Bianca's Book Blog

Flight from the Enchanter (Iris Murdoch)

2012-01-24T12:12:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"A group of people have elected ambiguous and fascinating Mischa Fox to be their god. But his alter ego, Calvin Blick, is inspiring fear, and Rosa Keepe is swept into the battle between sturdy common sense and dangerous enchantment."

--The review--

Having read and enjoyed several Iris Murdoch novels as a romantic eighteen-year-old (even to the point of writing whole assignments about the books), I was surprised to find one in my workplace library that I had not yet come across. The Flight of the Enchanter uses the enigmatic Mischa Fox as its hook, but I was more intrigued by the devil-may-care Annette, whose antics open the novel.

Annette's adventures are enough to amuse as she does things that others would always wish but never do. However, Murdoch then departs from the humorous into the realms of the bizarre, introducing us instead to characters who take themselves far too seriously, chase (with said seriousness) after completely unexpected, unrealistic and at times psychotic sexual relationships, and completely lack Annette's sense of fun.

Humour returns again later when Rosa is trying to convince legions of dotty old ladies to continue funding the leftist leaflet founded by her forebears. Their classic comedy, along with the emotion of dressmaker Nina's story, is enough to restore faith in Murdoch's work - but overall Flight From The Enchanter proved disappointing, and therefore certainly not a good introduction to the author's novels. The characters' fascination with Mischa Fox seemed completely unfounded and failed to draw in the reader. Frankly, the novel's other, stronger characters did not even need him to tie the whole thing together, and the 'enchanter' of the title is more conceivably the safer or more successful lives that the characters have available to them, as opposed to what they would really like. A less serious misdemeanour is the suspension of disbelief required for the plot. My eighteen-year-old self felt betrayed.

Overall entirely forgettable; if you want the 'real' Iris experience, I'd recommend going elsewhere - The Unicorn, The Bell, or The Sea, The Sea are all good places to begin.

Works by Iris Murdoch (click me!)

The Ballad of the Sad Café (Carson McCullers)

2012-01-05T14:35:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"In The Ballad Of The Sad Café, a tale of unrequited love, Miss Amelia, a spirited, unconventional woman, runs a small-town store and, except for a marriage that lasted just ten days, has always lived alone. Then Cousin Lymon appears from nowhere, a little, strutting hunchback who steals Miss Amelia's heart.Together they transform the store into a lively, popular café. But when her rejected husband Marvin Macy returns, the result is a bizarre love triangle that brings with it violence, hatred and betrayal. Six other stories by Carson McCullers also appear in this volume."

--The review--

Having grown up with the Eighties classic songs "Follow You Anywhere" and "Every Day Hurts", by a group called Sad Café, I was mainly intrigued by this short story once I'd learned that the band had taken it's name's inspiration from it. I was even more intrigued to find that the author had kicked off her writing career when she was only nineteen, publishing the short story "Wunderkind" (which is also included in this volume). It is for "The Ballad of the Sad Café", though, for which she is best-known.

At times it is tough to see why, with some characters seeming underdeveloped and Amelia's tolerance and affection for Cousin Lymon apparently incomprehensible or deliberately kept from the reader. However, it is the overriding theme of melancholy which serves to draw the reader in and keep them there, with the sad image of an abandoned town that was once filled with fun and community.

There are also inconsistencies: for a protagonist who is supposed to be mean and miserly in every respect, making money out of every possible avenue, it seems improbable that she would charge "no fees whatsoever" for her medical services.

But the greatest appeal - aside from the persistently haunting atmosphere (even if McCullers is outdone by Henry James or Wilkie Collins in this respect) and unique cast of characters - lies in the sheer beauty of some of the author's insights, which will tug at the heartstrings of any reader who sees themselves as being similarly affected by the experience of unrequited love ("he must house his love within himself as best he can: he must create for himself a whole new inward world - a world intense and strange, complete in itself") or the feeling that life has not turned out as expected ("Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much"). Such extracts can be viewed as epitomising the very purpose of literature: to portray the experiences of others to those who have not experienced them, or to allow others who have experienced them to know that there is someone out there who has been through it too.

The other stories in this collection - The Jockey, Mme Zilensky and the King of Finland, The Sojourner, A Domestic Dilemma, and A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud - are more forgettable and it is not always clear what point McCullers is trying to make. The Sojourner and A Domestic Dilemma are perhaps the most moving; as well as encapsulating McCullers' trademark pensive style, one features a man trapped by his past and the other stars a man trapped by his present. Like The Ballad of the Sad Café, it is strikingly relevant to modern life, proving that the feelings experienced by people are the things that are truly timeless.

Other works by Carson McCullers

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941)

The Member of the Wedding (1946)

The Square Root of Wonderful (1958; play)

Clock Without Hands (1961)

Sweet as a Pickle and Clean as a Pig (1964; poems)

Bookworm News: October/November 2011

2011-11-30T17:14:00.000+01:00

Awards news

The 2011 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. The citation from the committee said that "through his condensed translucent images he gives us fresh access to reality." The eighty-year-old recipient of the $1.5 million award beat off stiff competition, including Haruki Murakami, and has had his work translated into more than 50 languages - so there's no excuse for us all to not seek out his poetry.

The Forward Poetry Prize was also won by John Burnside, who had made the shortlist three times previously. He was awarded the £10,000 prize for his collection Black Cat Bone, which has also been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize alongside work by Carol Ann Duffy and Alice Oswald, to name just a few.

Across the Channel it is a secondary school biology teacher who has won France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, with The French Art of War (L'art français de guerre). Alexis Jenni will not receive a large monetary award as a result of being declared the winner, but will take his place in the hall of fame with previous winners Proust, de Beauvoir, and Houllebecq, and enjoy an almost guaranteed increase in sales and acclaim.

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo won the £30,000 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, which honours a book providing the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues. Smaller readers can enjoy the winners of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize: Cats Ahoy! (Peter Bently/Jim Field) and The Brilliant World of Tom Gates (Liz Pichon). And since young readers often become young writers too, let's mention Lucy Caldwell, who at age 30 has won the £30,000 Dylan Thomas Prize for Young Writers, for her novel The Meeting Point. Professor Peter Stead, founder of the award for best writing in any genre by a writer under 30, praised The Meeting Point as "a beautifully written and mature reflection on identity, loyalty and belief in a complex world."

Author proves beauty is more than skin deep

Author Bethan Stritton is a mum on a mission to counteract what she believes is the damaging effect that the beauty and cosmetics industry is having on women’s self esteem. “The industry is spending billions of pounds to convince us that the only way we can be seen as ‘beautiful’ is to buy their products. As a result people are spending more and more on an impossible dream.” In her new book “Grow your Gorgeousness”, Bethan offers a way back to true beauty by helping women to celebrate themselves as gorgeous just for being who they are. The mum from the Isle of Wight, who lost two friends to eating disorders, uses personal development techniques and empowerment tools to help women of all ages and all body types redefine themselves, and could well prove a breath of fresh air in the airbrushed industry that we are subjected to on a daily basis.

Amazon's latest acquisition
In spite of charges from industry organisations including the Independent Publishers' Guild that such a move would create a monopoly, Amazon's acquisition of UK online retailer The Book Depository has been approved. The Office for Fair Trading decided that competition within Amazon marketplace would continue to be strong after the takeover, and pointed out that the Book Depository only accounted for 2-4% of the online market for physical books.

Pottermore no more?

J.K. Rowling's Pottermore website, which had been planning to emerge from closed beta status in October, now features this message: "Pottermore is currently unavailable. We are making important updates to the site, which may take some time." The Pottermore Insider blog offered an explanation: "Since we launched Pottermore, our one million Beta users have given us lots of amazing feedback, and we've been collecting their thoughts and comments so that we can make Pottermore the best experience it can be before it opens to everyone. After looking closely at all the information that we've gathered, we have decided to further extend the Beta period so we can improve Pottermore before giving more people access. This means the site will not be opening to new users in the immediate future, but please know that we will open registration as soon as we can."

Neil Gaiman meets The Simpsons...

Fox released images and an official synopsis for a new episode of The Simpsons, on which special guest Neil Gaiman joins Homer's book-writing team. Comic Book Resources reported that Gaiman also posted a clip from the show, with "a glimpse of a bookstore display showcasing the author's work, including The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1, and The Absolute Death."

...and Neil Hannon meets Arthur Ransome

Expectations are likely high for Ransome fans as Swallows and Amazons hits the stage. This literary adaptation takes the form of a musical adventure, with The Divine Comedy's lead singer, Neil Hannon, providing the musical and lyrical soundtrack. Directed by Tom Morris and adapted by Helen Edmundson (who adapted Coram Boy), the play is sure to please Hannon and Ransome fans alike, and best of all for younger readers, under 18s are half price on the more expensive seats.

Touchscreen gloves to light Kindle lovers' fire

For those who want to keep warm and still use their iPhones and Kindles, TouchAbility has launched a new range of touchscreen compatible gloves featuring special conductive fibres in all ten fingers. The genuine silver thread that these contain help to allow the electrical impulses from the wearer's fingers to be passed through the gloves, and onto the touch screen. This thread is barely visible, unlike many other types of touchscreen glove that have distinct pads of conductive material or contrasting coloured sections on the tips of one or two fingers.

Available exclusively at the TouchAbility online store for £12.99, the gloves come in 2 colours (grey and charcoal) and 2 sizes (medium and large). Also to go with the Kindle is the Blasted Boxset: five full-length novels by five different authors on a branded USB stick in a presentation pack, combining the convenience and affordability of ebooks with the gratification of a tangible product, for the price of a single hardback.

Dating for literary lovers

LoveArts.com is the new dating site from The Stage that connects singles with a shared interest in the performing, literary or visual arts. The tailored service for arts lovers enables users to search for others via their cultural interests, whether it's photography, reading, or the theatre (to name just a few). Creating a profile, uploading up to 10 photos and receiving 100 potential matches is free of charge and the perfect way for members to start exploring the service. As an exclusive introductory offer, LoveArts.com is giving away 500 free one-month subscriptions. The subscription gives individuals the benefits of all the subscriber-only features including up to 1000 suitable matches and use of a safe, private messaging service. A free one-month subscription can be claimed by visiting http://www.lovearts.com/s/. As someone who met her husband online (albeit not through a dedicated dating site), I'd thoroughly recommend being open-minded about finding love on the internet: physical appearance will one day fade, and it is the meeting of minds and interests that ultimately keeps people together long-term.

Wishing you a happy holiday season with all of your loved ones :)

Lunch Bucket Paradise (Fred Setterberg)

2011-11-20T13:55:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--
"Here are the postwar dreams of a working-class California suburb, and the struggles[...]of those who came of age in that time and place[...] Fred Setterberg evokes that time when cake mixes, washer-drier combos, and a patch of lawn could inspire hope of even better things to come."

--The review--

Fred Setterberg's Lunch Bucket Paradise promises a vibrant picture of burgeoning America in its baby boom years. While this is achieved to a degree by the writer's occasionally eloquent prose and precise descriptions, as well as the way in which he brings his parents to life for the reader ('classic American characters', it's true, to quote some of the accolades on the back of the book), for the most part the novel was little more than a disjointed and dissatisfying read. This was exacerbated by a lack of resolution and the novel being inexplicably chopped into two different parts (one consisted of the main narrative, while another seemed to be made up of a rambling pseudo-political commentary), leading to a feeling of total disconnection from the book's original purpose. A greater sense of streamlining and focus would therefore appear to be required.

In many ways I was reminded while reading of the work of Doc Togden (although Setterberg's work is certainly better formatted as well as being better expressed in places). This is not a compliment; while we all have the story of our lives, it does not mean that all of our stories are worth telling. I was disappointed to find that Setterberg's work consisted mainly of swearing and discussion of sex and violence, which may appeal to ex-rugby players who miss the banter of the locker room, but did not appeal to me. The occasional moments of luminosity in description or character were not enough, for me, to save the novel as a whole.

I had also been hoping for a few more universal aspects of this novel which more of us would be able to relate to. Perhaps American baby-boomers can find things in here that they recognise on a personal level; as a British female born in 1980s England, I couldn't - not even in the loosest of ways. I now have no idea what to do with this review copy that the publisher so kindly sent me; perhaps I'll leave it lying around at work and see if an American baby-boomer picks it up.

Bookish Bits and Bobs: On My Wishlist

2011-11-15T12:29:00.001+01:00

With the rise and rise not only of online bookshops, but of Amazon in particular, it seems like everyone has an Amazon wishlist - but certainly not everyone uses them in the same way. My younger sister, for instance, makes a great effort to keep hers short so that she feels the goal of getting everything on the list remains realistic. My list, though, goes back years, and currently numbers 271 books. Sometimes I'll add a title and then remove it later - perhaps because I've lost interest, or I've managed to read it by borrowing a copy, thus removing the need to own it.

But even though I'm trying to be more minimalist - mainly by getting a Kindle and being a member of a library - the number of books on my Amazon wishlist never seems to shrink. I try to tell myself that I don't need to own something just because I admire it, and yet every time I step inside a physical bookshop and get to feel the covers and smell the new paper, I am reminded what beautiful things books are and fall in love all over again.

Some of the books on my wishlist are mainstays, not joining the fleeting titles that come and go from my list according to my whim. One of these was Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm, which was out of print for years and going for insane prices - but thanks to a reprint by Vintage I was finally able to purchase it last week. May hope never die! So I thought I'd take this chance to take you through my top 10 wishlist mainstays, tell you why they're there, and hopefully inspire you to check them out too.

In no particular order:

1. Dreams: Pathways to Wholeness (Lisa Cornwell) I'll level with you. This lady was one of my favourite teachers when I was 13, but raging teenage hormones led to an inappropriate crush on her which probably only served to embarrass and alienate her from me. As well as being interested in the subject matter of her book, I am also interested now, as an adult, to know her more as an adult and to be able to get an insight into her thought processes.

2. A Desolation of Learning: Is This The Education Our Children Deserve? (Chris Woodhead) Chris Woodhead is not a popular man in the world of education. But while I'm often inclined to support the underdog, this is not the reason why I respect his opinions and tend to agree with what he says. He feels, and I do too, that education in Britain is lamentably not all that it once was and that it is not currently preparing young people adequately for their future. Being really incredibly interested in his take on the matter, this book landed on my wishlist.

3. Lost Laysen (Margaret Mitchell) Reading Gone With The Wind at the age of twelve was one of the biggest experiences not only of my reading life but possibly my whole life - so to find that there was another work by Margaret Mitchell out there was definitely a pleasure. I can't wait to read it - and hope I won't be disappointed after the experience of Gone With The Wind.

4. The Gospel According To The Simpsons (Mark Pinsky) I am, to put it lightly, a HUGE fan of The Simpsons: I own almost every series on DVD and never seem to get tired of watching it. I also already own The Simpsons And Philosophy, which I read during my third year of university and actually used as part of my degree to help me with a presentation about Plato. As well as making Plato fun, the reaction I got to the book was amusing and amazing in equal measure, with most being along the lines of "Is that serious?!" (to which I replied, usually, "Yes...and no..."). It's something fun to dip into that everyone can enjoy, and I'm sure that The Gospel According To The Simpsons will be the same too (not to mention What's Science Ever Done For Us?: What The Simpsons Can Teach Us About Physics, which is also on my wishlist).

5. Clarissa (Samuel Richardson) Apparently you're not a proper English student until you've read this one (which I guess makes the degree in English that I received four and a half years ago void...). I did attempt it, I swear. But I gave up. But that was before I read Proust (I finished In Search Of Lost Time TODAY, people!), so I'm understandably feeling braver/cockier now, and am determined to slay this mythical beast of English literature.

6. Dictionary of Gastronomic Terms (Bernard Luce) My husband and I are both food lovers, but with him being French and me being English, sometimes very specific food terms, such as the names of different types of potato, can leave us foxed as to what the equivalent is in the other language. This book looks like it could solve all kinds of arguments - it's a dictionary of gastronomic words and phrases, converting them between French and English to settle our culinary disagreements once and for all. At nearly £37 for a paperback on Amazon, though, it's not coming cheap...

7. Night (Elie Wiesel) As well as indulging my interest in German history, this novel appeals because it was recommended to me by an ex-student of mine named Steve: an intelligent young man whose opinions I greatly trust and respect. Plus, it's won a few prizes and shizz. Not that I'm shallow or anything. *cough*

8. Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl (Donald Sturrock) The life and works of Roald Dahl have moved me more than possibly any other. He is probably the only writer who has kept me consistently entertained from childhood through to adulthood with such wonderful stories as The BFG and The Landlady. Luckily I'm not the only one in my family to be slightly obsessed with his work: a documentary about Roald Dahl's life a few years ago left my sister and I in tears, and we also both enjoy our occasional visits to the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden. So naturally a biography of the man, even if it contains information we already both know, is of great interest.

9. King of Shadows (Susan Cooper) Drawn to all things Ariel thanks to my research into the character from The Tempest, I was naturally intrigued by Susan Cooper's book about a young boy player acting in Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. The actor playing Ariel was also quite likely a boy player thanks to the character's androgynous if not female nature and high singing voice, so I'm all over this offering and am hoping it will lead me to discover even more of Susan Cooper's work - this is a new encounter with her books for me.

10. Dorothy Rowe's Guide To Life Looking at Amazon quickly plunged me into despair at the apparent lack of British self-help books on the market - too many of the books in this category are written by schmaltzy Americans whose hearts hurt and want us all to trust in God. I wanted a more stoic and stiff-upper-lip look at self-help, and it would appear that the best-known British self-help tome is in the form of Dorothy Rowe's Guide To Life (although perhaps it's cheating as Dorothy Rowe is technically Australian). I'll be interested to see if reading her work will restore my faith in the self-help market (and stop me from feeling the urge to fly towards certain people at work whilst holding a machete).

Branded Beauty: How Marketing Changed The Way We Look (Mark Tungate)

2011-10-09T15:47:00.001+02:00

--The blurb--

"Beauty is a multi-billion dollar global industry embracing makeup, skincare, hair care, fragrances, cosmetic surgery, and even tattooing and piercing. Over the years it has used flattery, seduction, science and shame to persuade consumers that they have to invest if they want to look their best. In Branded Beauty, Mark Tungate delves into the history and evolution of the beauty business. From luxury boutiques in Paris to tattoo parlours in Brooklyn, he talks to the people who've made skin their trade."

--The review--

This book blog is only really starting to take off, with requests for me to review hard copies of books being few and far between, so I was naturally pleased to receive the request from Kogan Page to review a complimentary copy. As a long-time beauty blogger, I was also pleased to receive it, as I don't tend to be asked to review many books on my site (the last was an American coffee-table style publication, Be...A Woman, back in 2008). I was wary, though, of the "self-published" impression I had of the publisher, as I feel that this industry still has a lot of work to do to build its credibility (although as it turned out I was mistaken - Kogan Page is a small independent publishing house, not a company for those wishing to self-publish). Nonetheless, the author's credentials (work published in The Times, Stratégies, and The Independent, among others), filled me with enough confidence to pick up the book and begin reading.

In spite of its initially specialist-seeming premises and topic, the style in which the book is written is extremely accessible without being patronising, meaning that marketing professionals and beauty aficionados alike should have no difficulty in enjoying it (although the summary of each chapter at its end - Beauty Tips - seems a little too dumbed-down in its style, even for amateurs). The stories from times past, anecdotes from industry insiders and peeks behind the scenes, alongside history and statistics, all contribute to making Branded Beauty an enjoyable and intriguing read. Illustrations would have been nice, but the reality is that the majority of the stories are sufficiently compelling on their own.

The writer's chronological approach makes it clear how the rise and rise of marketing has changed the way we not only look, but also look at ourselves. From this point of view, too, he is at risk of being led astray from his original purpose: from about halfway through the book, it is less and less about analysing how marketing has changed our appearance but more about exposing the controversies behind brands, such as the airbrushing scandals that have plagued certain very large brands, and the fact that not all brands marketing themselves as ethical are as squeaky clean as they may first appear. Nevertheless, even if Tungate does not perhaps 100% achieve his original goal, it makes interesting reading as we try to get past the suspiciously small samples of women on which products have been tested, and get back to the personal histories of what can now all too often seem like faceless global corporations.

But there was one deviation I could not tolerate. Part of Tungate's digression consists of repeatedly taking cheap swipes at the integrity of beauty bloggers. It is suggested and stated strongly throughout that beauty bloggers (along with beauty ediotrs) are traitors, propagandiists, straitjacketed, commercial, and untrustworthy. While I can see how Tungate may have reached this conclusion - I know that I for one have been frustrated at far too many magazines where features on products are as far from honest reviews as possible and are closer to being infomercials - it is far too sweeping to speak of beauty bloggers in the same breath as the magazines that do this. Equally, even though I cannot speak for other beauty bloggers, I wonder how many Tungate himself has actually spoken to: as well as trying to do this myself, I have met many other beauty bloggers who are concerned primarily with transparency, providing honest opinions, and allowing readers to make informed choices - not with glossily providing perfect impressions of a brand or product (regardless of how much the free products we are sent may happen to be worth). Such statements cast gross slurs on community journalists who are just trying to do a good job - and, more to the point, often do it voluntarily alongside more mundane day jobs. In addition, alongside the various assumptions delineated above, there are blatant errors, such as saying that Stri-Vectin SD is a Sephora own-brand product (it isn't).

As mentioned, the book is enthralling for its highly visual sense of history, its amusing and well-chosen anecdotes, and its extremely ambitious and up-to-date scope. Exploring the positives and negatives of the beauty industry, it is bound to be of interest to many. However, it fundamentally fails in its mission thanks to its deviations from its original topic, occasional factual errors, and near-libellous slurs against people like myself, whom the book's publishers so badly want good reviews from in approaching us. Should Tungate wish for this book to be published by a mainstream publisher, I fear that it would lamentably require significant revisions in order to be up to standard (a shame; I was hoping that this book would restore my faith in the credulity of independent/self-publishing houses). For Tungate's intriguing content, I could possibly forgive him and delve into his other books on this subject. For certain aspects of his professional conduct within these pages, though, I may need to think twice.

Other works by Mark Tungate

Luxury World: The Past, Present and Future of Luxury Brands (2009)

Branded Male: Marketing to Men (2008)

Fashion Brands: Branding Style from Armani to Zara (2008)

Adland: A Global History of Advertising (2007)

Media Monoliths: How Great Media Brands Thrive and Survive (2005)

cross-posted to Bianca's Beauty Blog

A Secret Kept (Tatiana de Rosnay)

2011-10-02T18:49:00.001+02:00

--The blurb--

"It all began with a simple seaside vacation, a brother and sister recapturing their childhood. Antoine thought he had the perfect surprise for his sister Mélanie's birthday: a weekend by the sea at Noirmoutier Island, where the pair spent many happy childhood summers playing on the beach. But the island's haunting beauty triggers more than happy memories; it reminds Mélanie of something unexpected and deeply disturbing about their last island summer. When, on the drive home to Paris, she finally summons the courage to reveal what she knows to Antoine, her emotions overcome her and she loses control of the car. Alone, waiting for news of Mélanie, Antoine reflects on his life: his wife has left him, his teenage children are strangers to him, his job bores him, and his father is an ageing tyrant who still poisons every aspect of his life. How did he end up here? And, more importantly, what was the secret that his sister wanted to tell him?"

--The review--

Having enjoyed de Rosnay's debut, Sarah's Key (which sells in France as Elle S'Appelait Sarah), I was pleased to see her second novel, A Secret Kept (sold under the title of Boomerang in France) available in "livre de poche" (books in France are absurdly expensive for about a year before being released in this format). I therefore gave up my €6,95 and settled down to read it. Initially, though, I was disappointed by there being too many sexual references for my liking (do I really want to read about penises during my commute? Really?) - which, moreover, seemed to be there for no real purpose other than to shock - and by the amount of name-dropping of contemporary products (iPods and Facebook both feature - is this really obligatory to sell books these days?). The protagonist's relationship with his sister also seemed strange, with a few too many comments on her physical appearance than it would seem normal for a big brother to make.

In addition, de Rosnay does not adopt the male voice with 100% success. We know it is a female writing, which perhaps clouds our perceptions, but even without knowing this, I'm not sure that anyone would believe completely in Antoine's persona. We get the feeling that de Rosnay is projecting very female concerns and depth of self-analysis onto a male narrator, when in reality, most men are probably not as brooding and are more straightforward. Eventually, the novel becomes less about Antoine's relationship with sister Melanie and more about his relationship with lover Angele, which would be fine were it not for the totally unrealistic manner of them getting together, and were it not for the fact that the development of this romantic relationship is apparently at the expense of the loose ends of Antoine and Melanie's story being tied up.

Do not, either, read this book for a realistic portrayal of life in Paris: it's all plush 16th-arrondissement apartments with concierges. I have not yet found a book set at grassroots level in Paris, rather than just telling Anglophone readers what they think they want to hear about the city (perhaps I should write one?!).

However, there are some redeeming features, even though the story doesn't have the same pace and flawlessness of Sarah's Key (there are episodes in A Secret Kept that don't seem to be there for any real reason). We believe in the characters of Melanie, Clarisse and Blanche, as well as those of Antoine's children and ex-wife (although here, too, we are led up the garden path with ex-wife Astrid's relationship with Serge, which is never fully explored or resolved). The author's strength is in plot, with the accident not being the whole story but a catalyst that takes us into a journey spiralling down into Antoine and Melanie's family history. We also have a brief dalliance with a possible murder mystery as we are forced to question whether the death of Clarisse is really a tragic accident, or something more, and with this as bait, combined with other family happenings and the more intriguing vicissitudes of Antoine's burgeoning relationships with his children, de Rosnay draws us in and keeps us there.

The title under which it is sold in France, though - Boomerang - seems far more appropriate, as the story is not so much about a secret being kept but the unveiling of it. The notion of one's family history coming back to you and being discovered therefore seems better expressed under the French title. In spite of the novel's numerous imperfections, it proved an enjoyable but easy read - even if, like many other reviewers, I could not resist the temptation to compare it to the perfection of Sarah's Key.

Other works by Tatiana de Rosnay

Sarah's Key (Elle s'appelait Sarah, 2007)

The House I Loved (Rose, 2012)

Bookworm News (September 2011)

2011-09-30T10:33:00.117+02:00

Goethe Prize awarded to Syrian poet

The first Arab writer to win Germany's €50,000 (US$72,286) Goethe Prize, Adonis receives a prize awarded every three years on Goethe's birthday to an individual whose work reflects the spirit of the German master. The Guardian reported that the jury called him "the most important Arab poet of our time," and praised his "eminent literary talent, his cosmopolitanism and his contribution to world literature. Just as Goethe popularized Arabic poetry with [his book] West-Eastern Divan, Adonis carried the accomplishments of European modernity into Arabic cultural circles, with great effect," said the jury.

Guardian First Book Award longlist announced

This year's longlist for the £10,000 (US$16,247) Guardian First Book Award--open to all first-time authors writing in or translated into English, across all genres--is "fiction-heavy," with six novels, three works of nonfiction and one poetry collection. The Guardian reported that a "series of regional reading groups, run in partnership with Waterstone's bookshops, will now assist the judging panel with choosing a shortlist." The list of nominated writers includes Booker-shortlisted Stephen Kelman and artist and writer Erin Morgenstern.

Have a lovely time

A family travel writing competition celebrating the beauty of Britain is calling for submissions. The contest at www.havealovelytime.com has a top prize of £200, a second prize of a weekend stay at the Park Inn in historic York and an English Heritage family pass for everyone finishing in the top ten, as well as a copy of Travelling with Children, by Catherine Cooper, one of the competition’s judges. There’s also a mystery prize on offer for the entry voted readers’ favourite after the competition closes on October 1, 2011. Journalist and author Linda Jones who edits Have a lovely time, and is Catherine’s fellow judge, adds: “We want to celebrate all that’s great about family tourism in our stunning land. That might include breathtaking adventures in the Lakes, laughing til your sides ache at a family-friendly Edinburgh festival, savouring the splendour of the West Wales coastline, a Devon cream tea or a knees up at a holiday park…or of course plenty more. “Wherever you love to find quality family time in Britain – we want to hear about it. We’re looking for entries about family holidays, breaks, days out or adventures. “Perhaps your stories could be inspired by firing your imagination at an English Heritage (www.english-heritage.org.uk) property – as we’re delighted they are backing our contest – and there are so many adventures to be had for you and your family. We won’t tell you what we mean by ‘family’ – so long as you feel the title fits, that’s fine by us. Perhaps the break you want to write about is a first one without children when they’ve flown the nest. Maybe you don’t have children but consider a beloved pet part of your family." A first entry is free but if you’d like to try more than once, there’s a fee of £5 per subsequent entry. If you’d like a professional critique of your submission you can pay £12.50 for feedback on your style, structure and content. A proportion of all fees paid will be split between Have a Lovely Time’s chosen charity, CCPA (www.ccpa.org.uk) (formerly NACCPO) and their support for an organisation called the Torbay Holiday Helpers Network (www.thhn.co.uk) which helps offer free holidays, to families who have seriously ill life threatening/limiting, terminally ill and recently bereaved children.

Victorian Prize for Literature

Kim Scott won the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia's richest literary award, for That Deadman Dance, which "explores the relationships between 19th-century British settlers and the indigenous people on the coast of Western Australia," the Wall Street Journal reported. In June, Scott's novel won the Miles Franklin Award, making him the first indigenous writer to earn that prestigious award twice (his novel Benang won in 2000). "It’s reassuring and gratifying and should be confidence boosting," Scott said. "We’ll see. Last time I won a couple of awards for a novel, that was my last novel and that was about 11 years ago, so I wouldn’t want to have to wait that long before I wrote another one." That Deadman Dance is scheduled to be released in the U.S. and Canada in January.

Authors protest against online libraries

A number of authors and authors' groups have filed a lawsuit in New York to prevent universities from creating online libraries with millions of scanned books. The Authors Guild and the Australian Society of Authors, among others, joined eight individual authors in filing a copyright infringement lawsuit in Manhattan, claiming that the scans of seven million copyright-protected books were unauthorised.

Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award

The lists of finalists competing for the £30,000 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award has been announced ahead of a winners' ceremony due to take place on November 3rd. Shortlisted titles cover rethinking of ways to fight global poverty, the rise and fall of the dollar, and the differences between good and bad strategies.

Putting Potter powers and the Oxford name into ordinary interiors

According to the Telegraph, Oxford University has designed a new range of interior furniture and accessories to capitalise on its links with the Harry Potter films. The 400-year-old Bodleian Library lends its name to a bookcase worth nearly £4000 while a Harry Potter-style dining table, named the Oxford Collection, is priced at just over £2500. The furniture, inspired by 800 years of history and archives, intends to hark back to the many scenes set in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, which were filmed in Christ Church College's dining hall. One emeritus professor of the college was horrified, describing the venture as "vulgar, inappropriate, and unauthorized by the university at large," accusing it as "cheapen[ing] its image".

Returning banned books to the shelves

The Mark Twain work "Eve's Diary" has been put back on the shelves of a Massachusetts library more than a hundred years after it was originally banned. Library trustees unanimously voted to return the book to circulation, reversing the board's 1906 decision to ban the 1905 story, which is written from the perspective of the Biblical Eve, and was banned thanks to its nude illustrations of Eve.

Fashion dictionary adds new words to aid Debenhams shoppers

An influx of new terms that have emerged from the fashion press, such as 'jardigan (a cross between a jacket and a cardigan)' and 'tregging (the love child of trousers and leggings)', has forced high street retailer Debenhams to update its fashion dictionary that it gives to shoppers. The retailer's fashion dictionary has already had an influence on more mainstream tomes, with the Oxford English Dictionary taking terms from the book, such as 'jegging' and 'mankini' for its own pages for 2011. New fashion phrases added to Debenhams' reference list include shinos (short/chinos), athleisure (clothes to take you from work to the gym), and glittens (mittens that roll back to reveal gloved fingers). The new copy of the Debenhams Fashion Dictionary is out now.

Four hundred books banned from Algerian international book fair

Algeria's culture minister reports that 400 books were banned from the country's international book fair recently. Banned books supported themes including colonialism, terrorism and tacism, and books attacking the national liberation struggle against France were also not allowed in. More than 500 publishers participated in the festival from around the world, with Lebanon being the guest of honour thanks to its 70 participating publishers.

Roald Dahl Funny Prize

What better way to celebrate Roald Dahl Day than with the announcement of this year's finalists for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize? For the first time, schools will be involved in the judging process. More than 400 pupils from England have been selected to read the shortlisted titles, discuss with their classmates and pick their favorite funny book in the relevant category for their age. Their votes will then be combined with the votes of the adult judging panel to find the two winners. Category winners receive £2,500 (US$3,970), and will be honored November 8 in London. The 2011 shortlisted books are:

Funniest book for children aged six and under

Bedtime for Monsters by Ed Vere
Cats Ahoy! by Peter Bently, illustrated by Jim Field
First Week at Cow School by Andy Cutbill, illustrated by Russell Ayto
Limelight Larry by Leigh Hodgkinson
Marshall Armstrong Is New to Our School by David Mackintosh
A Place to Call Home by Alexis Deacon, illustrated by Viviane Schwarz

Funniest book for children aged seven to fourteen

Animal Tales by Terry Jones, illustrated by Michael Foreman
The Brilliant World of Tom Gates by Liz Pichon
The Get Rich Quick Club by Rose Impey
Letters from an Alien Schoolboy by Ros Asquith
Penny Dreadful is a Magnet for Disaster by Joanna Nadin, illustrated by Jess Mikhail
The Wrong Pong by Steven Butler, illustrated by Chris Fisher

Red Bull Flying Bach: the ultimate clash of cultures

2011-09-18T18:57:00.000+02:00

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Viral video by ebuzzing

Classical music meets breakdance and high culture meets urban art at Red Bull's Flying Bach. Breakdancing champions Flying Steps are not only dancing, but visualising and reviving Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.

They are now touring in five countries on the Red Bull Flying Bach European Tour, utilising twelve extraordinary locations in Bonn, Copenhagen, Zurich, Vienna and Istanbul. Venues include the Burgtheater (Vienna; Nov 5-6 and 12-13), Schiffbau (Oct 21-23), Halic Kongre Merkezi (Nov 25-27) and the former chamber of the German Bundestag.

Bookish Bits & Bobs: Booker Prize Shortlist 2011

2011-09-11T20:23:00.002+02:00

With the release of the Booker longlist in August, it's my little game every year to see if I can guess what will make the cut when it comes to the announcement of the shortlist in September. I'm usually wrong on an epic scale. I was therefore quite pleased to see the degree of my accuracy this year after predicting that the shortlist would contain "one of the two big guns [Barnes or Hollinghurst], or, if not them, [...] Kelman's offering." The shortlist does indeed contain one of the big names (Julian Barnes' A Sense of an Ending is on the list), and Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English made it too. But what of the others who made it onto the shortlist?

I was hoping that with the release of the shortlist more previews would be available on Amazon - with the price of books these days, how are people supposed to be able to have a valid opinion on what they think should win otherwise? By reading the reviews of the broadsheet journalists who get free copies and parroting their opinions? Anyway, Amazon seems to see my point for the shortlisted novels at least, with all except AD Miller's Snowdrops being available for preview. I therefore went in and had a second nosey around the first few pages of each.

Already being sold by Barnes' and Kelman's offerings, I decided to concentrate on the others. Jamrach's Menagerie, by Carol Birch, is poetic and raw in equal measure in describing its gruesome matter. Descriptions are simple, striking and accessible, with short sentences quickening pace and longer ones adding suspense and panic. With my only criticism being that the grim choice of subject would not put it at the top of my reading list, I can still nonetheless see why it could win: it grabs you from the off, with the retrospective narrative voice adding further intrigue, as we immediately want to know how the protagonist has got from the awful 'there' to the apparently calmer 'here'. In many ways it epitomises the purpose of literature: to inform, entertain, share the experiences of others, and give us an alternative prism through which to view the world.

Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers is equally graphic but more defensive. Information is revealed slowly and in a controlled manner, but perhaps a little too slowly: it is more pedestrian than Birch's effort, where we are immediately thrown into the action, and this may cause readers to lose interest more quickly. Nevertheless, we are given a mysterious commanding character called The Commodore, and the narrator's responsibilities and profession are as yet unknown. These are all reasons to continue reading.

Finally I came to Half Blood Blues, which I described in my previous Booker-related post as having a compelling premise but let down by disappointing prose. Upon rereading the preview, it is with a sinking feeling that my initial impressions do not appear to have changed. The use of dialect seems contrived and stilted - but having just embarked on the study of Of Mice and Men for the third year running with my eldest students, it is perhaps only natural that just about anything would be weak in comparison to Steinbeck's sterling command of colloquial English. But this is not to say that Esi Edugyan's work lacks promise - phrases like "twisted beauty" and "clotted shadows" are gems to be treasured.

So who do I believe will win? I'm inclined to go with my initial predictions of Julian Barnes or Stephen Kelman. It seems mean to name another author on top of them when a) AD Miller's work was unavailable for preview, and b) to name another author would effectively mean I was naming 50% of the shortlist as potential winners, which seems rather silly or unfair odds.

I realise the irony in what I have just done, given what I said before: I have just reviewed these Booker-shortlisted works for others' reading pleasure. I encourage you, though, to not take my word for it: go and read the previews as I have just done, or even buy the whole book to read before the winner is announced in October. By all of us getting involved and informed, we can get a truer impression of whether the elected winner is also the people's winner, and not just that of a circle of judges.

Nazi Literature in the Americas (Roberto Bolano)

2011-09-05T17:00:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"The rich seam of Nazi literature has, until now, been sadly under-explored. Here for the first time acclaimed novelist and poet Roberto Bolano provides a long-overdue and meticulously researched survey of the writers who have contributed to pan-American Nazi literature. Carefully documenting the lives, politics and literary works of these writers in exhaustive and compelling detail, this is the definitive account of the writers who have shaped the literary landscape of the Americas."

--The review--

This book's deliberately reactionary and taboo-breaking title is probably what encourages most readers to pick it up, inciting in people a dormant and perhaps slightly morbid interest not only in Nazism but also the desire for insight into the minds of those who not only believed in the principles espoused by Hitler but also wrote about them. The blurb implies that what you are getting is a historical and biographical document, and to a degree this is believable. However, readers' suspicions are aroused when some of the writers' dates of death are significantly in the future (2013+). At first we wonder if this is a typo; then, after several occurrences and a bit of Googling, we realise that the whole thing is nothing more than an immense fiction.

It is the lateness with which we work out the fictional nature of the book that leads us to mistrust the author and causes our attention to wander. We become increasingly disengaged and uninterested, especially given the narcissistic, unsuccessful and depressive personalities of the characters described; when repeated over and over with only a few variations, it all begins to wear rather thin and it lacks wit all the way through. And once we have had time to digest the notion of this being fiction disguised as fact, Nazi Literature In The Americas seems even more pointless; why not present it more transparently as fiction? Why not link the characters more explicitly to Nazism and Nazi literature (in most of the characters' cases, their links to Nazism and Nazi literature are tenuous to non-existent) if that was what you wanted to do? The upshot is that the author's aims become increasingly confused and ill-thought-through. The spew of praise on the inside and outside covers is therefore very difficult to believe in.

As an attempt at satire and commentary it is weak at best. As one Amazon reviewer puts it, "unless you are sufficiently well versed in the literary figures of the Americas then for the most part this book is like being told joke after joke where you don't understand the punchline". Equally, the author is inconsistent (switching out of the third person and into the first for the telling of the final character's story) and frequently leaves stories unfinished in a way that does not fit in well with either fiction, history or biography. I understand that his more stolid works of fiction are better, and at some point in the future I would be open to attempting these. However, there's definitely more than one reason that this book was found with a £3.99 sticker over its £16.99 price tag, so it's going straight onto the "to sell" pile.

other works by Roberto Bolano

By Night in Chile (2003)

Distant Star (2004)

The Savage Detectives (2007)

Amulet (2007)

The Skating Rink (2008)

2666 (2008)

Antwerp (2010)

Monsieur Pain (2010)

The Third Reich (2011)

*NB Many of these works were published posthumously.

The Visible World (Mark Slouka)

2011-09-04T19:30:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"The unnamed narrator of The Visible World, the American-born son of Czech immigrants living in New York, grows up in an atmosphere haunted by fragments of a past he cannot understand. Nowhere is this more true than in regard to his mother, Ivana, a spontaneous, passionate woman moving ever closer to genuine despair. As an adult, the narrator travels to Prague, hoping to learn about a love affair between his then young mother and a member of the Czech Resistance named Tomas, an affair whose untimely end, he senses, lays behind Ivana's unhappiness. Ultimately unable to complete his knowledge of the past, he imagines the two lovers as participants in one of the more dramatic moments of the war: the actual assassination of a high-ranking Nazi official."

--The review--

Having spotted that this was recommended by the Richard and Judy Book Club (praised as their Best Read of the Year), I picked it up with confidence, knowing the Madeley/Finnigan duo to be responsible for the meteoric rise of such literary successes as Notes on a Scandal, Brick Lane, and Starter For Ten. Strangely, I had not heard of this particular recommended read; by the end I knew why.

There are errors right from the start in the respect that the narrator, by telling the story in the first person, ends up giving the reader information that he could not possibly have had access to; telling the story in the third person would have therefore been far more appropriate and far less distracting. It also decreases our trust in the narrator and causes our attention to wander (a problem with another book that I've had recently - but more of that another day). Other elements, which are not necessarily errors but perhaps just personal preferences or observations, can also be criticised: the author is precise in emotion and detail but not in plot or character. Overall, he is just far too vague, to the point of it preventing us from fully understanding the story.

Having read Edmund de Waal's excellent history-biography-memoir hybrid recently, the bar had already been set rather high. It did not help that Slouka had apparently been trying to do something similar to de Waal but failed due to a lack of straightforwardness. The comparisons on the back of the book to Ondaatje and Kundera therefore begin to seem completely over-complimentary, unjustified, and overly generous. This is a shame, as it is a potentially rich and promising story that is ruined by shoddy writing skills.

By the time we get to the climax, we no longer care, due in part to its slowness in coming. There are some moments of eloquence that really resonate - but for the most part, the author skirts around the story and makes us wonder what he did to Richard and Judy to make them dispense such a laudable accolade. It is a little worrying, to say the least, that barely a week after reading it I have forgotten the vast majority of it. We get the feeling, ultimately, that the author used this work as a chance to exorcise his own personal demons relating to his family, with little thought for the readers themselves.

Strangely, in spite of all this, The Visible World seems to have scored highly on Amazon, as have his other novels and non-fiction works. It is stranger still, then, that despite good reviews and the prize bestowed on him by the great morning sofa, the author is still apparently relatively obscure, not even apparently meriting an entry on Wikipedia (and I had seriously never even heard his name before reading The Visible World - let alone those of any of his books). Does this mean that the writer's work is just interminably bad? Or is it that the only thing that's bad is the luck he's had? After all, you can be a good author who is just unrecognised - and God's Fool, his fiction debut, does not seem entirely without its charms. But for its sheer forgettability alone, I think that in general I'll be giving his work a wide berth.

Other works by Mark Slouka

The War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the High-Tech Assault on Reality (1997)

Essentialism (1999)

God's Fool (2008)

Lost Lake (2008)

Real Life (2010)

Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations (2010)

The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

2011-09-01T14:27:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who dreams of travelling the world in search of a worldly treasure as fabulous as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers, and from there into the Egyptian desert, where a fateful encounter with the alchemist awaits him."

--The review--

Disconcertingly, despite having had both an English and a French copy of The Alchemist on my bookshelf for a number of years, I could not actually remember if I had read this story before or not. The reason for this is perhaps as follows: upon (re)reading it, I found that Coelho's poetic strengths as found in Eleven Minutes are not as obvious here. The author's strengths are in setting and detail, and then, to an extent, character, rather than in plot - the whole of The Alchemist just seems a bit thin, and takes on the manner of a children's story, rather than being in the style of a spiritual book for adults. While that's a good thing, in a way, if it makes the story more accessible to a wider range of people, it could have easily done with extra padding and extension.

The Alchemist is ultimately a sweet and sentimental fairytale that lacks concrete relevance to our own lives - in the end, it contains nothing that we can apply directly. More development, as mentioned, is certainly required overall, especially when it comes to explanations of some of Coelho's concepts, such as The Soul of the World. The story does contain some pleasing and thoughtful maxims, but it does perhaps depend on the reader as to whether they are happier with this than with something more directly advisory. This is perhaps exemplified by the fact that after the number of five-star ratings for this book on Amazon (184), the next highest number of ratings is actually in the one-star category (where there are 62).

It is fitting that the protagonist ends up back where he started, and this endows the book with a satisfying and cyclical appeal. Ironically, even though this is Coelho's best-selling work, I did not find it to be the best of his oeuvre; go elsewhere for something more inspiring and less woolly.

Other works by Paulo Coelho

The Manifest of Krig-Ha (1974)

Theatre of Education (1974)

Hell Archives (1982)

Practical Manual of Vampirism (1986)

The Pilgrimage (1987)

Brida (1990)

The Greatest Gift (1991)

The Valkyries (1992)

Maktub (1994)

By the River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept (1994)

The Fifth Mountain (1996)

Love Letters From A Prophet (1997)

The Manual of the Warrior of Light (1997)

Veronika Decides To Die (1998)

Essential Words (1998)

The Devil and Miss Prym (2000)

Fathers, Sons and Grandsons (2001)

Eleven Minutes (2003)

And On The Seventh Day (2004)

The Genie and the Roses (2004)

Journeys (2004)

The Zahir (2005)

Revived Paths (2005)

Like The Flowing River (2006)

The Witch of Portobello (2006)

Life: Selected Quotations (2007)

The Winner Stands Alone (2008)

The Aleph (2011)

The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance (Edmund de Waal)

2011-08-31T14:37:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his great uncle Iggie. Later, when Edmund inherited the ‘netsuke’, they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined…"

--The review--

Moved to read this tome for its mentions of Proust (due to working through the big guy's opus as we speak - last volume now!), I was left upon finishing with a sense and knowledge of so much more. Edmund de Waal's work received an award for biography, but it is not quite a memoir - it is more than this. Having received recommendations of the book from my mother and sister, and gone on to enjoy it myself, proves via our different spectra of abilities and interests that it is readable, accessible, and interesting to very many. The author therefore does what many in the past have failed to do by bringing history and art history to the masses, binding these interests together perfectly with political and personal histories.

Skilled and sensitive, The Hare With Amber Eyes is driven by the sheer dedication of its author, and the depth of research that has gone into it is of clearly phenomenal levels. Images are used carefully to gently enhance enjoyment, rather than bombarding the reader, and the concision of the prose is equally commendable. The choice of the hare in the title is perhaps not necessarily apparent (after all, there are 264 netsuke to choose from, so why pick that one?), but this does not seem to matter. The book is also a travel book, in that it compels you to want to visit the places described - Odessa, Paris, Vienna and other locations are brought to life with vivacity and tenacity.

That the main themes in the book should be the nature of memory, storytelling and oral tradition (not AURAL, I'm afraid, Edmund), art, the making of things, and passing things down make it no surprise that the story's principal message should be that it's how you tell the story that matters - it's no good simply having these objects without knowing where they have come from, and certainly in the hands of a lesser author the story itself may have become devalued by being passed down to us as a readers in an inferior manner. It is perhaps here that the choice of a hare with amber eyes comes into significance - the use of amber as a way to preserve something old within something new exemplifies the purpose of the writer's story, which he states is to encase the story in something new for his children.

The inheritance referred to on the cover of the book is naturally not only the physical inheritance of the netsuke but the legacy of the family history, and it is told in such a way as to be pleasantly cyclical. Further strengths include the honesty, detail and humour with which family members are portrayed, and the accessibility with which various complex issues are approached. Familiarities such as Impressionism and Nazi Europe are made new for us, and de Waal's arguably overambitious scope is approached and fulfilled with deftness and modesty.

De Waal's mastery of all aspects of storytelling is what makes this true tale what it is; a rich fiction, but in the most positive possible way. Determined and moving without being slushy, it is practically perfect in every way - absorbing, intellectual, down-to-earth, humorous, and written with real feeling.

Bookworm News: August 2011

2011-08-30T12:09:00.000+02:00

Exiled Cuban writer Eliseo Alberto dies

The fifty-nine-year-old Cuban writer, who was living in exile in Mexico, died at the end of July a few days after receiving a kidney transplant. Alberto, who was the author of Caracol Beach, worked for many years as a journalist in Cuba before being exiled to Mexico in 1990. He received Mexican citizenship in 2000 and his work typically explored Christian themes, such as forgiveness, punishment and regret. He also wrote poetry, TV and movie scripts and taught at film schools in Mexico, Cuba and the US. In 1998 he received the Spanish literary award Premio Alfaguara de Novela, and his screen credits include the film Guantanamera.

Award news

Plenty of award news to be had this month:

John Grisham won the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, for his novel The Confession
A range of prizes from the PEN American Center were awarded to a number of authors including Susanna Daniel, Danielle Evans, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Aleksandar Hemon, and Robert Perkinson. The full list of winners can be found here.
Tatjani Soli and Hilary Spurling won the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes, which are awarded annually by the University of Edinburgh and are worth £10,000 each. Previous winners include Ian McEwan, AS Byatt and Cormac McCarthy.

The ReLit ring

Raindrops on roses, longlists and shortlists...

The shortlist for the Canadian Indie Press 2011 ReLit Awards was announced this month, celebrating novels, poetry, and short fiction titles published by Canadian independent presses. The list includes works by Kathy Page, Dani Couture, and Brian Joseph Davis. Category winners receive a ReLit ring - a ring with four dials, each one struck with the entire alphabet, for spelling words.

Pan Macmillan South Africa also announced the finalists of this year's Citizen Book Prize; the winner will receive R10,000 and either publication by Pan Macmillan or a place on a creative writing course. The full list can be found here, along with synopses of the nominated novels.

Finalists for the Guardian's Not The Booker Prize have also been named, with the winner being announced in October.

Finally, the Center for Fiction announced its shortlist for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize; the winner will be announced on December 6th and the nominees are Carolyn Cooke, Sarah Braunstein, David Bezmozgis, Bonnie Nadzam, Ismet Prcic, Alexi Zentner, and Ida Hattemer-Higgins.

Fifty over-50s who have made their mark

Recently the website www.high50.com decided to list 50 public figures over the age of 50 who matter most. Author Tony Parsons, who produced such bestsellers as Man And Boy, made the cut, and so did other authors Linton Kwesi Johnson, David Sedaris, and Jeannette Winterson. Well done to them all - everybody certainly needs an inspiration, and these people definitely provide a good place to look to.

Sales soar for poet laureate books

Sales of Philip Levine's books have shot up since he was named as America's new poet laureate. Within days of the announcement that the Pulitzer Prize winner would be taking up the post, several of his books sold out on Amazon, with one rising to 110 in the bestseller list - a rank not often seen by a poetry book. The 83-year-old author is known for his celebration of the working class and has won many other accolades alongside his Pulitzer, including a National Book Award.

Eleven literary friendships we can learn from

Website www.accreditedonlinecolleges.com has recently published an article on 11 Literary Friendships We Can Learn From. Their summation of the friendships of such luminaries as Byron and Shelley, and Larkin and Amis, concisely deliver us every lesson in friendship from "choose your friends carefully" and "forgive and forget" to..."don't do opium". Have fun reflecting on the friendships between these literary lights...no matter how crazy they were!

Boosting Mississippi tourism

The film version of Kathryn Stockett's The Help has only been out in American movie theatres for a couple of weeks, but already increased interest is being seen in visits to its Mississippi setting. Tourism agencies in Greenwood and Jackson have been rolling out tours to appeal to fans of the book and the film - Jackson currently offers two self-guided driving tours, The Help in Bellhaven Neighborhood and The Help in Jackson. Direct economic contribution to the area as a result is estimated to be at $13 million.

New words added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary

With 'tweet' and 'retweet' having recently cut the mustard in the UK, it's interesting to see how our American cousins are expanding their vocabularies. The latest words to be set in stone by lexical giants Merriam-Webster include bromance, cougar and, of course, tweet. Tweeting of which, I'm off to do so now. Happy September!

Natural Flights of the Human Mind (Clare Morrall)

2011-08-29T14:07:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--
"Peter Straker lives in a converted lighthouse on the Devon coast with a fine view of the sea, two cats, and no neighbors. That's just the way he likes it. He speaks to no one except in his dreams, where he converses with some of the seventy-eight people he believes he killed nearly a quarter-century earlier -- though he can't quite remember how it happened. But Straker's carefully preserved solitude is about to be invaded by Imogen Doody, a prickly and unapproachable school caretaker with a painful history herself. Against his will -- and hers -- Straker soon finds himself helping Imogen repair the run-down cottage she's inherited. There are forces gathering, however, as the twenty-fifth anniversary of Straker's crime approaches, and they're intent upon disturbing his precarious peace."

--The review--
Having read Morrall's Booker-shortlisted (OK, so I'm a Booker whore, so sue me) Astonishing Splashes of Colour some years ago, I was both thrilled and surprised to uncover this new find (OK, so 2006 is not exactly 'new'...but meh). Thrilled because I had thoroughly enjoyed her other work and could not wait to see what was next; surprised because I found this one in Poundland! I finally scooped up my new bargain and read it on holiday this year, and thankfully was not disappointed.

Titles of novels such as this one are bound to fill the reader with interest; what 'flights of human mind' could be referred to? As well as the more concrete meaning of 'flight' which increases in significance as the novel progresses, Morrall successfully defines 'flights of human mind' throughout the story via her embodiments of people's assumptions, consciences, and ways of coping with trauma from their past. Morrall adds further layers to the fascination that she creates due to her fine eye for detail and way in which she slowly reveals information, thus making the novel worth rereading.

Parallels between the 'ordinary mortal' Imogen and the criminal Peter Straker means that the author achieves her arguably controversial creative purpose - to show us that even if we don't like to admit it, we are all human, we all live under the same sky, and therefore the reactions that we all have to ordinary events in our own lives can develop in more extreme ways in some of us than in others. The origin, though, is the same. Dramatic scenery rises up to meet these very human characters, and Straker's process of opening up more and more to others is realistically documented. The real, physical journeys that the characters make define their internal, emotional journeys, and Morrall certainly does not disappoint us, following on in quality from her debut.

The challenge of addressing daunting themes of being 'second best' and the idea of somehow proving we exist, or validating and vindicating what we do as people, is risen to indomitably by the author, and as a result, she provides a more concrete, realistic and somehow inspiring message of our souls' progress through this world than the wishy-washy ideas explored in books like The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho), where they are often overdramatised and ill-defined. Morrall writes with greater subtlety and skill and does not seek to make any of her characters into noble guiding lights - even Simon and Maggie, who come closest to fulfilling this role, have the ability to become irritated and do not find it easy to forgive.

The novel cuts between scenes frequently, and while some may find this annoying, others (including myself) may find that it adds momentum and intrigue. Even though there are occasional faults - the novel-writing antics of the narrator, for instance, are necessary as a foreshadowing device but are not really convincing enough to make us believe in them - everything else is excellent, and the reader looks forward to seeing how the whole package is bound together. The notion in the novel that people are not all that they seem (as demonstrated by the characters of Harry, Celia, Peter, Imogen and Stella, to name just a few) means that the overall effect of the story is transformative and revelatory as we discover what really lies beneath the characters' exteriors. This process also proves applicable to our own lives as we are encouraged (in a way that is not intended as overt social commentary) to discard the notion of people being perfect and our need to imitate and please them in every detail - that way madness lies, as the author sinisterly proves. Perfection and happiness, as shown by Peter's and Harry's backgrounds especially, are not at all the same thing.

Morrall's deftness with her pen not only leaves readers moved and thoughtful but also gives her scope for further novels focusing on Harry and Imogen, or on Peter's parents, to point out just the tip of the iceberg of possibility. I don't suppose for one moment that Morrall would ever produce such sequels, as I suspect that she has bigger fish to fry; however, I would certainly read them if she did.

other works by Clare Morrall
Astonishing Splashes of Colour (2003)
The Language of Others (2008)
The Man Who Disappeared (2010)

Bookish Bits & Bobs: Booker Prize Longlist 2011

2011-08-19T18:17:00.000+02:00

OK, I'm aware that this came out now a few weeks ago, but other things got in the way (such as Do Nothing But Read Day, and holidays, and things).

The release of the Man Booker Prize Longlist meant this year, as in previous years, trawling Amazon for previews and seeing what I think. It was encouraging this year to see so many new names on the longlist alongside some familiar ones, but the downside to my approach is that many of these new names will not have previews available online. A shame. In any case, I did still manage to get a feel for a few of the novels gracing this year's list.

Julian Barnes' effort, entitled The Sense of an Ending, seems like it will not disappoint: arresting, innovative, intriguing and thought-provoking prose grabs you by the neck and makes you want to read on. The other returner to the list, Alan Hollinghurst, is, strangely, another one of those authors whose longlisted work is not available for preview. Another disappointment, as I was hoping that The Stranger's Child would help me to dispel my own prejudices towards his work. On the blurb's first appearance, it sounds beautiful, compelling and romantic, but I did sigh inwardly at the use of the phrase "sexual mores" (again, Alan? Really? You might as well throw in a bag of cocaine and a bottle of champagne and be done with it, if The Line Of Beauty was anything to go by). Still, I'd be willing to give the guy another chance.

Then, as mentioned, several longlisted authors remaining shrouded in mystery due to the inability to consult their works without actually buying them (what, you think I'm made of money? You can certainly forget finding such recently issued books at the library). Yvvette Edwards is one of these, having been nominated for her debut, A Cupboard Full Of Coats. The same is the case for AD Miller's Snowdrops. Patrick McGuinness, while not shortlisted for his debut, is shortlisted for The Last Hundred Days; no previews are available for any of his works. Of these three, based on the blurbs alone, it is Edwards' unravelling of the past that appeals most to me (although Amazon shoppers have voted with their wallets, clearing the online retailer of all stocks of The Last Hundred Days).

Grimness, tragedy and a sense of history pervade virtually all of this year's offerings; don't come to this list if you're looking for a laugh (if that's what you want, you'll likely find it in Barnes' tale of schoolboy escapades). Nevertheless, all of the remaining novels have something appealing to offer in spite of their serious overtones. Sebastian Barry's On Canaan's Side provides no look inside, but the writer's previously Booker-shortlisted The Secret Scripture does allow you to take a peek inside his style. Eloquent and flowing, we get a hint of a slightly spooky, rambling and Victorian feel which is not unattractive, although it does carry with it the often-found characteristics of Irish fiction. Jamrach's Menagerie, the nominated novel by Carol Birch, is too similar to Barry's work, but lacks the Irishness - so if you're not into Irish literature but Barry's tome appeals otherwise, Ms Birch's novel could be the one for you.

Esi Edugyan's premise in Half-Blood Blues is appealing, but is let down by the quality of its prose. The remaining nominees are similarly plagued by swings and roundabouts - Patrick Dewitt's The Sisters Brothers has intriguing but ominous circumstances that seem potentially traumatic; Alison Pick's Far To Go has an interesting historical and cultural context but again seems like it may turn out to be tragic; and the offerings by Jane Rogers and DJ Taylor (titled The Testament of Jessie Lamb and Derby Day respectively) seems relatable but grim, carrying themes of teenage invincibility and weighed down by slightly clunky dialogue in Taylor's case (although there are some more lyrical passages).

I mentioned earlier the tricky task of trying to find laughs in this longlist. Another place where some humour is found, aside from Barnes' opus, is in the work of the final nominee, Stephen Kelman. His Pigeon English too, is gruesome-sounding but is endowed with the charming perspective of a child and appears intriguing but amusing. Easily Barnes' and Hollinghurst's nearest competitor in the crowd of literary longlist noobs.

My money therefore, is on one of the two big guns, or, if not them, then on Kelman's offering. And, at the risk of coming over all left-wing on you, it's a relief to find that this latter novelist is not from the Oxbridge novelist factory, but has worked variously as a warehouse operative, a care worker, and an administrator. I'll be interested to see, with the release of the shortlist on September 6th, whether his debut novel has made the cut.

The Booker Prize longlist was announced on July 26th.

The Booker Prize shortlist will be announced on September 6th.

The winner of the prize will be proclaimed on October 18th.

A Week in December (Sebastian Faulks)

2011-08-18T19:08:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"Over seven days we follow the lives of seven major characters: a hedge-fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. The writing on the wall appears in letters ten feet high, but the characters refuse to see it - and party on as though tomorrow is a dream."

--The review--

Having enjoyed Sebastian Faulks' previous historical works, I had believed that there would be no reason why I would not also gain pleasure from reading his next snapshot of (albeit modern) history. It was therefore of great disappointment to me that in this novel, there appears to have been the same decline in quality as I am also starting to see in the works of other authors of a similar generation.

I'm still not sure where this decline has come from. Is it born of a desire to be 'cool'? Or 'edgy'? Or 'political'? Or is it just laziness? By using surroundings and products by name with which readers are already so familiar, you cut out the middle man: the need for description. If the reader already knows what you're talking about, you don't need to describe, and there is a nasty hackneyed side effect too. Even if you try to replace some of these 'brand names' with made-up conflations, as Faulks tries to do (e.g. 'YourPlace' for a certain social networking site), we as readers get the feeling that he is trying too hard, and yet not hard enough at the same time, and that some of the richness that we seek to find in literature is therefore lost. It's hardly the savage social satire that it is deemed to be on the book's back cover. Thankfully (in a way), it seems that Amazon reviewers agree with me: today the average review score (aggregated on the basis of 199 reviews) is a mere 2.5 out of 5, and of those 199 reviews, a whopping 124 give it 3 stars or below. In short, the whole thing is mediocre at best.

There are several reasons for this. Firstly, it is my view that some distance is required before trying to pass comment on the times in which people live. The fullness of items of historical or cultural significance simply cannot be known yet, and in his hastiness, I feel that Faulks gives too many aspects of life in the 2000s undue importance (we will know in ten years or so, I suppose, who is right). Secondly, several characters are only drawn very sketchily, so that we do not empathise nearly enough with them, even though they are supposed to be main characters. This stretches to aspects of their day-to-day existence as well: we do not know anything like enough about Finn's obsession with reality TV show It's Madness, or of Jenni's deep interest in Second Life-style program Parallax, or of their effects on the characters, to understand and care enough about them (and subsequently the plot) ourselves.

Other facets of the story are given far too much emphasis, such as the hedge-fund manager's scheme and the blossoming romance between two of the protagonists. These two latter personages are just so mismatched that even though we are given plenty of detail about the development of the relationship, we still don't believe in it; the trade engaged in by John Veals again, is given too much attention, to the point where readers who have little to no interest in or understanding of finance that they are unlikely to be galvanised into reading on (I just skipped these pages). The hack book-reviewer is more interesting but is not given enough page time (nor is Adam, the lawyer's brother), and the only character developed proportionately is the student led astray by Islamism, and his family.

Is all of this because Faulks has tried to do too much? Certainly the link between all of them and Jenni's Circle Line train is nowhere near explicit enough to give the novel a coherent narrative architecture, leading to something of a patchwork effect. There are some links made between the characters, but they are vague and few, and lack the main link that is suggested in the blurb. The overriding conclusion is therefore that Faulks has failed, in spectacular style, to achieve what he had set out to do. It is a shame, to me, that writers seem to be increasingly thinking that you can't be doing the world of literature any good these days unless you're talking about 9/11, or lambasting bankers, or dropping in a veiled reference to Facebook (or preferably all three). Too many of the storylines are just left to fade out unresolved, compounding the disappointment felt by the reader in the quality of the novel.

It is to be hoped, then, that Faulks will have got back to the drawing board - and seriously - in order to redeem himself for the next release.

Other works by Sebastian Faulks

A Trick Of The Light (1984)

The Girl at the Lion D'Or (1989)

A Fool's Alphabet (1992)

Birdsong (1993)

The Fatal Englishman (1996)

Charlotte Gray (1998)

On Green Dolphin Street (2001)

Human Traces (2005)

Pistache (2006)

Engleby (2007)

Devil May Care (2008)

The Captive/The Fugitive (Marcel Proust)

2011-08-05T21:30:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"In the two novels – The Captive and The Fugitive – contained in this volume, Proust’s narrator is living in his mother’s apartment in Paris with his lover, Albertine. However, this is far from an idyllic state of affairs. His obsessive love for her means that their relationship is shadowed by jealousy and headed for tragedy."

--The review--

These two parts of the In Search Of Lost Time series are where confusion can arise as to whether the series is a six-part one or a seven-part one. Originally written as two separate novels, The Captive and The Fugitive are now so commonly packaged together that the series is more often regarded as a six-part affair than the seven-part opus intended by the author. Nevertheless, editors are not being silly to put these two parts together in one volume: the result is probably the clearest narrative arc that I have seen so far across all other volumes of Proust's epic.

This is not to say that the flaws present in other volumes cannot be seen here. Unsurprisingly, the two parts are still pervaded by overrated social gossip (about which the reader does not care, since those characters being gossipped about have not been developed nearly fully enough to make us care) and Proust's circular and obsessive version of love. It is the superficial whisperings that weaken the end of The Fugitive in particular, and Proust's jealous and jaded feelings towards Albertine that bring us down again in between moments where it does seem, briefly, as if he really does love her in a form that most people would recognise.

But we must remember, too, that ultimately there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts - unrequited love and love that is suffused with paranoia may not be the same as reciprocal love, but they are types of love nonetheless. Lust, then, perhaps inevitably, features strongly again in these two volumes, as various revelations are finally released into the open to spice up proceedings. It is perhaps this feeling of "He/She did what with who?!" that makes these two volumes more readable and exciting - and that because they concern characters that we already know well.

Equally, Proust keeps the reader on their toes - having made us feel at the end of Sodom and Gomorrah that we knew what would happen next (namely, a car crash of a marriage with Albertine), he then turns around and proves us all wrong in shocking literary style that would prove to be classic (the demise of a key character is replicated in such classics as Gone With The Wind, if you would like a clue). Occasionally he also continues to provide lightning bolts of lucidity that are ultimately what the reader continues to read for, in search of something universal with which we can all identify: "one remembers an atmosphere because girls were smiling in it," the narrator says, recalling a party. He also makes curious, thought-provoking statements, such as the notion that "memory has no power of invenion", which backs up his idea that "it is powerless to desire anything else, let alone anything better, than what it has already possessed", but fails, in my mind, to recognise the idea that memory is indeed so capable of invention that it can twist and contort to an alarming degree what has actually happened to us. He harks back to more ancient ideas in his notion that when we recover from grief, it is not really us that is 'the recovered one' but rather another 'self' waiting for us in reserve for when such traumatic things happen to us, to 'fill in' for our original self.

Such fullness combined with such scandal is probably what spurs the reader on to the final volume, in conjunction with the sudden extra narrative momentum that appears in The Captive and The Fugitive. I shall be equally interested to see the filmic version of these two volumes in order to reinforce my own personal Proustian journey in search of lost time.

Other works by Marcel Proust

Swann's Way (volume 1)

Within a Budding Grove (volume 2)

The Guermantes Way (volume 3)

Sodom and Gomorrah (volume 4)

Time Regained (volume 6/7)

Bookworm News: July 2011

2011-07-31T17:46:00.001+02:00

Caine Prize for African Writing

In a celebration of global literature, the £10,000 Caine Prize for African Writing was awarded at the beginning of July to NoViolet Bulawayo's short story "Hitting Budapest". Currently a Truman Capote Fellow at Cornell University, the author normally operates under the name of Elizabeth Tshele; the chair of judges dubbed her story "reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange".

Forward Prize for Poetry shortlist

Another £10,000 prize (it really seems to be a magic number) announced its shortlist in mid-July - the Forward Prize for Poetry. As well as including well-known names such as Michael Longley, it also includes poetry by Rachael Boast and John Whale. Winners will be announced in October on the eve of National Poetry Day.

Movie: Sarah's Key

Ahead of its European and UK release on DVD this year, Sarah's Key has just been released on the silver screen in the US. Based on the novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, it stars Kristin Scott Thomas as the American journalist who makes an awful and historic discovery about the apartment where she is staying with her daughter. Having enjoyed the book, but not yet seen the movie, I can only hope that the latter does the former justice.

Free audiobook

The Guardian, in conjunction with Audible.co.uk, is offering a free ebook with a 30-day free trial of Audible. You can choose any book from their 50,000-strong catalogue, and even if you don't choose to continue the £8-a-month subscription, you get to keep the book. Books can be downloaded in minutes and enjoyed on a range of MP3 players, phones, and Amazon Kindles. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy. Happy listening!

Closure of Borders

Mega book chain Borders is the latest firm to bite the dust mid-recession, unable to compete with supermarkets, budget book stores, and online retailers. Normally I wouldn't be so concerned - it's bound to happen in pressing economic times. However, this leaves the US with only one major book chain - Barnes and Noble. Don't readers deserve a little more choice than that? I'm hoping that American readers will choose to vote with their feet, allowing independent bookshops to flourish.

Free ebooks for A Level students

Supported by over 90% of teachers, a new scheme will be implemented as of September to provide free resources to A Level students. Exam board OCR has teamed up with the Oxford University Press to provide free e-copies of resources, available to all schools teaching A Level curricula. The free eBooks will be available in a wide range of subjects including Maths, English, Languages, History, RE, Physics, Law, PE, Business Studies, ICT, Psychology and many more. Commenting on the scheme, David Igoe, Sixth Form Colleges Forum Chief Executive said: “By working together, OCR and the publishers have shown their understanding of the needs of teachers and students, particularly in challenging economic times.” Further details of the scheme and demos of the eBooks are available at www.ocr.org.uk/ebooks.

Bookish Bits & Bobs: Do Nothing But Read Day

2011-07-30T19:08:00.000+02:00

I'm aware that this is my second Bookish Bits and Bobs column of the month, but please bear with me. I'm on volume 5 of In Search Of Lost Time and everything.

Last year, as you are probably well aware if you've been reading this blog for a while, I discovered NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Although it was tough, it was creatively and personally liberating to be able to magic up a workable draft from nothing in 30 days. All-consuming? Yes. But worth it? Undoubtedly.

This year, it appears I've stumbled across another equally tantalising concept: Do Nothing But Read Day, which was inaugurated in 2009 and whose 2011 event is taking place on August 6th.

At this point, I can imagine quite a few people who, unlike myself, aren't also addicted to the internet, television, cooking etc., looking down their noses at me and saying "But isn't every day Do Nothing But Read Day?"

Well, yes, maybe...if you are like certain colleagues of mine (who shall remain nameless) who deem checking their work email 'too stressful', live off yoghurt and have a country house to bog off to for the two-month summer holiday with no internet, TV or phones.

But for the rest of us, this can be taken as a positive opportunity, whether you're currently struggling through Proust (me) or...actually, I was looking for a suitable counterexample, but then I remembered I generally don't associate with people who don't read much. Not out of choice anyway. But you get my drift: this is open to ALL, and as the link above states, there are only two rules - 1) Read and 2) Have fun! It doesn't matter what you read - we all have to start somewhere, and if it gets you onto better things, so much the better.

My first reaction was "Wow! That sounds so cool! I'd love to do that." Then I started thinking about all of the reasons why I couldn't do it. It's a Saturday. I like to spend time with my husband on a Saturday. We like to go for walks in the park or visit museums on a Saturday. It will also be our last Saturday before my sister comes to stay for a week.

But then I remembered that it's this kind of attitude that has got in my way throughout my life. Walls are there to stop those who can't really be arsed. We all (myself especially) need to stop thinking of reasons why we can't and start thinking of reasons to say yes. There will always be more Saturdays (and besides, I don't expect the founder of Do Nothing But Read Day begrudges a person a break in the form of a walk in the park.)

So that's why next Saturday you'll find me holed up inside, or basking in sunshine outside (we can all hope...) as I continue my voyage through the world of Proust. That's why I just filled out the sign-up form. And that's why I reminded myself of my first reaction upon hearing about this event; we are not put on this earth, presumably, to loaf around watching episode after episode of Deal or No Deal (damn, I love that show). Will Do Nothing But Read Day be all-consuming? Yes. But worth it? Undoubtedly.

Bookish Bits & Bobs: Going Digital (2)

2011-07-12T17:55:00.001+02:00

To begin with, I am just a little bit appalled that I have not written any Bookish Bits & Bobs columns since my post about NaNoWriMo at the end of 2010. Does 'oops' adequately cover the situation?

Anyways, it's back, and reflecting on my 2009 post on 'going digital', I feel that the fast-moving nature of technology means that here in 2011 there is already a great deal more to add. In 2009, of course, we were in pre-iPad territory. Despite my slightly derisory comments about ebook readers in my original post, I probably already wanted one just a little bit then, and it's definitely growing on me now (for reasons that I will return to shortly). However, I have a second problem: I really really really also want an iPad. Or a Galaxy Tab. Or anything that will do what I want it to do (again, see below).

The reason I would like an ebook reader is because I frankly have silly amounts of physical books, and am beginning to realise the limitations of realising my 400-strong Amazon wishlist. Having an ebook reader would enable me to solve this problem, as I could purchase books to my heart's content (staying within the limits of my bank balance, natch) and not worry about where to put them or have the heart-wrenching feeling of selling them. The question is which one: do I get a Kindle, and potentially only be restricted to books from Amazon, or do I go for another brand, such as the Bookeen or an ebook reader by Sony, which may provide greater flexibility?

This is all in spite of the fact that I am well aware of the flaws in epublishing; I am somewhat consoled by the fact that the ebook market is unlikely to completely supersede the real book market until these kinks have been ironed out. In my review of An Odd Boy, by Doc Togden, I point out some of these issues.

My reasons for wanting an iPad are arguably more superficial: let's face it, they are just so damn cool. However, they are also expensive, so I would be equally willing to consider a Galaxy Tab or another type of tablet (even if it would be a bit of a wrench). My main motivation would be to get newspaper and magazine subscriptions on them - again, to combat the question of space. Ebook readers seem more portable, but it only seems natural to want to read newspapers and magazines on a bigger screen, even if it seems absurd to have two separate gadgets for two quite similar purposes.

In either case, before making such a purchase there are concerns. How long before such a gadget becomes dated? How long will it last before breaking? And, indeed, particularly in the case of something like an iPad where an ongoing subscription fee is required, are there not better ways to spend money? (I was doing quite nicely saving up for a holiday in America, Australia or Japan for myself and my husband until the tax man took it all away again.)

Sensible me is saying that it may be best to hang on for a year or two more so that I can do the travelling I want to do, perhaps purchasing these gadgets in future when I am tied to the home with children. But then impulsive me says that these gadgets aren't getting any cheaper, and that frankly, the space situation is pretty desperate now (we literally wedge books and magazines into any available nook and cranny).

In all likelihood, I will end up purchasing an ebook reader in the near future and allowing the iPad to remain a distant dream for now. All of this may seem shallow, but given the increasing digitisation of our world, it may soon move from being a somewhat superficial and unreachable desire to being an integral and affordable part of life - ideally, happily coexisting with the written word on paper.

A Spot of Bother (Mark Haddon)

2011-07-11T22:47:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, listening to a bit of light jazz. Then Katie, his unpredictable daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to Ray. Her family is not pleased - as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has 'strangler's hands'. Katie can't decide if she loves Ray, or loves the way he cares for her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by the way the wedding planning gets in the way of her affair with one of her husband's former colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind."

--The review--

In trying to write about mental illness, authors arguably set themselves up for an insurmountable task. If they have experienced mental illness themselves they can risk seeming mawkish and narcissistic; if they have not, they risk their portrayal seeming trite or unrealistic. Happily, Haddon seems to have struck a good balance: the speed at which George descends into madness, and the reason for it, appears, you could say to be superficial, silly, or unbelievable. However, the descriptions of George's madness once he is there, and the actions borne of this madness, are so apparently realistic and at times even so gruesome that we are compelled to read on, completely taken in, while at the same time, almost wanting to shut our eyes and skip a few pages and be told when the scary part's over.

The beauty of Haddon's second novel, though, does not just stem from his descriptions of George's mental state - he is only part of his family's unravelling and hapless mess. What all of the conflicts in the book come down to is a total lack of communication between all concerned; predictably, it all erupts in comic style. Even though we know it will all end badly, we carry on reading for the pleasure of Haddon's brilliantly-constructed dénouement. It is a complex narrative that the author does well to bring together, and its gripping nature and deftly-sketched characters mean that you can easily read the whole thing straight through in two or three hours. It also all ends in a very modest and British fashion, with the hero and heroine eating sandwiches and sipping tea in front of the telly and with an "all's well that end's well" kind of feel, like soap opera characters coming to the end of yet another crazy adventure.

While 'A Spot of Bother' is not laugh-out-loud funny, this is recognised by critics and, in any case, is never something the book claims to be - although in televisual format it could have the potential to be so due to comic timing and delivery. However, it is darkly and drily humorous, with Haddon's similes in particular being master strokes that yes, even cause genuine laughter out loud on occasion.

The author's debut, the highly feted Curious Incident, set the bar almost unbearably high. Thankfully, in 'A Spot of Bother' Haddon has possibly not only met but also exceeded expectations, but in an equally different and original way. It appears that Haddon chooses to concentrate mainly on children's literature, and while this is a blessing for our young inheritors, it is rather a shame for us. I do rather hope that the five years that have elapsed since the publication of 'A Spot of Bother' could soon herald a new and much-anticipated volume for adults.

Holes (Louis Sachar)

2011-07-05T12:08:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"Stanley Yelnats is sentenced to dig holes at Camp Green Lake detention centre for stealing a pair of trainers. Stanley's quest to discover what he is digging for leads to danger and adventure and to a confrontation with his family's past."

--The review--

The absurd premise of the theft of a pair of trainers - not to mention the mysterious holes that Stanley and his fellow "campers" are forced to dig at what must be the worst camp ever - serve as an intriguing narrative hook before you've even turned back the cover. Expectations are therefore high, and yet Sachar manages to fulfil them through the story of the possibly the unluckiest literary hero in history.

The story's modern anti-hero, Stanley Yelnats, and his various co-campers, paint a slightly 'emo' and sardonic picture that still remains humorous, and which in conjunction with the wacky events that follow, help to turn teenage readers onto the quirkier side of literature while still keeping real aspects of the characters that readers can relate to, in much the same way as Paula Danziger's books do. As well as the zany "what-ifs" that Stanley's situation generates, the narrative is cut through by tales of his family's past, as well as those of notorious outlaws and of the old lake's infamous and mysterious past. Initially these seem disconnected and we wonder where the author is going with this, but it is not long before he ties them up in superb and deft style. All of these narrative threads have the common aim, too, of Stanley eventually being able to better himself, meaning that the novella is not only a journey of justice and family history but Stanley's personal journey of self-esteem and self-confidence.

And by putting it like that, I've just made it sound a lot more American and schmaltzy than it actually is. In fact, it is gutsy and daring, with the characters proving imperfect but nonetheless likeable, rendered even more so by the classic young-adult-fiction trick of pitting the put-upon children against evil and malevolent adults (a turn employed by Roald Dahl, among other eminent children's authors). In triumphing against them, particularly when set against the earlier grim backdrop of the story's setting, we too feel Stanley's new-found sense of self-belief and ambition. We are convinced of his spirit and tenacity to a far greater degree than at the start of the book, when he seems to really be at the bottom of the pile.

As a result, it seems very appropriate for the author to tell us at the end of the book that 'we have to fill in the holes ourselves' and that perhaps not all of what Stanley is digging for is fully related in Holes. It is from this that we also learn about ourselves as we read, and it is perhaps because of this that we feel so heartened to discover that Holes is followed up by two further volumes.

Other works by Louis Sachar

Sideways Stories from Wayside School series (5 titles; 1978-1995)

Marvin Redpost series (8 titles; 1992-2000)

Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake (2003; second in the Holes series)

Small Steps (2006; third in the Holes series)

Johnny's in the Basement (1981)

Someday Angeline (1983)

Sixth Grade Secrets (1987)

There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom (1988)

The Boy Who Lost His Face (1989)

Dogs Don't Tell Jokes (1991)

Monkey Soup (1992)

The Cardturner (2010)

Bookworm News: June 2011

2011-06-30T21:34:00.132+02:00

Summer reading

It's that time of year again - the time when broadsheet newspapers publish long and delightful lists of recommended books to read over the summer, which we can go through and circle with a blotchy biro to our hearts' content. Doesn't have quite the same effect on a screen, does it? Nevertheless, Online Degrees Hub's list of the 20 Best Books About Suburbia is certainly worth a peek (as perhaps evidenced by the fact that my Amazon wishlist now runs to 231 items for books alone. Nuts.). Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler's autobiography, Does The Noise In My Head Bother You?, could also be one to check out for music fans. For next summer, Carole King's autobiography is due out in the first half of 2012.

Awards news

I often feel that in Britain particularly we don't always pay enough attention to foreign literature - perhaps because our own country's output is so good. That's why prizes like the Caine Prize for African Writing are important for allowing us to be exposed to texts from across the world. Sometimes known as the African Booker, the finalists for this year's £10,000 prize for a short story are as follows:

Hitting Budapest (NoViolet Bulawayo)
Butterfly Dreams (Beatrice Lamwaka)
What Molly Knew (Tim Keegan)
In The Spirit of McPhineas Lata (Lauri Kubuitsile)
The Mistress' Dog (David Medalie)

I for one look forward to the announcement of the winner on July 11th :) In a similar vein, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize went to a writer from Peru - Santiago Roncagliolo - for his novel, Red April.

Another £10,000 prize up for grabs each year is the Ondaatje Prize, which was this year awarded to Edmund de Waal for his book The Hare With Amber Eyes. Honoured under the prize criterion of 'evoking the spirit of a place', it was judged the winner by such luminaries as Ali Smith, Don Paterson and Sarah Waters.

John Le Carré

The famous abstainer from literary awards, John Le Carré, did, however, accept the Goethe Medal this year. In sadder news, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, which honours the best work by a writer under 35, has been suspended for 2011 due to lack of funding. Past winners have included Angela Carter and VS Naipaul.

Share the magic of Disney's Winnie The Pooh with your little one - for free

Until September 30th, Fairy Non Bio and Fabric Softener have partnered with Winnie The Pooh to offer three free audiobooks for all the family to enjoy. Purchase any marked pack of Fairy, send off the receipt, choose your book, and have it sent to you. You can find out more here.

Movies of Books

Coming out this year is the film version of Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin - surely a challenging and ambitious project, as anyone who has read the book will know. How to balance its heart and its gruesomeness? How to get across the confusion the reader feels at the book's beginning due to the clever and somewhat bewildering way in which Shriver sets us up? In any case, the film-makers have tried, casting Ezra Miller in the title role and with Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly as support. Out on October 21st this year in the UK.

Furthermore, having recently seen the frankly crappy version of The Great Gatsby on the big screen - the one starring Mia Farrow - I wait with interest for the newest version, starring...LEONARDO DI CAPRIO as Gatsby. Think I might just die of happiness (even though, somewhat confusingly, it's coming out in 3D). Out in June 2012.

For sale...

An extremely rare, unfinished manuscript by Jane Austen will be going on sale at Sotheby's on July 14. Entitled "The Watsons", it is believed to have been written around 1804, and is even more significant due to the fact that no other original Austen manuscripts survive. It is today believed to sell for anything up to nearly half a million dollars...get your wallet out, then...

And speaking of ancient texts...

A dictionary detailing the minutiae of the 'dead' language of Akkadian has finally been completed after ninety years' work. Started in 1921 at the University of Chicago, many researchers dedicated their entire working lives to the project, and still did not live to see its completion. But it is indeed now complete: the 21-volume Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is now available as a window into this world, through every conceivable type of text from recipe to prescription. More can be read about the project here - and, with the full dictionary retailing at around $150, your interest need not stop there; for a work of this magnitude, 150 big ones is surprisingly cheap.

A 500-year-old book also went on sale in Utah for $35,000, making the Assyrian Dictionary's price tag seem like small change in comparison. The partial copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, a history book originally published in Germany in the fifteenth century, is now open to offers; I'll be interested to see if it makes its asking price.

Tweet-tastic

Done with stalking Stephen Fry and having precisely no followers? For your entertainment, AccreditedOnlineColleges.com has compiled a list of 50 Impressive Literary Figures You Should Follow On Twitter. So if you've ever wanted to find out what the Fight Club author eats for breakfast or hang onto Neil Gaiman's every word - now you can. (Or, of course, follow me at @biancasbookblog ...don't know why I'm not on that list :p ).

And considering the increasingly digital future of literature, it's probably worth knowing about Google's deal with the British Library to digitize books, which will allow readers to search a quarter of a million texts that were originally published between 1700 and 1870. The plan is also to digitize 40 million pages of newspapers dating back 350 years - bringing knowledge just that little bit closer to everyone's fingertips.

Fortune's Rocks (Anita Shreve)

2011-06-26T18:09:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--
"In turn-of-the-century New England 15-year-old Olympia Biddeford is spending the summer with her parents at their seasonal house at Fortune's Rocks. She is swiftly despatched to Boston when it's discovered she has embarked on an affair with a friend of her father's, but Olympia is already pregnant."

--The review--

Teaching high school for the past three years has only consolidated my belief that there is no child of this age who is mentally/emotionally capable of adequate parenthood. Children of this age, even the very mature ones, are naturally still in a very difficult emotional stage and state; although I am sure many would try to make the best of teenage parenthood, they still have many things to sort out in their minds and hearts, and so many things to enjoy while young and childless that are difficult or impossible to do once you have a little person in tow.

Anita Shreve is the only person who has ever come close to changing my mind about this through the character of Olympia Biddeford. Whether this is because Olympia is not a realistic character, or whether this is because the author has shown the full maturity of certain young people, the impression we have as readers at least is that Shreve deftly combines the emotional and physical innocence of a flowering young lady with the emotional and intellectual maturity of someone really quite advanced. While there is a certain amount of idealism, though, the author does not keep us under any illusions: this is heading for trouble, and fast.

The antagonist, John Haskell, is guaranteed to polarise audiences: you will either understand him and empathise with him, and be on the side of his and Olympia's romance, or hate and revile him and side with his wife and children. But although the initial decisions of Olympia and John provide the book's kick-start, it is the decisions of others that prove the catalyst and make us want to keep reading, as their futures are repeatedly taken out of their hands.

But there is more to Fortune's Rocks than mere romance and dalliance: the legal aspects of the novel are simultaneously well-researched and accessible, and this legacy is carried, albeit to a lesser degree, by the next generation of romantic novelists, including Jodi Picoult and Sophie Kinsella. But the difference between these novelists and Anita Shreve is not only to be found in the depth of research and character but also in the lack of vacuousness and the beauty of the prose provided by the author. This is not only romantic fiction - this is literary fiction of the highest order, and perhaps something that Shreve's inheritors have not been able to carry the torch for.

Although it takes a long time to reach the story's conclusion, we are not bored for a moment on the journey, and when we do get to the end, we are not only satisfied, but even a little disappointed to be leaving Olympia behind, having followed her for five important years of her life and seen her develop and grow while still remaining the same person. And so it is to readers' delight to find that Fortune's Rocks is only the first in a quartet set at the same beach house (with the following three being, in order, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, and Body Surfing) - and when you have this reaction to knowing that in fact, there is more to come from this dream-like setting, that can only be a good sign.

Other works by Anita Shreve

Past The Island, Drifting (1975)

Eden Close (1989)

Strange Fits of Passion (1991)

Where Or When (1993)

Resistance (1995)

The Weight Of Water (1997)

The Pilot's Wife (1998)

The Last Time They Met (2001)

Sea Glass (2002)

All He Ever Wanted (2003)

Light On Snow (2004)

A Wedding In December (2005)

Body Surfing (2007)

Testimony (2008)

A Change in Altitude (2009)
Rescue (2010)

Everything You Know (Zoe Heller)

2011-06-04T15:22:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"Willy Muller has survived imprisonment for murdering his wife, years of hate mail from the public, and, most recently, the suicide of his daughter, Sadie. While recuperating from a heart attack, he finds himself drawn into the lonely world of his late daughter's diaries."

--The review--

Perhaps best known for her successful thriller Notes On A Scandal, which was turned into a bestselling film starring Cate Blanchett and Judy Dench, it is therefore arguably unsurprising that the author should have kept us all on our toes throughout her publishing career, with Everything You Know, her first novel, being no exception. The humour of Willy's compatriots balance out well the grisliness of Willy's own background and family; we read on not quite knowing how, or if, equilibrium will be reached.

The slightly engaging and yet slightly pathetic consonant protagonist, Willy Muller, keeps us hanging on by not letting us know until the very end whether he has been accused and subsequently imprisoned rightfully or wrongfully, and yet in spite of this suspense, when we are told the truth, we are not surprised - this being perhaps a testament to the skills of Ms Heller in building up character. Simultaneously, though, we are coached to believe that Muller is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and that therefore his confession may also be untrue. His relationships with his two daughters and their children have encompassed the whole spectrum of bad to nonexistent; why should his relationship with his readers be any more reliable?

Heller paints with scary precision and possible degrees of offensiveness a picture of Britain's lower classes, and, with equal accuracy, the own discomfort and prejudices felt (again, rightly or wrongly) by those seeing them from 'the other side'. Everything You Know, as with other books that I have read recently, seems to have as its principal message the idea that even if we do not follow in the exact same vein as our parents, they have the potential to make or break us more than any other influence. In the framework of this idea, then, it is thus natural that following on from Willy Muller's own shipwrecked life, his daughters' lives would be disadvantaged in their own ways (Sophie, by falling into a lifestyle controlled by drugs; Sadie, by becoming depressed and eventually committing suicide). However, Sadie's feelings that led to her suicide are not fully shed light on even by her diaries, which highlights the problem of how much is told about a single life (and brings us back round again to the problem of Willy's reliability as a narrator). The title of the book seeming to me to be too contrived, something about how much is revealed about someone, and in what way(s), may have been a better fit.

Strangely, while the novel is engrossing throughout, I suspect that this is mainly because we wish to find out the truth of the matter of Willy's imprisonment. Once this has been revealed, the book becomes forgettable, in spite of its ending of hope and empowerment. Ultimately the ideas that Heller presents are not new or original, even if the way in which they are presented is different: she may as well have prefaced the book with Philip Larkin's This Be The Verse ("They fuck you up, your mum and dad./They may not mean to, but they do...") and been done with it.

Other works by Zoe Heller

Notes On A Scandal (2003)

The Believers (2008)

Let The Great World Spin (Colum McCann)

2011-05-29T18:50:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"In the dawning light of the late summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. . . . It is August, 1974, and a tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter-mile in the sky. In the streets below, ordinary lives become extraordinary. Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among prostitutes in the Bronx. A group of mothers, gathered in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn the sons who died in Vietnam, discovers how much divides them even in their grief. Further uptown, Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenaged daughter, determined not only to take care of her 'babies' but to prove her own worth."

--The review--

At first sight, Colum McCann's latest offering, entitled Let The Great World Spin, has a very different and arguably less appealing face than the only other novel of his that I have read, Dancer (2003). Six years after Dancer's publication, would Let The Great World Spin prove equally enjoyable? Initially it would appear not, with the first parts of the book consisting of little more than a catalogue of substance abuse that were of little or no interest, similarly to Jon McGregor's Even The Dogs (a book which I have tried and failed to finish of late). Also like Even The Dogs, it is fabulous in its level of detail, and the fact of it being so graphic means that it is certainly not for the weak. But while Even The Dogs is a depressing and miserable collision almost of Eastenders and Skins on the page, Let The Great World Spin is more intriguing, changing scene totally from chaos to calmness and taking us from blood and screams to camomile and lace, making readers question just how all of this will fit together.

The novel's rhythmic qualities mean that although it is long we seem almost automatically carried along by the strength of the thing. The skill with which its characters are drawn is such that it would transfer successfully, in my mind, to the silver screen, and its potent mix of tragedy and gallows humour adds extra poignancy to the spliced moments that make up individual lives. Its illfatedness is almost Gatsbyish and makes it part of a great literary tradition, with its car crash being reminiscent of several famous others. We ultimately want to know what will happen to these poor souls; we know it will end badly and yet keep reading anyway.

Let The Great World Spin also very closely replicates the work of Don DeLillo and Marcel Proust in so uncannily mirroring how we think and how things prey on our minds. Although I have read Don DeLillo's Falling Man recently, and so be making links that are not really there, it seems too to be a portrait of a post-9/11 world, by showing how we are affected by such significant events, whether or not we realise it. The long chapters and stream-of-consciousness style are also features that are reminiscent of Proust, perhaps further cementing my earlier assertion that McCann is truly part of a long and successful literary heritage. He encourages us to see ourselves in art and art in ourselves, which has an inspiring effect in spite of the novel being so deeply suffused with tragedy. This is further compounded by the fact that the small children at the end of the novel are the only ones who have the chance to escape their doomed background, environment and parentage. We are given hope by them, but equally made to feel sorry for those in the story who were deprived of the same chance.

In spite of the non-chronological order of events, which does not always make the storyline easy to follow, Let The Great World Spin is nonetheless relevant and full of impact. It is not only about where we choose to direct meaning, but how and why, and this lends it an absurdist slant: we fill in our lives with meaning in the only ways that we know how, and this does not always involve colouring inside the lines. Although the novel can be disorienting due to the number of characters that it concerns, this is one reason why it merits multiple reads, and it is arguably a grand achievement that in spite of this sense of disorientation, the whole thing pulls together wonderfully, reflecting the world in which we live through a never clear-cut prism of broken dreams.

Other works by Colum McCann

Fishing the Sloe-Black River (1994)

Songdogs (1995)

This Side of Brightness (1998)

Everything in this Country Must (2000)

Dancer (2003)

Zoli (2006)

Our Street: East End Life In The Second World War (Gilda O'Neill)

2011-05-20T11:10:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"Our Street is the perfect companion to Gilda O'Neill's bestselling My East End. This book focuses on the lives of Londoners in the East End during the Second World War. Showing the concerns, hopes and fears of these so-called 'ordinary people' Our Street illustrates these times by looking at the every day rituals which marked the patterns of daily life during WWII. It is an important book and also an affectionate record of an often fondly remembered, more communal, way of life that has all but disappeared."

--The review--

As a 1990s kid, it's understandable that I and some of my academic interests should be a product of the restrictions of the UK education system at this time. One of these interests stems from my study of history; in spite of many years of study, the Second World War is one of only a few periods that I know much about and which continues to hold my interest, as well as that of a significant proportion of the British public. Thanks to the ageing combattant and non-combattant survivors of the war, and the younger generation who have had the war's history thrust upon them, WWII-related books and products continue to thrive in today's market.

The aforementioned survivors naturally want to tell the stories of their experiences, and Gilda O'Neill is one of these people, having inhabited the East End of London during the war period. However, Our Street tells relatively little about her own experiences, consisting of a patchwork of testimonials from others, which are of readable lengths and captivate the reader immediately with tidbits of tales which make our jaws drop due to the complete improbability of their occurrence today. This awareness of incidents that are totally outside our span of experience as younger readers also triggers the sobering thought of how different the world will be when we are of pensionable age to the 1990s world we inhabited as children.

For the older generation, in spite of the horrifying experiences that some of the interviewees have gone through, a sense of nostalgia and feeling of the 'Dunkirk spirit' is reawakened, and this aspect of community and strength and familial ties is equally palpable to younger readers. O'Neill ties together the testimonies reasonably successfully, although at times it feels a little forced. The flavour of the East End is equally alive, distributed with vigour through the use of dialect and descriptions of the cityscape and housing estates, and readability is enhanced by the splitting of the book into themed chapters such as evacuation and food. This also enables a 'pick and mix' approach, as it is therefore unnecessary to read the book in chronological order.

To assume the dual role of author and editor, as Gilda O'Neill has done in this book, is surely no easy task, and while she arguably does not completely succeed, the result is still an accessible tome that appeals to those that were there just as much as to those who were not. Her passion for her own personal past and for the history of her past in general is clear, and incites the reader to seek out more of her books - fictional as well as non-fictional.

Other works by Gilda O'Neill

The Cockney Girl (1993)

Whitechapel Girl (1994)

Dream On (1998)

The Lights of London (1999)

The Bells of Bow (1999)

My East End: Memories of Life in Cockney London (2000)

Playing Around (2000)

Just Around The Corner (2001)

Getting There (2002)

The Sins of their Fathers (2003)

Make Us Traitors (2004)

Of Woman Born (2005)

Lost Voices: Memories of a Vanished Way of Life (2006)

The Good Old Days: Crime, Murder and Mayhem in Victorian London (2006)

East End Tales (2008)

Rough Justice (2008)

Secrets of the Heart (2008)

Across The Barricades (Joan Lingard)

2011-05-14T20:03:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"Kevin is Catholic. Sadie is Protestant. In Belfast they are supposed to be enemies - so what chance do they have when they fall in love?"

--The review--

In spite of having studied history at school until I was 18, I know disarmingly little about the history of the world in which we live. Perhaps mercifully, however, Northern Ireland and the Troubles were among the units of study, and while of course several aspects of this tale are fictionalised, Joan Lingard unmasks some of the extremities suffered by people living there without pulling any punches. People were, it appears, quite literally prepared to die for their personal choices, and prepared to equally risk the deaths of other innocents.

Even though the basis of the story is fairly harrowing, Lingard introduces these issues gently to the teens and pre-teens at which this book is targeted, concentrating mainly on the human interest behind the love story while keeping history on the periphery. The plot is of course affected by political goings-on, but jargon is kept to the barest minimum, and focus is maintained on what has happened, rather than on why it has happened, making for a good introduction to this time in history (for the target age group, why these things occurred can come later). It is also helpful and moving with regard to showing how close our world has been to terrorism for so many years; even with the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaching, it is important to remember the sad fact that terrorism did not start or end with September 11th.

The author has also taken care to write concisely, packing a compelling story with believable characters into a text of readable length. A short story that can be read in one or two hours, this novella is an easy read in terms of length, vocabulary, and the success with which the author sustains readers' interest in the plot. However, it is of course not an easy read given the gravity of the subjects that are raised, and while young readers will naturally have questions that need answering after and during reading, adult readers too may well feel compelled to go and learn more about the country's devastating history - it being crucial also to remember that Across The Barricades, having been written in 1972, precedes by quite some years the pivotal Good Friday Agreement and the decommissioning of the Provisional IRA.

Finding out that Across The Barricades is part of a series (of which this book is the second of a quintet) that continues to feature the protagonists, Kevin and Sadie, is heartening: we have engaged with these main characters and do not wish to leave them just yet, and perhaps with further books, we are able to see not only what becomes of them but also of Northern Ireland, as seen through the author's eyes.

Other works by Joan Lingard*

The Twelfth Day of July (1970)

Into Exile (1973)

A Proper Place (1975)

Hostages to Fortune (1976)

*All of these books comprise the remainder of the Kevin and Sadie quintet. A far more exhaustive list of Joan Lingard's books for children and adults is available on Wikipedia.

The Wind Singer (William Nicholson)

2011-05-10T12:15:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--
"After Kestrel Hath rebels against the stifling rules of Amaranth society and is forced to flee, she, along with her twin brother and a tagalong classmate, follow an ancient map in quest of the legendary silver voice of the wind singer, in an attempt to heal Amaranth and its people.After Kestrel Hath rebels against the stifling rules of Amaranth society and is forced to flee, she, along with her twin brother and a tagalong classmate, follow an ancient map in quest of the legendary silver voice of the wind singer."

--The review--
Not being a regular reader of fantasy should not put off potential readers from reaching for this book; the narrative hook of a nation controlled by exams and tests and the engaging nature of the very human characters soon, in a funny sort of way, draws you into this fantasy world quicker than you can say "Lord of the Rings". It is the mixture of human and fantastical elements which, woven together with William Nicholson's clear dexterity, make this book so appealing to children and adults, and while it certainly does bear some similarities to the great fantasy precursors that have gone before it (such as Lord of the Rings, the works of Diana Wynne Jones, and, to some extent, the works of JK Rowling and Garth Nix), The Wind Singer is clearly all its own book.

Nicholson's skill in blending the chilling, the humorous, the touching and the suspenseful is to without doubt be commended. He is also to be praised for introducing the dystopian genre to children in a way that is fully accessible, with enough adventure and nightmare without being too terrifying. In addition, the storyline is concise and absorbing, leading to a label of being literally 'unputdownable' as readers hang on eagerly to see the story's denouement play out in all its eventually triumphant glory.

However, there is one criticism; for reasons that are not completely fathomable, the ending seems rather rushed. Did the author run out of steam? Was his deadline looming? Or was it just so clear in his mind about how the story would end that it all just came out in a rush naturally? Either way, the ending itself deserved more development, attention and care.

After following the adventures of the unique cast of goodies and baddies, though, it's easy to forgive the author this one transgression - particularly as it is already arguably quite long for the target age group. One could say that even more detail could have caused readers to give up and wander away - although given the book's action-packed nature, this is perhaps unlikely.

A rollicking tale that keeps up the pace, The Wind Singer is an expert portrayal of character and adventure that immediately draws readers towards not only the other works in the Wind of Fire trilogy, but to Nicholson's other works thereafter.

Other works by William Nicholson
Slaves of the Mastery (Wind of Fire Trilogy; 2001)
Firesong (Wind of Fire Trilogy; 2003)
The Society of Others (2004)
The Trial of True Love (2005)
Seeker (Noble Warriors Trilogy; 2005)
Jango (Noble Warriors Trilogy; 2006)
Noman (Noble Warriors Trilogy; 2007)
The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (2009)

An Odd Boy (Doc Togden)

2011-05-08T17:31:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"Volume one of an odd boy is a memoir of an eccentric aficionado of Bach and Blues, poetry and painting. A portrait of the artist as a lad, set in the experimental cultural ferment of the late 1960s. It is a coming-of-age adventure, both surreal and innocent, humorous and poignant, depicting an era when the Arts set a generation’s imagination on fire. The author’s life is a rare roulette wheel of childhood wonder and tragic debacles; a debilitating stammer and a powerful singing voice; bad luck and fierce good fortune."

--The review--

With its intriguing premise and a title that seems deliberately designed to provoke an "I'll be the judge of that" reaction from would-be readers of this autobiographical debut, it is perhaps not difficult to see why people might be inclined to pick up a copy of An Odd Boy, especially since it is available in the convenience of ebook format first and foremost, following the increasing trend of today's book market.

However, it is perhaps more difficult to see how or why readers might justifiably continue reading, given how far the novel is littered with minor irritations. The disjointed and patronising preface could probably be ditched altogether, and its tone of pretension unfortunately sets the tone for the rest of the book, with the text continually interspersed with quotations from various famous personages. Even naive young potential university students are not advised to write their personal statement in this way - in most cases, readers just want to hear the author's own words. Irrelevant information is often given, content is at times unoriginal (I did wonder if he was just trying to bring out his own version of Jonathan Coe's Rotters' Club, and failing), and the author is inclined to tell rather than show, making characterisation at times rather one-dimensional.

The narrator also tries to portray himself as a victim, but since he is too pretentious to be taken seriously, sympathy is in short supply. While his assessment (and others' assessments) of himself as an "odd boy" may well be correct, I'm not sure that his eccentricities merit an entire book on the subject. It is narcissistic; the portrayal of malapropisms used by others is unsuccessful in terms of trying to amuse; and, furthermore, the author also seems to think name-dropping will make up for his own (and his book's own) shortcomings (it doesn't). But this is not the worst of it: the entirely unnecessary footnotes are full of patronising remarks, such as the consideration that readers may not know who Evelyn Waugh was, what various British slang words mean, what the BBC is, or what 78s are. It is not, in my view, an author's job to explain the vocabulary that they use - rather, it is the reader's job to grab a dictionary or encyclopaedia and find out for themselves.

Perhaps worse is the sheer amount of typographical, geographical, and other types of error that permeate this book. Punctuation and italics are often poorly used, spelling mistakes include misspelling the name of the band Dire Straits (which is more than a little ironic considering how much music is supposed to mean to the author) and the word "whet" in the phrase "whet whistles", and grammatical errors include such horrors as "had forbade". The geographical mistake mentioned is in fact crucial to the narrative being presented - given that Borehamwood, Berkhamsted and so on are in Hertfordshire, not Herefordshire as maintained by the author, perhaps this explains why his searches for Alice were in vain?

It is clear from this, and especially also from chapter four, that significant cuts to this book are required, which makes it extremely surprising that ISBN numbers are provided on the book's flyleaf for both paperback and hardback editions of the book, as well as for the ebook. None of this does anything to help the ailing reputation of e-publishing (which suggests that there is still a lot of work to be done on the industry as a whole before it can pose a genuine future alternative for readers the world over).

In spite of all of the criticisms above, however, An Odd Boy is not a totally unenjoyable read. While the idyllic image with which we are presented in chapter one is on the schmaltzy side, it brings with it something slightly portentous: the union of the two people described surely cannot be as perfect as we are led to believe or presumably there would be no book, so the perfection described is perhaps intended to signal a future deficit thereof. It is amusing in places, especially when it comes to discussions on the topic of God and religion, the bond between the author and Mr Love is genuinely touching and meaningful, and the author's excitement at being introduced to the Blues is clearly palpable (and not only that, but infectious, making the reader want to start listening to this music just as obsessively).

The work of Doc Togden is certainly much more engaging when he is showing us a more relaxed or honest view of his personality, rather than when he is trying to project a superficial and pseudo-intellectual version. Even though the text becomes at times egotistical and over-venerated, the interspersions get worse (with terrible teenage poetry added), and he tries to dress up his objectification of women as being somehow noble (when in fact he's just being a normal red-blooded male), the novel is infinitely better once the author gets over the illusion of his own precocity, and it is an easy read which is increasingly engrossing as the characters become more developed.

An Odd Boy therefore certainly has potential, even if it is as times badly expressed by a man who has clearly been told all of his life that he is brilliant and intellectual, only to never realise that there are others in the world who are just as intelligent (and, indeed, even more intelligent) than he is. All in all a satisfying read which ultimately feels unfinished; an editor needs to take a red pen and some scissors to it, and quickly.

Sodom and Gomorrah (Marcel Proust)

2011-04-10T17:02:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"In this fourth volume, Proust's novel takes up for the first time the theme of homosexual love and examines how destructive sexual jealousy can be for those who suffer it."

--The review--

In presenting us with yet more hundreds of pages of high society goings-on (or, perhaps more to the point, non-goings-on), Proust seems out to bore us. However, the situation becomes more interesting and poignant when St Loup and Swann reappear, and we agree more with Saint-Loup too, who seems to be suggesting that he is becoming bored with high society life, and by this stage in the epic French novel we readily acquiesce. These two characters are refreshing among the parade of faceless individuals and only slight movements of an amoebic conglomerate.

As with other volumes of In Search Of Lost Time, though, this fourth instalments is, by turns, eerily prophetic, sublime, and thoughtful. The narrator continues also to give us academic and philosophical food for thought: we are forced to consider our own narcissism, for one thing. Do we not all, in some way, consider our own lives as a cast of a few special ones moving against a background of superficial and two-dimensional others? If this is the case then Proust has replicated our own situations very accurately, even if this in a setting that contemporary readers do not recognise. On a more academic level, the discussion of the etymology of place names is relevant to the theme of name versus place raised in earlier volumes, but was interesting to me as a topic that I had considered as a subject of my master's degree thesis, so this interest may therefore not be so piqued for others. The same applies to the discussion of sex versus gender which takes place later in this volume. More universally intriguing is perhaps the nature of dream and sleep; Proust asserts his curiosity that we do not count the pleasures experienced in sleep as part of our everyday life's catalogue of happy moments.

The author is consistent in his inconsistency in the provision of gleams of light. The prose is still often impenetrable and opaque, and it is difficult to tell how much of this can be traced back to the author himself and how much of it can be laid at the translator's door. While certain gems keep the reader going, and such passages are clearly successful, these are counteracted by the lack of success found in the author's use of malapropism. The narrator's persona also continues to be difficult to deal with: while he is becoming more assertive, he is still manipulative, irritating, wimpish, neurotic and possessive, with his separation anxiety serving as an omnipresent undercurrent. This is simultaneously annoying and interesting as it does in some ways provide narrative momentum: we wonder, as a result of his nature, what purpose his relationship with Albertine really serves, and it is a relief to the readers to know that some of the servants featured in the novel also find his neuroses ridiculous, and that not everyone in the novel is taking the narrator as seriously as he is taking himself. The Balbec hotellier is another voice of reason - even though the narrator assumes that he says "I can tell you have nothing better to do" out of jealousy at not having been invited, the reality is that he says what the rest of us are thinking.

The reader longs for the narrator to return to the pleasant, peaceful and beautiful seaside retreat of Balbec in the hope of escaping the high society circles in which he has been moving in Paris. This unbearable circle of people is unfortunately not entirely left behind in the French capital, but this is slightly compensated for by other characters appearing who are more interesting - even if they are equally unconvincing, caricaturish, and an embodiment of petty inside politics. The audacity and tactlessness expressed by some of these members of the gentry would be hilarious with the right delivery, and further comedy can be ferreted out from the Verdurins' fickleness.

It is difficult to link the title to the book's content, as its theme does not supply a consistent thread - apart from a few throwaway tidbits we are not given much. This is something to be grateful for in other ways, though - if the alternative were a full-on diatribe of the ilk found in Part 1, Chapter 1, then most readers would likely pass. Proust as a precursor to the Austenesque humour that is so known and loved in British society today provides light to contrast the narrator's indecisiveness; he really seems to want to romanticise the fact of him being a womaniser, and seems more in love with the idea of being in love than ever. We end the volume feeling that his continuing liaison with Albertine is going to be a very bad car crash to say the least, and wondering how the author will pick up the pieces.

Other works by Marcel Proust

Pleasures and Days (1896)

Swann's Way (volume 1; 1913)

Within A Budding Grove (volume 2; 1919)

The Lemoine Affair (1919)

The Guermantes Way (volume 3; 1920/21)

The Captive/The Fugitive (volumes 5/6; 1923/25)

Time Regained (volume 7; 1927)

Bookworm News: April 2011

2011-04-03T20:12:00.000+02:00

Billy Joel

Memoir News

"The Book of Joel", the Billy Joel autobiography due to be published this summer, has allegedly been dropped by Harper Collins due to the musical icon's reluctance to discuss his substance abuse and failed marriages. Makes you wonder why he signed up for it then really.

In the meantime, I was also wondering if my favourite stand-up comedian, Bill Bailey, will ever do an autobiography. After all, given that other successful comedians such as Michael McIntyre, Peter Kay and Dawn French have already done so, it would just be rude not to :p

Banned Books

The author of a new book about Mahatma Gandhi has defended claims that he accused the book's subject of being racist or secretly bisexual. Joseph Lelyveld's "Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India" has already been banned in Gandhi's home state and, according to the BBC, it is possible that bans in other areas may follow. This has arisen from early reviews which cited words from some of Gandhi's letters; the author claims that these words have been taken out of context and that the word 'bisexual' was not once used in his book.

Booker Batted Back

In a moment akin to Benjamin Zephaniah refusing the OBE he was offered in 2003, crime writer John le Carré has now rebuffed his International Man Booker Prize nomination, saying only that he does not compete for literary awards. The other writers on the shortlist are David Malouf of Australia; James Kelan and Philip Pullman of Britain; Wang Anyi and Su Tong of China; Juan Goytisolo of Spain; Amin Maalouf of Lebanon; Dacia Maraini of Italy; Rohinton Mistry of India and Canada; and Marilynne Robinson, Philip Roth and Anne Tyler of the United States.

In celebration of success, however...

Jeff Kinney, author of the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series, is still marvelling over its success. The series has been made into two blockbuster films and has also been recently recommended by education mogul Chris Woodhead as essential reading for children. "For me, this has been really fun, beyond my wildest expectations. I feel like I have my normal life in Plainville, Mass., and then my ridiculous fantasy life where I'm up on a stage, talking to people like this. So, it's just been surreal and very, very fun," Kinney, who is also an executive producer of the junior high-set flicks, told UPI at a recent New York press conference. There were reportedly 42 million copies of the series in circulation in 2010.

Aussie author and illustrator Shaun Tan has also recently won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title was given to Michael Young's Managing A Dental Practice The Genghis Khan Way. The Ridenhour Prize (awarded to a book deemed to be of social significance) went to Deadly Spin, by Wendell Potter.

Innovation of the month

Byook is not only a new reading experience but it is also keeping up with the latest technology with its recent launch for iPhone. Using codes and rules defined by the film industry, these ebooks are not just any ebooks: they are entrenched with pictures, animations and sounds, and as you read the first Byook for iPhone, a classic Sherlock Holmes tale, you will see the rain fall and blood drip in the palm of your hand as sound effects resonate in your ears, taking imagination to a whole new level. Out now, the app costs $1.99, and allows your senses to lead you beyond words.

The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim (Jonathan Coe)

2011-04-02T22:56:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"Maxwell Sim can't make a meaningful connection. His absent father is preoccupied with poetry; he maintains an e-mail correspondence with his estranged wife under a false identity; his daughter prefers her BlackBerry to his conversation; and his best friend won't return his calls. He has seventy friends on Facebook, but nobody to talk to. Max tries to stir himself out of this rut by quitting his job to accept a strange business proposition: to drive a Prius full of toothbrushes from London to the remote Shetland Islands in a misguided promotional campaign for a dental-hygiene company. Instead, he makes a series of awkward, cruelly enlightening visits to figures from his past, falling in love with the soothing voice of his GPS system ('Emma' ) en route. Eventually he comes to wonder if perhaps it's his utter lack of self-knowledge that's hampering his ability to form actual relationships."

--The review--

Having read Jonathan Coe's works avidly for the past ten years or so, it would perhaps be fair to say that by this time my expectations were almost unreasonably high, after unequivocally enjoying every one of his books that I had read and often visiting many for rereads and never tiring of their narrative twists and turns and character developments.

So if I was disappointed by The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim it was perhaps not entirely unexpected. The main character grated on my nerves in a manner that Coe's protagonists had not done in his previous works. Worse still, this did not even have the pleasant side effect of entertaining me. Compounding this was the "product placement" that I talked to Coe about in my recent interview with him; to me, it is lazy writing that limits the reader's own visualisation - something that I did not imagine Coe being guilty of. As a consequence, I believe that the novel will date more quickly than his previous ones - he is writing about a time period in which we still live, which has not yet passed, and so which cannot yet take on the feel of nostalgia that, for instance, The Rotters' Club has: it is difficult to know what, ten years from now, we will look back on with fondness, and what, in our minds, will just seem tired or insignificant.

However, The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim is not without its merits. In spite of the aspects of it that made me cringe, we do wonder how all of the novel's seemingly different components will eventually link up, and Coe guides us successfully to the conclusion of these. His portrayal of the protagonist's descent into insanity is also far more convincing than others who have tried similar tricks recently (yes, Alastair Campbell, I'm looking at you), and it shows with dexterity how easily we can all find ourselves getting into a rut if we are not careful. The novel's investigation of loneliness and privacy is also an intriguing one (even if I, unlike Coe, believe that this could have been achieved without the "product placement" effect), and the fact that at the end of the novel Maxwell's own personal, spiritual journey to find his own sense of self-worth is in fact only just beginning is a realistic and moving resolution; to have him waltz off into the sunset with the illusion that life just works out magically would not have been anywhere near as satisfying. Having such an imperfect narrator at the novel's forefront is almost like holding a mirror up to ourselves, showing us all of our own flaws, and prompts us to ask ourselves how we too can move forward with our lives on our individual quest to vanquish various insecurities. The style in which this is all expressed may not be to everybody's taste, but the message is powerful and bound to reach out to the majority of people in some way that they can easily identify with personally.

The end of the novel is curious, as it serves as a criticism of itself and of the genre of novel-writing in general. While I can see why Coe included it, it is ultimately unnecessary: by the end of the novel, the flaws of it have faded into the background and we are left with the complexities of the plot and of Maxwell's character. We do not need the author to step in at this stage; his craft has already done its work, and it is these intricacies and layers and faults inherent in the novel that perhaps make it one of Coe's most intriguing brainchildren: while his other books are straightforward to the point of becoming instantly-loved and often-reread modern classics, this almost demands to be reread not to be wholly enjoyed but to be unravelled so that we as readers may engage not only in the uncomfortable journey of Maxwell Sim but also in our own distinctly awkward voyages into the centres of ourselves.

Other works by Jonathan Coe

The Accidental Woman (1987)

A Touch of Love (1989)

The Dwarves of Death (1990)

What A Carve Up! (1994)

The House of Sleep (1997)

The Rotters' Club (2001)

The Closed Circle (2004)

The Rain Before It Falls (2007)

Author Interview: Jonathan Coe

2011-04-02T20:06:00.003+02:00

Bianca Summons talks with Jonathan Coe during an author event at WHSmith Paris about Starbucks, Ricky Gervais, and on what he’s got lined up next

How has the international reception of The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim been?

As far as I can tell, the novel has taken off into a different league in France in particular. In a month it sold four or five times as many copies in France as it has sold in the UK ever since it has been published! So it seems that the French like it more than British, which seems odd! Perhaps the fact that it is a very British book is part of the appeal. I know that French people have a phrase they use sometimes, which they say in English when they say it - ‘so British’. If a reviewer in the UK says a book is ‘so British’ they are probably trashing it, whereas in France I gather that is a term of praise. I also did a tour recently of the East Coast of the United States, mainly in the Boston and New York area. I haven’t been to the States in about eight years and it was the first time I’d ever done a book tour there. It was an interesting process because they tend to go for the hard sell over there. It comes back to the ‘so British’ thing! They love the Britishness of what I do but there aren’t quite so many Anglophiles. The ones that are there tend to be on the East Coast. It was a lot of fun to meet some American readers at last. I have to say the most enthusiastic couple I met was in a little town in New Jersey called Metuchen. I was a bit nervous about doing a reading there on a Saturday night because I thought that it would probably not be well attended, but it was fine in the end. And this couple who was very excited to meet me and had read all my books was Russian! So I don’t know quite what they were doing in Metuchen on a Saturday evening, but it was nice to meet them. This sort of thing is always rather nice as it gets you out of your workspace and into motion. Travelling somehow stirs something up inside your mind, and what's more and more important for writers these days is finding a reason to leave your desk. The curse of the internet is that everything that I used to do in libraries and by going to newspaper archives and meeting people can nearly all be done online.

How did The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim come about?

The idea behind it is already explained at the end of the novel in a slightly curious last chapter. Like most of my novels, I suppose, it arose from the collision of three or four separate ideas. When I notice these discrete episodes or sequences or overhear fragments of conversation, which a writer who was that way inclined would weave into a short story, what I start to do in my head is form connections between them, think of ways in which these separate episodes could be connected into some kind of ironic or tragic relationship with each other. That was really the germ of the book.

Why is Maxwell Sim a toothbrush salesman?

Well, I always want to break new ground, and maybe he is the first one in literature! Life imitates fiction sometimes. On that theme, another character in this book has a job which I thought I was inventing for the purpose of the novel. She is an adultery facilitator, and her job is to hang around airports around the world and make sound recordings of the airport so that cheating husbands – or even cheating wives, for that matter! – can, when they phone their spouses back home, they can play this sound in the background in order to thrown their partners off the scent to make them think that they are in a different part of the world. I thought I had made this up completely, but I read only a couple of weeks ago in the newspaper that there is actually a casino in Moscow, which was raided recently and which had a telephone booth in the middle of it where you could go to make a phone call back to your wife, and you had four or five buttons which offered a choice of different soundtracks play inside the soundproof booth as background noise – one of them was an airport, but you could also choose noises from football grounds and so on to make someone think you weren’t in a casino. Life imitating art! As for the toothbrushes, I wanted my anti-hero to be as ordinary as possible and I couldn’t think of something much more ordinary than a toothbrush, which we all use every day without thinking about it.

One of the themes of the book is the difficulty that modern technology presents for human relationships, and yet of course it is not technology’s fault that Maxwell Sim fell out with his wife and didn't have much of a relationship with his father or his daughter. Do you think it’s fair to say that modern technology complicates human contact?

I write books nowadays not because I think know the answer to something and want to write the book in order to prove it, but I write them because I don’t know the answer and want to find out! Investigation is a huge part of the process of writing a book, and it does strike me as being incredible how the revolution in communication and technology in the past few years is something that we take for granted now. People have now of course started to write about how that affects the way we relate to each other. We now have all these new and amazing ways of connecting with each other and I thought it would be interesting to take a character who was lonely and slightly socially dysfunctional and find out whether this really makes life easier for him or intensifies and magnifies his loneliness and gives him new ways of realising he is lonely. Facebook is the obvious example - I knew nothing about Facebook before I started writing this book so I joined in order to find out how it works. I just joined and left it there and then after a while I realised that everyone else I knew on Facebook had three or four hundred friends and I had seven or eight friends, and I started to feel a little pathetic about this and started to actually feel very lonely on Facebook. So I thought that the same would probably be true in the case of Maxwell. Similarly with the email thing - he comes back from holiday and 136 of the 137 emails he's received in that time are spam and the one that he does receive is just a one-line message from his only friend in the world. So that's just another thing that brings home to him how friendless he is. It was a strand in the novel that was meant to be just a minor thing, but it made me wonder if it's possible these days to have a close, genuine and involved relationship with someone who doesn't actually exist online, because Maxwell's online identity is completely fictional. And this also started making me think about what it is that I do as a writer and what it is that I encourage my readers to do, which is to form an emotional bond with characters that I have made up. So part of the process of writing this novel was also a process of starting to question not only what I do but also the idea that we might get close to non-existent people online as well as in literature. An interesting kind of double standard!

I once read that you write from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., sometimes while listening to music and often without talking to anyone. What else can you tell us about the way in which you write?

I wish I did write from nine to five; if I did I’d probably produce about three novels a year! The reality is that I publish a novel about once every three or four years, of which the actual writing process takes about three to six months (about three-quarters of The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim was written in about 3 months). I’m at my desk let’s say from 10 until 4, but not much about it is writing, and I always feel rather guilty about this because a lot of what I do as part of my working life is just leisure as far as most people are concerned. Reading is an important part, but that is one of the more strenuous things I do. Sitting in a comfortable chair and staring into space is an extremely important part of the writing process - perhaps the most important part - which makes it hard to explain to your family after "a day at the office" when they ask how many words you wrote that day: "Well, I didn't write any, but I thought of some great ones...!"

What are you working on right now?

I’m in a difficult position at the moment because something has happened to me that has not happened to me before. I have two ideas for books and cannot decide which one to write. They're completely different ideas and each one is a step into the unknown for me. So the short answer is that I am trying to make up my mind as to what I am working on now. I haven't written anything since I finished Maxwell Sim, which is 18 months now, so I have to start something this year. Perhaps I'll get a different idea that will solve the problem!

How much interference do you have from editors; what is your relationship with your own editor like?

I know writers who have very close relationships with their editors, where the editor - although this doesn't occur quite so much these days - would work on the manuscript line by line with the author and go through all of the little changes with them. In a way I slightly envy that but in another way think I wouldn't enjoy it as I can be too bloody-minded! For my last four or five novels I have had a very good relationship with an editor who makes very broad and sweeping suggestions for changes, and I have made fundamental changes to at least one of my novels as a result. When it comes to the American editions some further changes are made, and in Maxwell Sim this related to some of the language that he uses. In general, though, I suppose I am lucky to have someone who likes my work more or less as it is and tends to let me get on with it!

And what about your relationship with the critics?

Henry Fielding (who I wrote my doctoral thesis on) was quite thin-skinned about the critics; as, I think, most writers are, but we try to put a brave face on it! I'd be lying if I said that I didn't read my reviews - but I don't know why I read them, really. I never learn anything from them; all you learn is that some people like some things and other people like different things! Once you have written the book there is nothing much you can do about it. I have heard more interesting things from readers - both for and against my books - than I have from reviews. Most reviewers, even the good ones, have an agenda and a theory of some sort – that’s their job. There have only ever been one or two occasions when I have read a review and thought “That was really mean, and I hope I never meet that person in real life”. Even when the review is positive, I sometimes think, “Well, it’s nice that they said that, but I don’t think they really ‘got’ it, actually.”

Going back to Maxwell Sim: I sometimes found him to be so irritating that he reminded me very much of David Brent, the character played by Ricky Gervais in The Office. Was he a direct inspiration in any way or was this purely coincidental?

I’ve never seen The Office, but it’s such an iconic show that I almost feel that I have seen it even though I haven't - I have seen many clips of it. But I hadn't put two and two together. So yes and no is the answer - not a direct influence, but I'm always encountering influences that I hadn't put my finger on before, and that might be one of them.

So who, in your view, would be best placed to play Maxwell Sim in a film version of the novel?

Now that I think about it, Ricky Gervais is a great idea. There’s also another British actor called David Morrissey who is mainly known as a TV actor, who I think would be good as Maxwell.

In The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, there seems to be a lot of ‘product placement’ – you have already talked about the inclusion of Facebook, but you also mention a lot of other brands, such as Starbucks and Pizza Express. Was this name-dropping of brands intentional?

I can’t say I’ve received anything from Starbucks for mentioning them, although I was once offered money by a car company to have one of my heroes drive a particular car, which I didn’t do, although I might regret it a little bit – it was quite a lot of money they were offering! I don’t know – how do you write about an ordinary man in the UK in 2009 without mentioning all of the usual places where he spends his life?

And finally – after your experience there as Maxwell Sim – are you still on Facebook?! Yes, but I can take it or leave it – I think I’ve got about 90 friends there now.

The paperback edition of The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim is out now; the audio version, read by Colin Buchanan, will be released on CD in May 2011

A Kestrel For A Knave (Barry Hines)

2011-03-27T16:07:00.000+02:00

--The blurb--

"Billy Casper is a boy with nowhere to go and nothing to say; part of the limbo generation of school leavers too old for lessons and too young to know anything about the outside world. He hates and is hated. His family and friends are mean and tough and they're sure he's going to end up in big trouble. But Billy knows two things about his own world. He'll never work down the mines and he does know about animals. His only companion is his kestrel hawk, trained from the nest, and, like himself, trained but not tamed, with the will to destroy or to be destroyed."

--The review--

When the film Billy Elliot hit British cinemas at the turn of the last century, for many the story of a little Northern lad with a tough background who was only trying to go against the grain and be true to himself proved to have a lasting impact. However, Lee Hall's screenplay was not the first to revolve a hit story around this topic: those a couple of generations older will have been reminded of the hero of Barry Hines' A Kestrel For A Knave, Billy Casper, who was later immortalised by David Bradley in the film of the novel (entitled Kes) in 1969. Other details of these two works are also shared, including the background of "the pit" and the array of unsympathetic adults who as a literary device serve to make the protagonist's plight even more powerful.

Initially the structure of A Kestrel For A Knave seems a little bewildering: there are no chapters, and the strong Northern England dialect can be tricky to adjust to. It is a point of interest that in the author's note, which was written many years after the novel's publication, Hines states that he would not have written the novel in this dialect (perhaps to make it more accessible to readers; in the making of the film, he says, actors added in the dialect automatically). However, I do not believe that writing the novel's dialogue in Standard English would have improved it; to the contrary, it helps hugely in building up the sense of atmosphere and location, and the interspersion of this dialect with the Standard English descriptions makes for satisfying variation.

A further contrast is found when comparing the brutality of the dialogue and the situations Billy finds himself in with the soaring beauty of Hines' descriptions of the surrounding countryside and of the time Billy spends with the kestrel that he has hand-reared. This combination, when built up over the pages, is in the end explosive and makes the conclusion and dream sequence even more poignant. While it all could have so easily become a schmaltzy or unworkable novel, what we have instead is potent, moving, articulate, gritty, and simultaneously complex and accessible, providing within itself lessons and entertainment for adult and child readers alike.

Other works by Barry Hines

The Blinder (1969)

First Signs (1972)

The Gamekeeper (1979)

Unfinished Business (1983)

Two Men From Derby/Shooting Stars (1993)

The Heart Of It (1995)

Elvis Over England (1998)

The Price of Coal (2005)

This Artistic Life (2009)

Bookworm Byte

2011-03-27T15:18:00.002+02:00

Literary scholars and casual readers alike should be able to spread their wings with this list of Top 25 Literary Criticism Blogs from www.mastersdegree.net:

http://www.mastersdegree.net/blog/2011/25-best-literary-criticism-blogs/

Explore and participate in the world of literary criticism, and be forever reminded and grateful that for all the erosion of literary interest that the internet *may* be responsible for, it still does so much to galvanise and develop interest in literature.

Le Spleen de Paris (Charles Baudelaire)

2011-03-21T18:38:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"Set in a modern, urban Paris, the prose pieces in Paris Spleen constitute a further exploration of the terrain Baudelaire had covered in his verse masterpiece, "The Flowers of Evil": the city and its squalor and inequalities, the pressures of time and mortality, and the liberation provided by the sensual delights of intoxication, art and women."

--The review--

Marketed as a series of prose poems - a format which I ordinarily adore - I was looking forward to my first taste of one of France's most famous authors. Split into several relatively short sections, it has readability on its side not only in these terms but also in terms of the fact that funnily enough these "prose poems" did not seem to be especially poetic by the standards of modern day prose poems; to me they just seemed like pieces of very good yet accessible descriptive writing, which in itself was not unenjoyable.

Reading this in the original was a difficult experience due to the at times strange sentence constructions that pervaded it; however, in translations this may have been eradicated. This was exacerbated by the fact that several of the prose poems just weren't that memorable, seeming to repeat the same themes over and over again, particularly stating the theme - still common in France today - that the French, even the upper class ones with the greatest security of money and home, feel duty bound to sympathise with the poor for fear that they could too end up in their position (even when this is not in the least bit likely).

The two segments worth reading, however, are the haunting "The Eyes of the Poor", which most effectively describes the plight of the impoverished, and "The Rope", which is a frankly terrifying tale which has a hint of the Henry James about it. These perhaps most fully exemplify the literary meaning of 'spleen' as used in this collection's title, meaning 'an unexplained melancholy or disgust'. Learning that Edgar Allan Poe was one of Baudelaire's influences comes as no surprise, particularly after reading "The Rope", and it perhaps also fulfils the criterion of there being something for everyone contained within Paris Spleen, as the work spans horror-type stories and morality tales as well as debauchery and beautiful descriptions; in this respect it is not dissimilar to Boccaccio's Decameron - although, of course, in a much shorter and more distilled form.

While the different segments do at times seem to merge together, this work is certainly not without its richness and merit, even though it seems to be much maligned by UK readers (with only one review of the book existing on Amazon UK). However, I certainly found it for the most part to be a more analytical experience, rather than the continuous rushes and gushes of emotion described by American reviewers online. Nevertheless, I would not abandon hope in the works of Baudelaire, and I look forward to investigating even more of them.

Other works by Charles Baudelaire (selected)

The Flowers of Evil (1857)

Artificial Paradises (1860)

The Ritz London Book of Afternoon Tea (Helen Simpson)

2011-03-20T19:19:00.001+01:00

--The blurb--

"An irresistible collection of traditional teatime recipes and charming stories from the world famous Ritz Hotel."

--The review--

You may have noticed by now that I am becoming a tad obsessed with tea, given my reading of this and Stuart Payne's missive within a very short space of time. I also noticed this occurring when somebody at work was asking me about tea, for me to say "Oh, I don't know very much about it really" only to rattle off quite a few quite specific pieces of information, including about my own favourite type of tea (Lapsang Souchong) and how to prepare the tea.

So books like this are really for entertainment just as much as for knowledge, although by the end of this one the reader is rightly confounded by the apparent lack of link to the Ritz (in spite of its title). Apart from the book possibly being sold there, and the hotel being mentioned from time to time in the book's earlier sections, the book really is just about tea and cakes and the history thereof in general rather than it being anything to do with the place in particular. Still, it's not as if it matters terribly in the end, as it still makes for a satisfying and informative read as well as being lightly entertaining. The humour, tone, typeface and illustrations are all so genteel that I did in fact wonder if this was a modern reprint of a book from a bygone age; however, it was written in the mid-2000s. Whether it is intended to be satirical or serious is therefore something that comes into play but does not really matter all that much when all is said and done - much like the book's premise itself.

Slim and concise, it is packed with information, humour, cake recipes, history and anecdote, as well as quotations from various luminaries on the subject of tea and tea-drinking. It is all highly British with its sense of "this is how you pour the tea" and "oh, but that will never do", and all without seeming too preachy. We marvel and drool with awe at the recipes and descriptions that are included and immediately make up our minds to spruce up our own afternoon teas; in reading the history of this British institution, too, we feel proud to be imbibing a little history in our cups and feel inclined to go beyond the humble tea bag. It is, in short, aspirational and delicate while continuing to be cuttingly witty in unexpected places. In addition, its well-written, precise and slightly coy style helps in transporting us to days gone by.

A faultless and unpatronising book which not only educates, informs and entertains but also introduces us to the work of Helen Simpson - which, it seems to me, would be well worth seeking out.

Other works by Helen Simpson

Four Bare Legs In A Bed (1991)

Dear George, and other stories (1996)

Hey Yeah Right Get A Life (2001)

Getting A Life (2002)

Constitutional (2005)

In The Driver's Seat (2007)

In-Flight Entertainment (2010)

Whispers in the Graveyard (Theresa Breslin)

2011-03-20T19:00:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"Solomon is full of anger - with the teachers and his father, who mother who has left him and with himself. He cannot bear to be at home or at school. His refuge is one corner of the kirkyard, where nothing lives but a rowan tree. When workmen cut this tree down, a terrible force comes to life."

--The review--

Upon reading through Theresa Breslin's impressive Carnegie Medal-winning bibliography, I wonder to myself if I have in fact been living under a literary rock since the dawn of my life, for here is a woman who has been active in children's fiction since I was barely out of nappies and who has continued to be amazingly prolific since, putting out a book every two years as an absolute minimum and even in some cases putting out more than one book per year. And yet in spite of this track record, and despite teaching in a school that caters for children aged 2 to 18, I had not even heard of her before 2011. While remaining dumbfounded as to how this could be, I simultaneously had an excellent introduction to her work in the form of Whispers In The Graveyard.

I was the sort of child who was a fan of the Goosebumps and Point Horror series of books and made a habit of watching Strange But True Encounters on the television, so this would have been then, and still is, right up my alley. With a surly young child narrator, Roald Dahl's old tactic of setting the adults against the child so that as the reader you want the child to win out, and a creepy graveyard as the setting, Breslin has plenty of strong ingredients for a good story, which serve as a hook to draw the reader in right from the start. Solomon's miserable home life leads naturally into the kindness and support that he receives from the at times unorthodox Ms Talmur, and Breslin also helps to build up the background of the story and Solomon's personality by directing him there whenever times get tough. Various desolate and creepy descriptions are used to make the graveyard scary (but not too scary) and fascinating in equal measure, and not too much is given away about where the story will go; you could even argue that by the end of it we still aren't 100% aware of what has gone on, which is perhaps taking things to new heights for the book's target audience (the protagonist, after all, is only ten or eleven years old, and we can more or less assume that the average reader of this book will not be much older).

Perhaps the only weakness in the book is of the five-year-old character, Amy Miller. She seems to be used by the author merely as a catalyst for the rest of the storyline, with little thought to characterisation: she is an insipid character whose level of dialogue is inappropriate for a five-year-old child, and while this may have been done in keeping with the adult and sinister nature of the rest of the book (in addition to the spookiness of the story, we have the subplot of Solomon's father's alcoholism, and the fact that even Ms Talmur can sometimes seem a little sinister), the fact that this character is unrealistic and jars with the rest of the book still remains.

Whispers In The Graveyard is still nevertheless hugely readable and delivers a satisfying and inspiring conclusion without us feeling that all of the horrifying buildup has gone to waste. An excellent introduction to Breslin's work that should leave readers - whether adult or child - wanting more of the same.

Other works by Theresa Breslin

Simon's Challenge (1988)

Different Directions (1989)

Time to Reap (1991)

Bullies At School (1993)

Kezzie (1993)

A Homecoming for Kezzie (1995)

Alien Force (1995)

Missing (1995)

Death or Glory Boys (1996)

Across The Roman Wall (1997)

Blair, The Winner! (1997)

Name Games (1997)

Bodyparts (1998)

Blair Makes A Splash (1999)

Starship Rescue (1999)

The Dream Master (series: 1999-2004)

Duncan of Carrick (2000)

New School Blues (2002)

Remembrance (2002)

Saskia's Journey (2004)

Prisoner in Alcatraz (2004)

Divided City (2005)

The Medici Seal (2006)

The Nostradamus Prophecy (2008)

Prisoner of Inquisition (2010)

And Another Thing (Eoin Colfer)

2011-03-14T19:53:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"An Englishman's continuing search through space and time for a decent cup of tea . . .

Arthur Dent's accidental association with that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, has not been entirely without incident. Arthur has traveled the length, breadth, and depth of known, and unknown, space. He has stumbled forward and backward through time. He has been blown up, reassembled, cruelly imprisoned, horribly released, and colorfully insulted more than is strictly necessary. And of course Arthur Dent has comprehensively failed to grasp the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Arthur has finally made it home to Earth, but that does not mean he has escaped his fate. Arthur's chances of getting his hands on a decent cuppa have evaporated rapidly, along with all the world's oceans. For no sooner has he touched down on the planet Earth than he finds out that it is about to be blown up . . . again."

--The review--

When it comes to novel sequels, whether authorised or unauthorised by the original author's estate, we as readers always feel our hackles raised in suspicion. Pamela Cox's sequels to Enid Blyton's school stories and Gilbert Adair's follow-ups to the Peter Pan series leave me cold just thinking about them, whereas Alexandra Ripley's sequel to Gone With The Wind was, to my mind, a success. But where does Eoin Colfer's attempt to follow in the footsteps of the late great Douglas Adams fall?

When writing a sequel of a series originally started by another person, two types of fidelity are important: fidelity to characters and fidelity to style. Happily, Colfer is loyal on both of these counts while simultaneously putting his own stamp on the enterprise, having characters do things that we would expect of them as the plot is taken in new and hilarious directions. Equally, he adheres faithfully to Adams' near-inimitable sharp wit and non-sequitur humour, carrying the torch with ease for Adams fans everywhere. His prose not only caused me to laugh out loud on several occasions, but also made me forget that it was not Adams himself taking us through the final instalment. Imitating a writer's style to such an impressive degree is a laudable feat that shouldn't be ignored, and was perhaps helped along by Colfer's own humility and awe (of which more is detailed in the book's notes).

In being faithful to the standard set by Adams prior to this, Colfer also pays the respect that is due to the series by carrying through Adams' wishes for a sixth instalment to be written in a style that he would have approved of. While other reviewers have found the story to be "well-written but weak", I did not see any obviously glaring holes - but then again I am not an obsessive fan of the original series, merely enjoying them from time to time rather than scrutinising every available detail.

All in all, a satisfying, valedictory, respectful and downright hilarious conclusion to a much-revered and beloved series.

A selection of other works by Eoin Colfer

The Wish List (2000)

Artemis Fowl series (2001-present)

The Supernaturalist series (2004-present)

Half Moon Investigations (2006)

Airman (2008)

Plugged (2011)

One Day (David Nicholls)

2011-03-14T17:32:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"15th July 1988. Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows? Twenty years, two people, ONE DAY."

--The review--

Upon his 2003 debut, Starter For Ten, I remember feeling a little unsure about David Nicholls' writing. I seem to recall that it was the main character, and his dialogue, that did not sit well with me; it all seemed just a little too self-consciously pretentious. However, six years on from this, One Day (Nicholls' third novel) is storming the book columns of all the national papers and was recently named by radio presenter Richard Bacon on the show "My Life in Books" as being one of his precious five choices. But does it live up to the hype?

To my mind it certainly does - even taking account of the fact that my sister and I are fast readers normally, we zoomed through the one copy we had in about half a week, both enjoying it immensely to the point of being near-unable to put it down, and barely avoiding a little tear on the way as well. For One Day, with its delightfully imperfect and very human characters and deft depiction of all life's joys and messes, is as poignant as it is funny, and Richard Bacon described it very accurately upon saying that when reading One Day "you have never cared so much about two people who do not exist".

I am not, however, a fan of "product placement" in books, and unfortunately One Day has it in spades - although my sister's point that this may have helped to culturally define the periods in which the book was set (1980s, 1990s and 2000s) is not completely unfounded. This one negative is also vastly compensated for by the rest of the novel's positive points: it is compelling, accessible, and flows very naturally, contrary to the stiltedness of some aspects of Starter For Ten. It also delivers an enormous twist that strikes us painfully accurately as to the occasional randomness and unfairness of life and how our lives can be altered beyond doubt by the presence of one human being.

One Day therefore firmly establishes David Nicholls on the scene as a writer who is as integral to the contemporary fabric of literature as Ian McEwan and Margaret Atwood; with his way of worming his way into the hearts of his readers and his increasingly natural flow of dialogue and plot, he is a master of the popular read that not only entertains us but also affects us profoundly, with us even having realised this before the book is put down.

Other works by David Nicholls

Starter For Ten (2003)

The Understudy (2005)

Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down (Stuart Payne)

2011-03-13T18:17:00.001+01:00

--The blurb--

"Put a cup of tea in your hand, and what else can you do but sit down? This wonderful new book is a celebration of that most British of life's cornerstones: taking a break, putting your feet up and having a breather. There is, however, a third element that any perfect sit down requires and it is this: biscuits. As Nicey so rightly points out, a cup of tea without a biscuit is a missed opportunity. Finding the right biscuit for the right occasion is as much an art as it is a science, and it is a task that Nicey has selflessly worked on for most of his tea drinking life. From dunking to the Digestive, the Iced Gem to the Garibaldi, everything you'll ever need to know about biscuits is in this book, and quite a lot more besides. Is the Jaffa Cake a cake or a biscuit? And have Wagon Wheels really got smaller since your childhood, or have you just got bigger? [...]Nicey and Wifey's Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down does exactly what it says on the biscuit tin. So go on. Take a weight off, put the kettle on, and enjoy."

--The review--

Ever since e-publishing and the web in general took off in any serious way, there have been worried whispers among teachers, librarians and other book-lovers regarding the future of the beloved book. However, with popular web editions increasingly coming off the web and into people's hands in the form of physical copies (you only have to look to Belle du Jour and Petite Anglaise for examples of this), for now at least it appears that we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down, by Stuart Payne, is one such book. Initially conceived as a website to catalogue information on currently available biscuits and to mourn the passing of biscuits from days gone by, and for people to get into deep conversations on this subject, it has now come off the web and appeared before us in real book form. Sales of this have probably enabled the author (and his co-contributor, referenced in the book only as Wifey) to sit back, relax, and enjoy their new-found wonga, as the website itself has not been active now since 2008. While it remains available now for consultation, this may not be the case forever, and so it does seem to be distinctly advantageous to have a real book at our fingertips as an encyclopaedia for all biscuity matters.

While that description may seem slightly overblown, the deceptively slim-looking book truly has encyclopaedic qualities. It contains everything you could ever want to know about biscuits old and new from around the world (and, to be honest, in some cases, more than you ever wanted to know - in some places it becomes wildly detailed), as well as giving information about tea, the history of tea, the best way to drink it, and what to drink it with. Cake is also given a passing mention somewhere towards the back. All of this is laid out very methodically and articulately, making it a handy reference tool.

But, further to this - even if it is slightly politically incorrect to judge a book by its cover - it is certainly not boring, as perhaps one would expect from (you guessed it) the fun-loving cover design. Stuart Payne's piercing wit shines through at every turn, making the reader's quest to find out more about biscuits as entertaining as it could possibly be. Accessible and intelligent without being patronising, and with a good dose of humour along the way, this is a one-of-a-kind, detailed book which will find a place on any bookshelf in the land - even in houses that don't normally have bookshelves.

The Icarus Girl (Helen Oyeyemi)

2011-03-13T17:42:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"Jessamy Harrison is eight years old. Sensitive, whimsical, possessed of an extraordinary and powerful imagination, she spends hours writing haikus, reading Shakespeare, or simply hiding in the dark warmth of the airing cupboard. As the half-and-half child of an English father and a Nigerian mother, Jess just can't shake the feeling of being alone wherever she goes, and the other kids in her class are wary of her tendency to succumb to terrified fits of screaming. When she is taken to her mother's family compound in Nigeria for the first time, she meets her uncles and aunts and cousins - and her formidable old grandfather. Then one day, in the deserted Boys' Quarters, she encounters Titiola, a ragged little girl her own age. It seems that at last Jess has found another outsider who will understand her. TillyTilly knows secrets both big and small, and some she won't reveal. But as Tilly shows Jess just how easy it is to hurt those around her, Jess begins to realise that she doesn't know who TillyTilly is at all."

--The review--

Reading a truly excellent novel often causes the reader to draw breath sharply. What causes the breath to be sharper still, however, is when we find that the author is, frankly, insanely young. Martin Amis was only twenty-three or twenty-four when his first novel, The Rachel Papers, won the Somerset Maugham Award. Zadie Smith was twenty-five when White Teeth, partly written while she was still a Cambridge undergraduate, was published. The author of The Icarus Girl, Helen Oyeyemi, is among this list of prodigious young debutants without doubt, for this novel, her first, was written while she was still studying for her A Levels. Two more have been written and published since.

So how does Oyeyemi's debut stack up? It is difficult to know how to categorise it: is it a ghost story? Is it surrealist? Is it horror? Is it something else? Or is it all of these things? From this alone it is evident that it is an ambitious project, culminating in a heady mix of the occult and the more realistic challenges of trying to live harmoniously as a descendant of multiple cultures. We are able to completely believe in the layers of tension that the author builds up, the emotional blackmail and outrageous incidents wrought by TillyTilly, the innocence of Jessamy and the bewilderment of her friends, family, classmates and teachers as the two worlds that Jessamy seems to inhabit collide at various inappropriate moments of her life.

Oyeyemi still has some skills to refine in her writing - as, I suspect, all of us do - but this is particularly obvious in her construction of the precocious Jessamy, whose genius makes it difficult for us to be convinced by the fact that she is only eight years old: constantly writing haikus and reading Shakespeare does not fit in authentically with the portrayal of a child of this age. While I appreciate that the author probably wished to emphasise the girl's naïveté and innocence by reflecting the plot through a child under ten, I suspect that this would have been just as effective if the character had been eleven or twelve years old, while at the same time allowing us to be more greatly persuaded by Jessamy's precocity. This is counterbalanced, however, by how the other children treat Jessamy, which is far more realistic and gives us a window onto how far she must be suffering from the undercurrent of all of the changes in her life.

Many incidents in the story go by unexplained, and this is highly suitable for the nature of the tale at hand; we do not even know at the end of the story if Jessamy is still with us or if she has been taken away by TillyTilly into a whole other realm. The air of mystery and terror built up by the author leaves us spooked, and brings a whole new frisson into the field of British literature. It appears that the literary magazine Granta was right in 2003 to earmark Helen Oyeyemi as one to watch.

Other works by Helen Oyeyemi

Juniper's Whitening/Victimese (2005; drama)

The Opposite House (2007)

White is for Witching (2009)

Mr Fox (due out 2011)

The Growing Summer (Noel Streatfeild)

2011-02-27T21:27:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--
"The four Gareth children have always led a very quiet life in London with their parents -- until Dad suddenly gets ill abroad, and Mum has to go out to look after him. The Gareth children are shipped off to Great Aunt Dymphna, who lives wild in an extraordinary half-ruin in Ireland. Here they are not only expected to look after themselves, they also discover that they have company -- a mysterious boy who announces that he is on the run. The children hide him from his pursuers -- but who are they? And who is the boy? The children are determined to find out..."

--The review--
While less didactic than Enid Blyton's canon, Noel Streatfeild's comforting formula is still held affectionately in the hearts of children and adults everywhere, and The Growing Summer is no exception to this: it is a successful story of family life turned upside down in the most positive and fantastical of ways, combined with a dexterous mystery element, and it is surprising that it is not more popular, particularly given that it has in the past been adapted for television.

The fabulous character of Aunt Dymphna is a triumph of children's literature who easily ranks on a par with Supergran, Mr Toad and other equally insane, madcap and hilarious characters who should know better (but don't or choose not to). She is a very welcome interlude in the lives of the prim children who are used to doing very little for themselves and who are made to learn to do things for themselves very rapidly. The story therefore also becomes a great journey of independence and self-discovery, which reinforces the themes commonly found throughout Streatfeild's work.

This could have risked making the story seem schmalzy or sugary or as if the author were trying to overdo it in the 'inspiring' stakes, but this is well-tempered by the subplot of the odious young boy that they take in and hide, and whose real background is only discovered later and his lies seen through. This is just one of the narrative hooks keeping the reader impelled to read on; add to this the descriptions of the beautiful Irish landscape and the marvellous outdoor expeditions that the children and Aunt Dymphna embark upon, and the resultant magical blend makes for excellent rainy-day reading, allowing we as readers to escape our own universe completely.

It also serves as an appropriate touchstone for Streatfeild's work as an example of memorable characters and a high-quality, well-executed storyline. What is perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that by this stage (1966) Streatfeild was already thirty years on from her children's fiction debut, Ballet Shoes (published in 1936), and that in spite of that, at the age of seventy-one, she showed no signs of waning.

Other children's fiction by Noel Streatfeild

Ballet Shoes (1936)
Tennis Shoes (1937)
The Circus is Coming (1938) (also published as: Circus Shoes)
Curtain Up (1944) (also published as: Theater Shoes)
Party Frock (1946) (also published as: Party Shoes)
The Painted Garden (1949) (significantly abridged and published in the U.S. as: Movie Shoes)
White Boots (1951) (also published as: Skating Shoes)
The Fearless Treasure (1953)
The Bell Family (1954) (also published as: Family Shoes)
Wintle's Wonders (1957) (also published as: Dancing Shoes)
Apple Bough (1962) (also published as: Traveling Shoes)
A Vicarage Family (1963)
The Children on the Top Floor (1964)
Away from the Vicarage (1965)
Caldicott Place (1967) (also published as: The Family at Caldicott Place)
The "Gemma" series (1968-9)
Thursday's Child (1970)
Beyond the Vicarage (1971)
Ballet Shoes for Anna (1972)
When the Siren Wailed (1974)
Far To Go (1976) (a sequel to Thursday's Child)

Summertime (JM Coetzee)

2011-02-27T12:16:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"A young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. He plans to focus on the years from 1972-1977 when Coetzee, in his thirties, is sharing a run-down cottage in the suburbs of Cape Town with his widowed father. This, the biographer senses, is the period when he was 'finding his feet as a writer'. Never having met Coetzee, he embarks on a series of interviews with people who were important to him."

--The review--

When embarking on the reading of Summertime, initial impressions are, to be blunt, not good at all. Words coming to mind to describe it at this stage include narcissistic, highly stylised, pretentious, and confused. One wonders what Coetzee is trying to say or to achieve.

However, this feeling of being overwhelmed by the novel's concept or purpose is thankfully transient. The more one reads, the cleverer the novel seems to be in its foundations: by fictionalising one's autobiography, this simultaneously makes it a very cunning way to write one due to it being up to you how much you reveal about yourself, as well as the distancing effects created by fictionalisation making it easier to be honest about your faults and foibles. It is rare to see the third person deployed with such originality and to such effect.

By distancing himself from himself, Coetzee also encourages the reader to think more critically: not only politically so, by teaching the reader about the background of South Africa and its people, but also in terms of showing us how much an author or biographer can twist another's story to their own ends and how writers who have still-living people as their subject have to consider the impact of their writing on the living - and on the still-living family of the subject, too.

Less academically-speaking, these Brechtian effects don't last forever: the narrative is well-written and Coetzee does allow the reader to become absorbed in the story. Although the peripheral characters of Coetzee's life are not always consistently well-developed, it is an easy read because of its highly compelling nature.

However, it is the concept of this fictionalised autobiography (and the previous two in its series, Boyhood and Youth, which could have been named more creatively to avoid looking like they've just been nicked from Tolstoy) which has surely attracted attention from critics and awarding bodies; the story itself is less remarkable, and if it were told in another format, it would have surely slipped through the net.

Other fictional works by JM Coetzee

Dusklands (1974)

In The Heart of the Country (1977)

Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)

Life and Times of Michael K (1983)

Foe (1986)

Age of Iron (1990)

The Master of Petersburg (1994)

Boyhood (1997)

The Lives of Animals (1999)

Disgrace (1999)

Youth (2002)

Elizabeth Costello (2003)

Slow Man (2005)

Diary of a Bad Year (2007)

Circus Shoes (Noel Streatfeild)

2011-02-26T20:33:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"Threatened with life in separate orphanages when their aunt dies, two children run away to join their unknown uncle who is a circus clown."

--The review--

Noel Streatfeild's standard format is by now familiar to anyone who's a fan: children find themselves without parents or other family, situation seems hopeless, then badabingbadaboom a "fairy godmother/father" type character appears in order for their lives to take a very different and sometimes better turn. There is a real risk with such authors that the reader could become tired of the same old predictable framework and desert their works.

Streatfeild, however, always manages to keep things fresh; she does not only achieve this with the changes in setting (albeit usually performance-related settings) but also with various other details and characters. Her choices of names for the characters always seem to be inspired, too, suiting their owners down to the ground. While Santa is a frankly bizarre name for a little girl it is somehow made to fit her quite well and marks the book out as being just that little more unusual.

Equally, Streatfeild offers insight into a less commonplace environment which perhaps does not fully exist in the same form today. Peter and Santa's lack of education up until this point would also not be found today in Britain given the various governmental regulations surrounding home schooling. We are therefore also given a slight relic of the UK as it was in days gone by, but Streatfeild's work is not only valuable as a museum piece: the characters are engaging and memorable, perhaps more consistently so than the storyline, and while it is perhaps not consistently strong enough throughout to be considered a children's classic in the same way as Ballet Shoes or White Boots, we find within its pages a brand of comfort reading that the whole family can enjoy.

Also a product of the books' and author's time is the innocent existence in which the children live (although this also perhaps comes down to the middle class environment where they are situated), which perhaps provides an increasingly sought-after dimension to literature, with adults not only wanting this for the purposes of their own nostalgia but also for the image they wish to project to their own children. Streatfeild's continued appeal is therefore unsurprising, with her stories' twists and turns, memorable characters, elements of a bygone age and her happy endings all keeping readers returning for more.

Other works by Noel Streatfeild

Ballet Shoes (1936)
Tennis Shoes (1937)
Curtain Up (1944) (also published as: Theater Shoes)
Party Frock (1946) (also published as: Party Shoes)
The Painted Garden (1949) (significantly abridged and published in the U.S. as: Movie Shoes)
White Boots (1951) (also published as: Skating Shoes)
The Fearless Treasure (1953)
The Bell Family (1954) (also published as: Family Shoes)
Wintle's Wonders (1957) (also published as: Dancing Shoes)
Apple Bough (1962) (also published as: Traveling Shoes)
A Vicarage Family (1963)
The Children on the Top Floor (1964)
Away from the Vicarage (1965)
The Growing Summer (1966) (also published as: The Magic Summer)
Caldicott Place (1967) (also published as: The Family at Caldicott Place)
The "Gemma" series (1968-9)
Thursday's Child (1970)
Beyond the Vicarage (1971)
Ballet Shoes for Anna (1972)
When the Siren Wailed (1974)
Far To Go (1976) (a sequel to Thursday's Child)

Puligny-Montrachet: Journal of a Village in Burgundy (Simon Loftus)

2011-02-26T13:23:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"The 1992 Wine Merchant of the Year describes one year in the life of a small wine-making village in Burgundy, discussing its ancient rivalries and political intrigues, its residents, and the rhythms of the agricultural year."

--The review--

There are plenty of expatriate enthusiasts sending missives from France who are more than ready to line our bookshelves and convince us that by the time we have got to the last page, we will be wine connoisseurs of the first order or ready to do up a derelict château in the middle of nowhere. Simon Loftus, however, is not one of these illusionists, presenting us with a down-to-earth and illusion-free account which is somehow still enchanting. This is even in spite of the fact that in the thirty or so years that have elapsed since the book's publication, some elements of the village life he describes may have changed a little.

Packed full of fascinating facts (including that Puligny-Montrachet has no underground cellars due to the water table causing them to flood should they be dug below ground), Loftus manages to engage his audience without patronising us by flying too low or losing us in technical jargon by flying too high. The production of the wine is fabulously intertwined with tales of the villages' inhabitants, which are enhanced even further by individual interview snippets conducted by Loftus. As if this were not enough, we are also treated visually with photographs, although in a more modern (perhaps hardback) edition there may be even more of a wow-factor with colour photographs (those in the paperback edition are black and white, although this also adds to the journal's more rustic feel).

The journal format also allows the story of the year's wine season to flow, building atmosphere and intimacy with success. It has been said that Loftus' book is not only the best story of French wine-making but also the best story of France in general, and this is certainly a convincing assessment - Loftus takes us all by the hand and leads us to meet the people, the village, the businesses, the landscapes, the produce, the language and the atmosphere with authenticity and vigour. Rich in detail, it also calls us back to reread the account again and again. While it may not convince readers that spending a summer of back-breaking physical labour in the form of harvesting grapes is the best idea, the journal is not here to sell us an untainted dream; Loftus leaves us with no false impressions of how difficult this work and this life can be. We are tourists, but of the best kind, as we are guided by perhaps one of the most honest accounts that there is, by a wine expert who also seems to be very much one of us.

Other works by Simon Loftus

A Pike In The Basement: Tales of a Hungry Traveller (2004)

Red Wines of Bordeaux (1988)

White Wines of Burgundy (with Jasper Morris; 1988)

Anatomy of the Wine Trade: Ade's Sardines and Other Stories (1987)

Update on books read (2011) - January/February

2011-02-23T18:09:00.004+01:00

1. The Guermantes Way (Marcel Proust)
2. Whispers in the Graveyard (Theresa Breslin)
3. The Ritz London Book of Afternoon Tea (Helen Simpson)
4. Summertime (JM Coetzee)

The Guermantes Way (Marcel Proust)

2011-02-23T18:03:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--
"After the relative intimacy of the first two volumes of In Search of Lost Time, The Guermantes Way opens up a vast, dazzling landscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century, as the narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literary and aristocratic salons. Both a salute to and a devastating satire of a time, place, and culture, The Guermantes Way defines the great tradition of novels that follow the initiation of a young man into the ways of the world."

--The review--

By this point in Proust's six-volume epic novel, the reader has already quashed around 1300 pages of prose. It being fair to say that these 1300 pages have not been especially accessible or easy to read, it is therefore also fair to say that the reader’s hopes are raised by the comparatively accessible beginning of The Guermantes Way. However, this effect sadly tapers.

This is reinforced by the volume's "War and Peace" quality, in the respect that the military and political discussion will be more enjoyable for some than for others. This aspect relies on prior knowledge and could inhibit understanding or enjoyment of this volume of the novel for those not in the know (including myself). Proust consequently risks losing his readers’ attention as a result.

However, there are some gleams in the night. Proust is masterful of the dry insult and witty comeback; even today, anyone with this power at their disposal is likely to be able to muddle through any situation life throws at them. The dialogue in this volume is also much more enjoyable than it has been in previous volumes, tension is managed well, and Mr Charlus also comes into his own as a great, amusing character. Could this prove to be some of the character development we have longed for during the reading of the past nearly two thousand pages?!

Alas, the author does not sustain this skilful depiction of character. The timing of the appearance of the grandfather for just about the first time in the entire novel means that he is unconvincing in his grief: Proust has not invested the time or energy in making us care about him by building up his character more. The author also continues to tell rather than show, with places remaining easy to visualise while people are not always so; this suggests that the author can describe well but chooses not to, which seems a highly bizarre trait to be attached to such a highly acclaimed novel.

There are other, more academic, points which make this volume interesting, perhaps as redemption for the above. Proust is metacritical, talking about the skills of authorship frequently. We have the fun of trying to work out if he is making Marcel deliberately ironic or just pretentious, and the deeper enjoyment of the volume being more like a work of philosophy in places than a work of fiction. The first slightly strange translation is also seen in this volume, with the word ‘formed’ being used for ‘educated’ or ‘trained’, as a sign of the translator or editor taking the French ‘former’ (to train or educate) or ‘formation’ (education or training) a little too literally.

By the end of this volume we are more or less halfway through the opus; we should be rolling along by now but to the contrary are still having to work hard. However, Proust still knows how to throw in a few details that mean we don’t just give up here. Is the doctor incompetent, or just wrong? And is the ending as predictable as the final sentences lead us to believe, or is there a massive twist coming? Here’s hoping for the latter.

Within A Budding Grove (Marcel Proust)

2011-02-23T17:59:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"In this second volume of In Search of Lost Time, the narrator turns from the childhood reminiscences of Swann's Way to memories of his adolescence. Having gradually become indifferent to Swann's daughter Gilberte, the narrator visits the seaside resort of Balbec with his grandmother and meets a new object of attention—Albertine, "a girl with brilliant, laughing eyes and plump, matt cheeks.""

--The review--

As with volumes 1 and 3 of In Search of Lost Time, the second, Within A Budding Grove, is not without its merits and, in addition to the sheer beauty of the language used, again toys with some interesting semantic issues in the second part of the volume and confirms previous suspicions that Proust makes it easier for us to visualise places than people.

What is clear, though, is the growing irritation at Marcel's behaviour and personality that steadily increases throughout the volume. For want of a better phrase, the man acts like a total pansy; this act wears thin after several hundred pages. However, it could be argued that Proust cleverly replicates the maddening temperament that overtakes us all when in the sights of unrequited love. This makes the volume become quite blurry in its similarity, and while this dreamlike quality is perhaps Proust's trademark, it can make it difficult for the motivation to continue to be consistently maintained.

The politics of France at this time and of the high society that Marcel is beginning to be aware of and to inhabit are not laid on so heavily in this volume as in volume three; this is a blessing rather than a curse, as it, in its own special way, probably helps to render this volume more accessible.

Proust also successfully chronicles the nature of teenage obsession with certain interests and people; upon reading, we too are transported back to those same feelings of intensity, which are more important to us than Marcel’s specific situation. The word “Berma” could be replaced with any other word; this, if you like, is another in the sequence of the reader's own madeleine moments. Equally, there is relevance to be found in Marcel’s meeting with Bergotte, the author that he idolises; the idea that perhaps we should never meet our heroes is arguably ever truer in an increasingly celebrity-obsessed Western world.
Although Proust has had accusations of anti-Semitism levelled at him for his portrayal of Bloch and his family, this to me is unfounded; the impressions and opinions expressed here are likely an honest social portrait of the time, rather than setting out to be deliberately malicious. He, along with other authors such as Enid Blyton and Hergé, are to be valued rather than condemned for such representations; rather than making their work into nothing more than museum pieces, they are important living parts of history.
But in spite of all of these various positive aspects, the reader still longs for more movement in terms of characterisation and momentum in the plot, to match in some small way the massive voyage of self-discovery and mapping of history that is taking place. Really all that the reader has is the image of a character who is not enamoured with any specific female but whose attentions constantly flicker; in love with the idea of being in love, he comes across as little more than fickle and silly.
And yet it is perhaps this interior evolution of character which encourages the reader to continue; in spite of the volume's deep flaws, it is not enough to be completely off-putting.

Wishing you a bookish New Year

2011-01-02T19:58:00.000+01:00

...and apologies for my general rubbishness as a blogger this year. One of my resolutions for 2011 is to be better!

While progress was generally impeded by my decision (for better or for worse) to read Proust's ridiculously long "In Search of Lost Time" this year, as well as my devotion (also for better or for worse) to NaNoWriMo in November and the acceptance of a mammoth translation project which should go some way to funding my planned trip to America in October, that is no excuse for my apparently appalling commitment to writing up.

My resolution to be better at blogging this year is also accompanied by my resolution to read more books in French; while my achievement of 7% French books this year is still better than last year, it's still not all I would like it to be. If I had read Tatiana de Rosnay's "Sarah's Key" in French (which I could have done) I may have achieved a more acceptable 10%. Still - onwards and upwards!

New and marvellous discoveries of 2010: Tatiana de Rosnay and Nancy Mitford. May the literary treasure trove that is open to me long continue to surprise and delight me.

update December 2010

2010-12-31T19:46:00.012+01:00

# of books read in December: 4

Cumulative total: 54

1. The Blessing (Nancy Mitford)

2. The Plato Papers (Peter Ackroyd)

3. The Hours (Michael Cunningham)

4. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows)

5. Love in a Cold Climate (Nancy Mitford)

6. En passant (Raymond Queneau)

7. The Story of God (Robert Winston)

8. Ye Gods! Travels in Greece (Jill Dudley)

9. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K Dick)

10. La Chine Classique (Ivan P Kamenarovic)

11. White Teeth (Zadie Smith)

12. The House in Norham Gardens (Penelope Lively)

13. Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl)

14. Sarah's Key (Tatiana de Rosnay)

15. Rebuilding Coventry (Sue Townsend)

16. On Chesil Beach (Ian McEwan)

17. The Undomestic Goddess (Sophie Kinsella)

18. French Kissing (Catherine Sanderson)

19. Icons of England (various authors; edited by Bill Bryson)

20. Shirley (Charlotte Brontë)

21. Women's Hour Short Stories

22. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

23. Juliet, Naked (Nick Hornby)

24. Reviving Ophelia (Mary Pipher)

25. Nightingale Wood (Stella Gibbons)

26. The Orange Girl (Jostein Gaarder)
27. Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris)
28. Gemma and Sisters (Noel Streatfeild)
29. See Under: Love (David Grossman)
30. Swann's Way (Marcel Proust)

31. Le roi des fougères (Jean Anglade)

32. The Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio)

33. The Glass Room (Simon Mawer)

34. Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)

35. Missykad, or Britannic Raj Through The Turnstiles (Malcolm Henry James)

36. Where We Going, Daddy?: Life With Two Sons Unlike Any Other (Jean-Louis Fournier)

37. First Grey, Then White, Then Blue (Margriet de Moor)

38. The Dead School (Patrick McCabe)

39. The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)

40. My Favourite Wife (Tony Parsons)

41. How to be Alone (Jonathan Franzen)

42. Eclipse (John Banville) - review forthcoming

43. Dancing Shoes (Noel Streatfeild)

44. Petite Anglaise (Catherine Sanderson)

45. Within A Budding Grove (Marcel Proust)

46. Puligny-Montrachet (Simon Loftus)

47. Circus Shoes (Noel Streatfeild)

48. A Growing Summer (Noel Streatfeild)

49. The Icarus Girl (Helen Oyeyemi)

50. Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down (Stuart Payne)

51. A London Christmas (Marina Cantacuzino)

52. One Day (David Nicholls)

53. There's Probably No God: The Atheist's Guide To Christmas (edited by Ariane Sherine)

54. And Another Thing (Eoin Colfer)

A London Christmas (Marina Cantacuzino)

2010-12-29T18:55:00.027+01:00

--The blurb--

""A London Christmas" is an anthology of seasonal memories compiled from journals, novels, poems, local traditions and historical events, illustrated with over forty photographs and engravings. Diatribes against seasonal excesses mingle with celebrations of a more benevolent kind - best illustrated by Charles Dickens in "A Christmas Carol". In this book you will find everything associated with Christmas in London through the ages from the fifteenth century when festivities were overseen by a Lord of Misrule, to when the Puritans attempted to abolish Christmas, through to Norway's annual gift of a Christmas tree and the bravery of Londoners spending Christmas under the threat of the Blitz. A wealth of fictional characters help to celebrate the joy of the season from Mr Pooter in "The Diary of a Nobody" to the tale of a shopping spree in London in "Diary of a Provincial Lady"."

--The review--

When Christmas comes I love to savour it for as long as possible. While there are plenty of seasonal compilations out there to choose from, this certainly strikes me as being an ideal accompaniment which can be enjoyed throughout December.

The word 'enjoyed' is certainly key here: this is a collection to be savoured rather than devoured. This is certainly not a criticism, as it means that A London Christmas can serve as a companion for weeks on end. The selections are well-chosen and transport the reader successfully to Christmases gone by, although the extracts are on the whole rather highbrow and extremely traditional, so definitely more for those who prefer their literature to be more in a classical vein.

In spite of the beautiful illustrations, this anthology appears to be relatively little-known. It therefore perhaps gives off an impression of being a little too serious, and something that you have to work at to read rather than something you can read for relaxation, and while one might struggle to read it all the way through at once without losing focus, the extracts are short enough for one to be able to pick the collection up and put it down at leisure. It can therefore be enjoyed in any way that you see fit as the festive season plays out, with new secrets and details tucked within its pages for you to discover and rediscover with every Christmas that follows.

There's Probably No God: The Atheist's Guide To Christmas (edited by Ariane Sherine)

2010-12-26T17:33:00.015+01:00

--The blurb--

"Forty-two atheist celebrities, comedians, scientists and writers give their funny and serious tips for enjoying the Christmas season.

When the Atheist Bus Campaign was first launched, over £150,000 was raised in four days - enough to place the advert 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life' on 800 UK buses in January 2009. Now dozens of atheist writers, comedians and scientists are joining together to raise money for a very different cause. The Atheist's Guide to Christmas is a funny, thoughtful handbook all about enjoying Christmas, from 42 of the world's most entertaining atheists. It features everything from an atheist Christmas miracle to a guide to the best Christmas pop hits, and contributors include Richard Dawkins, Charlie Brooker, Derren Brown, Ben Goldacre, Jenny Colgan, David Baddiel, Simon Singh, AC Grayling, Brian Cox and Richard Herring. The full book advance and all royalties will go to the UK HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust."

--The review--

As traditional as I am when it comes to the festive season, it's always good to have a breath of fresh air when it comes to my beloved Crimbo (which I fear, on my MP3 player at least, is still stuck in the 1980s). This collection of famous names, I thought, which includes many names that I admire, such as AC Grayling and Simon Singh, would certainly provide a plethora of new points of view which would be both thought-provoking and entertaining.

As is perhaps difficult to avoid when you have forty-two people all trying to work together to write one book, this is only partly the case. While some of the entries are hilariously funny and articulate, others are unamusing (while trying to be the opposite) or just plain hackneyed. Some, one suspects, would be nothing without Ariane Sherine's editing skills. Again, like most anthologies, it is a collection to be savoured rather than raced through, and not something that one should feel compelled to read chronologically - in fact, dipping into it at random is possibly the best way to enjoy it throughout Christmas.

An interesting topic approached by some of the contributors involves how to explain Christmas to children when as parents you do not believe in the original Christmas story, and some of the resulting explanations are quite ingenious, funny, and touching enough to be used in real life. The collection is also helpful to the cause of further amplifying how one can identify culturally and even emotionally with a religion while not actually believing in its allegedly Christian roots. While the book is fun, it also touches on the serious, making it, in fact, not only a manual for an atheist Christmas but also offering a few pointers on how to manoeuvre one's way through an atheist life. Not that it is a rehashed Bible in any sense; we are presented with a platter of different viewpoints and allowed to dine from it at our leisure, whether over the course of a month or several years.

Many different forms of interpretation are also presented here, such as paganism and humanism, alongside more 'basic' varieties of atheism. As we all grow older we figure out where we fit into this and how our beliefs change, making multiple readings of this compendium not only possible but appealing as well - not only as a spiritual quest but also as part of a quest on a journey of finding the joy in life (at Christmas in particular, as well as all year round).

Petite Anglaise (Catherine Sanderson)

2010-12-05T19:36:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"Living in Paris with her partner, the workaholic Mr Frog, and their adorable toddler, Tadpole, Catherine decides to alleviate the boredom of her metro-boulot-dodo routine by starting a blog under the name of Petite Anglaise. Writing with disarming honesty about Paris life, about the confines of her hollow relationship with Mr Frog and about the wonder and pain that comes with being a mother, she finds a new purpose to her day. As Petite Anglaise, Catherine regains her confidence and makes virtual friends, including one charismatic and single Englishman who lives in Brittany, James. And after meeting James one evening in a bar, Catherine feels she has regained her ability to fall in love, too."

--The review--

As with Catherine Sanderson's fictionalised effort, French Kissing, I was expecting feelings of satisfaction and derision in equal measure following my reading of Petite Anglaise. Happily, this was more on the side of entertainment this time. Sanderson continues to demonstrate her canny ability to seize on tiny details that really do accurately portray daily Parisian life, and the way she writes veers between schmaltziness and sheer beauty in equal measure, making this a very comforting and accessible read.

There were plenty of ways in which I felt totally unable to empathise with Catherine. It certainly confirmed for me the feeling of absolute disgust which permeates me even contemplating the logistics and deceit of an affair, and from me the cherry tomato incident elicited no sympathy (just why would you even consider giving your child something which, when left completely whole, could so easily cause them to choke, and then be so surprised and annoyed when they throw them all up all over you?). However, there were many more ways in which I could empathise: she eloquently expresses the feeling of only living alongside French people, rather than living as part of them and being part of their landscape. Her writing reassured me that this can take many years to establish, and that not having a social life or (m)any friends at this stage of my life in France is not abnormal. Although I could not feel familiarity with her success as a blogger (given my quite frequent feeling when blogging that I am just shooting these words into a cyberspace equivalent of a black hole), I did not feel jealous either. Sanderson's familiar style invites you to take a seat beside her and enjoy the ride.

Consequently, Petite Anglaise proves a very quick read, which is never for a moment dull or sluggish: Sanderson keeps readers engaged and on their toes with ease. However, Petite Anglaise and French Kissing are both in a very similar vein in terms of their subject matter, and so while the advice to budding writers to write what they know is sound, I would issue a word of caution: Sanderson may wish to diversify her repertoire if she wishes to keep her readers on the hook. While the expat-lit market is popular, it is not insatiable.

Other works by Catherine Sanderson

French Kissing (2009)

Dancing Shoes (Noel Streatfeild)

2010-12-05T17:19:00.000+01:00

--The blurb--

"When their mother dies, leaving them orphaned, Rachel and Hilary are sent to live with their aunt, who runs a troupe of dancing girls –‘Mrs Wintle’s Little Wonders’. Hilary, a talented dancer, settles there immediately and loves the chance to dance every day. Rachel finds it more difficult to fit in. She’s also got another worry on her mind. Her mother’s dying wish was for Hilary to attend the Royal Ballet School. But Hilary seems to have other ideas!"

--The review--

It is clear that following the success of her classic and arguably best-loved story, Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild (or her agent or publisher) decided that it would be a good idea to stretch the format for the American market in particular as far as was humanly possible. To an extent this was successful, with White Boots (also published as Skating Shoes) in particular enjoying similar popularity with the author's fans. However, is there such thing as taking a concept too far? Alongside these two novels, Streatfeild's back catalogue also includes - to name but a few - Tennis Shoes, Theatre Shoes (/Curtain Up), and Party Shoes (a.k.a. Party Frock; all yet to be read by me) as well as Circus Shoes (read; review forthcoming), and the subject of this review, Dancing Shoes. So is Streatfeild's breaking point reached here?

Arguably the answer is no: Streatfeild's stories often feature a "fairy godmother" style character who steps in to save the children from whatever happens to be threatening their futures, and in Dancing Shoes this is not the case. In fact, we are presented with the complete opposite; we have supportive adult characters, yes, but none with enough power to save the situation. Instead, we have the highly disagreeable aunt and her equally disagreeable and spoilt daughter Dulcie, and the trusted family doctor who rightly or wrongly believes that Hilary and Rachel's aunt is doing the best for them, rather than listening to Rachel's concerns. Rachel's misery is therefore rather a focus, and while it can make the story a bit of a plod to read, it does ultimately serve a purpose, as Rachel has to realise that people do not always want what we want for them - for better, or for worse. This is an important lesson to learn, and not one, to my best recollection, that appears elsewhere in Streatfeild's stories, where quite to the contrary children are propelled along by pushy parents.

Another important moral appearing in the story is the idea that whatever we are suffering is only for now; we are likely to have the power to change our situation later on, even if this power is out of reach at the time, and this is something that Rachel learns as well. This is not to say that we do not feel any sympathy for Rachel throughout the story - the aunt is so odious that we cannot help feeling for the little girl who struggles to fit into her new life on the death of her mother.

The story does suffer from some forgettable aspects: in the style of Enid Blyton, the children in Streatfeild's novels all tend to be of similar personalities and from similar backgrounds, and consequently only a month or so after reading the story I cannot say that I remember terribly well how it ends. This, perhaps is due to the cause outlined above: Streatfeild may have been under pressure to continue in the 'Shoes' vein to such an extent that many of the stories ended up merging together in an unoriginal vagueness. So while the stories are nice comfort reads that can be returned to over and over, on first reading they may not always stick. Dancing Shoes sadly falls into this category.

Other works by Noel Streatfeild

Ballet Shoes (1936)

Tennis Shoes (1937)

Circus Shoes [The Circus Is Coming] (1938)*

Theatre Shoes [Curtain Up] (1944)

Party Shoes [Party Frock] (1946)

Movie Shoes [The Painted Garden] (1949)**

Skating Shoes [White Boots] (1951)

Family Shoes [The Bell Family] (1954)

Travelling Shoes [Apple Bough] (1962)

*All of the titles mentioned here, with the exception of Ballet Shoes and Tennis Shoes, which only ever had one title, are listed under their published titles for the US market; their UK title is listed in brackets afterwards.

** Interested readers are advised that the American publication of this novel - Movie Shoes - is a significantly abridged version of Streatfeild's original work.

update November 2010

2010-12-04T15:16:00.005+01:00

# of books read in November:4
Cumulative total: 50

1. The Blessing (Nancy Mitford)
2. The Plato Papers (Peter Ackroyd)
3. The Hours (Michael Cunningham)
4. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows)
5. Love in a Cold Climate (Nancy Mitford)
6. En passant (Raymond Queneau)
7. The Story of God (Robert Winston)
8. Ye Gods! Travels in Greece (Jill Dudley)
9. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K Dick)
10. La Chine Classique (Ivan P Kamenarovic)
11. White Teeth (Zadie Smith)
12. The House in Norham Gardens (Penelope Lively)
13. Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl)
14. Sarah's Key (Tatiana de Rosnay)
15. Rebuilding Coventry (Sue Townsend)
16. On Chesil Beach (Ian McEwan)
17. The Undomestic Goddess (Sophie Kinsella)
18. French Kissing (Catherine Sanderson)
19. Icons of England (various authors; edited by Bill Bryson)
20. Shirley (Charlotte Brontë)
21. Women's Hour Short Stories
22. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
23. Juliet, Naked (Nick Hornby)
24. Reviving Ophelia (Mary Pipher)
25. Nightingale Wood (Stella Gibbons)
26. The Orange Girl (Jostein Gaarder)
27. Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris)
28. Gemma and Sisters (Noel Streatfeild)
29. See Under: Love (David Grossman)
30. Swann's Way (Marcel Proust)
31. Le roi des fougères (Jean Anglade)
32. The Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio)
33. The Glass Room (Simon Mawer)
34. Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)
35. Missykad, or Britannic Raj Through The Turnstiles (Malcolm Henry James)
36. Where We Going, Daddy?: Life With Two Sons Unlike Any Other (Jean-Louis Fournier)
37. First Grey, Then White, Then Blue (Margriet de Moor)
38. The Dead School (Patrick McCabe)
39. The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
40. My Favourite Wife (Tony Parsons)
41. How to be Alone (Jonathan Franzen)
42. Eclipse (John Banville) - review forthcoming
43. Dancing Shoes (Noel Streatfeild)
44. Petite Anglaise (Catherine Sanderson)
45. Within A Budding Grove (Marcel Proust)
46. Puligny-Montrachet (Simon Loftus)
47. Circus Shoes (Noel Streatfeild)
48. A Growing Summer (Noel Streatfeild)
49. The Icarus Girl (Helen Oyeyemi)
50. Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down (Stuart Payne)