2010s

Faulks on Fiction (audio) – Sebastian Faulks

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As you see from this post’s title, I didn’t read Faulks on Fiction (2011) in the traditional sense, but rather I listened to it on audiobook.  This was something of a novel (ho ho) experience for me, as I haven’t listened to an audiobook all the way through for more than a decade, perhaps nearer 20 years.  Indeed, for me – when I had trouble sleeping as an undergraduate – audiobooks were basically lullabies.  I’d stick Diary of a Provincial Lady, or Felicity’s Kendal’s White Cargo, or the letters of Joyce Grenfell and Virginia Graham in the cassette player, and go to sleep to the sound of their voices.  Those were the only cassettes I owned, so I got very familiar with first ten minutes of each side…

But I asked for the CD (how times have changed) of Faulks on Fiction for Christmas a couple of years ago, and my parents kindly gave it to me.  I listened to it gradually, mostly last winter on my iPod, because I had daily walks into town of 45 minutes each way (and couldn’t afford to get the bus all the time).  Then I got the job at OUP, could afford to take the bus, and somehow left the final CD of ten until last week…

I haven’t even properly mentioned the author yet, although you’ll have worked it out.  Sebastian Faulks (known for his novels, particularly Birdsong, none of which I have read) presented a TV series looking at selected novels in the history of British literature, and this was the tie-in book.  I only actually watched one of the episodes – on heroes – and didn’t bother with the rest, because it all seemed a bit dumbed down.  Someone told me that the book was better (well, duh) and they weren’t wrong.

Faulks addresses various ‘categories’ – heroes, villains, lovers, and snobs – and tracks each through the history of literature. So he’ll start with a Defoe or a Swift, moving on through Austens, Eliots, Brontes, via Woolf, Lawrence et al, and finally an Amis or an Ali.  It is of course a subjective overview of literature, and the four categories we suggests could only ever be a necessary structuring device (arguably all four appear in most of the novels Faulks chooses), but I liked the idea of picking out these motifs.  With only one or two examples per century for each category, it could hardly be considered comprehensive, and I baulked a bit when Faulks attempted to draw wider conclusions from his chosen examples – but no matter, I suppose it is what is expected of anything with so broad a title.

There is always that main problem with books which summarise books: that you’ve either read the book being summarised or you haven’t.  If you have, you don’t need to be given the outline of the plot (although I found it did often help my faulty memory), and if you haven’t, you don’t want spoilers.  I appreciated the run-through on books I never intend to read, but did end up fast-forwarding through sections on tbr pile candidates.  Having said that, I listened to his thoughts on The End of the Affair by Graham Greene before I read it, and had still fortunately forgotten everything he said.

In either case, my favourite moments were when Faulks was talking about the books, rather than giving summaries.  I didn’t always agree with him – see my post on Faulks and Pride and Prejudice – but I’m a sucker for intelligent, accessible discussion of great liteature.  His groupings are intriguing and his discussion is warm, witty, and well thought-through.  Of course, it’s been so long since I listened to most of it that I can’t really recall what he said, but the CD I listened to last covered Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller, and I enjoyed hearing what he had to say about the creation of Barbara, and how the novel differed from the film.

As for how the format affected my listening… Well, I found it impossible to separate the speaker from Faulks, even though they were definitely different people (the narrator, incidentally, is James Wilby).  I could definitely have done without his attempts at accents – I can understand the eager actor relishing the opportunity to wander from Russia to Yorkshire and back again, but it was rather distracting.  But, aside from that, I quite enjoyed listening to an audiobook.  There were times when skipping would have been easier than fast-forwarding, or skimming backwards easier than rewinding, but Wilby has an engaging voice and it was the perfect entertainment for walking to and from town, as it could be listened to in discrete bursts without much being lost.

The Fault in Our Stars – John Green

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When I’m not reading book blogs (or, y’know, engagingly actively with the outside world, whatever that is), you’ll probably find me watching vloggers on YouTube.  I don’t watch any of the book vloggers any more, as they rarely talked about any books I’d be interested in (other than the one I’m going to write about today), but I do watch a lot of funny people, generally just talking about things that have happened to them, or opinions they hold.  One of these channels is called the vlogbrothers, where brothers John and Hank Green each make weekly videos addressing each other, but also addressing all their audience (whom – which? – they call ‘nerdfighers’, which is a little too high schooly for my liking, but I’ll let it pass).

Anyway, John Green is not only a YouTube star, but a bestselling author.  He’s written a few books, but it is his most recent, The Fault in Our Stars (2012), which caught my attention, and which my friend, ex-housemate, and self-proclaimed nerdfighter Liz lent to me.

Now, The Fault in Our Stars is teenage fiction.  I’m afraid I hate the term ‘YA’ (‘young adult’) because it is always used to refer to teenagers who are not young adults.  I am a young adult, being about a decade into adulthood.  The demographic of most fiction encompasses my age group.  Teenage fiction is for younger-than-adults, or old-children, but not for young adults.  Vent over.  Anyway, I haven’t really read any teenage fiction since I was a teenager, and I didn’t really read much of it after I was about 14.  I know a lot of grown-up readers (including bloggers) engage with it a great deal, and that’s fine with me, albeit a little confusing.  (People often say something along the lines that it “deals with issues that adult novels wouldn’t cover”, which simply isn’t true, since adult novels cover pretty much everything between them.)

I could turn this post over to a discussion for and against teenage fiction (and feel free to chime in on that, should you so wish) but instead I want to talk about The Fault in Our Stars specifically.  It was immediately obvious to me that it was teenage fiction, and I’m not sure why – partly, of course, because the protagonist Hazel (a girl with terminal cancer) is a teenager, but also the style.  Its simplicity, maybe?  Pass.  A few pages in, and I could cope with that, though, and didn’t remain at my initial psychological distance from the book.  Indeed, I embraced it, and was swept along.

Hazel is 16 and she is dying of cancer – more precisely, she has Stage 4 thyroid cancer with metastasis forming in her lungs. Green had spent some time working as a student chaplain in a children’s hospital, years before he wrote this novel, and you can tell that he is familiar not only with the goings-on of support groups and medical procedures, but the dynamic of teenagers living with cancer.  Somehow it is not an outsiders’ book – although Green has not had cancer, and I have not had cancer, I didn’t feel like their was a barrier between Hazel’s experience and my understanding of it.

Green presents a girl who is sarcastic, witty, secretly a bit sappy, and rocketing along a path of self-discovery, finding her place in the world – she is like every teenage girl in the West, then.  Except she has cancer.  It is an intelligent portrait because, although cancer is (obviously) the overriding focus of her life and those of her family, it doesn’t seem to be the starting point of Green’s creation of the character – instead, it is something that happened to a character he created, even if it happened before the novel began.

The main thrust of the plot, indeed, is more typical of teenagers’ novels – and adults’ novels – that is, love. Hazel meets Augustus (Gus) Waters, a heartthrob teenage ex-basketball player – who is in remission from osteosarcoma (to which he lost a leg).  He is suave, funny, handsome, muscular, sweet etc. etc.  I.e. he’s not as realistic as Hazel, in my book; he reminded me a bit of Todd from Sweet Valley High, if that oh-so-literary reference means anything to you.  Their relationship is cotton-candy sweet, of the variety which comes with passionate kisses being applauded in public.  Yes, that ‘public’ is Anne Frank’s house, but it works in context… just.

A more nuanced subplot is the shared love Hazel and Gus have for a novel called An Imperial Affliction by Peter von Houten (which doesn’t exist in real life, but Green’s novel seems to have spawned dozens of fake cover art attempts – just Google Image Search it.)  Of course, the author is not all he seems… but it’s a nice, interesting story – and goodness knows I’m a sucker for a character who loves books and reading, in any novel.

Ultimately, this is a book aimed at teenagers, and I believe they are the readers who will most benefit from it.  Hopefully it will inspire a love of reading in people who watch the vlogbrothers channel and, acting in the same way as Point Horror and Sweet Valley High for me, lead them eventually onto adult novels and older literature.  But it is not simply a gateway to later reading; for its intended age group, and for anybody being indulgent for an evening, it’s a fantastic and well-crafted novel.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

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Believe it or not, I’m reading a proof copy here… oops.  I started The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey more or less as soon as the proof copy arrived from Headline, back in 1884 or whenever it was that it was sent (erm, 2011?) but wasn’t in the right head space to be reading it, and popped it back on the shelf, knowing I’d go back to it.

Well, with a repeat of A Century of Books lined up for 2014, I’m enjoying delving into 21st-century literature in my post-thesis binge.  Indeed, I finished reading this shortly after I submitted my thesis, and before I flew to America, so it’s taken a little while to review.  And it’s every bit as good as everyone was saying it was, back when it first came out.

 It’s your standard fantastic creation story… a lonely woman who longs for a child accidentally creates one, and then begins to lose control over her creation.  The story is remarkably similar to Edith Olivier’s The Love-Child – and even more similar, overtly so, to the Russian fairytale ‘The Snow Maiden’.  With my interest in novels of this ilk, it’s as though it were written for me.  But, as with any updating of fairytale, what is important is the way in which the tale is told.  Ivey does it beautifully.

Mabel and Jack have moved to the middle of snowy nowhere in Alaska, 1920, and live quietly, working hard to keep their farm going.  Both characters are quite shy and keep their emotions to themselves, but it’s clear at the same time that these silent emotions run deep – so deep that any hint of them is unbearably painful.  And yet, shy as they are, they somehow make friends with their jolly neighbours Esther and George.

“I suppose I’m the black sheep.  No one else in my family would think of living on a farm, or moving to Alaska.  My father was a literature professor at the University of Pennsylvania.” 

“And you left all that to come here?  What in God’s name were you thinking?”  Esther shoved Mabel playfully on the arm.  “He talked you into it, didn’t he?  That’s how it often is.  These men drag their poor women along, taking them to the Far North for adventure, when all they want is a hot bath and a housekeeper.”

“No.  No.  It’s not like that.”  All eyes were on her, even Jack’s.  She hesitated, but then went on.  “I wanted to come here.  Jack did, too, but when we did, it was at my urging.  I don’t know why, precisely.  I believe we were in need of a change.  We needed to do things for ourselves.  Does that make any sense?  To break your own ground and know it’s yours free and clear.  Nothing taken for granted.  Alaska seemed like the place for a fresh start.” 

Esther grinned.  “You didn’t fare too badly with this one, did you, Jack?  Don’t let word get out.  There aren’t many like her.”

Though she didn’t look up, Mabel knew Jack was watching her and that her cheeks were flushed.  She so rarely spoke so much in mixed company.  Maybe she had said too much.
These sections actually reminded me a bit of Betty Macdonald’s The Egg and I, although that is a comedy; the same hardships and marital tensions come about because of giving everything to a working farm.

It swiftly becomes clear that the thing missing the in the lives of Mabel and Jack is not simply money or an assistant, but a child – and, of course, one materialises.  A child made out of snow turns – it seems – into a real child, called Faina.  She is quiet and undemonstrative; Ivey cleverly changes the way dialogue is spoken in any scene in which Faina appears, so that it isn’t announced by speech marks but blended into the narrative.  In the same way, Faina seems to blend into the natural world, never quite leaving it to be their child, always disappearing into the snow.  She willingly wears the beautiful coat Mabel makes, but she is still wild – like Clarissa in The Love-Child, she cannot really be contained.

And then there is the question, unearthed by Jack, as to who Faina really is.  Is she a miracle, crafted from snow?  Or is she all too human, abandoned and homeless on the snowy mountainside?  Well, obviously I’m not going to tell you.  Nor am I going to tell you about the other complication that arrives, which again mirrors the plot of The Love-Child (and which, I realise, probably means that Edith Olivier probably read ‘The Snow Maiden’.)

Eowyn Ivey has met with a lot of success with this novel, and deservedly so.  The Snow Child is written with a beautiful simplicity – or a simple beauty, if you like – with emotions always playing out near the surface; there isn’t much introspection, or a web or words trying to weave a complex portrait of an emotional state, but rather Mabel and Jack’s urgent feelings are clear to the reader (even while they are hidden from others.)  What I mean to say is, sometimes the deepest and most complicated situations require only simple words; sometimes the simplest words can convey the deepest sorrow and be more moving than any over-wrought passage.  I know I’m not alone in being very affected by The Snow Child – my friend from OUP admitted that it made him cry, and I’ve got to say I liked him even more after that confession – and it is a novel which requires some sort of emotional stability in its reader, or it would be too heartbreaking from the outset.  But, oh, it’s worth it.

As I wrote earlier, this novel could have been crafted for me and my interests – and it got a mention in my thesis – and I was surprised, but pleased, to see how widely it was admired and loved.  Rightly so.  Eowyn Ivey is a significant new talent, and I look forward to seeing what comes next from her.

That Sweet City: Visions of Oxford

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I have been meaning to write about That Sweet City: Visions of Oxford by John Elinger and Katherine Shock for ages – ever since I was kindly given a copy by Signal Books in May – but somehow it hasn’t happened before today, for which I can only apologise.  But it is a timeless book, so a few months here or there shouldn’t make much difference.  It’s a clever mixture of art book, guide book, poetry volume, and a celebration of Oxford.

Full disclosure time: I have known Kathy all my life, as she is my Mum’s best friend from school, and my first trips to Oxford were to the house in North Oxford where Kathy and her family have lived as long as I have known them.  Little did we think, back then, that I would eventually call Oxford home too – for nine years now – and, if I do not have Kathy’s familiarity with the city yet, I certainly share her love of it.

And, as long as I have known Kathy, I have known that she is an artist.  I remember Mum, Kathy, and their respective children (including me) sitting by a river bank and painting the view, with varying levels of success – and I’ve had the privilege of seeing examples of Kathy’s work for many years, and would recognise her work anywhere.

But it is not just partisanship which makes me say that the illustrations are the best part of this book – I’ve included a couple in the post, apologies for wonky camerawork.  I certainly don’t know how to write art criticism, but I will say that Kathy’s watercolours have a wonderful vitality – sprightliness, even – which brings stone walls alive just as much as the river.  Look at this lovely view into Worcester College (which is, in my very subjective ordering of Most Beautiful Colleges, in at no.4, after Magdalen, New, and Corpus Christi):

I want to keep using variations of the word ‘liveliness’, as that is what I think Kathy does best.  There are hundreds and thousands of pictures of Oxford out there, whether postcards or paintings or sketches or photographs, and so any artist turning once more to these much-depicted places must bring something new, and for me, Kathy does that through this liveliness.  Is it the not-quite-straight lines, or the dashes of colour which are graphic rather than precise?  I don’t know, I haven’t the expertise to judge, but I know that it works.
I attended the launch night, back in May, where poems were read brilliantly by Rohan McCullough, and learnt a bit about the process behind the book.  Apparently John Elinger’s poems were written first, and then Kathy painted scenes to go alongside them.  After some success with postcard series in this line, they decided to go a step further and put together a book, published beautifully by Signal Books – and it is, incidentally, exceptionally well produced, a really lovely object.
So, the poems.  Well, you know that I struggle with poetry, and I have to admit that it was a while before I ‘got into’ these.  Apparently the order in the book pretty much reflects the order in which they were written, which didn’t surprise me, as they definitely improve,  A great deal of the poetry is in a form which, though seeming to follow a rhyme scheme on the page, uses enjambment so much that, when read, it becomes much more like prose.  Indeed, the earliest poems in the book are more or less a paean to enjambment. (For those who took their GCSE English a long time ago, definition of enjambment here!)  Of course, it’s a perfectly valid technique, but I felt it was rather overused.  (And, on a personal note, I found the recurrent jabs at the church in Oxford a little unnecessary…)  Having said all this, when Rohan read a few of them, they came to life wonderfully – so perhaps a good orator is what is needed.
But, as I say, they improved.  This was my favourite poem in the collection – I thought it was structured rather cleverly.
I haven’t properly mentioned the clever way in which the poems and paintings are arranged yet – they follow various suggested walks around Oxford, which is where the guidebook bit comes in.  There is a map at the beginning of each section, and then seven places to stop off and see along the way – I think it would be a very fun way to take yourself around Oxford (some of the walks are pretty long, so it’s not just a case of walking down the High Street) with sites to match up to the paintings, and poems to read to oneself or aloud when one gets there.  These walks are cleverly chosen, and far more interesting than the usual tour guide traipse through the biggest colleges and (Heaven preserve us) the places where Harry Potter was filmed.
For instance, how many people see the unprepossessing exit near the railway station, and follow the beautiful canal along to this bridge?  (I took the photo a while ago… I *think* this is relatively near the railway station, apologies if not.)  It’s another of my favourite illustrations.

If you’re visiting Oxford, That Sweet City is available in a few of the bookshops – if you want to imagine you’re visiting Oxford from afar, you won’t be able to follow the walks in person (of course) but it’s the next best thing.  Indeed, what fun it would be to get to know and love these pictures – and then, when you finally come to Oxford, match them up with the real places!

The Red House – Mark Haddon

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What with reader’s block, moving house, and not having internet for a bit, it’s been a while since you had a proper review from me.  And today is no different, because I’m handing over to somebody else to write about The Red House by Mark Haddon, which I was sent as a review copy.  Tom (who recently married my best friend) spotted it on my shelves, and commented on it, so I decided it would find a better home with him.  Whether or not he ended up agreeing, you can discover below… Tom, by the by, can also be found at the blog Food, Music, God.  Over to you, Tom!
I promised Simon a while back that I’d read Mark Haddon’s The Red House and review it for him, and have sincerely been reiterating that promise to him ever since whilst getting distracted by other tasks like getting married or trying to qualify as a teacher. However, the other day my mother rang me up and told me that my father had recently read The Red House and she had just started it, and so it occurred to me that now might be the time to take action and stop anyone else having to read it ever again. That way, we can pretend that it didn’t happen, that Mark Haddon can still write novels with razor-sharp characters and compelling narrative, and that this clichéd series of adolescent writing exercises is the work of someone else.
The novel is about two families united by estranged siblings who are trying to reconnect with one another after the death of their ferocious mother. There’s Richard, the hospital consultant who remarried recently but doesn’t really know how to talk to his new wife Louisa, and may have A DARK SECRET. His estranged sister, Angela, who’s haunted by the ghost of her stillborn daughter, but of course she can’t tell anyone about that, and married to Dominic, who seems reasonably normal but may also have A DARK SECRET. Richard’s kids – Alex, a sex-obsessed teenager; Daisy, a buttoned-up Christian who also thinks rather more about sex than she’d like; Benjy, who is eight (I think) and I can’t remember much more about. Angela’s daughter Melissa, who is a self-obsessed cow who’s kind of hot and whom Alex fancies, of course. Then there’s the house itself, allegedly the conduit for all of these stories for some reason, although that’s arguably just an excuse for the fact that Mark Haddon couldn’t decide which character to focus on. The house seems to know quite a lot of poetry, and it talks like a travel guide written by James Joyce.
If you think that sounds like a lot going on, you’d be right, and that’s part of the problem. It’s a shame, as there are some good ideas here, especially with the teenagers in the cast – Daisy’s struggle with her sexuality and where it fits with her faith is clearly aiming for some wider significance, for example. Alex and Melissa’s teenage angst is sharply drawn, if rather aimless, and the differences in Angela and Richard’s approach to their upbringing and the effect on their families could have been channeled into something effective in the manner of Jonathan Franzen. However, it just doesn’t feel like it’s been edited into any kind of coherent shape. It’s this huge splurge of styles and influences and this, rather than seeming ambitious, comes across as amateurish instead. It doesn’t build, it doesn’t have much of a climax to speak of, and the central narrative just isn’t strong enough to provide any real mooring.
It’s also overwritten and laden with unnecessary detail. What is one supposed to make of a passage like this:
Louisa works for Mann Digital in Leith. They do flatbed scanning, big photographic prints, light boxes, Giclée editions, some editing and restoration. She loves the cleanness and precision of it, the ozone in the air, the buzz and shunt of the big Epsons, the guillotine, the hot roller, the papers, Folex, Somerset, Hahnemühle. Mann is Ian Mann who hung on to her during what they called her difficult period because she’d manned the bridge during his considerably more difficult period the previous year.
It’s like Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”, that, only about photocopying. And that’s not even the worst linguistic crime in the book – reading about Angela reading modern poetry, with snippets of Robert Browning woven through the text, is pretty painful, as is Richard’s attempt at reading ancient Greek poetry, not to mention the inexplicable quoting of something that seems to be an encyclopaedia about lorries.
Or what about this:
Richard slots the tiny Christmas tree of the interdental brush into its white handle and cleans out the gaps between his front teeth, top and bottom, incisors, canines. He likes the tightness, the push and tug, getting the cavity really clean, though only at the back between the molars and pre-molars do you get the satisfying smell of rot from all that sugar-fed bacteria. Judy Hecker at work. Awful breath. Ridiculous that it should be a greater offence to point it out. Arnica on the shelf above his shaver. Which fool did that belong to? Homeopathy on the NHS now. Prince Charles twisting some civil servant’s arm no doubt. Ridiculous man.
If you can find another novel in which you can find a narrative reason to justify spending this much time on one of the characters brushing his teeth, I’d be interested to hear about it. It’s a testament to the way that The Red House is written that the author thought that this belonged, but it is apparently a novel about the mundane and the ordinary (or so the blurb says), and so there’s plenty of that. Again, perhaps it’s an attempt at being clever; to impart some wonder into the everyday processes of how peoples’ minds work. If you feel a sense of wonder at the above, I’d be interested to hear about that too.

You should not read The Red House. Tell your friends not to read it. If people suggest taking it on holiday, don’t. If you find it in your holiday home, leave it there. It’s not a good holiday book. It’s not good literary fiction. No, it’s not lightweight, and yet it also doesn’t seem to mean anything. It’s shockingly dark in places (and shockingly dull in others) and it doesn’t seem to known what to do with that darkness. Curious Incident was (and still is) magnificent, thanks to an exceptionally strong narrative voice. A Spot of Bother was flawed, but still gripping and surprisingly visceral in places – and the characterisation was second to none. In The Red House, despite a couple of strong passages such as Richard’s disastrous run out on the moors, there’s nothing to make this stand out. It’s an ambitious experiment, and perhaps an admirable one; to his credit, at least Mark Haddon is still pushing his craft and trying new things. However, it’s a huge disappointment that in doing so he has moved so far away from his strengths.

Lucia on Holiday

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Many of us sigh despondently when we reach the end of a much-loved book or series of books.  It seems unfair, somehow, that there is no third book in the Winnie the Pooh series, or that Jane Austen wrote no sequel to Pride and Prejudice, or that E.F. Benson, despite being incredibly prolific, only wrote six books in the Mapp and Lucia series – and only three featuring both heroines together.

In each of these cases, other authors have stepped into the authors’ shoes.  I wrote about David Benedictus’s Return to the Hundred Acre Wood earlier in the year, and of the writing of Jane Austen sequels there is no end.  Some are brilliant (Diana Birchall’s Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma, for instance) and some are decidedly not.  Our eagerness for more of our favourite characters is matched only be our wariness and trepidation that usurping authors will have made a mess of things.  Thank goodness, then, for Guy Fraser-Sampson.

I adore the sniping, gloriously funny world of Mapp and Lucia, and I know I will read and re-read Benson’s books throughout my life. But it’s also wonderful to know that there are others to read when the series is complete.  I’ve not tried Tom Holt’s two sequels, although they are waiting on my shelves, but I love and adore Major Benjy and (now) Lucia on Holiday by Guy F-S.

The reason they are so delicious is that Guy ‘gets’ the voice of Benson so perfectly.  I can honestly say that, while reading Lucia on Holiday, I kept forgetting that it wasn’t Benson’s pen which had written it – and what higher compliment could possibly be paid?

Lucia on Holiday takes place after Mapp and Lucia, but it is not made clear exactly when in the chronology the story takes place. The ambiguity is bashfully explained in the introduction – because there is an event in the novel which dates it very precisely, but which would make it a touch out of kilter with the publication history of the original series – but, as Guy says in this introduction, since Benson moved his principal village from one county to another, he’d be very forgiving.  It does not, in the end, much matter – Mapp and Lucia et al behave precisely as they would at any point in their history.

As you may guess from the title, Lucia is on holiday – she cashes in some clever (if risky) investments, and heads off to Italy with husband Georgie in tow.  But Elizabeth Mapp isn’t having that, of course – not for she to be gloried over forever in Tilling society.  Luckily, her friendly Maharajah wishes his son to be accompanied on holiday to Europe… and Mapp decides that precisely Lucia’s hotel would be the best place.  Mr and Mrs Wyse also turn up, as does my favourite character, insouciant opera singer Olga Bracely, so (with a few Bensonian coincidences) we have a microcosm of Tilling society gathered.  If we miss Quaint Irene and Diva Plaistow, then, well, we’ve coped without Daisy Quantock for several books, and both ladies are much present in recollection and quotation.

What ensues certainly has a plot, and goes nearer the knuckle than Benson could possibly have done in the 1920s and 1930s (c.f. Georgie and his handsome valet), but is chiefly joyful for the constant oneupmanship and subtle bitchery between our heroines.  Anyone who has read the original series will be familiar with the sort of thing – neither ever makes an outright insult (or, if they do, it is in an unguarded moment) – but there are plenty that hide behind the thinnest of veils.  Lucia delights, for example, in making subtle references to occasions on which Mapp sabotaged someone else’s cake, and Mapp… well, Mapp, as always (sadly!) so rarely gets the overhand.  And, as always, I cheer her on, hoping that Lucia will be smited just once.

As I say, Guy F-S has understood and echoed Benson’s tone so wonderfully – I especially like his moments of narrative bitching, exposing the self-delusion of the grande dames.  This excerpt, early in the novel, was the moment I cheerfully knew I was in safe hands – it is perfect as a depiction of how ridiculous Mapp is, and how delusional:

“Benjy!” she gasped, clasping her hands together in what she felt sure was girlish glee. “But of course – that’s brilliant!”
My only reservations in characterisation were that things are pushed that tiniest bit too far for my liking.  Georgie seems genuinely to hate Lucia much of the time, without the constant, grudging admiration and love he feels in the original series (although this does come out eventually in Lucia on Holiday).  Mapp is a shade too monstrous, and Major Benjy a shade too lascivious – but these are only shades, and the fact that it comes down to tiny details is itself astonishing.

Of course, you must start with the originals.  If you haven’t read them, do start with Queen Lucia (not Mapp and Lucia itself, which is the fourth in the series) – you may have to struggle past the baby talk, which is mercifully scarce in Guy F-S’s book, but it’s worth it.  Once you’ve read and relished them – you can be overjoyed to know that these will be waiting.

On Writing – A.L. Kennedy

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Although I have never read any fiction by A.L. Kennedy (which is about as inauspicious a way to begin a review as any), I couldn’t resist when Jonathan Cape offered me a copy of On Writing to review.  This isn’t so much because I intend to be a writer myself (although I have always rather hoped to be – and, I suppose, in some ways I am – just theses and blog posts rather than novels, at the mo) but because I thought it might reveal more about the author’s life and processes.

It’s just as well that I approached On Writing with this proviso, because it’s a bit of a misnomer – there isn’t a great deal about writing, particularly not about how to write, but there is a great deal about being a writer. A crucial distinction. Rather than giving step by step instructions, or even general guidelines, Kennedy writes about the life of a writer – which seems to consist almost solely of travelling, getting ill, and running workshops for other people who want to be writers.

No one can teach you how to write, or how you write or how you could write better.  Other people can assist you in various areas, but the way that you learn how you write, the way you really improve, is by diving in and reworking, taking apart, breaking down, questioning, exploring, forgetting and losing and finding and remembering and generally testing your prose until it shows you what it needs to be, until you can see its nature and then help it to express itself as best you can under your current circumstances.  This gives you – slowly – an understanding of how you use words on the page to say what you need to.
So, that explains why she concentrates on other matters.  If, however, you are desperate to read about the act of writing itself, in the minutiae of prose details, then turn straight to chapter 22.  That’s precisely what A.L. Kennedy does there – building up the opening sentence to a story, rejecting versions, explaining why she doing so and what thought goes into the construction of each sentence.  Granted, I didn’t much like the end result (it didn’t encourage me to read her fiction, I must confess), but it was fascinating to observe.

This early part of the book is a collection of blog columns Kennedy wrote for the Guardian, and I found them compulsively readable. I love her sense of humour, the dryness of her writing, and her obvious love for the craft of writing. Occasionally, I’ll admit, I wanted her to lighten up a tiny bit – as she often admits, writing is not back-breaking labour – but I suppose that’s better than flippancy about writing, in a book about writing.  And while Kennedy writes about the horrors of appearing in public or having her photo taken – being very deprecating about her own appearance – she has the sort of face that, if you saw her on a bus, you’d say “By gad, good woman, you must write!” It’s so wry and cynical, and you get the feeling that it would be world-weary if she didn’t find every facet of existence ultimately so amusing.

The next section of the book has longer essays, significantly about running workshops – offering a really interesting insight to a world I know so little about, and showing how much thought Kennedy puts into preparing them (as well as her scorn for those who put on workshops without similar levels of thought.)  There is also – of course – more about writing, and I particularly loved this paragraph, which brilliantly demolished a tenet of writing which I have always thought nonsensical:

Personal experience may, for example, be suggested as a handy source of authenticity, perhaps because of the tediously repeated ‘advice’ imposed upon new authors: “Write about what you know.”  Many people are still unacquainted with the unabridged version of this advice: “Write about what you know.  I am an idiot and have never heard of research, its challenges, serendipities and joys.  I lack imagination and therefore cannot imagine that you may not.  Do not be free, do not explore the boundaries of your possible talent, do not – for pity’s sake – grow beyond the limits of your everyday life and its most superficial details. Do not go wherever you wish to, whether that’s the surface of your kitchen table or the surface of the moon.  Please allow me – because I’m insisting – to tell you what to think.”
And finally in On Writing is a piece she refers to often throughout – one which she takes to the Edinburgh Festival, as well as performing around the country.  It’s very, very funny – in a rather broader way than the rest of the book, and if it feels less natural than her blog writing, then that is because it is a performance piece. Some of it repeats things she has mentioned earlier, but for a book which is compiled from various sources, and also for a blog-based book, On Writing is remarkably unrepetitive.  I dread to think how repetitive Stuck-in-a-Book has been.  I dread to think how repetitive Stuck-in-a-Book has been.  (A-ha-ha.)

All in all, a great book to have on a bibliophile’s bookshelf – perhaps not the first place to go if you are penning your own novel – although if you’ve got past the ‘getting published’ stage, On Writing might well be an invaluable guide to the life of the writer.  For the rest of us, it’s simply a great read.

Miranda Hart – Is It Just Me?

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Another quick this-book-has-been-on-my-To-Review-shelf-forever review, I’m afraid – my reading has been so shamefully little recently – but that means you get to hear about some fun books in short bursts.  And today’s is Miranda Hart’s bestselling book Is It Just Me?  Note that I don’t say ‘autobiography’ – we’ll come onto that later.

I suspect you know who Miranda Hart is, but indulge me for a moment.  She is a comedian (we’re not saying ‘comedienne’ anymore, are we, please?) who sprung to fame in an eponymous sitcom where she falls over things, embraces middle-aged activities a little early, and generally makes fun of herself.  I’m always drawn to female-driven sitcoms, so I’ve been watching since day one – but the third series, which finished here about a month ago, was the one which really saw Miranda pull in enormous audiences of over 9 million.  One in seven people in the UK were watching, which is extraordinary.

The sitcom has the occasional dud episode, but generally I love, love, love it.  How can I not feel affinity with a woman who, aghast at the idea of going out clubbing, says: “It’s 9 o’clock! Four words: Rush. Home. For. Poirot.”  For those who don’t ‘get’ it, Miranda is just childish and meandering – but I really admire how she has made slapstick amusing to those of us who normally don’t care for it.  I adore her friend Tilly and her ridiculous expressions (I was saying ‘McFact’ before it appeared on Miranda: McFact.) Stevie (with her ‘allure’) and Miranda have a wonderful friendship, which is all too rarely shown in comedy.  And then there’s her Mum.  It’s all great fun, and very watchable.  And very British.

Which brings me onto Is It Just Me?  Although it is by Miranda Hart, about Miranda Hart, it’s only really an autobiography to the extent that the sitcom is – it feels a lot like it’s been written ‘in character’.  Presumably all the events she described happened, at least in outline, but it’s certainly selective.  Her tales of dating, office life, holidays, weddings… they’re all written as though outlining  an idea for a sketch comedy.  Which is fine – it’s more than fine, it’s great – but it isn’t really an autobiography.  She spends a lot of the time in faux-conversation with her 17-year-old self, disillusioning her of the idea that she’ll grow up into a graceful gazelle-type.  (Since I talked to myself in my first Vulpes Libris column – see yesterday’s post – I don’t have a leg on which to stand.)

Of course, having languished on my To Review shelf for so long, I can’t remember any examples to give you.  I chuckled my way through Is It Just Me? without making any notes on it, for reviewing purposes.  So I’ll borrow this clip of Miranda reading an excerpt herself…

I haven’t mentioned yet, but this was a gift from my lovely friend Lucy, whom I love even though she went and LEFT Oxford last year, to move to big old London town.

So, yes, a giggle of a book which does no more and no less than you’d expect.  Lots of amusing, light-hearted moments, and a surprisingly moving moment when she tells her younger self that her secret ambition to go into comedy has happened, and that she’s even spoken to her heroines French & Saunders.  I guess it’s the perfect Christmas book, but since that’s been and gone… Mothering Sunday?

(By the by, if you have watched the sitcom, and enjoy Sally Phillips wonderful turn as Tilly, may I recommend you seek out her sitcom Parents…)

Hallucinations – Oliver Sacks

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Anne Fadiman wrote in Ex Libris that every bibliophile has a shelf (or shelves) of books that is somewhat off-kilter from the rest of their taste.  Mine might be my theology shelf, or my theatrical history shelf, but I think the books (few as they are) most likely to surprise the casual observer would be those on neurology.

When I told my Dad I’d bought and read Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks (after he’d spotted a review and told me about it), he asked “But will you be writing about it on your blog?”  “Of course,” thought I – it hadn’t crossed my mind that I wouldn’t.  But I pondered on it, and thought – would blog-readers used to my love for 1930s novels about spinsters drinking tea also want to read about phantom limbs and Delirium Tremens?

Believe me, you will.  I have almost zero interest in science in all its many and varied forms.  I stopped studying it when I was 16 (except for maths) and found it all very dull before that point.  (Apologies, science-lovers.)  Biology was far and away my least favourite subject.  And yet Hallucinations is absolutely brilliant, as fascinating and readable as his popular work The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat.  A predilection for scientific books is definitely not a prerequisite.  Sacks is just as much a storyteller as a scientist.

Before starting Hallucinations, I thought they were mostly terrifying, felt real, and came chiefly with a fever or drug abuse.  While hallucinations can be all these things, I was surprised to learn how often they are benign (even amusing or comforting) and easily recognised as fake.  Strangest still, I hadn’t realised that (under Sacks’ definitions) I had experienced hallucinations myself.

That’s not quite true – I knew I’d had them when I had an extremely high temperature during flu, but I hadn’t known that what I’d had repeatedly as a child were hypnagogic hallucinations – those that people get just before going to sleep.  Aged about 5, I often used to see chains of bright lights and shapes (and, Mum remembered but I did not, faces) in front of me – whether my eyes were open or closed – at bedtime.  It turns out hypnagogic hallucinations are very common, and (Sacks writes) rarely unnerving for the hallucinator.  Well, Dr. Sacks, aged five I found them incredibly frightening, and usually ran to mother!

There are so many types of hallucinations that Sacks has witnessed in decades of being a neurologist, encountering hundreds of people and hearing about thousands from his colleagues.  This book just includes the ones who gave him permission.  It would necessitate typing out the whole book to tell you all the illustrations he gives, but they range from fascinating accounts of Charles Bonnet Syndrome (basically seeing hallucinations, often highly detailed, for long or short periods) to hallucinated smells, sounds, and even a chapter on hallucinating doppelgangers.

Almost all of these hallucinations act alongside lives which are lived otherwise normally, and do not suggest any terrible neurological condition.  It is somewhat chilling that Sacks recounts a study which revealed that 12 volunteers, with otherwise ‘normal’ mental health histories, were asked to tell doctors they were hearing voices – and 11 were diagnosed with schizophrenia.  Sacks is keen to point out how many patients with hallucinations, even when voices, are not suffering from schizophrenia or any other sort of mental illness.  He is deeply interested in how people manage their lives when seeing hallucinations at any hour of the day, and offers up humble praise to those who take it in their stride.

This is what makes Sacks so special.  A few of the blurb reviews describe him as ‘humane’, which I suppose he is – but the word feels a little dispassionate.  Sacks, on the other hand, is fundamentally compassionate.  He never treats or describes people as case studies.  The accounts he gives are not scientific outlines, interested only in neurological details, but mini-biographies filled with human detail, humour, and respect.  Here’s an example of all three factors combining:

Gertie C. had a half-controlled hallucinosis for decades before she started on L-dopa – bucolic hallucinations of lying in a sunlit meadow or floating in a creek near her childhood home.  This changed when she was given L-dopa and her hallucinations assumed a social and sometimes sexual character.  When she told me about this, she added, anxiously, “You surely wouldn’t forbid a friendly hallucination to a frustrated old lady like me!”  I replied that if her hallucinations had a pleasant and controllable character, they seemed rather a good idea under the circumstances.  After this, the paranoid quality dropped away, and her hallucinatory encounters became purely amicable and amorous.  She developed a humour and tact and control, never allowing herself a hallucination before eight in the evening and keeping its duration to thirty or forty minutes at most.  If her relatives stayed too late, she would explain firmly but pleasantly that she was expecting “a gentleman visitor from out of town” in a few minutes’ time, and she felt he might take it amiss if he was kept waiting outside.  She now receives love, attention, and invisible presents from a hallucinatory gentleman who visits faithfully each evening.

And with this respect and kindness definitely comes a sense of humour – the sort of humour exemplified by many of the people he met.  This detail, in a footnote, was wonderful:

Robert Teunisse told me how one of his patients, seeing a man hovering outside his nineteenth-floor apartment, assumed this was another one of his hallucinations.  When the man waved at him, he did not wave back.  The “hallucination” turned out to be his window washer, considerably miffed at not having his friendly wave returned.

Although Sacks does not compromise his scientific standing, Hallucinations is definitely (as demonstrated by me) a book which is accessible to the layman.  In the whole book, there was only one sentence which completely baffled me…

When his patient died, a year later, an autopsy revealed a large midbrain infarction involving (among other structures) the cerebral peduncles (hence his coinage of the term “penduncular hallucinations”).

I’ll take your word for it, Oliver.

But, that excerpt aside, Hallucinations was more of a page-turner than most detective novels, paid closer attention to the human details of everyday life than much domestic fiction, and certainly left me with more to think about than many books I read.  I hope I’ve done enough to convince you that, even if you think you won’t be interested, you probably would be.

I have wondered whether my interest in neurology might, in fact, just be an appreciation of Oliver Sacks.  I’ve started other books in the field and not finished them, though I will go back to one on synaesthesia that I recently began.  Perhaps no other author combines Sacks’ talents as scientist and storyteller… but I’m happy to be proven wrong, if anyone has any suggestions?

For now, though, I’m going to have to hunt out my copy of Sacks’ Awakenings…