2000s

Sense and Cinematography

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I saw The Jane Austen Book Club at the cinema tonight, and thought I’d use its various links to literature to excuse a rather more pop-cultural reference than usual… I read Karen Joy Fowler’s novel, from which the film was adapted, over the summer – must confess, not very impressed. Lots of unnecessary sex and not enough literary comment. My preference probably puts me in the minority, but with ‘Jane Austen’ in the title, I hope I’m not alone… Anyway, it was fun to read the novel and spot comparisons and parallels with JA’s oeuvre, but that was about where the enjoyment ended, give or take a few quite emotional scenes. Essentially six people meet up to discuss the six JA novels, one chosen by each of them, and the resultant book group is a backdrop for their relationship goings-on – divorcee, lesbian, teacher-with-crush-on-student, woman with Wife of Bath tendencies, dog-loving singleton and convenient token male. With SciFi obsession, like all guys, obviously.

The film hadn’t removed any of these elements, but I am more forgiving of modern films than I am modern novels – largely, I imagine, because I’ve seen hardly any older films. Somehow what seemed rather fatuous and saccharine in prose became sweet and passingly profound on the silver screen. It was refreshing that they anticipated their viewers had read at least some Jane Austen – reminds me of a different experience sitting in the cinema while watching the 2005 Pride and Prejudice; the number of people who laughed uproariously at certain bits suggested they hadn’t encountered them in prose beforehand. Literary snobbishness over… for a moment or two, anyway. Where was I? Oh yes – the film laboured the parallels between novels and book group members even more than the novel did, but that was quite entertaining. What really made the film work was the cast – especially the brilliant Emily Blunt as Prudie, the teacher-with-a-crush. Her marriage was falling apart; she joined a book group to avoid thinking about her thoughtless husband, and cannot countenance other members being trivial or unacademic. Oh, and she speaks in French quite a bit – despite having a potentially irritating character, Blunt makes Prudie loveable and endearing. I didn’t know the rest of the cast before (except Lynn Redgrave, who makes a fleeting and funny appearance as Prudie’s hippy mother) but they are a great ensemble.

Worth a watch, if only because IMDB imaginatively lists the Plot Keywords as ‘Book Club / German Shepherd’…

Dear Nancy/Jessica/Unity/Diana/Pamela/Deborah…

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Not the whole Birthday Books list just yet, but shall tease you with the biggest one of the lot, to whet the appetite. I knew this one was coming, as I’d not-too-subtly suggested it as a present option from my library colleagues Lucy and Clare, who have become very good friends in the two months I’ve known them. Both bookish types, and great fun as well.

So, it was without surprise, but with great delight, that I unwrapped The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley. They’d also sneaked in another book – more on that when you get the full rundown – today is just about Nancy and co. My previous acquiantance with the sisters consists only of The Pursuit of Love, and 10, Curzon Street: Letters Between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill. Even so, they’ve been on the horizon for most of my life, and I was keen to get my mitts on this beautiful collection of letters.

Haven’t finished (come on, my birthday was only a few days ago!) – in fact, only read the introduction so far, but that was enough to make me want to post about it. Charlotte Mosley explains that the book only represents a small fragment of the extant letters – and only three ‘links’ between sisters are unrepresented at all by surviving letters. My A Level Maths has to be dusted off here – if there are six sisters, each of whom can write to each other… call sisters ‘x’… carry one… divide by the number you first thought of… I think that gives 30 possible letter-routes (taking, say Diana-to-Pamela as distinct from Pamela-to-Diana) and thus 27 combinations covered in the book. Phew! What an amazing collection. Might be a bit tricky to keep track of who’s who, writing to whom, what their relationship is (in terms of temperament – obviously they’re all sisters), but thankfully there are mini-biogs and symbols in a family tree for each of them. The symbols are quite amusing, actually – while Nancy gets a ink-stand and quill, Jessica has her life summarised by a hammer and sickle. Reminds me of The Carbon Copy’s version of Scissor, Rock, Paper, entitled Hammer, Sickle, Stalin.

Anyway, where was I?
With so many letters from which to choose, chances are the most pertinent and entertaining will be here. There’s something to be said for comprehensive editions, but they can be a bit difficult to wade through – for instance, Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary was much more palatable than Volume One of the unedited thing. I’ll let you know more choice excerpts as I read through – I think this is going to be one I read a small portion from at the end of the day, and may take me til next birthday to finish – so shall just finish with one.

‘I had letters from you & the Lady [Nancy] & Henderson [Jessica] today, wouldn’t it be dread if one had a)no sisters b)sisters who didn’t write.’ [Deborah to Diana]

For you and us both, Debs!

But a lifetime burning in every moment

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Every now and then a book comes along which makes you think “wow”, and prevents the normal day-to-day activities taking place without a constant desire to be reading said book. It leads one to read whilst walking to work, often quite perilously, and sneak a copy under the desk in the library. This week such a book reared its head.

Back in one of my earliest posts, I asked people to suggest novels or plays with twins in – as a twin myself, it’s something I find endlessly interesting. Partly because the topic is fascinating, partly because I like discovering how accurate authors are in portraying twinship. Twinhood? Twinicity? Of course I can only compare to my own experience, so it’s not the most objective test. But it keeps me off the streets.

Anyway. A novel nobody mentioned back then was Linda Gillard’s A Lifetime Burning, but it is probably the most convincing portrayal of being a twin that I have ever read. Even more so than The Comedy of Errors. Then again, Topsy and Tim presented rather more verisimilitude than old Billybob. I don’t want to tell you too much about the plot of Gillard’s novel, for three reasons. Firstly, it will ruin genuine shocks and surprises which enhance the reading no end and add richness to the writing; secondly, Linda has said that she doesn’t really do plots – more characters to whom things happen; thirdly, it would sound ridiculous. I don’t mean that as a criticism at all – but a synopsis of the novel would make you think “wow, what a crazy amount of things happen to this family”, whereas reading the novel makes you think “Wow!”

So, not revealing the main plot points – but suffice it to say that the Dunbar family do not live uneventful lives. The novel focuses on Flora, whose funeral is witnessed in the opening pages, and flits between first and third persons, and many different times throughout her life. She is forceful, hopeful and often quite selfish, but with a disarming self-awareness – and great closeness with twin brother Rory. They are not identical personalities, nor are they wholly disparate (the two usual paths taken with twins in fiction) but rather complementing characters; individuals but intertwined.

Though the novel jumps all over the place, I never found it confusing – rather a path towards illumination and comprehension of the characters, understanding (rather than sanctioning) the way they act. Linda Gillard writes with lyrical intensity, beautiful prose which is powerful without being overly ‘flowery.’ I enjoyed her previous novel Emotional Geology, but this is leagues ahead of it – can’t recommend it enough. The subject matter isn’t uncontroversial, but nothing in A Lifetime Burning is gratuitous – and almost every other modern novelist I’ve read could take a leaf out of Gillard’s book.

Crow Lake

StuckinaBook All , 11 Comments

The camera is behaving slightly better today. Nothing I did, so think it’s just fickle. The focus modes have all been experimented with beforehand, but thanks for the tips, guys!

I’ve realised that I haven’t yet blogged about Crow Lake by Mary Lawson, so time to get that sorted out. First, I’ll let you know the little process taken from having no clue who or what Mary Lawson is, to being able to blog about Crow Lake. It goes something like this…

1) In the morning wander through the blogs, it goes something like this – Cornflower, Random Jottings, Dovegreyreader, Bluestalking, Booksplease, Crafty Person, A Work In Progress, Books and Cooks, Janice’s Reading Diary, Angela Young, anyone else for whom I have time. Hadn’t realised until typing that I had such a rigid structure. The ‘anyone else’ is vast and wide and takes many, many minutes – but before that, this is pretty much the daily round-up. I read to find out what my e-friends have been up to, but also largely for book recommendations. To differing degrees, I know I have shared tastes with these bloggers. If Elaine, Lisa or Karen like something, then I’m going to be interested. Crow Lake, however, started it’s Stuck-in-a-Book life as a recommendation on Margaret’s blog – she wrote about it here.

2) Books that REALLY excite me go onto the Blue Bit Of Card. Some bloggers, I know, write down almost every book they see recommended – I’m much more picky. Most books have to rely on luck – it’s sink or swim. If I remember them, then they get read. If not; obviously we’re memorable enough. The Blue Bit Of Card is for when a book looks great, but I don’t trust my memory.


3) Usually I trot off to abebooks or Amazon. Crow Lake, again, is different – I found it on the shelves at Honeypot, a church-linked bookstall/coffee morning/craft-making/gossip that Our Vicar’s Wife organises and I was visiting.

4) Almost finished it on the train home!

So, back to the novel. It takes place on two time periods – Kate Morrison is a lecturer, invited to her nephew’s 18th birthday party, which starts her thinking about her childhood – the other time period. She lives near Crow Lake in the back of beyond with her brothers Matt and Luke, and toddler sister Bo. When their parents are killed in a car crash, they learn to fend for themselves. This novel shows the sacrifices each has to make, and the lasting ramifications of these – and the guilt Kate still feels about having a PhD when Matt had to sacrifice his academic futherment. Along the way their lives become entangled with the mysterious Pye family, haunted by years of hatred and violence within previous generations.

Lawson writes with so many character nuances, and is concerned with subtle issues of empathy, sympathy, unity, hope, hopelessness, courage, foolishness, pride, misunderstanding – it’s all there, as anyone who’s read it must agree. Kate’s reunion with her family, along with the reader’s gradual understanding of their shared childhood, is tautly emotional and very absorbingly written. The ending and the re-analysis of Kate’s feelings demonstrate the most sophisticated writing on Lawson’s part, and a truly complex depiction of family and humanity. There are so many categories this novel could fall in which would have put me off – tragic childhood; Southerners-are-salt-of-the-Earth; violence – but Lawson proves that, though a lot of dross may be written in these areas, they can be used brilliantly. Oh, and a lot of it is very funny too. For instance, Kate and Luke trying to teach Bo nursery rhymes for the first time:

‘What are the main ones?’ (Kate)
‘I don’t know. Teach her the ones you like best.’ (Luke)
I couldn’t think of a single one. ‘I don’t remember any,’ I said.
‘ “Hickory Dickory Dock”,’ Matt said. He was sitting at the kitchen table writing to Aunt Annie.
Self-consciously I said, ‘Say “Hickory Dickory Dock”, Bo’
Bo paused in her work and looked at me suspiciously.
‘She thinks you’ve flipped,’ Matt said, scribbling away.
I tried again. ‘Bo, say “Hickory Dickory Dock”.’
‘Icky Dicky Dock,’ Bo said brusquely. She looked around her, searching for a particular saucepan.
‘Good!’ I said. ‘That’s good, Bo. Now say “The mouse ran up the clock.”‘
‘Dis pan,’ Bo said. She seized the largest pan and started whamming the others into it in order of size. She was pretty good at it, too. She didn’t make many mistakes.
‘She’s ignoring you,’ Matt said in a pause in the din. ‘She’s decided you’re nuts.’
‘Come on, Bo,’ I said. ‘”The mouse ran up the clock.”‘
‘Silly,’ Bo said, sparing a moment to wave a stern finger at me.

…

Christmas BOOKings now being taken

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It’s the 25th, and you know what that means – only two months until Christmas. Yep, usually I’m there with the Grumpy Old Men and complaining that Christmas comes earlier every year, with tinsel going up as soon as the Easter eggs have been melted down for fondue. But I’ll make an exception for books, as it’s not their fault that marketing has to happen in October. Today I’m going to chat about two different Christmas books – very different, actually, but both worth mentioning.
This week, like a couple of other bloggers, I was sent Lynn Brittney’s Christine Kringle, described as a book for children of all ages. All the Gift Bringers from around the world are meeting for the annual Yule Conference, which debates such issues as whether Gift Days should be internationally universalised, or whether women can be become the hereditary Gift Bringer if a Yule family have no male offspring. This is especially important to Christine, daughter of Kriss Kringle, as she has no brothers and wishes to inherit her Yule duty. In the midst of this, the council of Plinkbury, a town in Worcestershire (hurray!) decide to ban Christmas. Off flies Christine and her Japanese and English friends to get Christmas reinstated… An enjoyable book, though not my usual fare, and was delighted to see Worcestershire get in print, as it was my homeland for thirteen years. Can’t work out if Plinkbury is based on a genuine town, though… there certainly isn’t one of that name. Unsurprising, really.
When I started the book, I was a little dubious at all the national stereotypes. You know – Italians in the Mafia; British sullen; Japanese polite and industrious; Americans saving the day. But Brittney melds these characters into a fun plot which keeps you turning the pages. I do have quibbles with the polemics Christine delivers – as a Christian, I didn’t like to see the Christ part of CHRISTmas swept under the carpet so much, quite openly, and I’m too British not to blush at some of the bits about loving ourselves and finding a hero inside every one of us and so forth. But if you’re feeling Christmassy and uncynical, give this one a go.

The second Christmas book I wanted to mention is Jostein Gaarder’s The Christmas Mystery, initially published in 1992. The book is divided into 24, being the first twenty-four days of Decemver – like a big advent calendar, in fact. The central character, a little boy called Joachim, is given a mysterious old advent calendar – each day opened provides a slip of paper and a picture. Through the story on the bits of paper, we follow Elisabet as she wends her way through the shepherds and wisemen as they journey towards Christ’s Nativity – and Joachim’s family try to connect it to the Elisabet who disappeared at Christmas 1948. This is a beautiful book, with mystery and atmosphere and the magic of Christmas without making the festival commercial or saccharine. I read it last year, a chapter a day through advent, and would definitely recommend reading it that way.

Oh, and don’t forget you still have a chance to get Miss Hargreaves!

Not Quite The Booker

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Wouldn’t you just know it? I start to dabble in the twenty-first century, and the book I read doesn’t even win the Booker. That’s gratitude for you. Hmph. Well, can’t see myself bothering with Anne Enright’s The Gathering, even with the accolades of the Booker panel, but I have now read one of the shortlist at least. My library-trainee-chum Lucy, a McEwan aficiando to the death, leant me her copy of On Chesil Beach to see if Ian could redeem himself in my eyes. For the record, my previous experience with Mr. McE goes something like this: Atonement – great, especially the beginning; Enduring Love – amazing opening chapter, kinda tailed off after that; Saturday – umm, what happened Ian? So I’m pleased to say that, while On Chesil Beach isn’t particularly like any of the others there, it met with approval from Stuck-in-a-Book and McEwan is back in my good books. There’s almost a pun there.

Have now returned Lucy’s book, so shall type my thoughts as best I can without it. I’m sure you all know the premise by now – virginal newly-weds Edward and Florence experience an awkward honeymoon, and McEwan uses this tiny canvas to present their lives and the lives of a generation. Two such fully-formed characters he’s not written since Briony in Atonement – no cliches (imagine the accent, if you will) or easy portrayals, these are real people experiencing real situations. The only issue I take is that Florence seems like a real person from about 1910, not 1962… feels a bit like McEwan flipped through his Decades of the Twentieth-Century Book and picked the first one which wouldn’t have them encumbered by a World War. Still, that’s a minor quibble, and we’ll let it pass.

McEwan (controversially) called On Chesil Beach a ‘novelette’. Controversial because this more or less disqualified him from the Booker shortlist, but somehow they managed to sweep that under the carpet. Whether or not it was wise to label the book thus, I think I agree with the term – if McEwan had only included the honeymoon scenes, then this would be a (long) short story. Since he intersperses these sections with substantial chunks of background, it’s more than that, but it still doesn’t quite feel like a novel. Usually huge amounts of back story irritate me, and here they weren’t always welcome, but generally they are woven in in such a way as give characters deeper dimensions affectively. I certainly didn’t want more – the characters’ backgrounds offer the central story, almost a vignette, poignancy and integrity, but any attempts to make this a thousand page tome would have lost all the spark and depth.

I shan’t spoil the ending – except to say that it is the opposite of Atonement in terms of effect. Much of Atonement examines the consequences of a single action; On Chesil Beach examines the single action and allows the reader to extrapolate the consequences.

Common/Uncommon

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Had a lovely time at home, soaking in the countryside, and am now back in my usual blogging spot of Oxford – specifically the desk of the back bedroom in Regent Street. While down in Somerset (or Zumm as I affectionately label it) I was able to offer my lovely Aunt Jacq. a cup of tea, for she also lives in Zumm, and she reciprocated with much more exciting gifts…

No, not my birthday of anything – she just saw them and thought of me. It pays to make your opinions known, doesn’t it?! Well, you all know I love Virginia Woolf – and I’d ummmed and ahhhed over the Alan Bennett for a while, glad the choice was made for me.

Haven’t used the mug yet, but a car journey too and from Bristol to see The Carbon Copy (the whole Clan together for a few hours at least!) allowed me to read The Uncommon Reader, and greatly did I enjoy it. Haven’t read any Alan B before, though did see The History Boys film, and have vague recollections of Talking Heads being on in the car in my younger days. It was great fun – I’m sure everyone knows the plot by now. The Queen bumps into the local library van, and, out of politeness, borrows an Ivy Compton-Burnett. Love her or loathe her (ICB, that is), you have to acknowledge she’s not a great one with which to start the long path of literacy:

‘She’s not a popular author, ma’am’.

‘Why, I wonder? I made her a dame’.
Mr Hutchings refrained from saying that this wasn’t necessarily the road to the public’s heart.

As she pursues more and more books, with the help of kitchen boy Norman who becomes her constant aide, her royal duties start to suffer… This book, as well as being witty and just the right combination of absurd and plausible, also offers some genuine insights into the realm of reading, without being too truism-y. ‘I think of literature,’ she wrote, ‘as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but cannot possibly reach’. Ever felt like that?!!

And just a final word about the sketch. Not a great one today, I’m afraid, so if you need a clue just think ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

Tender is the Night

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The Tenderness of Wolves had two connotations in my mind before I’d even read the first page, and neither of them are very relevant or reverent to the book. Firstly, The Carbon Copy supports the English football team Wolverhampton Wanderers, which is abbreviated to Wolves by all and especially sundry. Though I no longer share an abode with him, I still think of Wolves as essentially a football team.

More in my own territory, the word ‘tender’ has connections with As Time Goes By. Anyone else love this sitcom starring Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer? Essentially very little happens, but it happens with a charm and wit which is unparalleled. The Hardcastles are given a county house, the gardener of which is called Lol Ferris – and he, for several series, refers to Jean (Judi Dench) as being ‘a tender woman’. So there you go – I started this novel with images of an overweight gardener and eleven men in football kits. Shockingly, none of these played pivotal roles in Stef Penney’s novel, which we discussed at Book Group tonight. It was my first week at this book group, which has only had three meetings in total, and I thoroughly enjoyed it – friendly and interesting people, nice pub. I wasn’t even the Token Male, which I was in my previous book group! Three of us – a whole third of those present, in fact.

So, what did I think of The Tenderness of Wolves? Really enjoyed it. Penney’s writing impressed me – nothing irritates me more than authors showing off about their research (I’m looking at you, Dan Brown… oh, and you, Mr. McEwan, for Saturday at least) – Penney had obviously done a lot of research, but never made this more important than plot or character. My main qualms with the novel were of genre – it never quite decided if it was detective, romance or literary fiction. Of course, it can be all of the above, but this left a few areas of dissatisfaction. The novel is essentially a murder, the consequent seeking for the culprit, with passages of discovery for pretty much everyone. That sounds awful, but it really wasn’t – Penney was great at making trekking through the snow interesting. Lucky, since a good three hundred pages are devoted to it – if she can make this fairly compulsive reading, then must be a good writer. Worth checking out.

I wonder how many modern books I’ve read this year… dovegreyreader had better be proud…

Don’t forget to enter BAFAB!

Beg Pardon?

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Thanks Lynne for bringing The Loudest Sound And Nothing to my attention, and thanks Faber (or should that be Faber and Faber?) for sending me a copy to review, on my request.

You may well know about my recent penchant for short stories – and I couldn’t resist reading a collection with such a great cover. Very simple-but-effective, which is the perfect recipe for a short story.

Very difficult to know what to say about Clare Wigfall’s collection of stories. What The Loudest Sound And Nothing has made me realise is that, though many collections of short stories contain a lot of variety, they always have some identifiable style or wording or topic which is unmistakably consistent. Not so Ms. Wigfall. She covers so many periods, personas, styles, situations, nationalities and (though I haven’t counted) no great imbalane in gender of narrator too. If they do share a common trait, it is the focus upon the unspoken. That’s rather a truism of all literature post-1950, but rarely have I read it done without being irritating or merely included for effect. Wigfall’s stories allow glimpses into lives, and wherever the image hinges on an untold aspect of these lives, it is the surrounding existence which grabs out attention. Sure, we don’t know, say, what it is the barman tells the girl in ‘Free’; we don’t know what Mr. Turbridge’s crime is in ‘Night after Night’ (though one can perhaps guess); we don’t know what’s going on in ‘Safe’, the most enigmatic story of them all. But in each of these cases, and throughout the collection, the portraits are complete enough to leave you satisfied. Not every story has an omission to illuminate the rest – in ‘On Pale Green Walls’, for example, understanding what’s happening, when the narrator doesn’t, is the crux.

Whichever way the story is structured, they all involve the reader in a way which I hope Wigfall can bottle and sell to potential writers. Because they’re such a varied bunch, each must stand on its own merits – and I found that all but one of them did. Within sentences, Wigfall creates a miniature landscape of narrative, and even stories which last a few pages feel like complete entities. This is how the modern short story should be written.

Reading Groups

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I re-read Jenny Hartley’s Reading Groups today, which looks very like the picture here, except I couldn’t find an illustration without Amazon’s chirpy ‘Search Inside!’ addition. Since the sentiment is admirable, I’ll let it stand.

Apparently there is an updated version available, but my 2001 edition is fascinating nonetheless. Hartley (et al, I daresay) sent out questionnaires to reading groups, and this guide is based on the 350 responses they received. If you’re like me, this information is enough to make you immediately order a copy of the book – I love book club, I do. Of course the internet equivalents are wonderful, and I think the blogging community can be pushed into this category, but this is nothing to beat a face-to-face reading group. I haven’t attended one for a couple of years, since university and moving house separated me from the one I spent a year at in Eckington. The other day, though, I discovered an Oxford book group in its initial stages, sent off an email, and shall be joining them from September – I daresay you’ll be hearing about that in due course.

Where was I? Hartley’s book, oh yes. As well as basic information about the number, location and gender of book clubs (statistically, apparently, the most common one is a rural, all-female group of 6-10) Reading Groups frequently cites questionnaires on all reading-group-related-topics. We hear why Beryl Bainbridge doesn’t find much favour, about Bristol’s four continuing book groups which were around in the early nineteenth-century, and the various reasons why men are considered miscreants in the world of collective reading. Hearing about the rituals and practices of all-male book clubs (one group sits in order of seniority, clockwise, and must consume no more and no less than two pints of ale per meeting) I’m not surprised that my gender is looked upon with some suspicion. Shame.

I could cite all the examples, but you should instead pop along to Amazon and pay the £0.01 + p&p required to own one yourself. Well, since you asked, here is another titbit: “One woman rarely reads the assignment but gives great excuses: for Camus’s The Plague she read one page only and said she does not like books about rats.”

Anyone reading this is self-evidently a peruser of blogs, and most of you will write your own – but what about your ‘terrestrial’ reading groups? Are you in one, two, twenty? And how do they compare to the blogosphere?