2010s

You can bring your dog

StuckinaBook All , 27 Comments

Not often that I give posts Tori Amos song titles, but it was the first thing that popped into my head when I put Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt in front of me. I was lucky enough to meet Rebecca Hunt a couple of weeks ago at a Penguin bloggers/authors event. For a lovely write-up of the day, check out Sakura’s post or Annabel’s or David’s or Hayley’s. All of which makes me think perhaps I should have written something about it myself. Oops. I will say that, for someone who wrote a book about depression, Rebecca was hilarious. I hope the wine I’d drunk on an empty stomach didn’t make me think *I* was too hilarious. Onto Mr. Chartwell…


The man in question is not, in fact, a man – but a dog. Winston Churchill famously referred to his depression as his ‘black dog’ – Hunt imagines what it would be like if Churchill had not been speaking metaphorically; what if there really was a black dog, visible only to those he afflicts? Mr. Chartwell (also known as Black Pat, although neither is his actual name – which is never revealed) is that dog. He also read a guide about the dog behavior training to know more about how dog behaves and how it will helps to cope from depression.

It’s 1964 and Churchill is 89 years old, and about to retire. Not far away, in Battersea, House of Commons librarian Esther Hammerhans has advertised for a lodger to live with her, and is awaiting his arrival. It won’t surprise you to learn that the lodger in question turns out to be… Mr. Chartwell. He is incredibly tall (and stands upright), he speaks English perfectly, and more or less his only canine vice is a propensity to eat anything and everything, usually in a peculiarly disgusting, slobbery manner. Reluctantly, Esther lets him stay.

This might all sound a bit fey. The anthropomorphism of animals is usually rather whimsical, or at least diverting, but in Mr. Chartwell it’s really something that we should come to terms with as quickly as possible, and then carry on. And there is certainly nothing fey about Mr. Chartwell. He is, if anything, menacing – but not aggressive or threatening, rather he is persistent. Whenever Churchill tells him to leave, it is acknowledged between them that Mr. Chartwell leaving is never really a possibility. He is an unwelcome companion, but a companion nevertheless.

Esther thought about Michael in here with this dog, trapped with him, already trapped when they first met. “And you’re going to trap me too.” She recalled the day he moved in, her gullibility. “This is an ambush.”

“No, it’s an affinity. I didn’t initiate it.” From behind the desk Black Pat said, “The magnet that keeps me here is the magnet which brought me here. We are twinned by the same orbit and I’m all yours, Esther, I’m all yours.” He said hopefully, “Don’t you like me even slightly?”Michael, by the way, is Esther’s late husband. His story slowly unwinds through the novel, as pieces are filled in, so I shan’t spoil it for you here.

Such are the bare bones of the narrative, and it is a simple story really – with an innovative central idea which permits simplicity. Indeed, to overcomplicate the novel would have been a big mistake. As it was, I could have done with less of Esther’s colleague Beth and Beth’s husband Big Oliver. They were something of a distraction.

What Hunt has done brilliantly, and originally, is capture the claustrophobia of depression. The idea of a hot, heavy, relentless dog lying across one’s body might not be medically accurate, but it certainly conjures up an idea of what living with depression might be like. And yet, Mr. Chartwell is not a distressing novel. There is a lot of humour flowing through it, especially from Mr. Chartwell himself – who is not a wholly repugnant character by any means. Relentless, yes, but also somehow seductive. Not in a romantic way, of course, but through his dogged (no pun intended) charisma.

I don’t know anything about Churchill, really, beyond what everyone grows up knowing. I don’t know whether or not his character and his dialogue are written convincingly – other people will be able to say, perhaps. I’m not sure it really matters. Churchill is useful as the originator of the ‘black dog’ expression, but his character could have been anyone who experienced both success and depression. Even without the ‘hook’ of Churchill, Hunt has written a strikingly original debut novel, and I’m looking forward to seeing what could possibly come next. And Rebecca, if you’re reading, I still want the chandelier we were arguing over.

Never let it be said, gentle readers, that I do not think of you. There was a free-for-all at Penguin’s table of free books, but (a) I had already asked lovely Lija for a copy of Mr. Chartwell, and (b) there seemed to be lots of spare copies – so I grabbed one to offer up as a giveaway copy. So, as a reward for reading this far, simply pop your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy (open worldwide) – actually, let’s make it a little bit more exciting. I want to know the name (and species) of your first pet – if you’ve never had one, then what would you call one. Get commenting…

A Little More Than Kin

StuckinaBook All , 4 Comments

You know how I love novellas – the shorter and punchier the better – and might have noticed that I was impressed by Susan Hill’s The Beacon. Indeed, it’s my Bloggers’ Book of the Month choice for February, at the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green.

That made me pretty excited when Hill announced that her latest novella was coming out – A Kind Man is obviously being marketed in a similar style to The Beacon (although, tut tut Chatto and/or Windus for putting an apostrophe in Howards End is on the Landing on the dustjacket. You win back some of those points for Mark McEvoy’s cover image. And for sending me a review copy – thanks!) If it could be as good as The Beacon, then I was very keen to read it. Also, fact fans, A Kind Man was published fifty years to the day after Hill’s debut novel. Gosh!

A Kind Man is something of a deceptive title, for most of the novella, as we actually see the world through the eyes of that man’s wife, Eve. In fact, the narrative opens with Eve making a solitary trip to an isolated graveyard – as the reader soon suspects, to visit the grave of her daughter, who died at three years old. We then move back to Eve’s family, and her courtship with Tommy – the kind man of the title – is outlined, as is their marriage. Tommy’s kindness is almost his only attribute, and certainly the most distinctive. He is made almost characterless in his ordinariness – rarely do we see anything from his perspective. This, of course, makes it all the more striking when we do; for instance, this excerpt from towards the end of the novel, retelling an event we had already seen from Eve’s perspective very early on:

As he had grown up he had watched the young men around him find girls and make them wives and start families and had naturally felt that he would do so too but not understood how to choose. He had looked at some and they were pretty, at others and they were pert, at the ones with kind faces and the hard ones, the laughing ones, the sad and those old before they had had time to be young, but walking by the canal he had seen Eve and she was different. How she was and why and what made him know it, he had wondered every day since.
I do not want to spoil this novella. Too many reviews give too much away. Plot is not the only reason to read fiction, far from it, but the novella which spins on an axis around a central point should not have that point disclosed from the outset; it tips the story off-balance. Suffice to say that is outside of the ordinary, although Hill wisely does not allow it to change the style or genre of the work. If the event would have performed better in a novel by Barbara Comyns (oh, how I would love to have read Comyns’ take on it!) then that is not Hill’s fault; I can’t think of any novelist who can approach the outlandish in so calm and involving a way as Comyns. Hill, however, finds the moral dilemmas caused by the strange and unusual (a thing Comyns would never do) and these form a central force of this beautifully forceful book.

Although this strange event would dominate most novels, and lingers longest in the mind, I think Hill is actually rather stronger at the more simple depictions of grief and mourning. These are emotions she dealt with brilliantly in In the Springtime of the Year, and in A Kind Man they play central roles, and are again shown convincingly and movingly – although (as is right) with a different slant from that previous novella. Everyday life and the dynamics of Eve being a wife, a sister, a daughter, a villager – these are the bread-and-butter of any work of fiction, and Hill is expert at them. I love Hill’s appreciation of the countryside, which comes through in occasional unusual and evocative phrases.

As she rounded the peak, she looked up and ahead to the far slope where the sheep were with their lambs, dozens of them scattered about the hillside like scraps of paper thrown up in the air and allowed to settle anywhere.If these strengths fade into the background once the twist of the novella arrives, that is to be expected – but we should not forget how rare it is to find a novelist who excels at both unexpected, and more predictable, narrative events. Far too rare.

A Kind Man is sombre and wise; it is almost delicate in its subtlety, but at its depth is a fable as sturdy as they come. Sorry to be vague about it, but you’ll thank me once you’ve read it. No other pen but Susan Hill’s could have written this novella in this way – and I hope there will be more in the same mould.

There is nothing like a…

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I mentioned yesterday that I’d only finished one book in 2011, and that I’d be writing about it soon. Well, I’ve now finished two, and I’m going to write about the one I finished last night – because it’s rather easier to write about than Howards End, which I feel I should Think About Properly.

No insult to Dame Judi Dench, but I don’t feel I need to think so vigilantly about her book And Furthermore. (And, before I forget, thank you Becca for giving it to me for my birthday!) Well, we should be clear from the start – this is John Miller’s book, written after (presumably lengthy) conversation with Dench. He wrote her biography, and has turned Dame J’s anecdotes into book-form here. The brief diary she includes from her own pen, about attending the Oscars, reveals that she is no natural writer – but, then, she doesn’t pretend to be. But she couldn’t have picked a better man to write things down for her. One of the most amusing things about watching Miller and Dench in conversation back in 2004 was that he knew her life so much better than she did. Judi would refer vaguely to doing a play somewhere in the mid ‘sixties, for example, and Miller would know the venue, year, date, cast… bizarre!

And Furthermore is, essentially, a collection of anecdotes. For those of us who have read Judi Dench: with a crack in her voice by John Miller, they aren’t all new – but no matter. It covers Dench’s acting career – primarily in the theatre – and only occasional mention is made of her private life, and her childhood is covered in a handful of pages. As a rule, a biography focuses on the career and an autobiography on the childhood – or so I have found – so it’s nice to have an autobiography which looks mostly at the area which interests me most. Because it is Dench’s decades of theatrical experience which captivate me – each play seems to come with its own amusing or intriguing incidents, and I love the atmosphere conveyed of being part of the company. It’s a little secret of mine, but – were my talents different, and my life headed in a different direction – I’d love to be an actor. I can’t act, and I’m not confident or energised enough, so this is no genuine ambition – but I love reading about repertory companies and imagining being in one. TV and film acting doesn’t have the same appeal, in my eyes – it is the theatre that I love reading about.

And Dench doesn’t hesitate to call theatre her first love. It is through other media that I have mostly seen her – I love or admire As Time Goes By, Cranford, Iris, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Notes on a Scandal, and so on and so forth – but I have had the privilege to see Judi once on stage, in All’s Well That Ends Well. I think being alive while she is performing, and not seeing her, would be an absurd abuse of the possibility that future generations will envy. That’s how I feel about Mrs. Patrick Campell, Margaret Rutherford, Peggy Ashcroft – none of whom, of course, I had the opportunity to see. And I am determined to see Maggie Smith on the stage, if she ever returns to it. Sorry, I’m getting distracted… What I intended to do was segue into this quotation:
I am so often asked, ‘Does the audience make any difference?’ Of course! It is the only reason you bother to be in the theatre, in order that tonight it can be better than last night, that you can crack something that you haven’t yet, that this audience will be quieter, that this audience really will at the end think they have had a marvellous experience, and you have told the author’s story. I always get that very depressed feeling at the end, and then miraculously a night’s sleep somehow prepares you for doing it a step up the next day.With any autobiography, it is the author’s personality that comes across. This is mediated here, of course, by Miller – but I still think the reader can get a little closer to Judi Dench than in a biography. She is perhaps a little sharper than might be expected, a little keener to have control over performances – but what struck me most was her deep sensibilities for writing. The great actors are also, in a way, the great literary critics. True, they work only on the level of character – but what a deep understanding of character they must have. When Dench says that Hermione would think this, or Beatrice speak thus, or Portia behave in this way, I am impressed by the full and thorough life she can breathe into words on a page.

So – sometimes the anecdotes don’t quite work; there are often punchline-statements which seem a little flat, but these are miniscule quibbles in a wonderful collection of stories and a unique set of experiences. Well, perhaps Dench’s is not a unique perspective (except in the way that any would be) but hers is a highly unusual and significant vantage over more than six decades of the theatre. Even if I did not love Judi Dench – and of course I do – this would be an incredible record of the theatre by one who knows it about as intimately and broadly as anybody possibly could.

But – I shall let Dame Judi have the last word:
Actors are really remarkable people to be with. I love the company of other people, but I love the company of actors, and to be in a company. My idea of hell would be a one-woman show, I wouldn’t be able to do that, I wouldn’t know who to get ready for. The whole idea of a group of people coming together and working to one end somehow is very appealing to me. It is the thing I have always wanted to do, and I am lucky enough to be doing it. You don’t need to retire as an actor, there are all those parts you can play lying in a bed, or in a wheelchair.

Age Cannot Wither Her

StuckinaBook All , 5 Comments

Whilst we’re talking about unusual narrative structures (as we were with Sarah Waters the other day) some months ago I read Remember Remember by Hazel McHaffie, which she very kindly sent to me as a review copy. I find Alzheimer’s sad, terrifying, and fascinating all at the same time, partly from experience within my own family, and I am drawn to writers who can portray dementia well. Or, indeed, any sort of illness or mental state which requires the author to give a wandering narrative voice.

McHaffie’s novel is split into halves. The first is devoted to Jessica and her attempts to grapple with her mother’s (Doris) dementia. Doris is becoming a danger to herself, and Jessica makes the difficult decision to find a residential home for her. Whilst sorting through Doris’ possessions, she makes unnerving discoveries about her mother’s and her own past. Thrown in amongst this intrigue are the everyday stuff of difficult children, unhelpful siblings, and a love interest in the form of Aaron the lawyer. I did wonder a bit whether Aaron was added at the suggestion of an editor, because he didn’t seem quite to fit with the rest of the novel – does every book need a love interest, really? – but we shan’t squabble over him.

To be perfectly honest, all this felt perfectly serviceable, but perhaps a little uninspiring. Documenting the grief and anguish of caring for a mother with dementia is done well, but other people’s grief can only be documented so many times. And, like love, it is all-consuming when one experiences it oneself, and difficult to find captivating when one is not – with the very honourable exception of Susan Hill’s In the Springtime of the Year.

So I was flicking through, thinking Remember Remember a perfectly good – and perfectly ordinary – novel, when the second half launched itself. Suddenly we move from Jessica’s viewpoint into Doris’:
The board says summer. 29 August. A sun, smiling. I smile.
Yellow. I hate yellow.
“You OK, Doris?” a blue lady says as she stomps past.
Doris? Doris isn’t here. But I know where she is. Hiding. Hiding under the shed in our garden. Hiding from Papa.The reader is swept into Doris’ confused and disorientating perspective on the world – and it is confusing and disorientating. This has been done brilliantly elsewhere – I recommend Eric Melbye’s Tru and Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel – but, if not quite at their heights, McHaffie offers a unique twist to the narrative of dementia. Each chapter of Doris’ perspective takes a step back in time. To be honest, I never worked out if the time gaps were sequential or cumulative (i.e. did ‘three years earlier’ mean subtract another three years, or simply three years from the present?) but that doesn’t really matter. What McHaffie cleverly presents is a mind, and thus a prose, that gets gradually more and more coherent – the mirror image of a mind disassembling through dementia.

As with Sarah Waters’ novel, there is much that is revealed through this anti-chronology – and I don’t want to spoil anything for potential readers. What I will say to anybody who does pick up Remember Remember is: persevere. The first half may feel a little ordinary, but I think McHaffie was just readying herself for the second half. That’s when things get interesting – in terms of structure, narrative events, and especially narrative voice.

Thanks for sending me your novel, Hazel – and I’m pleased I finally remembered to write about it! And, because I forgot to mention it earlier, a big gold star to Tom Bee, who provided the design and image for the beautiful cover. Give yourself a pat on the back.

Wait For Me!

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I have been reading Wait For Me! by Deborah Devonshire for (approximately) forever. I started it the day it arrived, back in September, but a combination of it being too heavy for my bag, and not being able to cope with the idea of finishing it – not to mention that somewhere towards the middle of each month I realise that I’ve not read the books for either of my book groups, and have six days to do so – mean I only turned the last page earlier this month.

For those of you who won’t get to the end of this post – and it will involve whatever the written equivalent of squawking is – I shall mention now that I have a copy to give away. Tell me your favourite autobiography, in the comments, for a chance of winning. This is open worldwide, so pop your name in. For many reasons to do so, dear reader, read on…

The Mitfords have been of great interest to many from their childhood onwards. They skirted around the outside of my consciousness, with Nancy taking occasional leaps forward, until I read the collection of their letters, expertly edited by Charlotte Mosley. Now – and I suspect most of you know this – I am rather besotted by some of the sisters. Unity and Jessica remain outside my affection, but I rather love the rest, and am devoted to Debo. So much so, that I am going to be hugely unprofessional and refer to her as ‘Debo’ throughout this review.

So, of course, I was delighted when she published her autobiography. Earlier works include collections of articles and musings (Counting My Chickens and Home to Roost) as well as lots of books about her home, Chatsworth, which I haven’t read. Those collections I have read, whilst entertaining and joyous, did little to suggest that Debo would be able to sustain a full-length autobiography. How wrong I was to worry.

Perhaps there isn’t much that will surprise in Wait For Me! Anybody who has read about the sisters before will find they know many of the anecdotes and stories already. What this book brings to the table is Debo’s perspective, and her wonderfully calm way with words. I hadn’t noted down any quotations to share, but having just flicked the book open at random, I came across a paragraph beginning thus:
Unity was always the odd one out. She arrived in this world in August 1914 to the sound of troops marching to war and departed it thirty-four years later in tragic circumstances. Larger than life in every way, she could have been model for a ship’s figurehead or Boadicea, with her huge navy-blue eyes, perfectly straight nose and fair hair worn in two long plaits. Perhaps because of her teenage diet of mashed potatoes, her teeth were her only bad feature.Debo hasn’t allowed familial closeness to cloud her judgement or provoke over-sentimentality; yet, who but a sister would choose those images and those details? Unity, who later befriended Hitler, and tried to kill herself on the outbreak of WW2, comes alive with these much more prosaic details. It is Debo’s complete unflappability which charms me through the account. Nowhere – except, of course, the title – would Debo dream of using an exclamation mark. It would be poor manners to get over-excited about something.

I was worried that Wait For Me! would pall once Debo had left home, and once the sisters were no longer centre stage – but I was wrong. Some of the most moving pages come when Debo describes her husband’s alcoholism, or their miscarriages and stillborn children. This isn’t done remotely gratuitously, or like those ghastly misery memoirs, but truthfully and unsensationally. And it is evident that Debo is far more interested in the businesslike running of Chatsworth than she in the doings of her sisters in their youths – her enthusiasm is contagious.

Don’t worry for my sanity. I am under no delusion that Debo and I could really be friends. My vegetarianism might put paid to that, for a start, let alone our fairly divergent views on hunting. Debo is occasionally unconsciously hilarious – like when, after a chapter devoted to the joys of hunting parties, she writes that ‘a fox came in daylight and murdered [chickens] for fun, as these serial destroyers do.’ Takes a beetle to know a beetle, Debo, m’dear.

But none of this really seems to matter, and it certainly doesn’t stop me adoring Debo and loving her book. Along with the spectacular collection of letters edited by Charlotte Mosley, Wait For Me! is a unique piece of social history, as well as an honest and entertaining personal memoir. The Mitfords are not everyone’s cup of tea (my own dear brother has a violent prejudice against them, based not on their Fascism or Communism, but rather Nancy’s refusal to use air-mail and their nicknaming of the Queen Mother as ‘Cake’) – but Debo’s book confirms that they are very definitely mine. In a china cup and saucer, naturally, with ginger cake on the side.

Box Clever

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It’s always exciting when you read something completely out of your comfort zone (if you should have such a thing) and you find that you absolutely love it. This happened to me months and months ago when I read Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman. Boxing, beetles, Nazis… none of these are on my hitlist of must-haves for books, and yet Beauman’s novel is one of the most interesting and compelling that I’ve read this year. Sadly I didn’t write my thoughts down at the time, and now that it’s actually been published, I’m having to cast my mind far, far back to remember what I thought… with the help of Claire’s review and Lynne’s review! Sorry if I’ve missed others…

Boxer, Beetle flits back and forth between two time periods – in one, trimethylaminuria sufferer and Nazi-paraphernalia collector Kevin (also known as Fishy) is investigating the work of scientist Philip Erskine. Erskine occupies the other time period, in the 1930s, where he encounters Seth “Sinner” Roach. Sinner is a five foot tall Jewish man who, despite his stature, is incredibly good at boxing. Which catches the attention of a man interested in eugenics. Oh, and beetles. Hence the title – alongside investigating Sinner, and paying for the privilege of examining him over a period of time, Erskine is trying to develop a strain of very resilient beetles. As you do. Oh, before I go further, I have to mention the first line – which really grabbed me into the novel, as well as putting a smile on my face:

In idle moments I sometimes like to close my eyes and imagine Joseph Goebbels’ forty-third birthday party.
Well, don’t we all? I should add hear that Kevin isn’t a Nazi sympathiser – nor, of course, is Ned. Kevin collects the memorabilia without having the slightest fascist leaning. Unlike quite a few of those roaming around 1930s London.

But East End London isn’t the only place we see in the 1930s – Erskine whisks Sinner off to a country house, and the family of his fiance (I think… as I said, I read it a long time ago) Evelyn. Evelyn is a rather fab character, a composer of atonal, avant-garde music. She makes the mistake of asking Sinner whether he likes avant-garde music (remember, this is the working-class lad who likes beating people up, swearing and joining gangs):
“I’m quite sure you would,” said Evelyn, “I can almost invariably tell.” Evelyn was aware that she didn’t compeltely convince when she made knowing remarks like this, especially to someone like Sinner with that gaze of his, but she didn’t see how her repartee was supposed to gain any poise when she had absolutely nobody to practise on at home. If she tried to deliver a satirical barb at dinner her father would just stare at her until she wanted to cry. And Caroline Garlick’s family were lovely but the trouble was they laughed rather too easily, rather than not at all – it wasn’t quite the Algonquin Round Table. She was convinced that if she had been allowed to go to Paris she would have had lots of practice, and of course me lots of people like this boy, but as it was, if she ever met any genuine intellectuals – or any beyond their neighbour Alistair Thurlow – they would probably think she was hopelessly childish. For about a week she’d tried to take up heavy drinking, since heavy drinkers were so often reputed to be terrific conversationalists, but most of the time she just fell asleep.

This isn’t, to be honest, the main tone of the novel. This humour, and this sort of almost Wodeshousian character, are drowned out by violence and antipathies and all sorts of terrifying things. Sinner is a pretty unremittingly horrible person. But Beauman’s writing is so good, the pace so well judged, and the climax so dramatic that I couldn’t help admiring this novel to the hilt.

It is difficult to get across my enjoyment of this, because I can’t point to any of the characters or any aspects of the plot which appealed. If I were just to read a synopsis of Boxer, Beetle, I’d probably steer well clear. That’s why I’m not going a ‘Books to get Stuck into’ feature today – I just can’t think of anything along the same lines. So you’ll just have to take my word for it, until you get your hands on the novel – Ned Beauman is a very talented writer, and if he can make this novel addictive for me, just imagine what he’s capable of!

For more from Ned Beauman, pop back tomorrow – I’ll be posting an interview he was kind enough to do with me… find out what inspired Boxer, Beetle, what Beauman’s doing next, and a little about his famous mother…

Teasing over…

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Well, that was a bit of a tease, wasn’t it? And it feels a bit fraudulent, because the book in question has already appeared on a few others blogs… but I kept thinking of the Guernsey book and I think folk who enjoyed that will also enjoy this… right, enough hinting. Step forward… Mr. Rosenblum’s List by Natasha Solomons!

Sceptre very kindly gave me a copy of this at an authors/bloggers party, but unfortunately I didn’t manage to speak to Natasha Solomons whilst there, and now I wish I had because anybody who could write this novel must be worth knowing.

Mr. Rosenblum’s List – or Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English if you’re looking for copies in America – has the subtitle Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman, which should give you a clue as to the book’s contents.

Jakob and Sadie Rosenblum are German Jewish refugees, escaping Nazi rule and coming to England in 1937 for safety – armed only with While you are in England: Helpful Information and Friendly Guidance for every Refugee. Jakob is incredibly keen to assimilate, and starts off by changing his name to Jack. He tries to work out what it means to be English (yes, not British, Dark Puss!) and how to fit in – adding his own bits of advice to the handbook. For example, to the rule that refugees ought always to speak English even if haltingly, he adds ‘And do not talk in a loud voice. (Unless talking to foreigners when it is the done thing to shout.)’ Of course, assimilating isn’t easy – and Solomons very wittily manages to show the Rosenblums’ difficulties without making either them or the English appear foolish. In fact, she is incredibly affectionate in both directions. It takes an intimate and thorough knowledge of the English to show these misunderstandings and misapprehensions, and Solomons (as a Dorset girl) is well able to provide.
When the Rosenblums were waiting anxiously in Berlin for their British visas, Jack had prepared for the trip by reading Byron’s poems and a Polish translation of P.G. Wodehouse. He understood only a little Polish and read the adventures of Mr. Bertie Wooster with the help of a German-Polish dictionary. It all got rather lost in translation, and the novel appeared to him a very peculiar sort of book and had dissuaded him from sampling further the pleasures of English literature.The bulk of the novel takes place eight years after World War Two. The Rosenblums have become wealthy through a carpet factory, and have relocated to Solomons’ own county Dorset (which leads to Somerset-bashing which I’ll tolerantly overlook!) Despite Jacks’s best efforts, they have not fully assimilated. Sadie is content to remember her German roots, but Jack wants them forgotten – and wants to make his daughter Elizabeth, studying at Cambridge, proud. Having almost completed his list of English attributes, there is just one item he can’t achieve: join a golf course. None will have him, once they see his surname. His solution? Why, to build his own, of course. It will be the best in the South West, and it will be in his back garden. Ignoring the unsuitability of the terrain – and the fact that he has never so much as swung a golf club – Jack ploughs all his energy, time, and money into creating this golf course… but the path of golf never did run smooth. And this is what most of Mr. Rosenblum’s List focuses upon.

Although there is a lot of humour in the novel, like Guernsey there are moments which are moving. Perhaps not to the same extent as Guernsey, where tragedy is given its own story arc, but the following section I found poignant: At the side of the house the garden reverted to scrub; the hedgerows crept forward and brambles and bright yellow gorse bushes made it impassable. The stinging nettles were five feet tall. yet butterflies landed on them effortlessly, somehow never getting stung. Sadie neither planted nor weeded; Hitler had declared the Jews weeds and plucked them out wherever he found them. She knew that a plant was only a weed if unwanted by the gardener, so she refused to move a single one, and they sprouted up wherever the wanted.Moving, no?

The Rosenblums persevere with their golf course – or rather, Jack does, as Sadie remembers her past. There is a heart-breaking scene with some photos, which I won’t spoil. Jack encounters resistance from many quarters, but also an unexpected and unusual ally in the most Dorset man in the village…

Although I often got frustrated with Jack for wasting so much money and being inconsiderate to his wife, it’s impossible not to love him. He’s a 5’3” bundle of enthusiasm and determination, unquashable and passionate. Although I could have done without the Dorset Woolly-Pig, which seemed all a bit silly, overall I thought Solomons’ debut novel was really delightful. Perhaps a little more light-hearted than Guernsey, but an interesting angle on post-war life nonetheless – and definitely something you’ll want to be reading this summer. I’m often positive about the novels featured here, so when something really special comes along I don’t know how to say “this is even BETTER than usual!” but, er, hopefully I just did… And word has it, on Solomons’ blog, that she’s been writing a screenplay…

Books to get Stuck into:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer: well, given the build up to today’s review, this one is hardly a surprise, is it?

Watching the English – Kate Fox: although this is pop-anthropology, rather than a novel, it’s the other book I kept being reminded of while reading Solomons’ – because it has a similarly affectionate view of the Englishman’s foibles and eccentricities.

David Mitchell

StuckinaBook All , 8 Comments

You know by now, I’m sure, how keen I am to coerce my friends and family into writing reviews to appear on my blog. Well, Sceptre kindly gave me a copy of David Mitchell’s latest novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. My aversion to long books, coupled with quite a graphic opening chapter, led me to seek outside assistance… step forward Clare. A David Mitchell fan AND an ex-employee of the Bodleian, there could be no better person for the task. And of course, her rather fab review has put me to shame. As always when I’ve got someone guesting here, I’d love you to make them feel very welcome… over to you, Clare!

I very nearly never read David Mitchell at all. If it had not been that I received a free (damaged) copy of his 2004 novel Cloud Atlas from the Waterstone’s branch in which I worked as a teenager, chances are I would never have paid him much attention. My reading tastes are mostly confined to novels published before the middle of the last century, and, I suppose, could be described as rather parochial in scope. So quite why I count as one of my all-time favourite writers a man whose novels are so absolutely unlike anything I would ever usually read is really rather beyond me.

His novels are, in fact, not at all my kind of thing. Spanning countries, eras, characters, voices, tenses and, sometimes, even dimensions of reality within a single volume, they are anything but parochial. Cloud Atlas, for example, my first Mitchell experience (and what an initiation!) has been described by the Guardian’s William Skidelsky as ‘a giant Russian doll of a novel’. Containing in its pages six vastly differing yet somehow interlinked narratives (from a boat in the Pacific Ocean in the mid-nineteenth century, to a holographic narration of an executed clone in futuristic, dystopian Korea, to letters from a penniless British composer in Belgium to his gay lover…and that is only the half of it), it leapfrogs from historical fiction to science fiction, from magic realism to something even more post than postmodern. Such towering ambition and chameleonic literariness should be intimidating, or at least, should simply not work. And yet this unassuming 41-year old from Worcestershire manages to not only get away with it, but also to create worlds, voices and characters that thrill, move and enrapture. His first three novels, Ghostwritten (1999), Number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), all share these ‘Russian doll’ tendencies, from which Mitchell moved away with 2006’s Black Swan Green, a more linear, autobiographical ‘coming of age’ novel.

Thus it was with some degree of interest that I approached his latest offering, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, published this month. It, too, marks a departure from his first three novels, but it is no less staggering in ambition and scope. Opening in the year 1799, the novel is set in Edo-era Japan; more specifically, the artificial island of Dejima in the bay of Nagasaki, at that point a trading post with the Dutch East India Company. The trade with the Dutch is the only contact Japan, a country where traditions and culture are strictly guarded and Christianity banned, has with the outside world. In this restrictive atmosphere we find Jacob de Zoet, an earnestly Christian and conscientious Dutch bookkeeper whose task it is to attempt to clear up the corrupt practices of the Company’s former officials. However, the more the ‘corrective’ work continues, the more corruption continues to breed both within the Dutch Company and the Japanese officials, until Jacob finds himself inextricably and dangerously entangled with Dejima’s fate, as the Napoleonic Wars gain momentum throughout Europe and the British attempt to capture Dejima for their own uses. However, as we would expect from Mitchell, this expertly researched narrative is only one thread within the novel. Throughout the book there runs the undercurrent of Jacob’s forbidden love for the disfigured Japanese midwife, Orito Aibagawa, whose kidnapping by a demonic ‘religious’ order dealing in sexual slavery, infanticide and cannibalism is one of the more bizarre but thrilling parts of the book. Finally, Jacob climbs in station as political events unfold, and there is a sense of an epic of Tolstoyan magnitude, a personal story set against a huge backdrop of events.
Mitchell utilises Dejima expertly as a symbol of threatened insularity, and the tensions between the ever-encroaching European world are a recurring theme throughout the novel, whether it be the forbidden family Bible which Jacob carries with him, or the access to European medical knowledge which enables Orito to save lives, or the recurring problems (and political dangers) of translation and interpretation between the Japanese and Dutch languages. The story is intricate, and peopled with characters as vivid, extreme and expertly realised as those in Dickens, yet Mitchell’s greatest skills are his ability to tell and manipulate a story, to grasp a reader’s attention, and to draw one fully into whichever and whatever world he is creating. He may be one of the few young modern writers who has had a two-day conference dedicated to his work, but David Mitchell’s main talent is the reality of his writing rather than the hyperreality of his plots. His descriptions cover frequently the gritty, grimy, physically degraded elements of human existence (the opening chapter is certainly not for the faint-hearted), but also ascends to painting moments of exquisite beauty. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is possibly not the best way to begin reading Mitchell (for that, I would recommend my own ‘way in’, Cloud Atlas), but for his existing followers it marks an exciting and mature move. I simply cannot wait to see what the man will do next.

I will leave you, I think, with a fragment of one of my favourite passages from The Thousand Autumns; a rather Under Milk Wood-esque description of Dejima and its inhabitants towards the close of the novel, which begins with describing gulls wheeling above the port and accelerates into dizzying rhyme: tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year old whores; the once-were beautiful gnawed by sores…where a puddle from last night’s rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself. Arguably, with his fifth book, Mitchell has created both a world and a masterpiece. I am very, very glad that David Mitchell is not at all my kind of thing. I hope he may not be yours either.

The Art of Gardening

StuckinaBook All , 4 Comments

No, I haven’t come over all horticultural (my current back garden is entirely laid to concrete, although I did once grow a few nice flowers in pots – cue unnecessary picture of them, taken a year ago).


So, where was I – not horticultural, but almost equally unusual for Stuck-in-a-Book, because today I’m talking about poetry. I’ll confess, I don’t know much about poetry – but every now and then it just hits the spot. And today the poetry is The Art of Gardening by Mary Robinson. The collection is inspired by a whole spectrum of things – nature, memories, other writers such as George Orwell and Karel Capek – and even a series inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, chunks of which I read last year.

The Art of Gardening was sent to me by the publisher (Flambard Press) but I have to be completely open about this and say that Mary Robinson is a family friend I’ve known all my life. The Robinson family lived near us in Merseyside – and, while we’ve moved further and further southwards, they went northwards, and we’re now at the extremes of the country. As a family with an arty Mum, a vicar Dad, and twin sons, they’re not dissimilar from the Thomas family…

Anyway – that’s the picture set, and it would feel far too weird for me to write a review of the collection, so instead I’m just going to type out my favourite poem in the collection and encourage you to go and get yourself a copy!


Apple Blossom

Don’t go my mother said
standing under the apple blossom
wearing that long baggy cardigan
snagged and pilled like a neglected paddock.

How could we not go?
I was doing a last round of the house
checking for something forgotten
but in reality saying farewell.

The removal men had gone.
I looked out of the wash-house window
and there she was, unchanged
after twenty years.

The spring before I started school
she had shown me the alphabet
under the apple tree – pale petals fell on the paper
as she traced the shapes with her self-taught hand.

Years later I was reading my own books.
In the evenings she banged out campaigning letters,
the old manual typewriter resounding to the clack
of rage and the rasping roller of frustration.

Now my last sight of her will always be
under the apple tree –
Don’t go she said.

How many Hectors make an acre?

StuckinaBook All , 2 Comments

I mentioned a while ago that I was dabbling in various translated novels, and when better than after a trip to Paris to finish off two novels translated from the French? Well, yes, perhaps *on* a trip to Paris would be better, but there’s a 782 page reason that I didn’t, which will be revealed in a week or two.

Instead, it was my train journey home where I finished a couple of novels (I think I surprised the girl I sat next to, as my bag seemed to have an inexhaustible number of books emerging from it) – and, first up, Hector and the Search for Happiness by Francois Lelord, courtesy of Gallic Books (thanks!)

Apparently Hector has sold over a million copies worldwide, and Gallic have just brought his words of wisdom to the English speaking world. Having just read books translated from the French by Lelord, Kundera, and Veronique Olmi, I can only conclude that there is no ‘French style’ which is universally carried across – because the style of this novel is quite unlike anything else I’ve read. It tells of Hector, a psychiatrist, wandering around the world trying to find out what makes people happy. Or, perhaps more importantly, what makes people unhappy – especially when there seems to be no external reason for their unhappiness.

Lelord is himself a psychiatrist, and so he knows what he’s talking about, but as I said – the style is very unusual. Every now and then it’s in the second person – the second person, you know… oh wait, that’s an example – and it’s all written (how shall I put it?) quite childishly. As though it were aimed at children, I mean, rather than telling immature jokes and so forth. Here’s an example, which also amused me because I live with one:A psychologist is somebody who studies how people think or why they go a bit crazy or what makes children learn at school and why some don’t, or why they hit their schoolmates. Psychologists, unlike psychiatrists, don’t have the right to prescribe pills, but they can make people take tests or choose the right picture in a box or calculate things using dominoes, or tell them what an ink stain makes them think of. And after that they know something about the way your mind works (but they don’t understand everything, it has to be said.)Of course, sometimes writers use a faux-naive voice so as to subtly work on two levels, a sort of knowing wink to the reader – but I don’t really get that impression with Hector. Lelord just seems to have chosen quite a guileless, ingenuous narrator – and it works quite well, so that we get a character exploring happiness without an ounce of cynicism. Which just wouldn’t happen in the pen of a British writer – we do ooze cynicism with every ink drop.

As Hector travels to far flung places, getting himself into situations which are awkward, dangerous, serendipitous and fun, he compiles a list of lessons about happiness. These are the crux of the novel, so I shan’t spoil them now, but to give you an example – the first two are ‘Making comparisons can spoil your happiness’, and ‘Happiness often comes when least expected.’

These sorts of lists could be saccharine and irritating – ‘happiness is like a butterfly of joy, flapping its wings of laughter’, that sort of thing – but luckily Lelord never wanders into that territory. Each lesson comes from an event in the novel, not just phrased in overly abstract terms. And, since Lelord is a psychiatrist, you realise that the lessons – seemingly off the cuff – actually come together to mirror psychiatric and psychological research, in the least off-putting way imaginable.

All in all, this is an unusual and fun novel, but one which might just have something worthwhile and interesting to say as well – for something else worthwhile and interesting, check out Cornflower’s review here!