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Death on the Riviera by John Bude

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Death on the RivieraAnother Shiny New Books review – this time of the latest British Library Crime Classic, and my first John Bude (despite having the rest of them on my shelf!), 1952’s Death on the Riviera. He does get wonderful covers, doesn’t he? To be honest, it’s not my favourite of their offerings – Alan Melville still holds that crown – but it’s good fun. Read the whole review, or be enticed by the opening to it…

I’ve got all the John Bude reprints that have appeared in the British Library Crime Classics series, and have given several to other people, but Death on the Riviera (1952) is actually the first of his that I’ve read. Like all the others, he has been given a beautiful cover – but what of the contents? Well, it’s a fun detective novel that won’t stand up to rigorous examination, but is none the less enjoyable for that.

Gratitude by Oliver Sacks

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GratitudeThe first of my reviews from Shiny New Books that I’ll be pointing you towards is… a little book called Gratitude by Oliver Sacks, and the final book that will ever be published under his name. Read the whole review here, or be enticed by the opening of it…

I’ve had the privilege of reviewing three different books by Oliver Sacks for Shiny New Books now, but this is the first since his sad death last year. By the time his autobiography On The Move was published, we already knew that Sacks had fatal cancer – though he didn’t know it when the manuscript was handed in. So the difference between his autobiography and three of the four essays here is precisely that: these are written with an awareness of mortality and this, indeed, is often their theme.

StuckinaBook’s Weekend Miscellany

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Thus Were Their FacesHowdy y’all – hope you’re all having lovely weekends. It’s beautifully sunny here in Oxford, but in a few hours I’ll be hopping on a plane for a very short trip to Glasgow (no time to find any bookshops, boo) – I’ll let you know all about that afterwards. For now, here’s a book, a blog post, and a link…

1.) The book – I heard on the Reading the End podcast that Helen Oyeyemi was having a collection of short stories out later this year, and while searching for that (FYI, it’s What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours and is out in April in the UK, possibly earlier in the US) I came across an NYRB she’d written an introduction for. It’s a collection of short stories called Thus Were Their Faces by Silvina Ocampo, and sounds darkly, weirdly fascinating. Does anybody know anything about it?

2.) The blog post – it’s got to be the link round-up post for Margery Sharp Day over at Beyond Eden Rock.

3a.) The link – thanks to Biana the publicist for sending me this link, to a video of the highlights from the Costa Book Awards, which seems like a fun thing to embed:

3b.) The sneaky second link – can you match the grammar abilities expected of 7 year olds under the new curriculum? I’m sad to say I got 10/11 – I feel like by now I should be able to ace a test for 7 year olds…

Shiny New Books: Issue 8

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As usual, I’ll tell you more about individual posts – but Shiny New Books Issue 8 is now live!

SNB-logo

Writing in haste… but do go and have an explore. It’s the usual mix of great fiction, non-fiction, reprints, and BookBuzz features – slimmer than usual as we’ve been particularly keen to include only our favourites. Many thanks to my wonderful co-editors Annabel, Harriet, and Victoria!

 

The Eye of Love by Margery Sharp

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The Eye of LoveI’m rather astonished that I’m managing to join in with the Margery Sharp celebrations at Beyond Eden Rock (organised by Jane) – chiefly because I only managed to start The Eye of Love (1957) on Saturday, and have had a very busy weekend. Indeed, it’s been a busy old year so far, which is the reason I must give for not having published as many blog posts as I’d intended so far. But the combination of fierce determination and (more importantly) Sharp’s excellent writing have made me finish just in time.

The Eye of Love is the third Sharp novel I’ve read so far, and it’s been on my shelves for many years. The reason I chose this one is because it turns out it’s the only one I have in Oxford (I had intended to go with Britannia Mews) – but it is rather lovely, and (sorry, but the connection is irresistible) sharp.

This is Sharp’s quirky take on a romance novel, her motif being that the ‘eye of love’ sees things that other eyes cannot; basically, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In this case, the beholders are a middle-aged couple, one of whom (born Dorothy Hogg, but choosing instead the name Dolores Diver) fancies herself a Spanish Rose type, comb in hair and shawl around her shoulders, but is known by laughers in the street as Old Madrid. Her inamorata is Mr Gibson, a portly man who has made his money in retail. As the novel opens, they are deciding that they can no longer be a couple. They have been in love, and lovers, for a decade – but both decide, unspoken, that people of their disparate stations do not marry. Instead, Mr Gibson must marry a Miss Joyce, solely for business reasons.

They are both rather distraught, but Sharp’s masterstroke is adding a third element: the young girl Martha. She is Dolores’ niece by marriage, orphaned and living with Dolores, and a more convincingly stolid and dispassionate child never existed in fiction. She is not mean or intentionally rude, she is simply completely uninterested in the emotional lives of the adults around her. Where Dolores hopes she will be a shoulder to cry on, or even some sort of go-between, she naively and honestly makes no indication that she misses him at all. Martha adds wonderful comedy to the novel, and Sharp draws her beautifully. Oh, and she’s also something of an artistic genius, unbeknownst to everyone (including herself).

Martha is not the only element of comedy. The narrative is always undermining the characters’ emotional effusions or deceits. When Miss Joyce accepts Mr Gibson’s proposal, with supposed surprise, Sharp adds:

As she moved impulsively to accept his embrace, she impulsively pressed a bell; the maid who brought in the champagne must have been very handy.

That repeated ‘impulsively’ works wonders. It is a very amusing book, and that – as in Cluny Brown, which I failed to finish in time for Margery Sharp Day 2015 – is due chiefly to this way Sharp has as a narrator. The most ordinary events are lent a spin of dry humour, but, vitally, Sharp remains intensely affectionate about her characters – and so does the reader. That is the keynote of the novel, that has various twists and turns and interlacing events: Dolores and Mr Gibson may appear ridiculous to many, but Sharp ably makes it so that the reader, like the characters, sees them instead through the eye of love.

Incidentally… my copy is The Popular Book Club, eventually a subscription book-of-the-month type club, and my copy still had the original brochure tucked in it (at around p.20, suggesting that they didn’t get very far). It features a little bit about the author…

Margery Sharp brochure

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Americanah cover

It’s the spinning blurry woman again! I’m over at Vulpes Libris talking about Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which I wasn’t super stoked to read, but which I actually ended up loving (spoilers!)

I usually choose to review books there that don’t necessarily feel like perfect fits for StuckinaBook – i.e. you’ll never find me reviewing a witty novel about spinsters opening a cafe over there – but this is a novel that I think everyone will value. And, let’s face it, I’m probably last to the party on this one anyway.

The Immortals by S.E. Lister

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The ImmortalsWhat’s the opposite of a time-traveller? I suppose it’s somebody who is stuck in one time – and that’s precisely the predicament of the Hyde family at the beginning of S.E. Lister’s novel The Immortals (published a few months ago – and indeed read a few months ago; I’ve been intending to review it for so long, but… Christmas got in the way). They have been living and re-living 1945 for many years, moving at the end of every year, and judging passing time by location rather than world events. This has been the decision of Rosa Hyde’s father, who – for some reason she doesn’t really understand – can’t bare the idea of leaving the year, or the ‘main event’ of going up to London for the declaration of peace.

I say ‘at the beginning’ of the novel, but in fact the novel opens with Rosa’s return – from where (or, more importantly, when) is not immediately clear. (And what an opening line it is! I love its intrigue.)

Rosa came home after seven years, in the same year she had left. It was the beginning of the wet spring she knew so well. She found their cottage on the edge of a village, the latest Hyde home in a string of many, tucked out of the way behind a disused cattle barn. There were sandbags stacked against the steps, blackout curtains in every window. Bindweed framed the doorway. Beyond the fields a church spire rose into the dusky sky, lashed by rain, its chimes silenced.

Lister has a knack for portraying a time and place quickly and effectively. This is an example, but there are plenty in the novel – because we then see all the times and places that Rosa has travelled. Once away from the 1945-dwelling of her father, she is able to travel much more widely. We rush through a maelstrom of places and periods, with local colour thrown in at just the right amount – on one page, afraid in a busy Victorian street; shortly after, made a near-deity in a bygone era. That section was rather lovely – seeing Rosa elevated in that way, after her years of 1945 tedium – but things become more complex when she meets Tommy Rust. He is a fellow Immortal (and believes in this immortality with his whole heart), and something of a suave, risky gent of the sort that is rather dashing in literature and might not be so much outside of it.

And then there is the soldier Harding, who makes things even more complicated – though I thing I was more affected by the brothers who travelled together as much as possible, and were distraught at the possibility of being separated. But, y’know, brothers always get me.

I’m not much of a one for time-travel novels in general, but I certainly am for novels about family dynamics – so I liked The Immortals best when Rosa was dealing with abandoning her family, and coping with missing many years of her younger sister’s life, and that sort of thing – all of which was handled nicely. The climax of the day peace was declared in 1945 – a day on which Rosa’s father always goes to London to join in the celebrations, trying to avoid other iterations of himself in the crowd – was very moving, and an excellent peak. Indeed, it seems rather as though the non-sci-fi sections of The Immortals were my favourites… and perhaps that was inevitable. But more skill is required to make quotidian events and relationships captivating than is needed to pick a selection of intriguing years and write about them – so kudos for Lister there, and it will be intriguing to see what she could turn her hand to in a more earth-bound genre, if she ever chooses to give that a whirl.

Thanks, Sophie, for sending me a copy of this book.

 

Don’t look at me: or, spinning women on book covers

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I’ve just finished Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – and, indeed, have just had book group discussing it. A full review will come soon, but first, it inspired me to put together something quickly on book covers. Something entirely unoriginal, but… well, I’ve not done it here before, so it’s original for StuckinaBook.

This is the cover of the copy I read, which I borrowed from the library:

Americanah cover

And it’s a really weird blurry turning woman. What is it with blurry turning women? It reminded me of the covers to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and the eerily similar The Spare Room by Helen Garner:

00Blog Pics5

Who decides that blurry women and spinning women are what people want on covers? We hear a lot about headless women on covers – and some blurry women can be headless too, it seems – but what is with this spinning? It’s so niche. I don’t recall Ifemelu doing any spinning to speak of.

Of course, I now can’t find any other examples. HAVE I launched into an exposé of something that doesn’t actually happen? Well, possibly. I’m relying on you all to find more examples for me…

A pilgrimage to the Bookbarn

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I’m back in Oxford now, and took the opportunity to go via the Bookbarn in North Somerset – where I have been many times before, and have written about here on several occasions. Every book is £1, though all the best books are siphoned off into the internet-only section of the barn complex (which wasn’t always the case – those halcyon days when all the books were browsable!) Truth be told, their fiction section is quite poor now, and I got very little there, but I got an awful lot of non-fiction. As you will see…

Bookbarn haul 2016

Lydia & Maynard: the letters of Lydia Lopokova and John Maynard Keynes
Ballerinas and economists aren’t top of my list of interests, but the Bloomsbury Group certainly are up there – and I love collections of letters, so here’s a corner of that group that I can add to my collection.

The Hare With the Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal
So, LibraryThing tells me that I already have this. Oops. Lucky charity shop in Oxford!

Letters to Louise: Theodore Dreiser’s Letters to Louise Campbell
I haven’t read a word by Dresier, but couldn’t resist more letters – particularly since they promise to cover his writing process and drafts, which is fascinating to me. And I bought a novel by him over a decade ago, so maybe it will inspire me to read that.

Hassan by James Elroy Flecker
If you’re following those books in the photo above, this was a tiny Penguin slipped between two bigger hardbacks. I bought this entirely because he gets a bewildered mention by the Provincial Lady.

Unforgettable, Unforgotten by Anna Buchan (O Douglas)
I didn’t realise that Anna B had written an autobiography – this looks fab.

Brensham Village by John Moore
The sequel to a book I have yet to read… but do own. Fingers crossed I like it!

Woman Alive by Susan Ertz
I haven’t read Ertz yet, but she gets a glowing mention in Nicola Beauman’s A Very Great Profession, and this hardback is lovely.

Two Worlds by David Daiches
All I know about Daiches is some literary criticism I read years ago – which seemed a good enough reason to grab his autobiography about growing up Jewish in Edinburgh.

Evelyn Waugh by Frances Donaldson
If there’s something I love even more than biographies, it’s memoirs by people who knew famous people in a non-famous context. Niche, I know, but Waugh’s self-proclaimed ‘country neighbour’ should be fun.

Talking Heads 2 by Alan Bennett
Writing Home by Alan Bennett
National Treasure.

The Spirit of Tolerance by Katharine Moore
I’ve read a couple of things by Moore, and also read about her editing this collection in her letters with Joyce Grenfell.

Mild and Bitter by A.P. Herbert
I can’t remember if I’ve ever actually read anything by APH, but I read quite a lot about him – and anything collected from Punch in the 1930s is going to be fabs,

My Apprenticeships by Colette
This is the year I’ll read some Colette, promise, Peter.

The Best of Stephen Leacock 1
I suspect I’ve got all these selections in other books, but I’m not the sort of guy who leaves Stephen Leacock on the shelf.

Pomp & Circumstance by Noel Coward
This has been on my keep-an-eye-out-for list for so many years that I can no longer quite way – other than the fact that Noel Coward is a legend.

The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium by Gerald Durrell
Birds, Beasts, and Relatives by Gerald Durrell
The Garden of the Gods by Gerald Durrell
The Drunken Forest by Gerald Durrell
There were SO many books by Gerald Durrell and Laurence Durrell there – I was particularly pleased to find the second and third books in the My Family and other Animals trilogy.

Selected Essays by Hilaire Belloc
Since I use the word belloc to mean ‘hilarious’ – yes, I know – so I should read some essays by him, right?