2000s

Tigers and Time Travelling

StuckinaBook All , 7 Comments

I was waiting for Colin to reveal the answer to the Tiger puzzle on his blog, and he hasn’t… so I shall tell you… well, I’ll let newcomers have a look first. Can you spot the hidden tiger…..

no?

well… look at the stripes of the tiger in the foreground. Look realllly carefully. And you’ll spot the hidden tiger. Or should I say ‘The Hidden Tiger’. Now you’ve seen it, isn’t it obvious? I know!

Onto completely different territory, I’ve just finished The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, for my book group. Yes, how did I manage to fit 500+ pages into my reading schedule… I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, but thankfully Niffenegger’s novel was such addictive reading (coupled with not being able to sleep for large portions of a couple of nights) that it took a matter of days.

The Time Traveler’s Wife [oh how my British blood boils at having to use only one ‘l’ in traveller] has been on my shelves for a few years, I think I bought it a few months after it was published, but the size of the thing put me off. As did, more recently, this review on Vulpes Libris. And this, rather pithy, review on Lizzy Siddal’s blog. Two bloggers I respect hated it a lot. So why did I love it?

Ok. Best to acknowledge the faults first.
Wait. Before that, I suppose some of you won’t know the plot, though it seems more or less everyone in the world has read this before me. Henry has a disorder which sends him, involuntary, back or forth in time – usually back. He can’t change the future, but he can interact with everyone around him (oh boy can he interact), and will spend minutes or days there before popping back to his present, where any amount of time (usually minutes) will have passed. The first 100 pages or so mostly follow a chronology of Clare’s youth – Clare being the time traveller’s wife in question. Henry comes to see her through most of her life, up to 18… when she is 20, they meet again… except for him it’s the first time. “Hey, I’m your wife”. More or less. And it’s a love story between these two; the difficulties of living with the condition, and of living with a husband with this condition.

So, those faults I was talking about.
Too much sex… there is a lotttt of sex. Some of it being Henry with himself (the part in the Vulpes Libris review which *almost* made me vow never to read the book). Whenever he shifts in time, he appears naked… Some reviews find the idea of Henry meeting his 8 year old future-wife rather disturbing, but there is, thankfully, nothing sexual about those encounters.
Erm… well, apart from that… the secondary characters were all more or less unnecessary (ex-girlfriends; ex-girlfriends new lovers; friends) but Henry’s father is a welcome addition to the ensemble.

That’s it, I’m afraid I can’t think of anything more negative to say – I think Niffenegger has achieved something incredible with The Time Traveler’s Wife. Usually books or films with time travel baffle and irritate me – either there is no consistency in whether or not characters can affect the future, or no method in the time shifting, or it all just confuses me no end. In The Time Traveler’s Wife, despite there being two characters to keep track of (only one changing time, but still) it was never difficult to follow. Each segment has the date and year, and the ages of Henry and Clare in that scene, printed at the top – a very canny device. And Niffenegger uses the idea so well – plot points are hinted at early on, the idea of Clare meeting Henry when he’s never met her, and the sudden reversal of knowledge in their relationship works brilliantly. More than anything, Niffenegger writes a convincing and moving love story. The Vulpes Libris review found both characters irksome to say the least, and I don’t think I’d be Co-founder of the Henry Fan Club, but Clare is great. Artistic and expressive, she is also patient and loving whilst still feeling jealousy and anxiety and grief. She is the novel’s main strength, I think, and Niffenegger was wise to give her the title.

What else to say? Thoroughly involving, the ending is unutterably moving, the structure and plot are flawless, and… let’s just hope the film (currently in post-production) has wafted an editing pen over the frequent sex scenes.

A Year of Mornings

StuckinaBook All , 4 Comments

The book publication I’ve been most eagerly awaiting is one with almost no words. Which might not say much for Stuck-in-a-Book’s literary credentials, but perhaps you’ll understand when I tell you what the book is…

I’ve eulogised about the blog 3191 before – this post could scarcely be bettered by a teenage girl waving pom-poms and screaming ‘Oh my gawwsh, they’re so, like, awesome!’ For those who haven’t come across their blog, either pop over there and have a look, or go to my post linked above to read what they do. In brief, two people living 3191 miles apart took photos every morning and posted them alongside each other – now they do the same in the evening. Beautiful and unexpected coincidences, symmetries, contrasts would appear – both are brilliant photographers, focusing on the details of normal, domestic life.

So I first in line to Princeton Architectural Press to ask for a review copy, when I found out that A Year of Mornings was going to be published in book format. And it’s delicious. The book is out in the US at the beginning of October (though their blog suggests it’s out now, so maybe they know best) and out on Amazon.co.uk a bit later – though the date there is changing every now and then. Keep an eye out. The pictures aren’t done quite how I expected – the photos are done in pairs, as on the blog, but the sets of two aren’t all the same size, and are at odd positions over the pages. It kinda works, but sometimes means my favourite pairs are rather small (20th June is perhaps my favourite, but honourable mention must go to 11th July) – but this is a small quibble.

Mav and Steph, with Princeton Architectural Press on design, have created a truly beautiful, wonderful book of photographs which demonstrate talent without being pretentious or off-putting. This would make a lovely coffee table book, or a great gift, and I can’t thank Karen/Cornflower enough for pointing me in the direction of their blog over a year ago.

Return! A plethora of books

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I am back from a week in Northern Ireland and a weekend in Warwickshire, and hope some of you are still around – will try and pop into most of the blogs tomorrow to say hello and catch up, but too late to do that tonight. Instead, will give a round-up of three books I’ve read recently… that’s right, leave me alone for a week and I have to burst with bookish things. None of these three books would make my top ten of the year, but each was worth writing about – and that might be where the connections end. We’ll see if any more come up as I write…

Capuchin Classics kindly sent me another of their reprinted novels – Tom Stacey’s The Man Who Knew Everything, which was published as Deadline in 1988. If you’re thinking ‘Oh, wasn’t that a film with John Hurt and Imogen Stubbs?’ then I’ll stop you there – Stacey’s foreword to this slim novel makes it clear that he has no wish to be associated with that film. Despite talented actors, ‘the director and editor went to ground for three months to emerge inexplicably with an edited version, not readily intelligible, which re-shaped the story as a tragedy of love’. So, if it is not a tragedy of love, what is it? Granville Jones is an aging newspaper correspondent in the 1950s Gulf, writing occasional dispatches and mostly idling towards the end of his life, reflecting on the two women who have played significant roles therein. He is there when a coup threatens the island’s leader, also a personal friend, and must report on it – and must meet the journalistic deadline before anyone else gets there.

In some ways it’s a pity Stacey had to lose the title, as it lends the narrative an urgency which can’t always be felt by those who, like me, haven’t lived the journalist’s life. It doesn’t help that Granville isn’t a particularly likeable character (I felt more than a little sympathy for his abandoned family) but he does come into his own when in conversation with the island’s leader, the Emir. ‘We have grown old together, Jonas. You and I are too old to fear to die.’ All in all, an interesting novel with some touching moments, but requires a mind with a greater political bent than mine possesses.

Piccadilly by Laurence Oliphant was also a reprint, but my copy is a 1928 reprint of the 1870 original. Victorian literature forms too large a gap in my reading, which I decided to rectify with the shortest Victorian novel I owned. Piccadilly is described as a satire on London politics of the 1870s – well, I’m not particularly clued up on the political scene of that era, or indeed any era. No matter, I continued regardless. The hero, Frank Vanecourt, decides to launch himself on a life of selfless charity, and to write a book:

‘I shall tell of my aspirations and my failures – of my hopes and fears, of my friends and my enemies. I shall not shrink from alluding to the state of my affections; and if the still unfulfilled story of my life becomes involved with the destiny of others, and entangles itself in an inextricable manner, that is no concern of mine’.

It might not astonish you to learn that the story of his life does become involved with the destiny of others – specifically his noble (and quite lovable) friend Grandon; the woman Grandon loves, Lady Ursula; and Ursula’s mercenary mother Lady Broadhem. What unravels is a complex and often amusing plot of secrecy and blackmail and love and much introspection and expostulation from Vanecourt – presumably mocking a vogue for novels of this ilk. Some rather unsavoury, but perhaps inevitable, racism occasionally spoils what is quite a witty work, but I can’t help feel I’d appreciate Piccadilly more if I’d read any of the sort of novels which it mimicks.

Finally, a collection of short stories by Mathias B. Freese, Down to a Sunless Sea, which I was sent to review. Full marks on the title – I do like quotations in titles, as I might have mentioned before. Vulpes Libris are kicking off a week on short stories over on their blog, and very interesting I’m sure it will prove to be – whilst they’re at it, perhaps someone could answer a query. Why does the short story so often attract the macabre? I thought (and wrote!) quite a lot about the Victorian short story for a dissertation at university, but the macabre didn’t pop up nearly so often… Freese’s collection has large doses of it, and wasn’t always my cup of tea, shall we say. I did want to mention one story, though, which seemed head and shoulders above the rest – ‘Young Man’. It’s a little like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves in style, but communicates some sort of mental illness, in an atemporal confusion. If I could remember Genette’s Narrative Discourse, then all sorts of terms would be appropriate. This is part of it:

One day his daughter asked him, “What’s on TV for children tonight, Daddy?”
One day his wife said, “Someday it will be all right.”
One day he asked himself, “Is this it?”
Again his daughter asked him, “What’s on TV for children tonight, Daddy?”
“Watch me, instead,” he replied

Flying Too Close To The Sun

StuckinaBook All , 7 Comments

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi has been on the peripherals of my mind since someone mentioned it here – in fact, taking a quick trip down blogmory lane, I find it was Nichola aka Lost In Translation, back when I was talking about The Love Child by Edith Olivier, in my 50 Books… but that was only January, and I’m sure I’d heard of it before that. No matter. When Stephanie at Bloomsbury asked what sort of books I’d like her to send me, The Icarus Girl instantly came to mind.

Jessamy Harrison is an introverted, thoughtful and fanciful child, eight years old, with a fiery Nigerian mother and a softly spoken, slightly anxious, white English father. When she visits her mother’s family in Nigeria (Jessamy et al live in England) she also meets Titiola, or TillyTilly, a ragged girl of her own age who seems to be living secretly in the compound. TillyTilly’s friendship means a lot to Jessamy – but then TillyTilly also appears back in England, and grows more and more possessive in their friendship. What seemed to be an exciting but innocent friendship soon becomes a dangerous and terrifying one – both for Jessamy and for the reader.

I don’t think any review of this book has been written without expressing astonishment that Oyeyemi wrote The Icarus Girl whilst she was studying for her A Levels. It is pretty darn amazing, but this book would be extremely impressive whoever had written it. I love narratives which introduce an element of fantasy into an otherwise domestic setting – it’s what I hope to write a dissertation and possibly doctorate on – but Oyeyemi goes a step further than that, because the reader is constantly left uncertain. How much is real, how much is illness, how much is delusion? Jessamy is seeing a psychiatrist, but her sessions deliberately do not reveal much to the reader.

What starts as a novel about loneliness and isolation becomes infused with issues of obsession, possession, power and, most sophisticatedly, doubleness. I know ‘duplicity’ is probably the correct term, but doubleness is more to the point – even from TillyTilly’s first appearance (and her name!) when she simply repeats everything Jessamy says. It seems a little like those pieces of voice-activated-typing software, where they have to listen to your voice for a while, to register and recognise it, before the programme will work. Doubleness and identity become increasingly important through the novel, very cleverly.

Now, I like novels which don’t tell you everything – ambiguity is fine. My Cousin Rachel is an example from my recent reading. But I finished The Icarus Girl without a clue as to what was real, what the almost hallucinatory final chapter signified – but I also felt that the fault was mine. Someone who’s read it – is it clear? Should I have been able to work things out? It doesn’t alter my opinion of the novel, though – it is exceptional, and I look forward to reading more of Oyeyemi’s work.

In less happy news, for those of you who’ve read this far, the Arts & Humanities Research Council decided not to give me any money for my Masters next year… the next step is college funding, and the step after that is bankruptcy! But I’m determined to do the course, and will keep praying.

Oxford Stories

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I’ve been attending my very first book launch! Not for my book, you understand, but for The Lost College & other Oxford stories, a collection by OxPens, a group of writers in Oxford. Last year they very successfully published The Sixpenny Debt & other Oxford stories, which I’ve read *almost* all of, and most of the authors make a repeat performance the second time around – and, what’s more, have secured the approval of Colin Dexter. He, who indirectly provides most of the University’s funding through Morse filming, was at the launch, and gave a kind, unassuming and funny talk. Also suggested that a potential future short story title could be ‘The Identity of the Second Dog Handler’…


Keen followers of Stuck-in-a-Book will recognise a few names from OxPens – Mary Cavanagh (The Crowded Bed), Margaret Pelling (Work For Four Hands… still haven’t reviewed this, but it’s very readable!) and Jane Gordon-Cumming (A Proper Family Christmas – now back in print! ) It was very nice to meet Jane and Margaret, and to see Mary again – this blog really has given me all sorts of lovely opportunities.

I can’t review The Lost College etc. because I only bought it a few hours ago, but there were some very promising readings from the authors included. I especially like the sound of Sheila Costello’s ‘Rabbit Fenley and The Body in the Garden’. Having read The Sixpenny Debt etc., though, I’ll chat about that, in the hope that I’ll have read The Lost College etc. by the time the next anthology comes out… I always find it so difficult to find anything unifying to say about short story collections, so it is a blessing that OxPens have done this for me – all the stories in both collections are connected with Oxford. That can be quite far-ranging, I’ll admit – from Tchiakovsky’s posthumous visit to the Sheldonian through to the accidental stealing of a library book in the distant past, from the confusion arising when a child understands everything adults say entirely literally, to the dangers of cycling in Port Meadow. My two favourite stories, though, are both connected with the middle classes committing murder… what does that say about me? Jane Gordon-Cumming’s Education in Action opens: ‘Dulcie was the scourge of the evening class. Which one? No, I don’t mean any class in particular. Dulcie was the Scourge of the Evening Class, generic. And I use the term loosely, to include day-time classes, weekend courses, summer schools – Dulcie was the scourge of the lot.’ You know the sort… The Rising Price of Property by Laura King contains an ingenious motive for murder, and is wonderfully cynical.

For a taste of Oxford from its real residents, though with real life being something usually foreign to these collections, do seek out The Sixpenny Debt & other Oxford stories or, I’m sure, The Lost College & other Oxford stories. Me, I’m just excited about having been to a book launch.

Everything’s Beachy

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I think I’ll give you another day on the writer-as-character quiz from yesterday, though well done to all the correct responses so far, I’m impressed!

Instead, I’m going to write about The Great Western Beach by Emma Smith, which Steph at Bloomsbury sent me a while ago. Its subtitle is A Memoir of a Cornish Childhood Between the Wars, which is exactly what it is. Before I go any further, I must praise David Mann and Victoria Sawdon – for Jacket Design and Illustration respectively. What a stunning book. In the publishing world, people seem to endlessly copy one another with their covers – hundreds of Joanne Harris/Jon McGregor/Kate Morton lookalikes. Bloomsbury have really done something different, and it is beautiful – Mann and Sawdon must be at the top of their game, or they should be.

Right. Onto the content of the book. Emma Smith was known to me as the writer of a Persephone book, The Far Cry, which I’ve yet to read. She’s also a Shakespeare lecturer at Oxford, but that’s a different Emma Smith. I wasn’t aware that this Emma Smith was still alive, which sounds rude, but not everyone reaches their 85th birthday. She’s (sensibly) waited until late in life (one assumes) to write this memoir of her childhood – and rather brilliant it is, too.

The Hallsmiths, as was their name, aren’t an astoundingly unusual family, but have striking points – misanthropic father who resents being in a lowly position at his bank and craves fame; mother who has lost three previous fiancees; twin boy and girl – the boy fairly sickly, the girl stubborn and adventurous; Elspeth, the author. Elspeth’s early childhood is spent on and around the Great Western Beach, and the beach, alongside the family’s various homes, forms the locations for this autobiography.

I think the most useful way I can write about this book is to describe the style. First person, but neither from the author’s current perspective, nor from the child’s. It is all written as though she were looking back at the events from a distance of only a couple years – some hindsight and analysis is permitted, but alongside childhood ignorance of certain things, and a child’s language. Actually, the vocabulary is an adult’s, but many paragraphs end with sentiments such as ‘It’s not fair! Not fair!’ How does Emma Smith make this mixture of voices and tones and persons work? I don’t know, but it does. The Great Western Beach isn’t irritating or affected; somehow the view of a child is presented convincingly, without losing the slants of wisdom which are the memoir-writer’s prerogative.

Despite the comforting title, this is no cosy childhood. Her father is unloving and mean. She watches her brother struggle through a miserable childhood. Twice she is almost victim to sexual abuse from strangers. But The Great Western Beach is as far from miserylit as it is possible to get – where others, with less material, would have written a Tragic Childhood Memoir (WH Smith actually has a stand called this…), Emma Smith writes an honest but calm book – the good alongside the bad. Her powers of recall are frankly astonishingly – presumably the conversations are not verbatim, but I wouldn’t be able to write a chapter on my childhood, let alone a book, at a quarter of Smith’s age.

Perhaps the most moving section is Smith’s Afterword, which unsettles all the assumptions I’d made:

O my parents, my poor tragic parents – my good and beautiful, brave, dramatic, unperceptive mother; my disappointed, embittered, angry, lonely, talented father: locked, both of them, inside a prison they had not deserved, for reasons they didn’t understand, by conventions they took as immutable laws. I see them now as they were in my childhood: blindly struggling, trapped by social circumstances beyond their control, governed by inherited prejudices not worthy of them. How I wish I could have saved you, set you free, given you the happiness you once expected, all the success you had hoped and longed for, and never managed to make your own. Forgive me, my father, my mother. I have written this memoir, however much it may seem to be otherwise, out of great pity, and with great love.

Even Stephens

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Sorry to be absent for a while – down in Somerset now, and getting a cold (isn’t it always the way, when you get time off work?) but enjoying myself nonetheless.

Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers is the book I’m going to chat about today. Whether or not you’ll like this book can be largely decided by what your reaction is to that title – if you think “Oo, nice names, sounds fun” then look elsewhere. If your immediate thoughts are “Bell! Woolf! The Stephen sisters!” then you, like me, will probably love Sellers’ novel.

Vanessa and Virginia is fictional, but based on real people and events – the childhood of Vanessa and Virginia Stephen, later to be artist Vanessa Bell and novelist Virginia Woolf, and their subsequent lives up to the death of Virginia. It is from the perspective of Vanessa, and addressed to Virginia (though without expecting response). Sellers’ style is not an imitation of Woolf’s, but it has deep similarities – the same beautiful lyricism, use of abstract images, delving into human emotions with an intelligence and compassion which never stumbles into the saccharine. Had Sellers been a shade closer to Woolf, it would have merely been a false copying – as it is, she stays just on the right side. Like Woolf’s writing, though, you have to read a couple of pages every time you pick it up, before you fall into her rhythm. And, also like Woolf’s writing, I think Vanessa and Virginia will divide people. I was wrapped in the beauty of the language and never wanted to leave – but I can see how the short sentences and symbolism might rankle.

I came from the position that I knew a lot about the Stephen sisters – from Hermione Lee’s biography of Virginia Woolf, but more significantly (for this novel) from Angelica Garnett’s impressive memoir Deceived with Kindness. As such, I had no problem when a host of characters were introduced, one after another, in the Stephens’ extended family and the Bloomsbury Group. I don’t say all that to blow my own Eng-lit-studying trumpet, of course, but rather because I don’t know how confusing Vanessa and Virginia would be for the uninitiated – I would humbly suggest that people seek out Deceived with Kindness first, as then everything will make sense. Plus Deceived with Kindness is great. I was going to point you in the right direction to read my review of it, but I don’t appear to have written one – so it might appear later.

To return to Vanessa and Virginia. The novel is a portrait of sibling rivalry and closeness; competition and understanding; unspoken bonds and unwritten rules guiding a relationship fraught with both love and jealousy. Obviously, I don’t know how true this is. Sellers uses at least one or two events (won’t spoil it for you by naming them) which probably didn’t happen, but are poetically justifiable. From the biographies I’ve read the sisters seem very close, but perhaps the jealousy side was there with some strength too. It certainly leads to some interesting discussion on the relative merits of writing and painting : “I think of Father’s jeer that painting is a bastard sister to literature” [Vanessa] later, “There is no doubt painting is leading the way. Fiction has forgotten its purpose. The novelists circle round their subject, describing everything that is extraneous to it, and then are surprised when it slips from view” [Virginia]. (Incidentally, to my mind, it is just this ‘circling around’ which makes Woolf such a brilliant writer – she homes in on a person, object, emotion through these descriptions of contiguity, rather than going simply and insufficiently for the heart). In some ways, the literal truth of the events and relationships doesn’t matter – Sellers was never going to be able to write Vanessa Bell’s autobiography. What she has done is write a beautiful novel which does justice to Bell’s perspective as a very talented painter, overshadowed by a very talented novelist sister, in an unusual group and unusual time. I don’t know where Sellers can go after this, but I look forward to finding out.

A Personal Low Point

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How the mighty are fallen. What would Virginia Woolf say if she knew what I’d just read. Granted, the whole book took me less than an hour, but that’s still an hour I could have spent in the company of Laura Ramsay, Clarissa Dalloway, Miss La Trobe.

I’ve just read High School Musical : The Book of the Film.

My very dear friend Mel bought it for me, since we have shared (ironically, you understand) the rollercoaster of emotions that is Troy (basketball player) and Gabriella (Maths genius) discovering affinity through song. She asked me to write about it on here, and being the slavish man I am…

If you’ve seen High School Musical, then you’ve read all the dialogue in this book. N.B. Grace, who appears to have penned all manner of such books (though also looks like a note reminding about the Gospel) has turned his/her hand to writing a book in the easiest way possible. Grab a script, and throw “He said, thoughtfully”; “She said, inwardly groaning” and so forth, throughout. Repeat as needed. Surprisingly, however, it is done unobtrusively, and makes for an enjoyable enough read.

But why do I write about it here? Well, some of you may be the parents/grandparents/friends/siblings of someone who is reluctant to read much. If that person is a pre-teenager, possibly with a crush on Zac Efron/Vanessa Anne Hudgens, then maybe this book would lure them into the reading fold… Worth a shot, anyway.

Happy, Mel? ;-)

Soft amongst the macabre

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A couple of review books I’ve been meaning to write about, with very little in common except that I want to write about them together. These sorts of posts always remind about my favourite tutor, Emma, who had my friend Chris and me in joint tutorials. We’d often written on completely different texts with completely different topics and themes – and Emma would valiantly spend the tutorial trying to draw out unifying points from the two. Should be fun.

The first is Alternative Medicine by Laura Solomon, a collection of short stories published by Flame Books. They also published The Bestowing Sun by Neil Grimmett (which I wrote about here) and Tru by Eric (which I wrote about here). I was so impressed by these two novels that I had to read more from the publishing house. Perhaps I’d set myself up for a fall – while I enjoyed and admired Alternative Medicine, it has a very different feel to it. Those novels were at the forefront of emotional, real modern literature, exploring relationships between families and the elasticity of feelings – Laura Solomon is doing something quite different.

It’s always difficult to summarise a collection of short stories, and it’s illuminating to see what the writer of the blurb has chosen to represent Alternative Medicine: ‘A couple is torn apart by a renegade duvet, an upstaged Santa takes revenge on his rival, a girl’s father is abducted by aliens, a man is relentlessly bullied by his sister on their annual holiday, a manufactured genius turns out to be not so perfect after all’. The next paragraph talks abut the ‘entertaining and insightful journey into the shortcomings of being human, and the wonder of our graces’; ‘masterful central metaphors, sharp wit, and a beautiful simplcity’. For me, the title to today’s post says it all for a theme – ‘soft amongst the macabre’. I read each story with foreboding, expecting something strange or grotesque at every corner – to inject the writing with this menace is quite a talent – but alongside this was a soft, sensitive understanding of the characters and their motivations.

The Battle for Gullywith by Susan Hill appeared on more or less every blog known to man a few months ago, but I’ve only just finished it. It’s my first book by Susan Hill, in fact, though I’ve read thousands of her words in the form of her blog. It is inevitable that any children’s book now will be compared to Harry Potter, so I’m just going to use the words and get on with what I was talking about. The plot is probably familiar to you all, if not, pop over to Amazon (this must be the laziest reviewing ever!) I read The Battle for Gullywith in three bouts, and was thus rather confused at times, but that’s my fault rather than the book’s. I think it’s probably a book one has to come to as a child to truly love – I found it an enjoyable romp, with amusing, slightly predictable characters, some inventive plot aspects, and the most ingenious use of tortoises I’ve ever encountered. A few too many topical references to feel timeless, but enough good old-fashioned adventure to beguile a child who has exhausted JK Rowling and Enid Blyton. Say what you like about those authors, but I don’t think a child can do much better than them.

Half of Two

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Lots of time to enter BAFAB – it always surprises me that over a hundred people popped by today, and not all of them want a free book! Do head over to Jenny’s BAFAB draw, too. Oh, free books. Gotta love ’em! If you can’t use the comments thing on Blogger, email me at simondavidthomas@yahoo.co.uk, and I’ll put your name in that way.

As promised, going to chat about Identical Strangers today. I bought it in Kensington on Saturday, and it leapt right to the top of my tbr pile. I love it when a book comes along which is impossible to resist…

Identical Strangers is non-fiction, by and about Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein. They were both adopted from Louise Wise Services, but it wasn’t until Elyse was 35 and contacted the adoption service for nonidentifying information about her birth mother that she discovered… she is an identical twin. Paula was equally astonished when she got a ‘phone call : “I’ve got some news for you. I hate to dump this on you, but you’ve got a twin.” Paula tries to ‘phone back the director of post-adoption services… and accidentally calls the number for her twin sister. They speak for the first time at 35.

I, as you may know, am absolutely fascinated by twins – in fact and fiction. And I am a twin myself, which accelerates my interest. Even without this predilection for twin literature, I think anyone would be intrigued, moved and compelled by Identical Strangers. Paula and Elyse tell their narratives in distinct paragraphs, alternately headed by their names, and it helps that both have been or are professional film reviewers, and are talented writers. They talk us through the experience of discovering that they are twins, and the first times they speak, and meet. This would be really interesting in fiction, but in non-fiction it is enthralling and honest. Paula is married with a child, and unsure that she wants to add to her family – Elyse, who is single and started the search, can’t understand why Paula isn’t as excited as she is herself. All sorts of issues about identity and self are reared – they both find it difficult to see their own mannerisms in the other (and think them exaggerated), and begin to feel possessive about their characteristics.

Alongside their journey, they’ve done some impressive research, and present it well. There are other examples of separated twins; theories on nature/nurture; how twins differ from ‘normal’ siblings. I lap all this stuff up – though, as usual, as a dizygotic /non-identical/fraternal twin, I’m rather sidelined. We’re always seen as something rather insignificant in comparison to identical twins… Colin aka The Carbon Copy isn’t a carbon copy really, you see, though we look similar enough that people still mix us up. Being a twin, I can understand their anger at being separated – and I can’t imagine how any child psychologists believed it was the accurate choice to make. Apparently some people believed being a twin was a “burden to the child and parents”… seething doesn’t begin to cover it. What would my life be like without having grown up with Col? I don’t want to think.

We follow Paula and Elyse through a couple of years – the joy, the excitement, the bickering, the discovering of their extraordinary relationship. A driving force of this book is their quest to find answers to questions – why were they separated? Why weren’t their respective adoptive parents told that they were twins? Who idea was it, and what were the theories behind separation? And then they begin trying to locate their birth mother.

A fascinating topic, well told by engaging, honest people experiencing a rollercoaster of events. Do go and check it out.