A Book Blog 2023 by Books do Furnish a Room

[France]

You really don't like Natasha Pulley! I would say she goes further than magical realism into outright fantasy and they aren't historical so much as outright alternative reality.  I love her books though the Bedlam Stacks isn't one of her best, imo. To really appreciate her books you ought to read the first four in the order in which they were published as the same characters pop up in minor or major roles.

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I may try another one France

One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard

“Give us this day our daily bread … bread.
And after saying daily bread, I didn’t go any further with the others, I just started thinking. I remembered Mam telling me before we came to Church that we had no bread to make bread and butter with, and so I asked God for some more daily bread cos the parish money wasn’t coming till Friday.”

 

This has been voted the greatest novel written in Welsh. It was published in 1961 and translated into English in 1995. The setting is the North Wales village of Bethesda, which was a community built around a slate quarry. The narrative voice is that of a young boy at various ages (well, it’s slightly more complicated than that …) and it happens around the time of the First World War, just before, during and just after. The author Caradog Prichard was born in 1904 and spent his childhood in Bethesda, so there is certainly an element of autobiography. One particular similarity is what happens to the child’s mother in the novel. As with Prichard’s own mother, she has mental health issues and ends up in the local asylum. The descriptions are vivid and harrowing. Prichard’s mother spent almost forty years in an asylum. He was a journalist, moving to London. He wrote some poetry and this novel.

It is a very powerful evocation of a working class childhood haunted by the spectre of poverty. There is a good deal of humour in it, but the whole is pretty bleak, but beautifully written. Despite the voice of the narrator being a child the reader is confronted with suicide, shellshock, indecent exposure, domestic violence, child abuse, alcoholism, prostitution, mental health issues, epilepsy, drug use, war, TB and much more. That makes the whole sound pretty grim, but it isn’t.

The village itself and the landscape are almost characters in themselves:

“Jees, the old lake looks good too. It’s strange that they call it Black Lake cos I can see the sky in it. Blue Lake would be a better name for it, cos it looks as though it’s full of blue eyes. Blue eyes laughing at me. Blue eyes laughing at me. Blue eyes laughing”

Religion is also central to the novel: Church and Chapel, along with a fair amount of singing. There is a good deal of Biblical language and a fair amount of Church going (that wasn’t a trigger warning!). It is about a brutal childhood and about three boys: the narrator, and his friends Huw and Moi. There isn’t really a plot, more a series of episodes which move around within the time frame. Some of the episodes are almost hallucinogenic and comparisons have been made with Under Milk Wood, but the differences are greater than the similarities. And there is great power here:

“And then I started crying. Not crying like I used to years ago whenever I fell down and hurt myself; and not crying like I used to at some funerals either; and not crying like when Mam went home and left me in Guto’s bed at Bwlch Farm ages ago. But crying just like being sick. Crying without caring who was looking at me. Crying as though it was the end of the world. Crying and screaming the place down, not caring who was listening. And glad to be crying, the same way some people are glad when they’re singing, and others are glad when they’re laughing. Dew, I’d never cried like that before, and I’ve never cried like that since, either. I’d love to be able to cry like that again, just once more.”

Then, of course there is the ending. It takes a great deal these days to shock or surprise me in a novel, but I really did not see this ending coming. It is an ending which makes the reader reappraise the whole thing. One of the greatest things about the novel is the descriptions about everyday life and death. I’m still processing it, but I would certainly recommend it.

9 and a half out of 10

Starting Black Drop by Leonora Nattrass

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The Animals of Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey

”Lockwood had too many empty rooms. They sat there, hushed and gaping, waiting for my mind to fill them with horrors – spectres and shadows and strange creeping creatures. And sometimes what was already there was frightening enough: empty chairs; the hulk of a hollow wardrobe; a painting that slid off the wall on its own accord and shattered on the floor; the billowing of a curtain in a stray gust of wind; a light bulb that flickered like a message from the beyond. Empty rooms hold the possibility of people lurking inside them – truants, intruders, spirits.”

 

I loved the cover art on this one, but I’m not quite that shallow as to have bought it for that! Another historical novel, I’m reading quite a few of those at the moment. This one is set during the Second World War. The main protagonist Hetty works at the Natural History Museum. A large part of the taxidermy section is moved to the country for safe keeping. It ends up at a large rambling country house called Lockwood Manor and Hetty is sent to look after and manage the collection. Lockwood Manor has a large collection of servants and a few alleged ghosts. The residents also include the owner Major Lockwood and his daughter Lucy. The stage is then set for a sort of queer gothic mystery as odd things happen at the Manor. There are certain similarities to Sarah Waters. The chapters alternate between Hetty and Lucy’s point of view. This is also a first novel. The whole is a slow burn and things do take a while to come to fruition.

There is plenty of “atmosphere”, secrets, nightmares, paranoia, stuffed animals being moved about the place, women in white flowing dresses wandering corridors at night (no tropes there), a cruel lord of the manor, devious servants, walled up rooms and much more. The house itself is also a significant aspect of the book:

 

”The house seemed to encourage wandering, hunting – the long corridor of its first floor, with the wall sconces leading you forward, the tall windows, the neat condition of each room that a dozen servants tended to; the hidden service stairs waiting to be found; the narrow warren of the servants’ floor; and above all the vacuum of life, the absence of people in the rooms that had been so lovingly prepared for them.”

On the whole I found this fairly innocuous, easy to read and mildly entertaining.

6 out of 10

Starting One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

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The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers

‘People just want to believe in something bigger than all this. Something beyond. It takes them away from the mundane details of their tiny lives. You can’t blame them.’

Myers has produced another great novel here to go with The Offing and Cuddy, already two of my favourites of all time. This was is set in the summer of 1989 in rural Wiltshire and centred around crop circles. It was the time of illegal raves and New Age Travellers and the Thatcher era was beginning to wind down with protests about the poll tax.

The two main protagonists, indeed pretty much the only characters, are Redbone and Calvert. Redbone lives in his rickety old van and is what would have been described at the time as a crusted punk. He is something of a musician, having been in a variety of local bands. He comes up with the ideas for the crop circles. Calvert is an SAS veteran, having fought in the Falklands War. He is scarred on the inside and out, lost likely having PTSD. He is generally quite taciturn with occasional moments of volubility. He plans the crop circles and identifies the remote locations. There is a chapter for each of the crop circles they create that summer.

 

“they tell a strange story, create a narrative. More than anything, they are something to believe in during cynical times … Hope is the human currency, and we’re spreading it about.”

 

The crop circles are symbolic and were quite a thing at the time. There were all sorts of esoteric theories about them, many involving aliens. Myers’s theory here was that it was two approaching middle aged blokes in an old van. One to which I heartily subscribe. The men here are outsiders, on the edges of society. The two men plan in detail and try to avoid notice which they mainly do. There are occasional interruptions from fly tippers, the wildlife, a pissed lord of the manor and confused pensioners. The land itself might almost be seen as a character in itself. It is ancient, almost conscious: there is a sense of history of continuity:

 

“A dark crescent spreads like a silent malevolent force across the mottled greys and whites of the sullen moon’s countenance, its surface a curious patina. Redbone and Calvert stop what they are doing and stare upwards until their necks ache, not daring to drag their eyes away from the empyrean display. The blank clock-like face fades from view as the black shutter of the earth’s shadow covers it to create a total lunar eclipse, and for a few seconds it feels as if the darkness will be unending and absolute. Momentarily the land is an undeveloped photograph and time is rendered meaningless, and both Redbone and Calvert are aware that they are part of a long lineage of men and women who have stood in these very fields in rapt astonishment for thousands of years, infatuated and intrigued by the magic of the sky at night, and feeling the smallness of their lives and the preciousness of their planetary home.”

 

This is about much more than just crop circles. It is obviously about the friendship between Redbone and Calvert. They share scraps of their lives and loves (in Redbone’s case) and the way they see society. Calvert has some reflections on his time in the army and his country:

 

“It means that, once, we looked to the horizon, and we wondered what lay beyond, and then set out for it. We colonised and plundered, and then when innocent people had been slaughtered and their resources accrued, we returned with riches. Then we turned inwards to slowly fester and moil in our bitterness for a century or two, fearful that someone would one day do the same to us. Believe me, I know because I’ve been a part of it, but never again. Never again. The sea is a border, a boundary, and living on an island like this makes us think we’re something special. But we’re not. We’re just scared, that’s all. We’re scared of the world. And that breeds arrogance and ignorance, and ignorance signals the death of decency.”

 

Although in some ways this feels like a comic novel it has a strand of melancholy woven into it and the humour is often cynical. Myers does manage to create two very unlikely likeable characters and again manages to say a good deal about the current state of England. Again another favourite from Myers.

9 out of 10

Starting Begars Abbey by V L Valentine

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Black Drop by Leonora Nattrass

“This is the confession of Laurence Jago. Clerk. Gentleman. Reluctant spy.”

Another historical novel. Set in London in 1794. The Black Drop of the title is Laudanum. It is the height of the terror in France and England and France are at war. The main protagonist is Laurence Jago a clerk at the Foreign Office. There is plenty of intrigue and deception and I believe this is the first of a series. Jago is a flawed hero as he is somewhat reliant on of the opiate of the title.

There is a mix of fictional and historical characters. Lord Grenville is the foreign secretary. Others include George Canning, Thomas Hardy (not the novelist, but the radical shoemaker tried for treason), John Jay (an American envoy) and, of course, Pitt the Younger.

One of Jago’s fellow clerks has been murdered and Jago takes it on himself to investigate. This takes him around the back streets of London with a mix of spies for France and the government and the home grown radicals caught up with the Corresponding Societies. There are a few journalists around as well.

Nattrass creates atmosphere well and the tale holds the attention. It was quite fun to reacquaint myself with radical London of the 1790s: it felt like home when I was at university!

6 and a half out of 10

Starting Weird Woods edited by John Miller

[Madeleine]

I have the second book on tbr pile, and I think a 3rd is on the way, looks like it's a trilogy.

[Books do furnish a room]

Thanks Madeleine

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

“People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats.”

Very unconventional and a product of surrealism. Carrington herself was also rather unconventional. I was aware she had spent much of her time in Mexico. I hadn’t realised she escaped there, following a period in an asylum in Madrid and her family’s plan to move her to an asylum in South Africa. The protagonist is 92 and it makes a change to have an older main character with a great deal of life in her. The best summation of the book I am borrowing from the back:

“After coming into possession of a hearing trumpet, 92-year-old Marian Leatherby discovers her son's plans to send her to a nursing home. But this is no ordinary place.... Here there are strange rituals, orgiastic nuns, levitating abbesses, animalistic humans, humanistic animals, a search for the Holy Grail, and a plan to escape to Lapland and knit a tent”

There is much more than this including an apocalypse and a nuclear winter. It is a sort of feminist fable as well. It’s idiosyncratic with a strong sense of the absurd. And yet it is also domestic at the same time. Marian’s description of herself:

“Here I must say that all my senses are by no means impaired by age. My sight is still excellent although I use spectacles for reading, when I read, which I practically never do. True, rheumatics have bent my skeleton somewhat. This does not prevent me taking a walk in clement weather and sweeping my room once a week, on Thursday, a form of exercise which is both useful and edifying. Here I may add that I consider that I am still a useful member of society and I believe still capable of being pleasant and amusing when the occasion seems fit.”

The novel starts rather sedately and goes into apocalypse mode towards the end. Marian’s friend Carmella always adds interest as when she finds out Marian is to go into a care home run by a Christian group:

“‘The Well of Light Brotherhood,’ said Carmella, ‘is obviously something extremely sinister. Not I suppose a company for grinding old ladies into breakfast cereal, but something morally sinister. It sounds terrible. I must think of something to save you from the jaws of the Well of Light.’ This seemed to amuse her for no reason at all and she chuckled although I could see she was quite upset. ‘They will not allow me to take the cats you think?’ ‘No cats,’ said Carmella. ‘Institutions, in fact, are not allowed to like anything. They don’t have time.’ ‘What shall I do?’ I said. ‘It seems a pity to commit suicide when I have lived for ninety-two years and really haven’t understood anything.’ ‘You might escape to Lapland,’ said Carmella.”

Some of the off the cuff remarks are amusing as well:

“At times I had thought of writing poetry myself but getting words to rhyme with each other is difficult, like trying to drive a herd of turkeys and kangaroos down a crowded thoroughfare and keep them neatly together without looking in shop windows.”

Olga Tokarczuk in the Paris Review describes the novel as having open-endedness and wild metaphysics. The Hearing Trumpet defies easy classification, but it goes in distinctly surprising directions which makes it worth reading.

8 out of 10

Starting Mischief Acts by Zoe Gilbert

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Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo

“Words not only mattered but they were power. Words were muti. Words were weapons. Words were magic. Words were church. Words were wealth. Words were life.”

There are going to be inevitable comparisons with Animal Farm and terms like Orwellian are going to be bandied about. It is a satire on the last forty or so years of history in Zimbabwe, here renamed Jidada. All of the characters are animals of varying sorts and varieties: horses, pigs, cats, dogs, donkeys, goats, geese, ducks, peacocks, crocodiles, hens and possibly more. I may have missed a few. It tells the story of a totalitarian regime ruled by “the old horse” and his downfall. This leads to the birth of hope until there is again despair and disillusion. As the song by The Who goes:

“Meet the new boss: same as the old boss”

Social media now plays a role and there is a very perceptive comment on queueing:

“Standing on hind legs, the back leaning against a wall, tail curled or tucked between the legs. Sitting on the pavement. Squatting. Holding on to walls. Sleeping queues. Sleeping pressed together like hot loaves of bread in queues. Sleeping standing with one eye open in queues.”

Bulawayo ties in African folklore into the tale and so you have an interesting juxtaposition of the old and the new. The novel is in very small sections and this made it easy to read and to put down and come back to. The language is almost a performance in itself, consider this description of the initial reactions to the fall of the dictator and the arrival of a new regime:

“The new Dispensation was such a show bird that very soon other parrots learned the strange new song that now seemed to always be in Jidada’s airs. It felt to the birds like another popular fad not to be left out of, and so in no time crows were cawing New Dispensation, owls were hooting New Dispensation, sparrows were chirping New Dispensation, canaries were singing New Dispensation, doves were cooing New Dispensation, hornbills and other birds were calling New Dispensation, and the cicadas were droning New Dispensation, bees were buzzing New Dispensation, crickets and grasshoppers and other insects were chirping New Dispensation so that Jidada’s hedges and trees and air and skies and even the jungles outside Jidada were all New Dispensation New Dispensation New Dispensation, yes, tholukuthi New Dispensation everywhere and New Dispensation all the time.”

Before tying this too closely to Animal Farm, we need to remember that much African folklore tells stories about animals as well.

It’s sometimes difficult to follow and can meander a little; but it is a sharp and well-aimed satire. Like the list of government posts:

“Minister of Order, Minister of the Revolution, Minister of Propaganda, Minister of Things, Minister of Disinformation, Minister of Corruption, Minister of Homophobic Affairs, and Minister of Looting”

The variety of narrative voices works as well and this is certainly worth reading.

8 out of 10

Starting Incomparable World by S I Martin

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Weird Woods edited by John Miller

At the moment the British Library are publishing a series of books collectively titled Tales of the Weird. There are over thirty of them at the moment and they are thematic. Some are collections of stories by one author others have themes like this one. There are a couple of Christmas volumes, a polar one, one on women writers, one based on Churches (inevitably called Holy Ghosts), several on the seas and coastlines, some on science and so on. This one has stories related to the forests of Britain. There are twelve stories from a variety of writers including M R James, Algernon Blackwood, Marjorie Bowen, Edith Nesbit, Walter de la Mare and Mary Webb among others.

As the introduction says:

“Woods play an important and recurring role in horror, fantasy, the gothic and the weird. They are places in which strange things happen, where you often can’t see where you are or what is around you. Supernatural creatures thrive in the thickets. Trees reach into underworlds of earth, myth and magic. Forests are full of ghosts.”

‘’These are the aspects of our experience of nature that cannot be offset; the history of a place cannot be traded off against the history of another place; you can’t erase the history of one location and just put some more history somewhere else. Weird woods are singular places with very specific energies.’’

Inevitably some of the stories are stronger than others. The M R James is one of his lesser known ones. I found the one by Arthur Machen interesting, I’ve not read anything by him before:

 

““Come with me to Wales. I think you would like me place.’’

Charnock accepted; he knew that Blantyre lived in scenes of complete isolation in a remote valley, among the hills haunted by many a mysterious legend, the setting of some of the oldest tales of Europe, and this disturbed him, for he was very sensitive to the influences of the past; yet for Blantyre’s sake he went.

  It was October; the strangest month in the year, Blantyre always said, culminating in the awful vigil of the last day which has some mystic meaning now lost.’’

 

The De la Mare is interesting and may be a reflection on Imperialism. They are not all about the supernatural, but try to unsettle and unnerve. The Webb story has a strong feminist undertone and links the land and what grows in it to passion and history.

An interesting collection overall and good for chilly winter nights.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting the Long. Long Life of Trees by Fiona Stafford

[Hayley]

12 hours ago, Books do furnish a room said:

Weird Woods edited by John Miller

I have this one and I’m really looking forward to it! I’m reading one of the sea-themed ones at the moment (From the Depth) and it is very creepy! 

[Books do furnish a room]

Yes, Hayley I have a few of these ready for the autumn and darker nights.

One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest

 

This was published in 1962 and is set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital. It is a critique of psychiatry which appeared around the same time as Laing, Foucault and Szasz were putting their thoughts on paper about mental health treatments and Goffman was writing Asylums. There is a story that Kesey wrote much of this whilst taking LSD. Kesey had taken drugs like LSD and mescaline as part of Project MKUltra and he also worked as an orderly in a mental health facility.

The plot and the cast list are pretty well known, especially as a result of the 1975 film with Jack Nicholson playing Randle Patrick McMurphy, the loose cannon on the mental health ward, feigning mental illness to avoid prison. It is, of course narrated by Chief Bromden, a half Native-American inmate who is feigning being deaf and dumb.

Kesey has valid points to make about the pointless brutality of the mental health institutions and treatments of the time, but I think they are better made elsewhere. What struck me most was the racism and misogyny of the whole thing. Critic Marcis Falk makes the point well:

 

“The novel/play, never once challenges the completely inhuman sexist structure of society, nor does it make any attempt to overthrow sexist or racist stereotypes. The only blacks in the play are stupid and malicious hospital orderlies. And the only right-on women in the play are mindless 'ladies of the night'. Nurse Ratched is a woman because Ken Kesey hates and fears women.”

 

The problem is that Kesey is trying to present a single male taking on the system and being the only one, alone against the world. Like Alan Ladd in Shane, Gary Cooper in High Noon or Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. McMurphy has all the quips, all the good lines. There is a messianic element to McMurphy and Kesey drops in lots of references to Christ’s passion for good measure, which I found entirely unconvincing.

The problem is the antagonists are female or black. The white doctors seem to have little power. This particular matriarchy is oppressive to the egos and libidos of the poor oppressed white males and they must therefore buck the system and gain their revenge. There is no nuance, no exploration of the roles of the orderlies or the nurse.

Very overrated.

3 out of 10

Starting Stalingrad by Vassily Grossman

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Begars Abbey by V L Valentine

Another heavy slice of gothic with a slight variation. It is set in the 1950s. !954 to be precise. Sam lives in Brooklyn with her mother and is in her 20s. When her mother dies she discovers that her mother has kept secrets. She has a family in Britain, well a grandmother living in a crumbling old ruin of a country house built on the site of a medieval convent. Sam treks over to Yorkshire: it’s close to York and there meets mystery and intrigue (surprise, surprise!). Her grandmother has had a series of strokes and is entirely dependent on others. There are a small number of servants, some of whom are decidedly elderly. There are also a couple of brothers (solicitors) who sort of manage affairs and there are plenty of mysteries. Not least of which is why Sam’s mother told her nothing of all this.

Adding it all up there are secret passages leading to who knows where, creaking corridors, ghosts, apparitions, oubliettes, ghostly whisperings, diaries with more mysteries. It’s all set over the Christmas and New Year period and there is lots of snow and cold.

There’s nothing new here. It’s put together ok with some effective descriptions and it does what it says on the tin. There’s ghosts, gothic and spookiness a rather nasty old aristocrat in the family history. It isn’t memorable and the ending doesn’t really go anywhere.

5 out of 10

Starting The long long life of trees by Fiona Stafford

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Mischief Acts by Zoe Gilbert

This novel weaves together prose, myth, folklore, poetry, history as well as past present and future. Gilbert has focussed on a particular aspect of English folklore Herne the Hunter. The mythology around Herne has lots of strands. It usually focuses on the Great North Wood which was counter-intuitively just South of London. Herne is mentioned in Shakespeare in the Merry Wives of Windsor.  He is variously a ghost of a poacher, the ghost of a keeper, a part resurrected favourite huntsman of Richard II now with fully attached antlers like a stag. Generally Herne is a mischief maker, Lord of Misrule, spirit of the forest and leader of the Great Hunt (going back to Norse mythology). He (not always a he in this novel) is a trickster.  The stories here start in 1392 and move through the ages by year ending in 2073. In each Herne plays a role, usually subversive, using humans as foils and playthings. Herne is male, female and sometimes animal. Herne shape shifts throughout the ages as does Gilbert’s prose and the snatches of poetry, to fit the era.

The novel is in three sections. The first is Enchantment and runs until the 1700s when Herne is powerful, the second is Disenchantment as the woods diminish and Herne’s role changes. The last section is Re-enchantment with three tales set later this century. There are recurring characters to be spotted, including some of the river spirits of the tributaries of the Thames.

Gilbert acknowledges that she had great fun researching this:

“the chapters are interspersed with chants, or songs. Some of these are extant verses, from traditional wassails (‘Anon’ crops up more than once) to a poem by Blake or a lyric by Henry VIII. Mixed in with those recognisable old verses are chants I wrote myself and attributed to fictional authors. To me, reading a list of common names for fungi or mosses that runs into the thousands of terms is an exquisite pleasure: the density, the repetition, the sheer delight of names such as ‘sweet poisonpie’ just floors me. The same happened when I dredged up all the street names in post codes that were once covered by the wood, and isolated those that mentioned forests, trees, or geological features. Such beauty, in simple lists, I wanted to share, but I spent a great deal of time organising them into rhythms and forms, following those of medieval lullabies or carols. I attributed these to authors other than myself as a form of mischief – I wanted the reader to wonder where this odd little thing had come from.”

The novel provides an intersection between myth, folklore, history and humanity and ecology.

All in all this was great fun with some pertinent points being made about progress and our treatment of the planet.

8 and a half out of 10

Starting Misunderstanding in Moscow by Simone De Beauvoir

[willoyd]

On 7/22/2023 at 12:35 PM, Books do furnish a room said:

The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers

Although in some ways this feels like a comic novel it has a strand of melancholy woven into it and the humour is often cynical. Myers does manage to create two very unlikely likeable characters and again manages to say a good deal about the current state of England. Again another favourite from Myers.

9 out of 10

 

 Thanks for this excellent review. I read this back in June, my first Myers read.  Your review very much sums up my experience. Whilst I wouldn't rate it quite as highly, it was a great read, and certainly more than good enough for me to want to read more of his work - I've been strongly recommended Gallow's Pole.  He lives just two valleys down from us (Calderdale vs Wharfedale), and the setting (in the same area) is very familiar! 

[Books do furnish a room]

Thanks Willoyd

Misunderstanding in Moscow by Simone De Beauvoir

“She kept from him certain moods, some regrets, some little worries; doubtless he too had his own little secrets. But, by and large, there was nothing that they did not know about each other.”

 

“It would be fine, he often thought, if the past were a landscape in which one could wander at will, discovering little by little how routes meander and double back.”

 

A rather brief novella from De Beauvoir, set in 1960s Moscow and written in the mid-1960s. It is about a married couple, Nicole and Andre. They have both just retired and are in their early 60s (it is nice to have protagonists about my age!!). They are in Moscow to visit Andre’s daughter Macha who is showing them round. Both are left leaning and possibly based on Sartre and De Beauvoir who were about the same age at the time and were regular visitors to Moscow. Their relationship is a longstanding one and both have had affairs in the past. It’s about the ties that bind people together and pull them apart.

There is a fair amount becoming accustomed to growing older and the adjustments that need to be made:

 

“When you are young, with an illusory eternity in front of you, you jump to the end of the road in one leap; later, you do not have the strength to surpass what have been called the incidental casualties of history, and you consider them to be appallingly high. He had counted on history to justify his life: he was not counting on it any longer.”

 

It is a portrait of a couple who have entrenched habits between them. Sex has disappeared and is no longer there as a way of making up. Both are realising that they are no longer objects of desire to the young. It’s the usual growing old stuff.

De Beauvoir also adds some of the debates taking place on the left at the time in relation to the Soviet Union in the talks between Andre and Macha. The descriptions of Moscow and the way of life are also fascinating:

 

“The railway station, painted in garish green: Muscovite green….Gorky Street. The Peking Hotel: a modest, tiered wedding cake when you compared it with the gigantic, ornate buildings allegedly inspired by the Kremlin, with which the city was bristling. Nicole remembered everything. And as soon as she got out of the car she recognised the smell of Moscow, an even stronger smell of diesel fumes than in 1963, doubtless because there were far more vehicles, especially trucks and van.”

 

The misunderstanding itself is really about a series of little misunderstandings that accumulate and some long standing tensions and niggles, and of course communication is at the centre of it. There are mutual fears with illuminating asides, but it is something minor which sets off a significant disruption. De Beauvoir shows a depth of understanding, but as this is so short there is no space or time to really explore what is going on. De Beauvoir is very good at showing both sides though. Inevitably there’s a bit of existential angst:

 

“She was stricken with anguish: the anguish of existing . . . Alone like a rock in the middle of the desert, but condemned to be aware of her useless presence”

 

It’s an interesting and very brief exploration of relationships and aging, which I appreciated because it’s a while since I read any De Beauvoir.

8 out of 10

Starting The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins

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Incomparable World by S I Martin

This is part of the Black Britain Writing Back series that Bernadine Evaristo put together. The collection is designed to highlight a variety of black British writers and to help reconfigure black British literary history. Martin is a teacher, historian and author. His writings are to address the lack of black British history. As well as his academic writing he also does walking tours entitled “500 years of black London”. This is a novel set in 1780s London (It was written in 1996). It is a little known fact that there was a significant black population in London especially at the time. After the Revolutionary Wars in the 1770s a number of black slaves who fought with the British had to leave the US. Some went to Nova Scotia, a few to Brazil, some to Africa and quite a few to Britain. Martin has imagined the lives of a group of them, based on what is actually known mixed with some story telling. As one reviewer says:

“It’s a fascinating and conflicted take on what it means to be Black in Britain, a racist country that nonetheless lets you make it home.”

The topography of London feels correct as does the slang that is used. Some of the descriptions feel as though they could have happened at any point in London’s history:

“The noise from the crowd didn’t quite drown out the noise from the massive alehouse. Bass-heavy music…rattled the glass and ancient timbers of the Bull Inn. And the waiting throng, though packed solid, somehow moved in time to the music in a weld of hips, elbows and anxious-happy faces”

Martin manages to combine a meditation on race and class with an adventure story, a thriller with a bit of romance. It shouldn’t be good, but it is and is in the tradition of novels like Tom Jones.

Evaristo says about this series:

“Our ambition is to correct historic bias in British publishing and bring a wealth of lost writing back into circulation. While many of us continue to lobby for the publishing industry to become more inclusive and representative of our society, this project looks back to the past in order to resurrect texts that will help reconfigure black British literary history… My aim is to present a body of work that illustrates a variety of preoccupations and genres that offer important and diverse black British perspectives. I am very excited to introduce these books to new readers who will discover their riches.”

This novel is part of that and deserves to be better known.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Independent People by Halldor Laxness

[willoyd]

On 8/20/2023 at 10:48 AM, Books do furnish a room said:

IThis is a novel set in 1780s London (It was written in 1996). It is a little known fact that there was a significant black population in London especially at the time. After the Revolutionary Wars in the 1770s a number of black slaves who fought with the British had to leave the US. Some went to Nova Scotia, a few to Brazil, some to Africa and quite a few to Britain. Martin has imagined the lives of a group of them, based on what is actually known mixed with some story telling. 

 

Ooh. Thanks for pointing this series out - must investigate.   If you haven't read it, I can recommend Black England by Gretchen Gerzina, a history of black people in Georgian England that was recently republished.  Read it earlier this year, and it was fascinating.  Rough Crossings by Simon Schama too, including those post-revolutionary movements to Canada and Africa.

 

On 8/20/2023 at 10:48 AM, Books do furnish a room said:

Starting Independent People by Halldor Laxness

 

 

Looking forward to your review of this - high on my TBR list.

[Books do furnish a room]

Thanks willoyd, I'll watch out for those.

The Long, Long Life of Trees by Fiona Stafford

“The oak branch is my golden bough, offering immediate safe conduct from one world to another. It transports me to a particular day and tree, and then on to other oaks and their places, some of these known personally, others vicariously through things I have been told, or through poems and stories, photographs and paintings. Sometimes it will take me full circle, from heroes to local histories, tales of magic and metamorphosis, panegyrics and protests, fables of planting and felling, and on through forests of wood carvings, masts, musical instruments, and furniture, until I am back in the same room, surrounded by familiar things. They are never quite the same.”

Seventeen chapters, each on a different tree, you might say this was a root and branch analysis of some of the more well-known trees (sorry, I couldn’t resist: not one of mine, I borrowed it). There is a great variety of information here; lots of history, poetry and literature, a bit of life cycle, some myth and folklore, some description of what the wood is used for and some personal reflections. It is also pretty Eurocentric. There are some excellent illustrations, especially the woodcuts.

Many things stand out, one id the sheer age of some species. Yew trees can reach five thousand years, oaks well over a thousand. Olives too, there are thousand year old olive groves in Greece and one olive tree in Portugal is nearly three thousand years old. Yet apples rarely reach a hundred years and usually only thirty. Cypress for melancholy, Yew for death, Rowan for protection from spirits/magic, oak as a national emblem (for about fifteen countries).

There’s lots of information, arranged and illustrated well. The scope is mainly European. The links to poetry, literature and folklore are fascinating and provide a cultural history. There is a lot to be learnt. Yews were planted in Churchyards because they were poisonous and kept the local cattle from eating the grass on holy ground. The Rowan because of its protective powers was made into walking sticks for older people and small sailing boats. Rowan berries were made into necklaces for babies. Elm was used for making lavatory seats. Informative and enjoyable.

8 out of 10 s

Starting Mortal Echoes: Encounters with the end edited by Greg Buzwell

[Books do furnish a room]

Dhalgren by Samuel Delany

“Very few suspect the existence of this city. It is as if not only the media but the laws of perspective themselves have redesigned knowledge and perception to pass it by. Rumor says there is practically no power here. Neither television cameras nor on-the-spot broadcasts function: that such a catastrophe as this should be opaque, and therefore dull, to the electric nation! It is a city of inner discordances and retinal distortions.”

 

This is a tour de force, Very long, experimental (structurally and linguistically) and not science fiction in the Star Wars, Star Trek or Doctor Who sense at all. It is set in a Midwestern US city called Bellona after some sort of disaster. There appear to be two moons and plenty of apparent anarchy. The main character is the kid (or Kid or Kidd, even he doesn’t know). The reader follows kid around Bellona. There appears to be no formal structure to society and as one resident says:

 

 “You know, here… you’re free. No laws, to break or to follow. Do anything you want. Which does funny things to you. Very quickly, surprisingly quickly, you become… exactly who you are.”

 

Kid, as it happens is a poet, a bit of a wanderer: what might be called a flaneur. There is plenty of communal living and gangs of youth. There’s also lots of sex in many combinations, singly and in groups: gay, bi, hetero.

The fabric of reality has pretty much disappeared and so have all the fault lines between people, so pretty much anything goes and reality itself isn’t really knowable:

 

“You meet a new person, you go with him and suddenly you get a whole new city, you go down new streets, you see houses you never saw before, pass places you didn't even know were there. Everything changes.”

 

This is a challenging book and seems to be loved and hated in equal measure. Harlan Ellison said of it:

 

“An unrelenting bore of a literary exercise afflicted with elephantiasis, anemia of ideas, and malnutrition of plot.”

 

But then I’m not a fan of his either! This is indeed complex and full of ideas, often thought provoking. Like Finnegan’s Wake there is an unclosed closing sentence. Delany has said it is a circular text which could be entered at a number of places. It is a world in itself. There are plenty of issues to discuss: sex and race for starters. The writing can be uneven, but it’s a great book.

 

“There is no articulate resonance. The common problem, I suppose, is to have more to say than vocabulary and syntax can bear. That is why I am hunting in these desiccated streets. The smoke hides the sky's variety, stains consciousness, covers the holocaust with something safe and insubstantial. It protects from greater flame. It indicates fire, but obscures the source. This is not a useful city. Very little here approaches any eidolon of the beautiful.”

9 out of 10

Starting Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

[Books do furnish a room]

Grand Union by Zadie Smith

A collection of nineteen short stories. I have read some Zadie Smith before and quite enjoyed On Beauty and White Teeth. However this collection of short stories completely left me cold. There’s stuff about social media and society and the settings vary from London to New York and into Europe. There is no particular theme and I found them very difficult to relate to. There was one exception, Kelso deconstructed. It is about the 1959 murder of Kelso Cochrane a 32 year old black Antiguan man in the Notting Hill area of London. It plays around a bit with the facts but highlights a racist murder that went unsolved (there’s a tradition of that in the UK). The aftermath of the murder led to the setting up of the Notting Hill Carnival.

The stories go nowhere and feel artificially clever. I expect they will soon be on university literature syllabus’s being analysed and studied. I suppose these stories reminded me how much better her novels are. I just didn’t relate to these.

3 out of 10

Starting The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry

[Books do furnish a room]

Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Second in the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. The premise is still the same, PC Peter Grant is a Met police officer and apprentice magician (the premise is of magic, easily accepted but otherwise society as it is). This second episode is set mainly in Soho and revolves around Jazz clubs and the underbelly of Soho. It’s slick and well written. The Potter links are obvious and as Aaronovitch has said himself:

"suppose Harry Potter had gone to a comprehensive school rather than Hogwarts,"

Grant is state educated, from a council estate and is of mixed parentage. This one follows pretty much straight on from the first. As with the first Aaronovitch makes good use of his knowledge of London and the sense of humour continues as well:

“The important thing about Camden Market is that nobody planned it. Before London swallowed it whole, Camden Town was the fork in the road best known for a coaching inn called the Mother Red Cap. It served as a last-chance stop for beer, highway robbery and gonorrhoea before heading north into the wilds of Middlesex.”

Discussing a book about magic found in a victim’s flat:

““Assuming he was a practitioner,” I said.
Nightingale tapped his butter knife on the plastic-wrapped copy of the Principia Artes Magicis. “Nobody carries this book by accident,” he said. “Besides, I recognize the other library mark. It’s from my old school.”
“Hogwarts?” I asked.
“I really wish you wouldn’t call it that,” he said.”

The catchphrase from the cover sums it up, “Magic and murder to a Jazz beat”. There are plenty of obscure Jazz references for those into that sort of thing. Of course London itself is a significant character as in writers like Dickens, Conan Doyle and even Moorcock in The Whispering Swarm and the idea of a secret London persists in them all.

There are plenty of the usual tropes and a certain amount of predictability, but it sent me off to sleep well enough.

7 out of 10

Starting Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

[Madeleine]

This is one of my favourites in the series.

[Books do furnish a room]

I am enjoying the series Madeleine

The Raj: an eyewitness history edited by Roger Hudson

This is a Folio Society collection of eyewitness accounts and descriptions of being in India from 1600 to 1947.

The excerpts are from all levels ordinary soldiers and civilians to those at higher levels including Curzon, various assorted Trevelyan’s, Macaulay, Emily Eden, the Wellesley’s to name a few. The accounts cover a great deal. The obvious battles and skirmishes, food, servants, religions, daily habits, poverty, relations between local notables and the British, the first war of independence (in some gruesome detail), issues between the Crown and the East India Company, wildlife and hunting, leisure pursuits, the weather, politics, crime, cultural issues, marital relationships, amorous relationships and much more.

Imperialism in India had a profound effect on Britain, or on certain parts of it, especially the wealthier South and Midlands. One of the commentators in the collection says everyone in the country knew someone who used to serve in India. I would dispute that. I was brought up in a steel town. I did not know anyone who was in India. I did know people who were ordinary soldiers in the First World War, especially The Somme and heard their stories. However when I was training to be a priest (part of my murky past before I discovered atheism) I was on placement near Birmingham and there I met a rather old colonial civil servant: tiger skins and all. It left a rather bad taste.

This is an interesting collection. Quite a few of those who did contribute didn’t want to be there, a few even thought we shouldn’t be there (not many). There are some interesting quotes along the way. Here is Edmund Burke talking about the East India Company:

“Animated with all the avarice of age and the impetuosity of youth, they roll in one after another: wave after wave; and there is nothing before the eyes of the native but an endless hopeless prospect of new flights of prey and passage.”

This quote is from General Sir Charles Napier in 1842 at the town of Alore, from his tent overlooking the encampment where his army was camped:

“Why is all this? Why am I, a miserable wretch supreme here? At my word all this mass obeys – multitudes superior to me in bodily and mental gifts! A little wretched experience in the art of killing, of disobedience to God, is all the superiority that I, their commander, can boast of! “

There is lots in here over the centuries to illustrate imperialism at work. Of course it is all from one side and I need a corrective of accounts from the victims of imperialism. There’s some horrific stuff in here, especially around 1857.

There is way too little known by those in this country of what colonialism really meant; this certainly goes some way to remedy that, but it only scratches the surface. 

7 out of 10

Starting The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T E Lawrence

[Books do furnish a room]

The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins

““Imogen,” he said with forced patience, “you have plenty of occupations of your own, and you don’t care to do the things that give a great deal of pleasure to me – when I have time to do them. You don’t want to fish or shoot and you can’t drive my car, which would be a help to me sometimes. Am I to understand that you object to my having the companionship of another woman who can do these things?””

 

“Are you sure you know what men fall in love with?” 

 

Another Virago! The title is obviously a reference to one of Aesop’s Fables. It was published in the early 1950s and is set around that time. Elizabeth Jenkins (who died in 2010 at 105) wrote a few novels, this being the best known. She is better known for writing biographies (a couple on Elizabeth I, Jane Austen, the Princes in the Tower and King Arthur amongst others) and for co-founding the Jane Austen society.

This is an emotionally complex novel, claustrophobic and it doesn’t go for the easy and obvious at the end. This is about betrayal: a love triangle if you will. Evelyn is a barrister aged 52. He is married to Imogen who is 37 and conventionally beautiful. They have a son. Gavin who is 12 and the image of his father. One of their neighbours is Blanche Silcox, who is the same age as Evelyn and not conventionally beautiful. When I say neighbour, this is the countryside with large houses, so we are thinking a couple of miles. As Hilary Mantel says in her introduction, marriage is akin to warfare and Evelyn is generally assertive and likes his own way whilst Imogen is generally pliant. There are some well-developed minor characters, who do contribute to the whole.

The premise is simple Evelyn begins to spend more time with Blanche, they begin an affair and eventually move in together. This is the 1950s in rural England and so everything is gradual and conventions have to be noted. It is interesting to work out who is the tortoise and who is the hare: by the end it isn’t entirely obvious. The plot is fairly flimsy in itself, it’s what Jenkins makes of it.

 

“Imogen went into the house. From the end window of her bedroom she looked out on the drive, a yellow gravelled circus surrounded by evergreens. The gate was pushed back against a box hedge, and standing with one hand on it, Evelyn was talking to Blanche Silcox, a neighbour who lived behind the hanger. She was on the way to the post in the village, it seemed, for she held several envelopes in her leather-gauntleted hand. The tweed suit, expensive but of singular cut, increased the breadth of her middle-aged figure. She appeared kind and unassuming, which made it the more strange that her hats should be so very intimidating.”

 

This is a tale of domestic disharmony which isn’t formulaic. The male lead in this really is not likeable, but there is nuance to his character as well. I did enjoy this and Jenkins reminded me of Elizabeth Taylor and her novels.

8 out of 10

Starting The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman

[Books do furnish a room]

Mortal Echoes: Encounters with the end edited by Greg Buzwell

” ‘You’re not really dying, are you?’  asked Amanda.  “I have the doctor’s permission to live till Tuesday,” said Laura. ”

Another short story collection from the British library Tales of the Weird series. These stories are about encounters with death and the end: about being alive and the transitory nature of existence. There is, as the series suggests the weird as well as the supernatural. The series does pick out some of the more obscure writers: but this one includes some very well-known writers indeed. There is Dickens (The Signal Man), Le Fanu, Poe (The Masque of the Red Death), H G Wells, Graham Greene, Daphne Du Maurier (very good twist at the end), Saki, Nathanial Hawthorne, May Sinclair, Marjorie Bowen, Ambrose Bierce amongst others.

There are some interesting ones. The H G Wells looks at the changes in anaesthesia: chloroform and ether and near death experiences. The Dickens is a traditional ghost story. Bierce writes a civil war story about an execution. The May Sinclair story is the one which is probably the most chilling. It imagines what hell might be like and it is linked to ex friends/lovers.

The last tale by Charlie Fish (the one writer still alive) is called Death by Scrabble and it is very funny. There is also a story by Donald Barthelme, which might seem surprising. It is also rather short, very funny and decidedly macabre. Aikman’s Your Tiny Hand is Frozen uses the telephone as the central prop.

This is a good collection of tales.

9 out of 10

Starting The Manningtree Witches by A K Blakemore