Books do furnish a room

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

The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin At Boolavogue as the sun was setting O'er the bright May meadows of Shelmalier, A rebel hand set the heather blazing and brought the neighbours from far and near. Toibin’s writing is beautiful and lyrical and the title comes from the first verse of a song as recorded above. It recalls the Irish rebellion of 1798 which was brutally put down by the British (as usual). The novel tells the story of Eamon Redmond an Irish High Court judge, alternating between past and present telling the story of his childhood and his later life. Remond is a leading member of Fianna Fail and we also see the changing nature of that party with real history intruding as De Valera and Haughey play minor roles. The star of this novel is the Irish countryside; the land and the sea of the south-east coast, of Wexford and Limerick. Redmond comes across as a rather cold character and we are taken through a couple of judgments he makes early in the book which make the reader tend to dislike him. His family, especially his wife Carmel, also find him distant and difficult to know. We follow Redmond from his childhood and his relationship with his father, through courtship and starting out in law to legal eminence and widowhood. There is an epiphany at the end, but it is very late; too late for many of those who know him. The troubles are in the background, but still a presence and there are some indications of Redmond’s family involvements in the uprisings that led to independence. Later as a judge the troubles forma backdrop, but they are secondary to the tale. Communication is a key theme; Redmond’s inability to communicate on an emotional level, his father’s struggles to communicate after a stroke and the embarrassment Eamon felt when he was in his father’s class at school. The communication issues extend to his children as well. There are other juxtapositions as well. At the Redmond’s holiday home the sea is eroding the land; as a judge his decisions relate to the rights of society as opposed to the rights of the individual, Death is also ever present and as a child Redmond describes the death of relatives and the rites and rituals of the Catholic Church (also ever present). Irish history permeates the novel; Redmond is a pillar of the Fianna Fail establishment, his father was a message carrier for the IRA. Although simply and lyrically written; there is a thread of complexity within because Toibin is examining the republican ideology of the Irish state and the social reality of its population and the tensions with the Catholic Church. It is a critique of the way the Irish state has developed, written in 1992, which seems even more pertinent today. But it is a critique from a position of support with a strong sense of the immersion in history and landscape. It’s really rather good. The only problem is that we spend all our time with Eamon Redmond and he isn’t that likeable. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting Landscape for a Good Woman by Carolyn Steedman

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

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

The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker The second book in the trilogy; just as good and it helps a great deal to have read the first. As previously Barker does an excellent job of weaving fact and fiction together. We have moved on to early 1918 and the war is still in the balance. One of the fictional characters from Regeneration, Billy Prior, is also central to this novel. Dr Rivers is now in London (as is Prior) and we are plunged into a society struggling with the consequences of war and some of the hysteria that goes with it. Barker focuses on the maelstrom of opinion, debate and misinformation that comes with a society at war. She uses Prior, unfit to return to France, working for military intelligence and having affairs with men and women to take us round what is happening. Barker describes the lives of those opposing the war, pacifists and those sheltering deserters and those contemplating more drastic measures. There is also a window on one of the more bizarre incidents which took place in Britain, which would be entirely unbelievable, if it wasn’t true. The varied attitudes towards because of the strains of wartime have been well documented. However one particular sensational libel case stands out. Noel Pemberton Billing (aviator and would be MP) was convinced that homosexuality was infiltrating society and damaging the war effort. He was convinced the Germans had a list of 47 000 prominent homosexuals who they could blackmail. He teamed up with Harold Spencer who was working for the secret services. They were convinced the Germans were trying to “propagate evils which all decent men thought had perished in Sodom and Lesbia”. Even Margot Asquith was publicly attacked. However they particularly disliked Robbie Ross and old friend and supporter of Wilde. He had organised a production of Wilde’s Salome with Maud Allen in the lead role. Billing published an article called The Cult of the Clitoris which accused Allen of being a lesbian. She sued Billing and lost. The strain told on Ross and he died before the end of the war. Barker weaves all of this into the novel very effectively via Prior and a new character Manning and builds the feeling of paranoia very effectively. Again the descriptions of the nightmares, the effects of “shell-shock” and its varying treatment are very effective and one remains in no doubt about the horrors of war. Sassoon features again, fighting his demons with the help of Rivers; but it is Prior who takes centre stage. He is a complex character and Barker analyses his bisexuality and the effects trauma has on his psyche. It’s excellent stuff and well worth the effort of seeking out. 9 out of 10 Starting The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Murial Spark This is another one of those books I’ve been meaning to read for years; seen the film several times. Having also read The Ballad of Peckham Rye recently and been impressed by Spark, I thought it was time to finally read this. It is brief, but very cleverly put together, employing a flash forward technique, so Spark reveals the plot and the eventual ending bit by bit and in a varied order. Spark also makes good use of some neat aphorisms; “I am in my prime”, you are the crème de la crème”. Miss Brodie is a primary school teacher of unorthodox method who takes certain pupils under her wing to influence them; they become her “set” and remain so, even after they leave her direct sphere of influence and start senior school. Miss Brodie reads them poetry, takes them to the theatre, points them away from Maths and Sciences and generally tries to direct their lives; identifying a “famous for” or notoriety for each of them. Early on we discover one of the six members of the set betrays Miss Brodie to her greatest enemy, the headmistress. About halfway we discover who, but the how is left to the very end. We follow the set from the end of primary school, through senior school and into glimpses of their later lives and sometimes deaths. Despite the fluid language Spark limits what she gives the reader about Miss Brodie; we are never alone with her; her presence is mediated by someone else; one of the set usually. Spark is playing with the nature of knowledge, epistemology; as a Catholic convert Spark would have known about that. Here we see nothing of Miss Brodie’s interior life. The character is based on a teacher who inspired Spark, but there are some twists here. Miss Brodie is a great fan of Mussolini; there is also an element of living through others and an edge of cruelty. Spark doesn’t provide us with particularly attractive characters and all the set have obvious flaws; as for the men ... Miss Brodie (who lost her fiancé in the war; we are in the early 1930s) is attractive to the Arts and Music masters and has a relationship with one of them; both are rather insipid. Interestingly the author dispenses judgements and fates with godlike omniscience and Spark is making Brodie behave in an authorial way to explore the limits of authorial power. It’s good stuff and Spark has been compared with Christine Brookes-Rose for this reason. The character of Sandy in the novel has been compared to Spark and she too moves to Catholicism. Given the events of the novel the name she has as a nun Sister Helena of the Transfiguration is an interesting choice given the novel’s consideration of knowledge and the nature of authorship. It’s a great tragic-comic novel with some nicely sinister undertones. As forward thinking as she appears to be Miss Brodie is also at heart conservative and the parallels between Miss Brodie and her girls and Miss Brodie’s fascist hero and his followers are interesting. Spark is a great novelist. 9 out of 10 Starting The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Thanks Pontalba; Noir is good fun! The Europeans by Henry James A brief novella, which is effectively a comedy of manners, in which, on the surface, little happens. It reminded me of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. The plot is simple; Felix Young and his sister Eugenia are the Europeans. Felix is a painter, who lives a bohemian lifestyle. He is incessantly (nauseatingly) cheerful. His sister Eugenia is in a morganatic marriage and her husband’s family want a divorce. They lead a wandering, essentially frivolous lifestyle. They decide to visit their American cousins, the Wentworths. Head of the family is their uncle Mr Wentworth. He has two daughters, Gertrude and Charlotte. Charlotte is very serious and religious, Gertrude is restless and uncertain what she wants. Their younger brother Clifford has just been suspended from Harvard for drinking. Throw into the mix Mr Brand, a Unitarian minister who wants to marry Gertrude and the Actons and you have the lot. Robert Acton is a friend of the family who has been to China and made his fortune and is supposed to be worldly wise. His sister Lizzie makes up the main players. The Wentworth’s are New England Puritans of a certain moral tone and life is a serious business. This is often portrayed as James having a swipe at Americans; however it isn’t that simple as Felix and Eugenia are American as well. The employment of an omniscient narrator means James is able to remain entirely neutral in telling his tale. He analyses a Puritan morality, contrasting it with a more “modern” reliance on feelings, emotions and the self. A type of individualism compared to the communal stiltedness of Puritan New England. Gertrude knows she does not wish to marry Mr Brand but does not know how to go about expressing it. Felix and Eugenia are more self-confident. James is critical of the Puritanism of the Wentworth’s, but it is tempered with an underlying affection as he also finds much to admire. Mr Wentworth is not the tyrannical father he could have been; he just does not understand the approach to life of his European cousins, though he does try. The real villain is Robert Acton who seems more modern and aware, but proves not to be. A fairly light confection, with a little more going on than meets the eye, but a good introduction to James. 7 out of 10 Starting The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Noir by Robert Coover My first Coover; and where to start? Well the title does give it away; it is an exploration of the Noir genre; send up, satire, tribute, a general culling of tropes. This is written in the second person which fits the type and the protagonist Philip M (M for Marlowe perhaps) Noir is suitably sleazy, drunk and beaten up on a regular basis. He has a smart secretary and a mysterious, veiled female client. The City is dreary, run down and mainly experienced at nights; there is a docks (obviously); there are corrupt police officers; there is a Mr Big; there are bars and eating houses that are suitably seedy; there are mysterious tramps; there are sultry singers who seem to find Noir irresistible. As well as playing with the genre I think Coover also indulges in a little teenage wish fulfilment; more of that later. Coover, when it comes to creating ambience, words and sentences is clearly a craftsman. Much of noir is very cleverly done. It is difficult to work out timescales. The novel takes place over the period of about a week. Time is rather fluid and there are nods to Greek myth with the labyrinth underground where Noir spends a rather hazy amount of time. The plot itself is also rather hazy with plenty of gaps. However one of the characters does rather sum up the point of this technique: “I have found, Mr. Noir, that if you make a story with gaps in it, people just step in to fill them up, they can’t help themselves” Noir himself is not likeable; a concoction of cynicism, ignorance and the inability to detect himself out of a paper bag! He gets hit on the head and half-killed several times. The female characters all seem to want to put him back together and to bed him; and not just the real women. The scene with the mannequins just about sums up Noir: “In the dusty penumbral light, there's an eerie sensuality about them with their angular provocative poses, their hard glossy surfaces, their somnambulant masklike faces, features frozen in glacial eyeless gazes. In short, not unlike most of the women you have known.” The female characters vary between those who look after/mother Noir (Blanche), even to the extent of dressing and feeding him, and 'ladies of the night' (some of them are caregivers as well when he has been beaten up). The little, though not unexpected, twist at the end just confirms that the female characters are the ones with warmth and intelligence. As always with Coover there is a caveat; the fate of Michiko, although only a minor character, sums up the objectification and possession of women with the subsequent abandonment and destruction once past youth and usefulness. I would like to see how he addresses gender over a series of books; the Noir genre was always going to be atypical I suspect. There are a great many nods towards film; the mannequins are straight from a Kubrik film and the mirror shoot out from Orson Welles. The convoluted plot is pure Chandler. The review in the Spectator points out that the effect of Noir is very similar to the Robert Montgomery film “Lady in the Lake”. In the film Marlowe is effectively played by the camera. The effect here is very similar. Summing up is difficult, partly because I think Coover is a writer who cannot be summed up in one book and this is tenuously the last in a trilogy; and he is playing serious and thought provoking games. What I haven’t decided yet is whether Coover in his exploring genres is just giving the impression of the flaws in the order of things and cracks in establishment, or is he putting those impressions into something more concrete in terms of ideas. I can’t assess that from one book. Reviews have tended to be positive and I have seen it described as Dieselpunk (whatever that is) and I can see it will attract fans of Noir fiction. I think I may have started at the wrong end of Coover’s work and as he is someone who has worked in many genres, judging from one alone is impossible. 6 and a half out of 10 Starting The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin

The Bridge of San Luis Rey This is a brief novella which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928 and is often mentioned in lists of the greatest novels. It is set in Peru and is centred on the collapse of a rope bridge which killed five people. A Franciscan witnesses the collapse and sets out to find out why those five people died and not others. Brother Juniper feels that the mind of God must be logical and knowable and there must be a scientific method of working out why those particular people die. He therefore sets out to find out all he can about the five who died and their stories are the bulk of the book. Brother Juniper sets out all his information and is unable to come to any firm conclusions. Unfortunately the Church takes a dim view of his work and he and his book are burnt. Wilder said that his work was a reflection on arguments he had with his father, who was a strict Calvinist. Wilder was asking “Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual’s own will?” It isn’t about why bad things happen to good people there are no conclusions, only ambiguity. I am going to be predictable and quote the same passage everyone else does, because it hits the nail on the head in relation to what Wilder was saying; “But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and then forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” It is indeed all about love. Whatever other philosophical and religious questions are being pondered, this is the point; the real bridge is not physical but in and of the heart. This is why the novel is so often quoted and well remembered. Novelists and writers as varied as David Mitchell, Ayn Rand, John Hershey and Stephen King have referenced it. There have been three films (one starring Kathy Bates, Robert De Niro, Gabriel Byrne, F Murray Abraham and Geraldine Chaplin amongst others). There has even been an opera! Tony Blair quoted it at the memorial service for the 9/11 attacks. It isn’t sentimental or maudlin (well perhaps just a little), but it is about the links between people rather than links between humans and some cosmic schoolmaster reckoning scores and meting out “accidents”. 8 out of 10 Starting Goodbye to all That by Robert Graves

Regeneration by Pat Barker The first volume in Pat Barker’s First World War trilogy; and what an excellent start and a brilliant weaving of fact and fiction. I already knew about Craiglockhart and the hospital for those with “shellshock” and breakdown with the pioneering psychologist Rivers. Siegfried Sassoon’s stay there is well documented in Max Egremont’s excellent biography. He is a central part of this novel and his interactions with Rivers and Wilfred Owen (whom he encouraged to write poetry). Robert Graves also pops up; he tried to shield Sassoon from the results of his declaration. Sassoon was highly decorated (he had a Military cross), but he was disillusioned with the war and sent a declaration to The Times; “I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation. I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed. On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realize.” It is worth quoting in full and Barker starts the book with it. Sassoon’s friend Graves realized that Sassoon was heading for a court martial and applied to the medical board (Sassoon had been wounded) to persuade them that Sassoon was suffering from shellshock. Barker tells Sassoon’s story; his homosexuality is hinted at and his talks with Rivers are well imagined. Owen and Graves are minor characters but add a great deal to the novel. As do the fictional characters who are brilliantly drawn, especially Prior. Barker makes some interesting points about what we now call PTSD. Women had long been pigeonholed as being prone to “hysteria” in its many forms and the men who suffered from the same type of ailment were handled very differently and quietly. The First World War with its horrors and sheer brutality produced men suffering from PTSD and it was the sheer numbers that meant the issue could not be ignored. Barker contrasts the humane and modern approach favoured by Rivers with other more brutal approaches. Barker presents many of the ideas in flux at the time and what is most prescient is the very modernity and relevance to the present conflicts we have been contending with in our generation. There is a myth that the Great War changed everything and people woke up to the nature of war; we know it isn’t so unfortunately. Barker manages to make it quite difficult to disentangle the strands of fact and fiction she sets up; but she does a very good job of conveying the horrors of war in a subtle way; this is not boring history or historical fiction; it is a mirror for humanity to look into and see the obscenity of war. 9 out of 10 Starting The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker

The Tail of the Blue Bird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes A classic whodunit detective novel set in Ghana, with a literary flavour, written by a poet, with a sharp and perceptive use of local dialect. It focuses on Kayo, a forensic scientist trained in Britain and who had worked for a British police force. He has returned to Ghana and is working for a company doing mundane forensic work for a private company and hoping for something better. The girlfriend of a minister finds something that may be human remains in a village in the interior. There are wheels within wheels and Kayo is made an offer he can’t refuse by a corrupt police officer and finds himself investigating the circumstances with orders to get the right result. There are two narrators; Kayo and a hunter from the village, Opanyin. Kayo even finds himself a sidekick, Constable Garba and in many ways this is a traditional whodunit looking at the tensions between science and superstition, tradition and modernity. The setting is away from modern metropolitan life and transplanted into Africa. Kayo is not a traditional detective hero; he lives with his parents, is not alcoholic or a drug addict, respects his elders and treats women with respect and has no disturbing personal habits. Despite his forensic skills the mystery is not easily soluble and Kayo has to listen to traditional storytelling methods of solving the problem. There is mystery and a little magic realism. Traditional labels are twisted as in Parkes’ poetry; Kayo uses non-western wisdom and the poetic story of the hunter to solve the problem (although not perhaps in a traditional sense. In doing so he also exposes the role of domestic violence in traditional relationships; holding a light up to positive and negative in traditional wisdom. There is a good sense of humour running through the whole and the ending suitably blurred. There are glossaries around for some of the dialect words. It’s a well told tale, written with a certain lyrical intensity and you can certainly tell Parkes is a poet. The tension lies between Kayo’s western forensic education and the traditional wisdom of the village and neither have all the answers. 8 out of 10 Starting Noir by Robert Coover

The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein I struggle with Gertrude Stein, as I struggled with this novel. I don’t think this work is typical of Stein as she wrote it very quickly with the idea of being commercial as she needed money; not a problem in itself, but it meant she was also ambivalent about it. It is a novel written as though Stein’s partner Alice Toklas is writing an account of Stein’s life in Paris before and after the First World War. It is also an account of those many famous and not so famous writers and artists who passed through their home: Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, Braque, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, the Sitwells, Appollinaire, Eliot and many others. My issues with Stein relate to her support for Franco in the 1930s. She was also a vocal supporter of Petain, even when he was deporting Jews to Auschwitz. There is a certain political naivety and possibly, being a Jew in Nazi occupied France, some self preservation. There is a point in the novel where Paul Robeson visits Paris. Suffice it to say he received a much warmer welcome from the coalminers of the Welsh Valleys. However Stein was a pioneer in terms of writing about same sex relationships; writing some very early coming out short stories. Stein was also one of the first to use the term gay in her writing. I haven’t read enough Stein to make a judgement about her work and feel I need to read much more. She was an early experimenter with stream of consciousness. Modern critics have tended focus on Stein’s limited breadth; she was politically quite right wing and that is a limiting factor for me. And yet this novel does draw you in. The writing is interesting and managed to offend a fair few of those mentioned (including Hemingway). Jeanette Winterson has argued that this is a development of the type of writing Woolf did in Orlando. This is really an experimental novel. It isn’t clear whether Stein writing as Toklas is expressing the views of Stein or Toklas, or both. Reading it is slightly confusing and you have to think on your feet at times: sometimes it feels as though you are watching Stein as described by Toklas until you remember Stein is writing as Toklas, observing herself. It is also very formally written; Stein is always referred to as Gertrude Stein, never as Gertrude. There is no analysis; it is really a description of domestic manners; dinner parties, buying paintings, moving around France, meeting people etc. I enjoyed the novel. In itself it isn’t ground breaking and I still feel I need a more rounded appreciation of Stein; and I still have some uncertainty about Stein herself. So it’s a bit of a work in progress and I think I will try to look out a decent biography and put The Making of Americans on my tbr list, as well as her short stories. 7 out of 10 Starting Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns This is one of Barbara Coymns’ later novels. It is based on the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm of the same name; you know then that this isn’t going to be an easy read. The plot is very similar until about the last quarter of the book. Comyns reinterprets the ending in a more feminist way; to say more about that would give too much away. Comyns weaves the fairy tale into a normal domestic life in a very subtle way. Bella is estranged from her mother, has a scar on her face courtesy of the idiocy of a previous boyfriend who was very controlling and has a child as a result of a one night stand. The father we never meet, but his ethnic origin comes into play several times in the book at telling moments which act as turning points. From the first paragraph the fairy tale element is very much to the fore: “I noticed a beautiful fair woman standing in the courtyard outside her house like a statue, standing there so still. As I drew nearer I saw that her hands were moving. She was paring an apple out there in the snow and as I passed, looking at her out of the sides of my eyes, the knife slipped, and suddenly there was blood on the snow. She turned and went into her house before I could offer to help” Bella gets to know the woman, Gertrude and her husband Bernard and becomes part of their circle of friends, almost family. The Juniper Tree is in the garden and plays an important role, as do the magpies that nest within. Revolving around the main characters are a whole variety of others creating a tension of nationality, gender and even class all contained in what appears to be a gentle slow-paced story narrated by Bella. Yet there is an almost imperceptible undercurrent which builds. Like the fairy tale it is macabre and disturbing. It is beautifully written and quite unexpectedly good. I’ve had it on my bookshelves for years and I should have read it sooner. It explores the nature of friendship, single parenthood, mental health (and its treatment) and many of the sinister undercurrents of human interactions. It’s all centred around a musty antiques and bric-a-brac shop with lots of cups of tea and walks in the park. Very English, but with a real edge and fairy tale quality. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting The Europeans by Henry James

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin Often touted as a classic of gay literature, and I think quite rightly; this is a heartbreaking analysis of love, attachment and the struggle between what society expects and what is felt. Baldwin treats complex relationships with some warmth and no easy or comfortable answers. There is debate as to whether Baldwin is focussing on bisexuality, but you have to look at the context and the sense that the two main characters are on a journey of self discovery with varying degrees of acceptance. The two main protagonists are David and Giovanni. David is an American currently living in Paris. He has a girlfriend, also an American, who is spending some time in Spain. David goes out for a drink with a gay acquaintance and meets Giovanni who is working in a bar. A passionate affair ensues, focussed on the room where Giovanni lives and where David spends much of his time. This idyllic, but doomed state of affairs continues until David’s girlfriend returns from Spain and decisions have to be made. Some of the novel is told in flashback and so the reader already knows the denouement; the point is the journey; the how. Considering this was written and set in the 1950s, it is a brave book with a clear battle between different value sets and a debate about what love is and isn’t. I wonder whether like Death in Venice we are looking at the Apollo/Dionysius split. Giovanni representing the passionate and unreasoning: David representing Apollo, more reserved, cerebral with the repression of emotion and denial of feeling. David feels like almost a detached observer of his own life. He has a very brief sexual relationship with a girl he meets, knowing it means more to her and knowing that for him it means very little. He detaches himself and is at a distance from his involvement and there is no care or concern for the needs, wants and feeling of the other. David does this with all those he relates to. He cannot accept his own self and this makes him very dangerous and damaging to others. To an extent, all the characters settle for what they don’t seem to be. You could say that love doesn’t conquer all, but I’m not sure this is really about love at all; apart from Giovanni, who is destroyed by betrayal. It is about society’s expectations and about battles with identity and roles. A great novel creates debate, uncertainty and differing opinions and this is a great novel. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

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

South from Granada by Gerald Brenan The First World War had a powerful effect on many of its participants; Gerald Brenan was one of those. Brenan came from an Anglo-Irish military family. He had the usual public school education, hated it and was bullied. He was expected to go into the army, but at 18 elected instead to walk to China with a friend John Hope-Johnstone. They made it to the Balkans, but events intervened. Brenan served in the army for the whole of the war. In 1919 he decided to move to Spain and chose the remote Alpujurras district in southern Spain. He also selected an even more remote village, Yegen. He stayed there on and off for some years and here he recounts his experiences. Brenan was a good observer and documenter; his descriptive powers are excellent. The 1920s in Yegen were in time before the disruption of the civil war. Its very remoteness meant that modern life had not reached it and the lifestyle and culture had remained the same for centuries. Brenan wanted to write and he transported (by mule) several hundred books to his remote hideaway. His plan was to immerse himself in the classics and learn to write properly. He had a small amount of money and a small pension from the army and had to live frugally. His journey was difficult and he had no set destination, stumbling on Yegen by accident. He immerses himself in village life and is accepted by the local inhabitants; a willingness to learn the language and to be hospitable and accepting all helped. The lifestyle was agricultural and the only food imported from outside was fish from the sea, a day’s mule ride away. It has been argued that Brenan’s choice of home and his exposition of its life and culture was an implicit criticism of what he had left behind. Unlike the reserved “my home is my castle” middle class British, everyone knew everyone else’s business and life took place on the street. The only other expat in the area was an embittered Scottish alcoholic, who despite having a Spanish wife, refused to learn the language. Although he was only nine miles away, Brenan only visited once. Brenan was on the edge of the Bloomsbury group. He was a close friend of Ralph Partridge and had an affair with Dora Carrington. Brenan describes various visits to his new domicile. Lytton Strachey, Carrington and Partridge visited and really didn’t enjoy themselves; Strachey in particular missing “mod cons”. The Woolfs were better guests, not minding the asceticism and loving the countryside and also providing intellectual stimulus. Brenan provides vivid portraits of local residents. He describes rather than judges; Brenan’s landlord was a particularly reprehensible character, especially in his attitude to women. There are descriptions of relationships between the sexes which depended heavily on long established ritual before and after marriage. Village society depended on the rules being kept and generally they were. There was little local justice and those who crossed boundaries tended to be the local landowners/worthies (twas ever thus). However collectively the community did force some recompenses as with one woman who had been taken advantage of who received her olive oil in larger quantities than anyone else. It is an odd story, but Brenan as he usually does, leaves the reader to make their minds up about the characters described. Brenan also describes in detail the local plants and animals, the topography, archaeology and the perils of travelling. He describes visits to Grenada and travels in the local area. All in all it is an engaging account, written by someone who loved Spain. Brenan wrote a great deal more about his life in Spain and the civil war. He was only allowed back into Spain in 1953 because of his criticism of the Franco Regime. He lived in southern Spain for the rest of his life. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Bonjour Tristesse by Francois Sagan Written when Sagan was still a teenager it is the story of Cecile, a seventeen year old girl who lives with her amoral and dissolute father who has a different woman in tow every two months or so. This year seems to be the year for vapid teenagers; having read A Clockwork Orange and The Catcher in the Rye. Admittedly this was better than the latter and at least here there is some self knowledge and development over the period of the book. There are few players. Cecile is 17, rich, spoilt and supposed to be studying for university over the summer. She is staying for the summer in a villa in the South of France near the beach; there is no studying. Raymond, her father, widowed many years ago has a series of much younger lovers who each last a couple of months or so. Cecile is lacking a mother figure; she is also, it might be argued lacking a father figure as well! Elsa is Raymond’s latest love interest; 29 and red haired with a tendency to sunburn which makes her a figure of ridicule for Cecile. Cyril is an older man with a boat (only 26, but at 17 that is ancient!) who is interested in Cecile; a potential lover. Anne is a sophisticated woman in her early 40s, an acquaintance of Raymond and friend of his late wife, who comes to stay and displaces the young lover. Raymond and she decide to marry and Cecile sees her idyllic lifestyle about to disappear. Anne treats Cecile as a child and expects her to actually do some studying. Cecile resents her and hatches a plan with unforeseen consequences. Most of the characters are immature; adolescent even and the only person who behaves like an adult in the book (Anne) is the centre of resentment. This may be because it was written by a teenager. Cecile appears to be looking for a parent, but the reality of an adult creating boundaries leaves her cold. It’s an easy read but ultimately the troubles of the idle rich are rather boring and predictable and it was difficult to have real sympathy for any of the characters. 6 and a half out of 10 Starting The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns

Thank you Julie; it is much appreciated! Jack Maggs by Peter Carey This is an intelligent reworking of Great Expectations from the point of view of the convict; the eponymous Jack Maggs. Carey has a habit of doing this in his novels. The Unusual life of Tristan Smith relates to Sterne and Oscar and Lucinda is a reworking of Gosse’s Father and Son. Carey populates the novel with fantastical characters and fully immerses himself in Dickensian London with some vivid descriptive passages. Jack Maggs returns from Australia in secret (he has been transported for life); just before he was transported an orphan boy Henry Phipps did him a good turn and Maggs has become his benefactor allowing him the life of a gentleman. In this novel, unlike the original the Pip (or Phipps) character is thoroughly unlikeable. Maggs takes a position as a footman to bide his time and is brought to the attention of a struggling writer Tobias Oates (in actuality Dickens). The plot takes many twists and turns and vividly drawn minor characters come and go with great frequency. Carey is more open than Dickens could be and we have homosexuality, sexual passion, the brutality of the prison system, child prostitution and the abortion trade. There are powerful descriptions of Maggs as a child being taught how to steal and being sent down a chimney for the first time. The Victorian passion for mesmerism and magnetism and there is some wonderful tomfoolery around this. Oates (the Dickens character) doesn’t come out of this very well. He is a trickster journalist with an already complex private life who steals Maggs’s story for his own purposes. There is plenty of melodrama, violence, twists and turns, an unlikely and surprising heroine, lots of secrets (some confessed, some not), grief and loss. The poor and downtrodden and their lives feature heavily as they do in Dickens. Carey is an Australian author and although this is an homage, it is also, I think a counterblast and a spot of revenge done with a good deal of verve and panache. This is an enjoyable reworking that trundles along at a great pace; an enjoyable and not too demanding read. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting Regeneration by Pat Barker

Linda Tressel by Anthony Trollope I keep coming back to Trollope because I increasingly feel he is one of the better Victorian novelists and in my opinion he writes female characters better than any other Victorian male. This was one of his more experimental novels; he published it anonymously and it was much shorter than usual. Generally Trollope takes a chapter to introduce each of the main characters in a leisurely way. Here he does not have the space to do that and as a result some of the characterisation is not as sharp as usual. Trollope described it as a romance; it certainly is not (more of a Shakespearean tragedy). The story is set in Germany (Trollope is never quite as sharp when he sets his novels abroad). Linda Tressel is about 21 and an orphan. She lives in a house (a rather nice house) left to her by her father. She has been brought up by her aunt Madame (he mixes up his madames and frauleins a good deal) Staubach who is very religious in a hard-line Protestant Calvinist kind of way. Also living in the house is Peter Steinmarc, an old friend of her father’s who is in his early 50s and single. These are the major characters. Ludovic Valcarm is a young man who is reputed to be something of a reprobate because of his radical political ideas. There is an almost understanding between Linda and Ludovic; unstated but potential. The deeply religious Madame Staubach sees the possibility of the relationship between Linda and Ludovic and recognises that it would be a deeply sinful match. She realises that Peter Steinmarc (a man who Linda despises)would be a sensible and steady match and would give the house a sensible master. There is pretty much the whole plot; Linda fights against the match but is pulled by duty to her elders and religion. Trollope has a genius for description of characters at times; he describes Steinmarc as honest “with a sort of second-class honesty”. Trollope is taking a swipe at the middle and upper class system of arranged marriage (as he often does) and at strict fundamentalist religion (another regular target). Linda is an embattled character, so affected by her upbringing taht she is unable to overcome her scruples and tell everyone else where to go; it is after all her house! What Trollope also manages to do is not to make Madame Staubach totally unsympathetic. The reader is privy to her inner struggle to follow her religion and do the right thing and her innate sympathy with her niece which she feels she cannot show. The men, as often with Trollope are motivated by greed and power or by misplaced ideals (Valcarm may be a radical, but he hasn’t a clue about personal relationships). And so the tragedy is played out. Not Trollope at his best and there are flaws; he is better when giving himself space to develop characters and ideas. However it is an interesting addition and not without merit. 7 out of 10 Starting Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

Efuru by Flora Nwapa Published in 1966, this apparently was the first book written by a Nigerian woman to be published (this is from Wiki so take with a pinch of salt). It is set in the same area and tradition as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The blurb with the book sums it up; “Efuru, beautiful and respected, is loved and deserted by two ordinary undistinguished husbands.” The setting is rural and Efuru is a woman who is independent and competent and trades for herself. The writing style is very similar to Things Fall Apart and if you enjoyed that you would certainly enjoy this. Like Achebe, Nwapa commentates rather than judges, but the messages are clear and this book is about the society of women in the same way Things Fall Apart is about the society of men. In my judgement this novel is every bit as good as Things Fall Apart and yet it is hardly known. This is not because of a difference in quality; they are both great books and in my opinion Efuru is marginally better. Perhaps because it is written by a woman? Surely not? The story opens a window onto customs and traditions going back centuries which are beginning to die out with younger generations and the encroachment of white culture and medicine. There is a not too graphic but very powerful description of genital mutilation. Efuru is a wonderfully strong and vibrant character; apart from her father the men in her life are pretty useless and she concludes she is better off without them. She appears to be unable to produce lots of children and this is a source of sadness for her but she finds a role model in the form of the goddess of the lake who is beautiful, powerful, and independent and without children. This is a great novel; much too neglected and well worth looking out for. 9 out of 10 Starting The Natural Order by Ursula Bentley

The Road Home by Rose Tremain This is the tale of Lev an immigrant from an unnamed Eastern European accession country comes to London to seek his fortune, He is 42, his wife has recently died and he leaves his daughter, Maya with his mother. There is an element of the fairy tale about this and we see London as a foreign and unfamiliar land through Lev’s eyes. Most of the people who are kindest to Lev are also similar to him. Lev works in a variety of restaurants and take aways and for a brief while on the land in East Anglia. He also helps out in a care home for older people, manages to fall in and out of love and finds a friend in a divorced Irishman called Christy. Lev sends money home and develops a dream of returning to his own country to open his own restaurant; if only if he could raise enough money. There you have it; there are some engaging characters, especially Christy and Rudi (Lev’s best friend back home) and it does feel a little like a fairytale. There are a couple of coincidences and plot turns which reinforce this. At times the dialogue doesn’t sit easily and there is one particular moment of violence which strikes a discordant note. The reader spends most of the book in Lev’s head and he is likeable until one act which feels very out of character and is difficult to reconcile with what has gone before. Apart from that one note the characters are flawed and loveable and there is a sense of community amongst the poor and oppressed which is illuminating and uplifting, sad and melancholy at the same time. There were some serious flaws and irritations but I’m a sucker for a fairy tale and it provided a different perspective on my country which was welcome and thought-provoking. 7 out of 10 Starting Bonjour Tristesse by Francois Sagan

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

Moths by Rosalind Ashe Another penguin from my favourite bookshop. This one is an oddity, a ghost story. I must admit I hadn’t heard of Rosalind Ashe; she’s written a few other novels and a couple of books on Literary Houses. This was her first novel, I think, and was praised by Iris Murdoch. The plot does stretch believability. Harris is an Oxford don in his late 30s and a bachelor. He finds and old house on the market; grand and beyond his price range. He spends a good deal of time in its grounds (and in the house) while it is on the market. He meets the potential purchasers, James and Nemo (Latin for no one) Boyce and befriends them, falling in love with Nemo. Things drift along well with good descriptions of the gardens and the grandeur of the house and Harris getting along well with the Boyces’. Nemo becomes obsessed with the house and how it should look and slightly odd things begin to happen; mostly related to a former resident, Sarah Moore, a regency actress. Harris begins to believe Sarah Moore is still around. To cut a ,ong story short; Nemo begins to bump off men having had sexual intercourse with them first (they are the moths). Harris is a potential victims, but survives and realises that Sarah Moore has taken over Nemo (?!?). Instead of doing the obvious and telling the police, he decides his love for Nemo overrides this and he wants to save her/help her etc. Events spiral with a few twists and turns. It’s all a bit mad and strange. I don’t mind a good ghost story; Susan Hill and M R James being among my favourites. Virago have also published an excellent compilation. This is ok, but the notion of a homicidal female bumping off deluded males led by the one thing males are usually led by is a little formulaic and the ending leaves much open. However the late great Dennis Potter was working on a film version of Moths when he died (called Midnight Movie) and I do like much of his work. It’s interesting, but too much focussed on Harris and too little on Nemo for it to work entirely. 6 and a half out of 10 Starting Linda Tressel by Anthony Trollope

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

The world is what it is; the authorised biography of V S Naipaul How do you solve a problem like Naipaul? I’ll stop the Sound of Music references straight away; but this will be a difficult review to write. Naipaul is a Nobel laureate and is certainly one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Notably irascible and difficult to pin down. Accused of a great deal, including racism and imperialism; more British than the British, a fan of Margaret Thatcher. He wrote some great novels and a good deal of reportage from his extensive travelling. He was an acute observer, especially of ordinary people and their thoughts and feelings. His views have often been controversial and he began writing about political Islam long before most others. He also had a complex private life; marrying Pat Hale, a woman he met at Oxford. He also conducted a twenty year affair with an Anglo-Argentine woman, Margaret; never deciding between them and making contradictory promises to both. His relationship with Margaret was sometimes violent and she was seen with bruising round her eyes on a number of occasions. He admitted in a newspaper interview in the 1980s that he had regularly visited prostitutes for many years in the 1950s and 60s. Pat found out by reading the interview. When Pat was dying in the mid 1990s Naipaul travelled to Pakistan where he met Nadira, a journalist. They fell in love. It is recorded that Naipaul felt Pat wasn’t dying quickly enough. A few days before she died he told her about Nadira and that she would be his new companion. Nadira moved into Naipual’s house the day after Pat’s cremation and they married a couple of months later. Margaret, the mistress, found out about the wedding from the papers. How do we know all of the private details? When Naipaul agreed to allow Patrick French to write his biography he gave him access to absolutely everything, with no restrictions; including Pat’s diaries which detailed her feelings of inadequacy and Naipaul’s treatment of her. All of the skeletons in the cupboard were to be open to view. That is the contrariness of the man, and that is why this biography is so brilliant. The Guardian review sums it up; “Must be the frankest authorised autobiography of anyone alive and in possession of their senses.” Naipaul is a contradiction; he lived in Britain as a struggling writer, experiencing the racism that was commonplace, and in a relationship with a white woman. He arrived in Britain having won a scholarship to Oxford from his native Trinidad. He is a perceptive observer of people and his writing is at times brilliant. Does that excuse his treatment of others? For me, No. But I recognise his sense of being an outsider and not belonging anywhere, his ambivalent relationship with India; changing from quite negative in his early work, to much more positive in later years. Here is not the place to talk about his work; French does that in detail and he is a perceptive analyst. I admired Naipaul’s tenacity and perception, but I wouldn’t like to know him or be in a relationship with him and Pat Hale’s story is so very sad. She deserved better. 9 out of 10 Starting South from Grenada by Gerald Brennan