific conditions on slave ships, the sexual exploitation, the selling of slaves and splitting children from families, beatings, poor living conditions: everything would expect. The reversing of geography can be quite inventive; “Slavers had just arrived or were getting ready to set sail for the various coasts of Europa: the Coal Coast, the Cabbage Coast, the Tin Coast, the Corn Coast, the Olive Coast, the Tulip Coast, the Wheat Coast, the Grape Coast, the Influenza Coast and the Cape of Bad Luck.” Evaristo by writing in this way critically engages with the slave narrative and shows its limiting and limited nature. She is disrupting history in order to show the ways the Atlantic slave trade is relevant in a contemporary context. There are also, inevitably because of the title, comparisons that can be made with Alex Haley’s Roots. There are also references to Conrad and Heart of Darkness which are very telling. It was worth ploughing through Conrad for this phrase; “What can I say, Dear Reader, but the horror, the horror…” And it’s very clever placement within the text. The novel is brilliantly counterfactual; the first person narration in the first and third parts adds to the effect. It is fascinating and asks questions that still need to be posed. Evaristo does not quite get all the nuances right, but that is quibbling; it’s a novel that is well worth reading. 9 out of 10 Starting The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam

The Thing around your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie An excellent set of short stories which concentrate mostly on the lives and experiences of Nigerian women; ranging over issues such as tragedy, political and religious violence, new relationships (especially marriage), loneliness, sadness, displacement and the many problems of post colonialism. There is plenty of social and political comment, but it is wrapped up in human stories. The stories move between Nigeria and the US; the homeland and what is seen to be the Promised Land, but seldom is. Two of the stories are in the second person, which is quite unusual. The plain style of the writing better illustrates the subtlety of motivation. There are insights which are sharp and to the point. In the title story, the narrator meets a young white man: “He told you he had been to Ghana and Uganda and Tanzania, loved the poetry of Okot p’Bitek and the novels of Amos Tutuola and had read a lot about sub-Saharan African countries, their histories, and their complexities. You wanted to feel disdain, to show it as you brought his order, because white people who liked Africa too much and those who liked Africa too little were the same—condescending.” Adichie focuses primarily on the Igbo/Biafran experience; unsurprising as this is her background. In each of the endings is a suggestion of a new beginning. The characters create empathy in the reader because they speak of our own hopes and fears as well. Adichie seems to have a passion for human progress and freedom and it is infectious. I’m not going to analyze the stories; just recommend you read them. I think the last one is the best, but would have benefitted from full length treatment. There are echoes of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, but with Adichie’s feminist twist. 9 out of 10 Starting Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall

Dorothy Edwards by Claire Flay This is a biography in the “Writers of Wales” series and also an analysis of Edwards’ work; the novel Winter Sonata and the short story collection “Rhapsody”. Edwards was born in 1903 and her father was a socialist and Independent Labour Party activist; a political tradition she followed. She read Greek and Philosophy at Cardiff University. In my opinion she is a much neglected writer; Christopher Meredith in his introduction to Rhapsody says: "Fashion for re-readings according to various theories have helped critics to rediscover her from time to time, but I believe that Dorothy Edwards is a great deal more than an interesting literary case. She's an important, utterly original modernist. Whichever way you read her, she's the extraordinarily accomplished author of powerful and suggestive fictions”. Flay’s analysis draws on the letters Edwards sent to her fiend Beryl Jones. The analysis is basically chronological following Edwards’ own development, recognising the importance of her socialist upbringing. Flay looks at her interactions with the Bloomsbury Group, via her friendship with David Garnett. Garnett calls her his “Welsh Cinderella” (patronising doesn’t even begin to cover it). Edwards nearly always uses male narrators, generally English and middle class. Flay shows how this is a very deliberate way of looking at relations between the sexes and deconstructing power relationships. Flay also reminds readers that Wales can be seen in a postcolonial context; it is easy for the English to forget that! Edwards’ writing does examine identity and essence; the paradox between her upbringing and the literary world she found in London. National and class divisions affected her and impacted on her work and increased her feeling of inner estrangement. Edwards killed herself in early 1934 by throwing herself under a train; leaving a note; “I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship, and even love, without gratitude and given nothing in return." Edwards in her correspondence intimates that she finds relating to other people challenging and certainly she found the London literary world and Bloomsbury in particular, very difficult. Flay points out how excluded Edwards felt. A failed love affair and the breakdown of her friendship with Garnett led to her return to Wales. Flay also suggests depression as a factor from her reading of Edwards’ correspondence. This is an interesting study, but I think it is important to read Edwards before reading this, and I would encourage everyone to read Edwards as she is far too little known. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting The Virago book of Women and the Great War

Bringing the Empire Home by Zine Magubane This is an academic and thoroughly researched tome which looks at images of blackness (and whiteness) in the nineteenth century; initially in South Africa and Britain and then in the US. Magubane looks at groups that are marginalised in both societies; her analysis is primarily Marxian, but seen also through the prism of gender. She looks at the nature of the discussions about the colonised world have not been taken into account by economic historians and neither has their effect. Magubane argues that that western modernity is very much based on constructions of racial identity and imperialism. Magubane states that; “The premise that guides this book is that figurative language, whatever form it takes and although it is frequently and unthinkingly and imprecisely, matters – particularly when we are speaking about race and blackness.… Figurative language matters precisely because of what it can tell us about the intentions of the individuals who deploy it.” Magubane also examines “the transformation of commodification into sexuality” arguing that racial and sexual embodiment was central to the construction of capitalist ideology. There are several rains of thought and arguments which I found particularly interesting. In nineteenth century Britain there were increasingly punitive laws concerning vagrancy and much was written about it. Henry Mayhew when he wrote his report on the London poor he drew a distinction between “Those that will work, those that cannot work and those that will not work”. For his time Mayhew was relatively liberal, but he went on to say this; “Of the thousand millions of human beings that are said to constitute the population of the entire globe, there are – socially, morally and physically considered – but two distinct and broadly marked races, viz., the wanderers and the settlers – the vagabond and the citizen – the nomadic and the civilised tribes.” Mayhew specifically uses the examples of the Khoikhoi and San and draws direct comparison with the vagrants and vagabonds he describes at home and Magubane shows how blackness was used and constructed in the minds of the general public in Britain. Another interesting analysis evolves around the spread of minstrelsy from the US and into South Africa and beyond and the different ways it was conceptualised by both the black and white communities. Magubane also looks at how whiteness was perceived by the black community as well. There are focuses on gender, some very interesting analyses of suffragism, the Boer War and the way pro war and anti-war suffragists constructed their arguments. It’s not an easy read, but is worth the effort. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting My Friend says it's bullet proof by Penelope Mortimer

South Riding by Winifred Holtby This is Winifred Holtby’s last novel and she wrote knowing of her own imminent death. It is both vast and narrow in its scope at the same time. Its length and the varied and large array of characters reminded me of Victorian novelists like Eliot and Dickens. There are over 160 characters in the character list. It is set in Yorkshire in a fictional South Riding. The geographical area is the one Holtby grew up in and is in actuality the East Riding of Yorkshire, the area just north of the Humber centred on the city of Hull (Kingsport in the book); an area I know well. Holtby captures the area well, the people and its geography. Holtby was a committed pacifist, socialist and feminist, a close friend of Vera Brittain. She has thrown everything into this novel; as you would if you knew your time was limited. The novel looks at change; old and new ways of doing things and the tensions attendant with that. It is partly based on Holtby’s mothers experience as an alderman and on her experience of local government (her mother opposed her writing the novel). The main protagonist of the novel is Sarah Burton, newly appointed headmistress of a girl’s school, moving back to the area of her birth; she is 40, single, a socialist and committed to the education of women. Robert Carne is a gentleman-farmer, struggling to make ends meet because his wife is in an asylum (an expensive one) and trying to bring up his daughter alone. He is conservative, reactionary, enamoured of the old ways of farming, a keen hunter and essentially patriarchal. There are a large number of significant characters and the main characters don’t appear in large portions of the novel. All of the characters are well drawn; they all have significant faults and failings. The alert amongst you will have noticed something about the two main characters; a touch of the Jane Eyre’s perhaps. I’m sure this isn’t a coincidence and among the many strands in the novel is a reworking of the Jane Eyre/Rochester relationship. The complexities and frustrations of English local government are writ large; “Without emotion, without haste, without even, so far as Lovell could discern, any noticeable interest, the South Riding County Council ploughed through its agenda. The General mumbled; the clerk shuffled papers, the chairman of committees answered desultory questions” This enables Holtby to deal with the issues she felt were important; education, public health and the eradication of treatable diseases, ignorance, poverty and unemployment. It also allows Holtby to explore the irritations and corruptions inherent in the system and she does so with a good deal of relish. The secondary characters are also well drawn and not there to make up numbers. Holtby illustrates one of her primary beliefs “We are all member of one another” and writes it large here. Holtby provides no neatly tied ends and happy endings and her characters sometimes have a difficult time of it, but there is still running through a sense of the need for the struggle to improve the lot of people especially through socialism and feminism; it isn’t a depressing book. Holtby deals with difficult subjects. The history of Robert Carne’s wife and her internment in an asylum is very much the way the middle classes dealt with mental ill health. Holtby makes even her less savoury characters human with likeable qualities, but she leaves the reader to judge; the other characters not knowing all the picture make their own mistakes. In this context with Carne there is one piece of information, a marital rape, which the reader knows (eventually), but no one else does. It’s a telling piece of writing and makes the reader thoroughly uncomfortable; one knows a secret and nothing can be done with it. Holtby is perceptive in her understanding of male sexuality. This is a tour de force and a great novel. 9 out of 10 Starting Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh