Return of Winnie-the-Pooh

StuckinaBook All , , 10 Comments

When it was announced that there would be an authorised sequel to Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, I was rather sceptical.  It seemed doomed to failure from the outset, and previous attempts to cash in on Milne’s talent (notably the horrendous Disney adaptation, and resultant filling of the world with the hideous illustrations that were mangled into being) weren’t encouraging.  But I read the first story online and was pretty impressed; Verity gave me a copy of Return to the Hundred Acre Wood (thanks Verity!), and… 15 months later, quick as a snap, I read it.

I don’t know why it took me so long, other than because it almost always takes me an age to read the books on my shelves, however much I’ve been looking forward to them.  But it seemed the perfect choice for my sickbed last week, undemanding and jolly, and so I took it down.

My thoughts could be summed up by saying: “It’s pretty much as good as it could be.”  We all knew it would never be as good as the original – how could it be? – but it could have been a lot, lot worse.

The right people wrote and illustrated it, for a start.  David Benedictus, the writer, had already dramatised the Winnie-the-Pooh books for the radio, and Mark Burgess (stepping into E.H. Shepard’s shoes as illustrator) was the colourist for Shepard’s illustrations in When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six.  These are clearly men who have a great awareness of, and fondness for, the genius of Milne and Shepard.  Whatever results they come up with, they have written and illustrated with respect and caution.  Not for them, the slap-dash “Wouldn’t it be funny if Rabbit looked like he was off his head on drugs, and Eeyore were an alcoholic?” stylings of Disney.

The stories in the book take place during one of Christopher Robin’s school holidays.  I’ll write a little bit about the ending of The House at Pooh Corner in another post, soon, but it’s clear that Christopher Robin hasn’t forgotten his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood.  He’s changed a bit, but he’s still delighted to see them – and they organise (or should that be organdise?) a speshul welcum home party for him, complete with speshul invitations.  Roo has his eye on a green jelly, and is trying to convince everyone else that the red and yellow ones look better.  Kanga successfully diverts Owl’s story about Uncle Robert.  Pooh gets drowsy and dreams about honey.  “Jollifications and hey-diddle-diddle,” comments Eeyore, and who are we to disagree with him?  Of course, Christopher Robin eventually turns up, and all is well.  It is a gentle, auspicious start to the collection.

Things continue pretty well.  As we go through the book, the events are chosen well.  Owl wants to write a book.  They start a school – Eeyore is headmaster.  Cricket is played.  Rabbit tries to take a Census…

“I thought I was a sensible animal,” Rabbit said, shuddering. 

“Of course you are,” said Pooh, “everybody knows that.” 

“And it was such a sensible idea, the Census.” 

“It’s almost the same word,” agreed Pooh.
It’s all very much in keeping with the gang’s original adventures, which is great.  Benedictus does, though, add another character.  A drought dries up the river, and there emerges (possibly indignant from years of having pooh-sticks dropped on her head), Lottie the Otter.  She wears pearls, says ‘darling’, and has gumption.  She certainly isn’t a replication of any other characters – it’s impressive the Benedictus has found a gap in the seemingly-comprehensive gallery of personality types invented by Milne – but, perhaps unsurprisingly, Lottie never quite works as a character.  Benedictus cannot rely on the charm that Milne has already built up in Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore et al – and there is a lot of looking-over-the-shoulder at events and expressions from previous books, which is better than if they’d been ignored altogether.

And there lies the problem, the inevitable problem, with Return to the Hundred Acre Wood.  The charm is missing.  Or, rather, it is less.  The same goes for Mark Burgess’s illustrations – the spark of genius which characterised both Milne’s writing and Shepard’s drawing is absent from their imitators.  That indescribable something which brought Shepard’s illustrations so charmingly alive, and gave Milne’s prose a subtle undertone of wry wit and affectionate knowingness – it has not been bestowed upon Burgess and Benedictus, at least not in these guises.

The main emotion I have, when closing the very enjoyable but ultimately, of course, inferior tales of the Hundred Acre Wood?  To re-read the originals, naturally.  What fun!

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

StuckinaBook All 6 Comments

It’s been a tiring week, mostly because I came down with a virus last weekend (I’m very glad I scheduled four posts to appear before I was stricken!) so I’m looking forward to collapsing a bit.  AND seeing my dear friend Mel, who is visiting Oxford.  I hope you all have equally fun plans!  And if you don’t, solace yourself with a book, a link, and a blog post.

1.) The book – who’d have thought that one of the new books I’m most excited about would be a graphic novel?  I loved the colourful, gentle touch of Brecht Evens’ The Wrong Place, so different to the brash superhero-comic-style of many graphic novels (but not all, of course.)  So I asked Jonathan Cape if they’d be kind enough to send me his latest, and they very nicely did – it’s called The Making Of and it looks to have the same aesthetic.  I will, of course, tell you more when I’ve read it.

2.) The link – is to the first post I’ve written in my new job at OxfordWords!  Actually, the first one I wrote will be appearing on Tuesday – this post, on ‘5 Words You Didn’t Know Were Acronyms‘, was written yesterday as a quick substitute for something else – but it was great fun to write, and might surprise you.

3.) The blog post – I’m afraid I’ve been pretty rubbish at commenting on posts this week, from my sickbed, but I’ve been reading ’em.  Mary/Mrs. Miniver’s Daughter has some lovely mural images in her latest post.  She seems to be at an exhibition every other hour, and I must follow her example and try to get to the British Murals and Decorative Painting 1910-1970 exhibition before it closes on 9th March.

Q&A with Mary Henely Magill

StuckinaBook All 9 Comments

As promised, here is my interview with Cheerful Weather for the Wedding screenwriter Mary Henely Magill!  It’s a real privilege to have her here.  And don’t forget, the DVD is currently out, available from Amazon and lots of other places.


Mary with director Donald Rice, on set.
(photo by Mark Tilley)

ST: For people who haven’t read Julia Strachey’s novel, describe it in a sentence!

MHM: I’m not good at this kind of thing at all, but I’ll give it a go … It’s a very sharp and funny and odd tale about a romance gone awry and a family on the verge of chaos.

ST: How did you discover the book?

MHM: It was given to me as a present by a very good friend.  We were both huge Persephone fans and she worked around the corner from the shop in Bloomsbury.  I was about to get married, but I don’t think my friend had read the book herself.  Dolly is not exactly the model bride-to-be.

ST: What led to you adapting it, and getting the film made?

MHM: I was looking for a small(ish) scale project to adapt and this seemed to be it.  I really didn’t know what I was doing.  I had worked in production on short films with Teun Hilte and Donald Rice, and they were involved with Cheerful Weather for the Wedding from the beginning.  Teun optioned the rights, and we always planned that Donald would direct the movie.  He edited the first few drafts of the script and eventually we wrote the script together.  Once Felicity Jones was on board, everything moved very quickly.

ST: Were there any bits of the novel which you loved, but didn’t feel would work for the screen?

MHM: Yes!  My favourite thing in the book is when Dolly remembers the moment she knew Joseph had fallen in love with her.  He didn’t actually say the words.  He told her that she would “adore” a jumbly, whatever that is, but he was really saying that he adored her.  I absolutely loved this and wrote it into the script.  We wound up changing the scene completely and the whole thing was cut – which was really disheartening.  But, we replaced it with the barn dance scene, which is my favourite part of the film so it all worked out!

ST: Here’s my idiosyncratic personal question, because it was about my favourite bit of the novel…. why weren’t the socks emerald green?! 

MHM: I really don’t know why we changed that.  I think we liked the idea that they looked like “cat sick.”  That was just a weird thing that got lost in translation somehow.  I always laughed about the socks in the book.  In the first few versions of the script, everyone who read it would say there was way too much stuff about the socks.  

ST: Any amusing anecdotes from the set?

MHM: The crew stayed in chalets at a place called Sandy Balls (look it up, it’s real!) and that provided lots of tittering and silliness.  We also had a hilarious evening at a hotel in Salisbury which involved restaurant ineptitude that would make Fawlty Towers look like The Ritz.  But, the most amusing anecdotes from the set are far too inappropriate to share on this blog!

ST: If you had to pick a favourite line from the screenplay, what would it be?

MHM: Yikes.  I really like when Kitty says that she doesn’t want the boy who looks like he has rabies.  I also like it when Mrs. Whitstable says that Dolly is beautiful, and then announces that she (Mrs. W) has lost her eyesight.  This was not in the book, although almost all the rest of Mrs. Whitstable’s lines were.  I actually took it from an aged great aunt of mine who said nearly the same thing to me when I visited her in Greece when I was 18.

ST: Which other books would you like to adapt, in an ideal world?

MHM: I could go on and on with this one, but here are the first three that come to mind:
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Timothy and Two Witches by Margaret Storey

ST: And the question I ask everyone… what are you reading at the moment?

MHM: I’m attempting to read Middlemarch for the third time.  First two attempts ended in failure.  I think I hate it.  I feel like a complete philistine for saying that, but I am really struggling to get through it.  Pathetic!  I also just re-read The Go-Between, which I think is absolutely brilliant.

Thanks, Mary!  (And, by the way, I’ve never got beyond the first 100 pages of Middlemarch…)

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding: the film

StuckinaBook All 18 Comments

First off, I should let you know that tomorrow I’ll be posting an exclusive Q&A with the scriptwriter of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, Mary Henely Magill – so, look forward to that!

I saw the film last week (incidentally, it is now available on DVD), and I’ll confess that I was a bit nervous before I went.  As quite a few of us said in the fab discussion we had here, the novel (novella?) felt quite unfilmable.  And the reviews weren’t all hugely positive… although mostly they seemed upset that it wasn’t Downton Abbey.  (Why on earth should it be?)  One even complained that it wasn’t very cheerful, and irony exploded.  Well, I’ve got to say – with one or two reservations, I thought it was really good.  I’d definitely recommend getting hold of the DVD, if you can’t get to a screening.

I’m going to assume I skip a synopsis, because you can just read the novel review above, if you don’t know what’s what.  So instead, because I don’t really know how to structure a film review without a synopsis, I’m going to give you my thoughts in bullet points… just below the film trailer.

1) As you can see from the trailer, the film is beautifully shot.  That’s usually a damn-with-faint-praise comment, but I don’t see why it should be.  Every frame was sumptuous, whether interior or exterior.  A golden, hazy spring day was as strikingly gorgeous as a sharp winter’s morning in a bedroom.  Even if the script and acting had been appalling (which they certainly weren’t), it would be a delicious film to watch.

2.) Felicity Jones was the Big Name for the film, and she was good, but I think the best people were Ellie Kendrick as Kitty, Elizabeth McGovern as Mrs. Thatcham, and Fenella Woolgar as Nancy.  Let’s look at them one by one…

3.) Ellie Kendrick was so wonderful as Anne Frank in a TV series about her a while ago, and she was equally wonderful here.  Her Kitty was precocious, spontaneous, affectionate, and witty.  The most engaging character on screen, for my money.

4.) We all know Elizabeth McGovern for her Downton performance nowadays, but she was signed up for Cheerful Weather for the Wedding first.  On the page, Mrs. Thatcham is unbelievably absent-minded.  McGovern brings that across, but also makes her realistically stern and single-minded.

5.) I don’t remember Nancy in the novel, but the dynamic between her and husband David were a wonderful part of the film.  Fenella Woolgar is so brilliant at the brisk barbed comment or sardonic murmur.  A total joy.

6.) From the main trio – James Norton’s Owen was as much a nonentity on screen as on the page, but that’s the way it should be.  Luke Treadaway was fantastic as Joseph, in both impassioned and frivolous scenes, and Felicity Jones put it in a thoughtful performance as bride-to-be Dolly.

7.) I loved how, from the opening notes of the score onwards, the film captured the hysterical madness of the narrative.  Especially in the first half, the frenetic, overlapping conversations and muddled characters was done really well – with the right level of detachment from genuine emotional concerns.

8.) The flip-side of this are the extended flashback scenes, and a deep-and-meaningful between Joseph and Dolly on the day of the wedding.  I know opinions differ on this, but for my money, the characters in Julia Strachey’s novel aren’t intended to be sympathetic.  It doesn’t really matter what they think and feel, because they’re all grotesques, and the point of the book is to be a madcap romp through events.  Which meant I didn’t buy the emotional scenes between Dolly and Joseph, which seemed to dilute the tone of the film.  You can’t really have your cake and eat it – either it’s a surreal comedy, or it’s a poignant one.  I think it would have been better to avoid making the characters at all sympathetic (same goes for the film of Angel), although I understand that that would make it harder to pitch or market.

9.) It *is* a really funny film.  The cinema was filled with laughter on many occasions.  The trailer goes a bit slapsticky, but the film itself isn’t, and most of the humour came from dialogue and facial expressions.

10.) The socks weren’t emerald green!  My favourite bit!  But that is something I asked Mary… come back tomorrow to find out her answer to that and other questions…

A London War Note

StuckinaBook All 18 Comments

 
I can keep it from you no longer!  The book is London War Notes 1939-1945 by Mollie Panter-Downes.  Congratulations to anybody who correctly guessed that (I’m typing this in advance, so for all I know you all guessed it.)  I’ll give you a proper review when I’ve finished the book (and very reluctantly handed it back to the library, because secondhand copies are prohibitively expensive) but here’s an excerpt to give you a taste of Mollie Panter-Downes’ style:

Coming out into the blackout after these evenings is like falling into an inky well; the only lights are the changing green and red crosses of the masked traffic signals and the tiny flashing torches of pedestrians feeling their way like Braille readers around the murky puzzle of Piccadilly Circus.  A hawker with a tray of torches does a roaring trade there these dark nights.  So great has been the demand for batteries that spares are now unobtainable, and exasperated Londoners whose torches fail find that they either have to buy a complete new one or risk breaking a leg when they sally out of doors.  Everyone echoes Bottom in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”: “A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanack; find out moonshine, find out moonshine.”  It is felt that moonlit nights may be an invitation to bombers, but at least they’re more friendly.
More soon…

My new job

StuckinaBook All 27 Comments

I promised to tell you about my new job, and now that I’m a week into it, I will.

Firstly, I suppose I should get some housekeeping out of the way.  I am now employed by Oxford University Press, and involved with their blog, but all opinions given here are solely mine, and not OUP’s.  There, that’s out the way – transparency always a good idea!  But I’m not going to pretend to keep blog and job completely secret, because I think there are things on OxfordWords which you’ll really enjoy.  Indeed, I linked to it before I ever worked there.  It would be silly to keep these things to myself.

So, yes, I am Content, Communications, and Engagement Manager for OUP online dictionaries (for four months, as part of someone’s maternity cover).  And – I love it!  I have really, really enjoyed my first week – to the point where I’m already a little sad that it’s probably only going to last four months, in this position.  Everyone’s very friendly, and the job is both challenging and fun, so far.

What do I actually do?  My lovely line manager is still easing me in, and at the moment most of my role revolves around the OxfordWords blog – commissioning, editing, proof-reading, and (occasionally!) writing blog posts about language.

Although I won’t be writing hugely often, I have written my first post – which is a competition, so I didn’t actually have to write very much, but I did come up with this Dickens-related question.  Enter to win a Kindle Fire HD!  (Yes, yes, you know my stubbornly paper-books-only-please position, but if you’re Kindle-inclined – Kinclined? – then it’s a fantastic competition.  And obviously I can’t enter anyway.  Incidentally, the only downside to this job is that I can’t receive OUP review copies anymore!)

We language-lovers also, of course, love puns.  If they’re puns mixed with pedantry, what more could we ask for?  I don’t know where I stand with copyright, so I’m not going to copy the picture across, but I crafted something in Paint which will stand for time immemorial as Great Art… no? (If that Twitter link doesn’t work, try this one on Facebook.)

All in all, I’m so happy that I applied for it – and, more than that, that they offered me the job!  It’s even more ideal for me than I’d imagined, and the people friendlier than I could have hoped.  It already feels to me like I’ve been part of the team for ages.

I’ll keep mentioning OxfordWords content here, if I feel it’s appropriate for SiaB readers – and hopefully will also be posting regularly here.  As a teaser, one of (seven!) books I’m reading at the moment is a fantastically good and observant chronicle of the Second World War… and it isn’t by Nella Last… guesses?

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

StuckinaBook All 26 Comments

Happy weekend, folks!  As I warned, things have been a bit quieter than usual on SiaB this week.  I’ll tell you more about my job next week (thanks for all your lovely congrats) – for now, sit back and enjoy a book, a link, and a blog post.

1.) The blog post – You know how great it is when someone loves an author you love?  Even better is when initially they don’t, and then discover later that they do.  Harriet rather hated her first experience with Ivy Compton-Burnett (whom, as you might know, I adore).  Bravely, after some encouragement from me and some reading around the blogs, Harriet decided to give Dame Ivy another try.  And let there be rejoicing in the street, it worked!  Let Harriet explain it all, here.

2.) The book – just look what will be coming out in April…

3.) The link – I’m afraid I can’t remember where I first saw this (it was on Facebook, let’s face [ahem] it) but thanks if you brought it to my attention!  It’s 30 of the Most Beautiful Abandoned Places – some really stunning, quite eerie, photos.

Making My Mark

StuckinaBook All 24 Comments

Once or twice on Stuck-in-a-Book I’ve talked about my little foibles when it comes to bookmarks.  Click back on those links to find out more (especially the first one, which gives a few examples) – basically, I like my bookmarks and books to fit together, by theme or colour.

And I was especially pleased by the bookmark/book combination that’s currently on my bedside table… so I had to share it with you.

Not only are Jane Bowles’ short stories shaping up to be pretty stunning (thanks Sort Of Books for sending it to me!) but just look how well the postcard from Blackwell co-ordinates with the image of the woman on the front.

It’s the little things in life that please me…

Exciting news!

StuckinaBook All 14 Comments

If starting a new job weren’t enough exciting news, I have more!  Some of you may have seen it on Twitter and Facebook, but I haven’t mentioned it here yet.

I shall be appearing, with Elaine from Random Jottings, at the Felixstowe Book Festival 15-16 June 2013!

We’ll be nattering about book blogging – how we got involved, what it entails, anecdotes etc.  Not entirely sure what we’re saying, but I imagine it’ll be fairly organic.  Let’s face it, when Elaine and I get talking, we’re not worried that there will be long periods of silence.  Hopefully the audience will be able to get a word in, for a Q&A!

If you live remotely near Suffolk, it would be lovely if you could come!  Obviously we’re not the only event – the website is here, so have a browse through.  I’d love to meet SiaB readers, so do come along and introduce yourselves.  For more info, either see that website, or read what Elaine had to say about it all.