EAGLETON BOOK NOTES

The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time

2010-06-22T23:15:00.001+01:00

The cover note says that this is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective and narrator is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger’s Syndrome [although that is not mentioned in the text of the book]. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour’s dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

“This will not be a funny book," says Christopher. "I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them." But that’s not altogether the case. It is a book with humour and pathos. I am acquainted with people with Asperger’s Syndrome and to be able to gain an appreciation through this book of how they see the world was a challenge and an education.

The eyes of a child are often used to portray the frailties of adults and human life in general and this not only uses the eyes and mind of a child but it strips everything he sees of emotion and narrates it in a cold and logical format which I found at the same time both simple and hard to read.

I’m not sure that this can really be described as a murder mystery novel but it is a book which I found hard to put down and impossible to ignore. I also learned quite a lot about maths!

My only reservation is that when the author got to the end of the book it was as if he suddenly just gave up and finished writing.

Would I recommend it? Without hesitation. Even if you don’t enjoy the story you will learn about a human condition and that will help you to understand an alternative view of life. That has to be a Good Thing.

Quotes:

Because time is not like space. And when you put something down somewhere, like a protractor or a biscuit, you can have a map in your head to tell you where you have left it, but even if you don’t have a map in your head it will still be there because a map is a representation of things that actually exist so that you can find the protractor or the biscuit again. And a timetable is a map of time, except that if you don’t have a timetable time is not there like the landing and the garden and the route to school. Because time is only the relationship between the way different things change, like the earth going round the sun and atoms vibrating and clocks ticking and day and night and waking up and going to sleep , and it is like west and nor-nor-east which won’t exist when the earth stops existing and falls into the sun because it’s only a relationship between the North Pole and the South Pole and everywhere else, like Mogadishu and Sunderland and Canberra.

People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance. But they should think logically and if they thought logically they would see that they can only ask this question because it has already happened and they exist.

After posting this I remembered that Scriptor Senex had read it when he was here last year. See his blog entry at A Book Every Six Days.

The Matchmaker of Périgord

2010-05-29T22:27:00.001+01:00

I have absolutely no idea how or where I first saw this book. All I can remember is that Julia Stewart’s book caught my eye when it was published in 2007 and I knew that I had to read it. Perhaps it was because I am acquainted with the Périgord region of France (and in particular the real towns mentioned in the novel although I was unaware of that before I read it).

I received it as part of a Christmas present and it was waiting for me when I returned from New Zealand. I finished it a few hours ago over a leisurely lunch. As I was reading it (which I managed in a matter of a few days – a record for me when not on a plane?) I was occasionally reminded of Tom Sharp’s Blot on The Landscape (1975) and Porterhouse Blue (1974) which I read in the ‘70s. I enjoyed them but I could never get into any of his other books and abandoned the attempts.

As soon as I started it I needed to know how it ended. On occasions it irritated me. On occasions I just enjoyed the style and prose which borrows from the same school as Alexander McCall Smith when it comes to describing things. The Matchmaker, for example, never wears plain ‘sandals’ but always ’supermarket leather sandals’ It is, however, an absolutely delightful read with not a nasty thought to be found on any page.

Quotes:

‘I’ve never eaten frogs in my life. Nobody in their right mind would. Have you?’ ‘Of course not! Only tourists do.’

Love is like a good cassoulet, it needs time and determination. Some bits are delicious, while others might be a bit rancid and make you wince. You may even come across the odd surprise like a little green button, but you have to consider the whole dish.

Without love we are just shadows.

Once the villagers had settled their argument as to whose limbs were whose, they got to their knees and it wasn’t long before they were able to stand. Eventually they found they could focus, and even remembered their own names. When they staggered out of the bar and saw the frightful state that the village was in, their hearts immediately soared, knowing that the chances of the English buying homes in Amour-sur-Belle were now even more remote.

…the Comité des Fetes announced that the celebrations to mark Patrice Baudin’s recovery from vegetarianism would be held that afternoon.

However, possibly the best quote of all is the last two sentences of the book and to get there you’ll just have to read it. I think it was worth it.

Birdsong

2010-05-28T23:26:00.001+01:00

I mentioned in March that I’d read Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks and that I knew that I’d made notes at the time. I never found them. They may, of course, have been in one of the two notebooks I lost over the last few months. I know from discussions with others who have read it that views about it are not always the same as mine. In fact several people couldn’t finish it; not because it was a bad novel but because they detested the realism of the images it portrayed.

To me the plot, actually the plots, involving all the usual suspects in a war novel – love, sex, hatred and violence only scratch the surface – is almost irrelevant to the impact the book had on me.

I was trying to recall the plots around which the novel is woven and the fact that I managed to do so says more for the plot than it does for my memory. For me, however, what I remember was the raw emotion and detail in which the horrors of life in the trenches and, worse still, the tunnels under the trenches, is described. My imagination is not good but I didn’t need it to feel as though I was there with the narrator in hell. I found it even worse when I realised that so many people whom I had known, and know, experienced that and never mentioned it. I understood why some people such as my school teachers who had been in the trenches were as they were.

This book is not an easy read. To me, however, it had a greater impact than almost any other book I can recall. Somehow the horrors of Tolstoy’s War and Peace which I read in two different translations I enjoyed it so much, were unreal in comparison. But I was much younger then! If I were to compile a ‘must be read’ list then this book would be very near the top.

Quotes:

We are contemptuous of gunfire, but we have lost the power to be afraid. Shells will fall on the reserve lines and we will not stop talking. There is still blood though no on sees. A boy lay without legs where the men took their tea from the cooker. They stepped over him.

No child or future generation will ever know what this was like. They will never understand. When it is over we will go quietly among the living and we will not tell them. We will talk and sleep and go about our business like human beings. We will seal what we have seen in the silence of out hearts and no words will reach us.

The Careful Use of Compliments

2010-05-28T21:24:00.001+01:00

Now I’m getting really frustrated. I’m a devotee (second time I’ve used that tonight) of Alexander McCall Smith’s Isobel Dalhousie Novels – or are they the Sunday Philosophy Club Novels? The publishers don’t seem able to decide. So why am I frustrated? Because I thought that I’d read this novel fairly recently but it was obviously some months ago. And therein lies the problem with these novels. They all seem to run one into another but not necessarily in sequence and even trying to work out some of the underlying plots which transfer from one to another can be difficult even a few weeks after having read one. In this case I didn’t even note any quotes for repeating.

The next one in the series is The Comfort of Saturdays. I shall, of course, pick it up off the coffee table some time soon and read it and enjoy it and, hopefully, blog on it more speedily. One thing I can be absolutely certain about is that it will contain a reference (or two or three) to Auden. Another is that I will, as sure as it will rain tomorrow, enjoy it.

If you are, by any chance, a person who hasn’t read one of the series then do so, starting at the beginning with The Sunday Philosophy Club. I’m sure that you won’t be disappointed.

Death of a Gossip

2010-05-28T20:35:00.001+01:00

It’s a while since I read this and I realised when I started this sentence that I couldn’t even recall the plot. Presumably someone died at some stage. Then it came back to me. There is something rather comforting in the predictability of books such as this. It’s undemanding and involves death through murder in a feel-good sort of way.

As a devotee of the BBC series Hamish Macbeth based on these novels I was surprised to discover that the Hamish of the TV series does not quite fit with the Hamish of the book; well, not the one I remember anyway. I suppose that I shouldn’t have been surprised but I did rather prefer the TV Hamish.

Even I (a person who reads novels, even light ones, as though they were legal tomes) managed to read this in a few hours in small bite-sized chunks. It can safely be said, therefore, that it’s not long or demanding. But it is good fun and there are much worse ways of spending a few hours - even if they did happen to be on a ‘plane journey when the alternatives were hardly throwing themselves at me.

Would I recommend it? Yeah, why not. I’m sure you’d enjoy it ‘cos, frankly, there’s nothing not to enjoy about it.

The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom

2010-05-06T01:27:00.001+01:00

A little while ago Katherine from The Last Visible Dog asked me if I had read Alexander McCall Smith’s The 2 ½ Pillars of Wisdom. Given that I have read most of his novels published to date I couldn’t really understand why I had had this in my bookshelves for several years but had not read it. So I got it off the shelf and put it on the coffee table. That usually means that it’ll be read ‘sometime’. In fact I read it almost immediately.

It is described as Frasier Crane meets Inspector Clouseau. I think that is a pretty accurate description. The principal character of the books (It’s three books amalgamated into one volume) has all the worst aspects of Frasier’s character although I have to say that I didn’t really see any of his more endearing traits. Come to think of it I’m not sure Frasier had any either. I have to admit that Clouseau wasn’t one of my favourite characters. So we were off to a bad start: an unlikable central character and stories of undisguised slapstick.

One of the criticisms I have sometimes levelled at McCall Smith is his use of novels as a vehicle to demonstrate his prodigious knowledge and very considerable intellect to an audience who would not normally read his works on legal ethics and moral philosophy. This volume is a shining example of that. He quotes Auden (I wonder if there is a novel in his two Scottish series in which he has not done so), Kant, Proust and so many more and uses plenty of untranslated languages other than English. Fortunately for me my German and Italian is good enough for this book.

The book’s title comes from the central character, Von Igelfeld [hedgehog field!] who ‘had heard the three of them described as the Three Pillars of Wisdom, but looking at Professor Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer he came to the conclusion that perhaps The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom might be more appropriate. This, he thought, was rather funny.’

The book is a very clever book. It’s also very typical of AMcS’s easy, unchallenging, style. The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, the 44 Scotland Street and the Sunday Philosophy Club series all have the same unchallenging easy style but they also have wit and charm woven into the less appealing side of some of the characters portrayed in them. This does not have that charm.

Did I enjoy the book? Oddly I did quite enjoy it for all that I have said about it. It had some wonderful moments and prose in it. Would I recommend it? No. Would I recommend his other series? Absolutely.

Quotes:

Professor Dr Moritz-Maria Von Igelfeld often reflected on how fortunate he was to be exactly who he was, and nobody else. [The opening words of the book. Wasn’t that what the Pharisee said according to Luke?]

Von Igelfeld wondered whether there is a moral obligation to read a letter. Surely the moral principles involved were the same as those which applied when somebody addressed a remark to one. One does not have to answer; but inevitably does. Yet, why should one have to answer: was there something intrinsically wrong about ignoring somebody who said something if you hadn’t asked them to say something in the first place?

That must be safe; there was nothing threatening about Belgium. Ineffably dull, perhaps; but not threatening.

The mind, you see, is full of dark furniture.

…unlike Germany, where everybody seemed to be . . . well, they seemed to be so cross for some reason or another.

Von Igelfeld had little time for Belgium. In the first place he was not at all sure that the country was even necessary, in the way that France and Germany were obviously necessary.

Birdsong

2010-03-24T10:23:00.000Z

I am puzzled. Last year before I came out to New Zealand I read Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. I know that I wrote about it and I had a series of quotations as well. It was a book that affected me deeply. What I can't understand is why there is no posting on this blog.

I shall put this marker down and when I return to Scotland (or perhaps even before if I have the notes on one of the hard drives down at the Cottage - I am writing this whilst child-minding) I shall expand it.

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones

2009-06-29T06:52:00.005+01:00

The Fifth of the 44 Scotland Street novels by Alexander McCall Smith, this volume does not disappoint. It is as comfortable and reassuring as I have come to expect of AMC's Edinburgh books. One of my quibbles with AMC has been that he has a tendency to show off his prodigious knowledge and obviously considerable intellect in some of his novels with no apparent reason other than to show that he has that knowledge. In other words there appears sometimes to be no benefit to the novel of the inclusion of the information. I think that that has been remedied in this volume. Either that or I've just got used to it!

Most of the characters will be familiar to readers of previous novels in the series but we do learn more about the Jacobite Pretender - a rather fanciful and unnecessary incursion in my view but then Big Lou has to have some disaster in her relationships. Come to think of it that seems to be all she has in her relationships.

Bruce is back too. Can he possibly be a reformed character?

One thing that AMS's characters have on the whole is goodness. Even the villain, Lard O'Connor, is a likable gangster. ' A gangster?' I hear you ask. Yes. Really. A very useful one too.

It is that essence of goodness which brings out the serious side of AMS. He is somewhat of a believer in the role of goodness in life. I was going to say 'moralist' but I'm not sure that he is quite that.

The best way to form an opinion is to read the books. You don't just have to have a knowledge and love of Edinburgh to love these books. I have to ration myself. I have a great temptation to go and buy all the remaining ones and devour them one after the other.

If you can feel miserable after reading one of these books then I will be completely overcome with surprise. I was going to throw down a challenge but it all got too complicated.

Quotes:

She [Agatha Christie] said that an archaeological husband was an ideal husband as the older the wife became the more interested he would be in her.

Angus smiled. the moral energy, the disapproval, that had fuelled Scotland's earlier bouts of over-enthusiastic religious intolerance were still with us, as they were with any society. It wore a different cloth, he thought, and was present now in the desire to prevent people from doing anything risky or thinking unapproved thoughts.

And a coffee cup, as we all know, is not something that it pays to look into if one is searching for meaning; coffee, in all its forms looks murky, and gives little comfort to one who hopes to see something in it. Unlike tea, which allows one to glimpse something of what lies beneath the surface, usually more tea.

And here he [Mathew] was in the sharks' element utterly at their mercy - although mercy was not a concept one associated with sharks.

They prevent people from being who they are; they forbid them to express themselves in the name of preventing offence. Cyril's offensive to cats, but is he to stop being a dog?

I might as well have written those words on water.

Moisturiser and a good cry: two things for modern man to think about.

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

2009-06-12T08:00:00.003+01:00

This is the eighth volume in the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. As I said in my posting on The World According to Bertie McCall Smith is the spag bol of reading for me. I find it impossible not to be comfortable when reading his three main series. There are, of course, continuing gripes. I'm not sure whether it is a charm or a major irritation (or both) that there is so much repetition: of things past, of Mme Ramotswe's love of her father, red bush tea, Mr J L B Matekoni etc etc. The list of repetitions is endless and if they were not there then the series could, I'm sure, be reduced by two volumes. But would I have it so? No.

The plot (if such one could call it) in this volume, as in the others, is largely irrelevant. These books are not read for the plot but for the simple pleasure of reading a simple story well written.

Heaven forbid that McCall Smith should ever fall into the trap that Lillian Beckwith did with the sequels to The Hills is Lonely and end up with larger and larger print and smaller and smaller books. Come to think of it I think he's probably started where L B left off anyway. But do I care? No.

Quotes:

The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.

'There are many men for whom there does not appear to be any reason,' ....... '....even when he is standing there, doing nothing, I don't think that.'

She wanted something, she felt, but she was unsure what it was. Love? Friendship? There was a loneliness about her, as there was about some people who just did not seem to belong, who fitted in - to an extent - but who never seemed quite at home.

....but nothing ever approached the level of incompetence that these young men so effortlessly achieved.

So the small things come into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one's own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what was their own solution?

When Will There Be Good News?

2009-06-11T19:35:00.004+01:00

Some years ago I read Kate Atkinson's first novel: Behind the Scenes at the Museum. I recall that I found it slightly strange and rather unrewarding. Notwithstanding that I have maintained an interest in her subsequent books and on my way back from New Zealand in April I read her When Will There Be Good News? I was not disappointed. If I'm honest although it is only 6 weeks since I read it it seems a very long time ago and I have only the good impressions rather than the detail in my mind.

It is a detective story without being a whodunnit. It's a story about individuals with whom you can identify or empathise; whom you can like or dislike; who have a realness about them that I certainly didn't remember from Behind the Scenes.

It is serious. It is funny. The story carries through the twists and turns of time and circumstance with clarity. It is (in my humble opinion) exceptionally well written. I enjoyed it very much and I will return to read the rest of her books. I hope you will too.

Quotes:

Reggie would have liked to say, 'And you're too old to wear it [make-up],' but unlike, apparently, everyone else in the world she kept her opinions to herself.

When they went shopping for an engagement ring in Alistair Tait's in Rose Street [Edinburgh].... [Been there, done that. There's a comfort in books set in familiar places].

Lying in bed Louise could see the rings glinting in the dark, even when the safe was shut. Band of gold. Band around the heart. Heart of darkness. Darkness evermore.

A coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen.

A Patchwork Planet

2009-04-08T00:27:00.003+01:00

I bought this book because it was by Anne Tyler and she wrote The Accidental Tourist which was much recommended and which I abandoned after starting it before I left Lewis for New Zealand last October. I keep wondering, now that I've read The Patchwork Planet, whether I would have started it had I known what I now know. Answer 'No'. Question 'Why?'

I think that I look for something in a novel which gives me an emotional interest; perhaps even a challenge providing it's not too much of one. If there is not an emotional interest then a 'good story' is a must. This book provides neither for me.

It explores the ordinaryness of the very ordinary lives of its characters. It is about trust: the way we react to those who may not trust us and the way those who may not trust us react to us. It is about change: the way we may try and change as a reaction to the way those around us view us. Having said that I'm not sure that I found any of it particularly convincing nor interesting.

Would I recommend it? No.

The Sorrows of an American

2009-03-14T22:07:00.005Z

I was wandering through a bookshop (how unusual) and saw this novel by Siri Hustvedt. The blurb intrigued me. Until recently I have never borrowed novels from the library. I decided not to risk buying this but borrowed it. Correct choice: it's not a book for my collection. Apart from anything else I should have been warned by the endorsement on the front cover from Salman Rushdie. I'm not one of his admirers. But I digress.

The dominant plot - there are many plots and sub plots - revolves around a mystery unearthed by the narrator, Erik Davidsen (a New York psychiatrist of Norwegian parentage) who is grieving for his father, and his sister Inga (an academic). They are going through their father's papers when they discover a cryptic note about which their mother knows nothing. 'Dear Lars, I know you will never ever say nothing (sic) about what happened,' it reads. 'We swore it on the Bible. It can't matter now she's in heaven or to the ones here on earth.' The author of this note is a mysterious 'Lisa' no one can trace.

This is not, however, really a story about finding the meaning of the note but a look at the human mind and its reactions to, and contained in, the many plots and sub-plots. The book is very much an analysis of the characters contained within it. It obviously does that well and is acclaimed for that. There is an element of autobiography in the book in that the memoirs quoted are those of Siri's deceased father quoted almost verbatim. It is true, too, that one can learn a smidgen of psychiatry and psychoanalysis from the book.

It did have an element of compulsion and once started I had to finish. It was not time well spent. If you desire a satisfying outcome to a mystery then this is not for you. It may be strong on personal analysis but it's weak on storyline. Despite discovering that the book is almost universally acclaimed by the critics it did not make me want to read any more of her, also highly acclaimed, novels.

Quotes:

It's odd that we're all compelled to repeat pain, but I've come to regard this as a truth. What used to be doesn't leave us.

"We don't experience the world. We experience our expectations of the world." (Inga)

Our memories are forever being altered by the present - memory isn't stable, but mutable.

"Injustice eats your soul" (Inga)

"...the [psychiatric] patients are now referred to as customers." " That's revolting." "That's America."

[Telling a story] Burton made another dash towards his point.

And so we held vigil in the eerie space of the ongoing present, an interval drained of all significance, except that it was suspended between a child's fall and some future moment when we would know.

Hunting and Gathering: Revisited

2009-02-11T10:22:00.004Z

On 11 December (gosh, is it really that ling ago?) I posted a blog about Anna Gavalda's book, Hunting and Gathering. I have since watched the film with Audrey Tautou as Camille. This caused me to re-visit the book. As an aside the film, though enjoyable enough, is startlingly superficial when compared to the book. I suppose that's an inevitability given the complexities and detail of the characters within the simplicity of the story.

In my original comments I had wondered whether the book was simply a holiday read or a more serious work. If I were writing that posting now I would have absolutely no hesitation in saying that it is a work of considerable depth in its exploration of the characters who inhabit its covers. Nor would I have any hesitation in suggesting that it should be read.

The Lovely Bones

2009-01-13T07:47:00.006Z

I bought a copy of this book some time ago in, I think, a charity shop in the UK. I kept meaning to read it. It disappeared. I was standing in a bookshop in Napier just after Christmas contemplating the purchase of another copy when a young lady (customer) started explaining very enthusiastically why I should read it. She had just finished it and was consuming The Time Travellers Wife. I recalled that my Brother was very enthusiastic about that book so decided that her taste must be good. So I bought the book. I'm so glad that I did.

A fourteen year old girl (Susie) is murdered. From heaven she gives a commentary on how her family, the murderer and those affected by the murder cope or, more to the point, don't always cope.

So you now have a synopsis of the story; a synopsis that tells you nothing.

The book explores relationships and feelings (particularly grief) which are compelling aspects of life when dealt with this sympathetically and perceptively. It mixes the subjective emotions with very day to day aspects of life and how people might react and interreact in both areas. One very mundane and practical moment which I found particularly moving was when Lindsay (Suzie's sister) first shaved her legs. Her Dad was the one who, despite his misgivings that she was too young, guided her through the process and showed her how to change the razor blade.

The book appears to portray Lindsay, who is one year younger, as the person who suffers the most from the tragedy because she is "the victim's sister" and loses her own identity as a result. No one can look at her without thinking of Susie. I think, however, that she deals with the situation better than her parents and brother.

Suzie's portrayal of a heaven is non-religious. Whether Alice Sebold is religious I neither know nor wish to know but she gives an account of heaven which, in my view, equates to it being a state of mind portrayed in physical terms rather than a physical heaven.

The description of a novel as 'Number one best seller' is one of my dislikes and tends to put me off books. This is, however, a compelling read. Would I recommend it? Without hesitation.

Quotes:

Inside the snow globe on my father's desk there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white striped scarf. When I was little my father would pull me onto his lap and reach for the snow globe. He would turn it over letting all the snow collect at the top, then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I worried for him. When I told my father this, he said, "Don't worry, Susie; he has a nice life. He's trapped in a perfect world."

"When the dead are done with the living, " Franny said to me [Susie], "the living can go on and do other things."

With the camera my parents gave me, I took dozens of candids of my family. .. .. .. I had rescued the moment by using my camera and in that way found a way to stop time and hold it. No one could take that image away from me because I owned it.

These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections — sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent — that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events my death brought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life.

Life is full of coincidences. Production of the film of The Lovely Bones (which is, I understand, being filmed at the moment) has moved from Pennsylvania to New Zealand.

I Wish Someone Were Waiting For Me Somewhere

2009-01-01T04:31:00.001Z

With the exception of those by Somerset Maugham I am not a lover of short stories. However I can now add Anna Gavalda to Maugham. This book comprises a dozen short stories and a novelette (if there is such a thing) entitled Someone I Loved. When, a few weeks ago, I commented on her novel Hunting and Gathering I said that it was, apparently, a departure from her previous two books in that it was not a dark story of love denied nor lost nor roads not taken. As I had not read this book I relied on a reviewer for that information. Yes, this is a book of 'what if' and love denied and lost (and found and rejected for that matter) but I'm not sure that I would describe it as dark.

I have the feeling that many, many people if they were to read this book would feel distinctly uncomfortable. I spent a lot of time during the reading of Someone I Loved denying that I had ever acted like that. I had always been honest. Or had I? Whatever else this book achieved it made me feel uncomfortable.

Anna's style (I'm living in New Zealand at the moment and we don't do surnames here - OK I did for Maugham but that's different!) is controversial. It's staccato and leaves the reader to fill in a lot of the foliage. This would be totally alien to anyone who likes Anthony Trollope or admires descriptive writing for its own sake but for people like me who, generally speaking, cannot be arsed with the fluff and description and just want the story (because I'm a very slow reader who reads a novel as if it were a law book) her style of writing is ideal. I actually find it very pleasing as well.

Anyway I thought this book was quite thought provoking in a fairly light way and I enjoyed it very much. Would I recommend it? You know, I'm having great difficulty with that question. CJ recommends without hesitation books which I would never dream of reading. Not because they are not good books (I'm not sufficiently well-read to pass an opinion on that) but because they are subjects which don't interest me. Anna writes of people, situations and emotions. You will learn from her books nothing of history, nor science, nor, perhaps, very much for that matter. But they will stir you. And if they don't then you and I are very different people. There is only one way to find out.

Ah, yes, we are are we not?

Quotes:

A bottle of Côte de Nuits, Gevrey-Chambertain 1986. Baby Jesus in velvet britches. [Possibly the most extraordinary descriptive phrase I've read, but I think I understood what was meant.]

One of the few things I remember from school is a theory by one of those ancient philosophers , who said the important thing isn't where you are it's the state of mind you're in. He wrote that to one of his friends who had the hump and wanted to travel. He basically told him that it wasn't worth the trouble since he was bound to lug his load of problems around wherever he went. The day the teacher told us that, my life changed.

I guess that your face is a place that touched my life.

The trap lies in thinking that we have the right to be happy.

"You like squash and I like swingball, and that explains everything..." . . . . ". . People who are rigid inside are always bumping into life and hurting themselves in the process, but people who are soft - no, not soft, supple is the word - yes, that's it, supple on the inside, well, when they take a hit they suffer less...I think you should take up swingball, it's much more fun. You hit the ball and you don't know where it's going to come back, but you know that it will come back because of the string, and it makes for a wonderful moment of suspense. . . . . "

"You, you're like my father, you have nostalgia for the mountains."

"Which mountains, Mouschka?" I would ask.

"Why, the ones you've never seen, of course!"

A Moment In Time

2008-12-16T10:43:00.004Z

I showed Hunting and Gathering to Wendy when I started reading it and she did not think, from the few glimpses she had, that it would be her sort of book. As a love story she recommended H E Bates' A Moment in Time. It would be arrogant of me to try and 'review' a book which must have been the subject of so many comments over the years by people far better qualified than I to pass judgement.

However there is one very striking comparison between it and Hunting and Gathering: the endings. I commented on the latter's ending that "What one can say is that the ending is wrapped up without a single thread left unsewn". Bates's ending is one which leaves you to believe in the ending without telling you what it is. Many years ago I wrote a piece called Life Is Good Brother which did just that. I thought (and still think) that it was quite a good piece. However I was slated by the teacher because it did just what Bates has done. I liked it in my essay. I don't like it when others do it. Inconsistent or what?

A Moment in Time is a pleasantly written story which one could not leave half read but it is not a book which I would pick up again nor put on my list of suggested reading for anyone else. Which just goes to show you.

Quotes:

It's always as well to remember that there are occasions when the greatest danger comes not from your enemies but from your friends. [Quote, Unquote]

It sounds like the most ordinary and simple of conversations but because of it I felt my latent affection for Tom Hudson stir very deeply inside myself, turn over and then go completely to sleep again, exactly like a warm kitten. [Hmmmm.]

Hunting and Gathering

2008-12-11T11:09:00.006Z

Translated from the French, Hunting and Gathering, Anna Gavalda's latest book is, apparently, a departure from her previous two books in that it is not a dark story of love denied nor lost nor roads not taken. It is a story driven by its characters rather than a plot.

The characters are Camille, who works as a 'cleaning operative' and lives alone in a tiny, unheated, delapidated garret with a Turkish toilet on the landing and doesn't eat; Philibert, an aristocrat 'minding' an enormous flat which is the subject of a family inheritance feud and which is in the building in which Camille lives; Franck who lives in Philibert's flat and is a talented chef with severe boorish tendencies and Franck's Grandmother, Paulette, who is too old to look after herself but who is terrified of being placed in a nursing home.

All these characters are damaged in some way but come together as a group of individuals who, through each other, manage to mend that damage. It is a story of many emotions: despair, kindness, sadness and happiness. To my mind they were crafted with considerable skill and feeling. One suspects the whole time of reading that this is a book which will have a happy ending. Surely it will............... What one can say is that the ending is wrapped up with not a single thread left unsewn.

I seem to wonder about the intentions of the authors of books that I have been reading recently. I can't decide, for example, whether this book is simply a 'holiday read' or a more serious work. Whichever, it is very pleasing prose. I would suggest, too, that it is one of the most beautiful books that I have read recently.

It was recommended to me by a friend who knows me well and was a welcome recommendation. Would I recommend it to others? Absolutely but, and it's a big but, only to selected people. 'Cos if you're not one of those people you may well just not take to it.

Quotes:

It's a hypothesis. History won't take us far enough to confirm it. And our certainties never really hold water. One day you feel like dying and the next you realise all you had to do was go down a few stairs to find the light switch so you could see things a bit more clearly.

In mid-November, when the cold weather began its dirty work of undermining everyone's morale... [So appropriate on Lewis this year!]

The thing that prevents people from living together is their stupidity, not their difference. [Ouch, that hurt.]

Why does there always have to be a notion of profitability? [in knowledge] I don't give a fuck if its useful or not, what I like is knowing that it exists.

...everything you regret comes back to haunt you, torment you. Day, and night...all the time. [My Godfather, Uncle JPD, drilled into me that one must never regret anything in life because, you've guessed it, it would come back constantly to haunt one. The one thing I've regretted haunts me constantly. Oh dear.]

Mathilde had the kindness, arrogance and offhand manner of those who are born in finely woven sheets.

Wuthering Heights

2008-11-21T09:15:00.005Z

Until I read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronté I had not read any of the Bronté sisters' books. Somehow that era of classics had just not appealed to me. However Wendy prevailed upon me to read ít and I have just finished it. It is another first too: the first time I've read a novel borrowed from a public library.

I had always thought that this was a story of great emotional love. As I got into it (I have to admit that, at first particularly, I found it very hard to follow) I felt more and more that it was a story of obsessive all-consuming hatred and revenge. Such 'love' as there was appeared to me to be obsessive desire rather than true love. This is a novel about male domination and female powerlessness, abandonment, betrayal, jealousy, obsession and revenge. Of true love I find little. I accept that I am a still, small voice.

But who am I to comment on such a novel when, apparently, more essays and analysis and speculation has been written about this novel than any other. I do wonder, though, how somone of the tender age and upbringing of E B could have the knowledge and imagination that which she obviously had in order to write such prose and convey emotions or actions of such fearful ferocity.

This is not a novel for the faint hearted. I shall, at some time, revisit it. It will be interesting to see if, next time I read it, I perceive it in a different light. To be sure I will certainly enjoy the splendid prose.

I did rather enjoy one critic who had evidently been infected by the food and starvation imagery of the novel who wrote "There is an old saying that those who eat toasted cheese at night will dream of Lucifer". The author of Wuthering Heights has evidently eaten toasted cheese.

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

2008-11-07T03:33:00.006Z

I finished reading this book on the 'plane on the way to New Zealand. I've been thinking about it on and off ever since. I think that this is the first book I've blogged about and upon which I have had such difficulty knowing what to say.

I'm not well enough read to comment on the style of writing but I have never come across a similar one. It seemed to me that the storyline was almost irrelevant. I think that the point must be in the detail rather than the general. The prose was, I thought, beautifully poetic and painted a picture that even my unimaginative mind could appreciate. However I usually read a book in very small tranches and my inability to conceptualise sometimes made it difficult to re-locate myself into the geographical setting. But that's probably just me.

I'm not even sure that I actually enjoyed it. But it certainly made me think. Perhaps that is what I got out of this book. Has any other reader of this blog read it?

Quotes:

If you listen you can hear it.
The city, it sings.
.......
It's a wordless song, for the most, but it's a song all the same, and nobody hearing it could doubt what it sings. And the song sings the loudest when you pick out each note.

...I don't understand how we can be so busy and then have nothing to say to each other.

I look at my room, at the table with the flowers and the pot of tea, the two cups, I think how nice two cups on a table can look.

He says, if nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?

Tom's Midnight Garden

2008-10-23T13:58:00.005+01:00

I'm not sure how one can read a book by mistake but that's what I have just done. I was contemplating the next book to read when my eyes alighted on this thinnish volume and I though that I'd manage to finish it before I leave for New Zealand. As I started it I had an uneasy feeling that it wasn't quite what I expected and it seemd to be a children's book. No indication anywhere that it was so I persisted. Then I decided that as I'd got so far I might as well find out the ending. I imagine that it's an enjoyable enough book if you were a pre-teenager in the 1950s. Or someone old enough to read children's books again! In a funny sort of way I enjoyed it. More importantly, though, I liked the concepts of time and space explored in the story and the potential for other planes of being. I think I would have enjoyed this as a child.

Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce is regarded as a modern (children's) classic. I'm certainly not qualified to comment but I'm not sure that it ranks with Black Beauty or Peter Pan.

But I've decided that I shall re-read Peter Pan.

Cold Comfort Farm

2008-10-21T14:48:00.001+01:00

When I started to read Cold Comfort Farm I didn't know what to expect even though I'd read CJ's posting on A Book Every Six Days which, by the way, I would suggest that you read before you venture further with this paragraph. It was that posting that made me take the book off my shelf and read it. Anyway whatever it was I might have expected I certainly would never have expected what I found.

It is supposed to be a comedy. It didn't amuse me. It seemed to me to be a parody. But of what or whom I had no idea and it made me wish that I had a better knowledge of English literature. I came across a paragraph which started "Dawn crept over the Downs like a sinister white animal, followed by the snarling cries of a wind eating its way between the black boughs of the thorns." I have never liked Thomas Hardy and it was at that moment that I thought perhaps I had discovered at least one of those whom Stella Gibbons was mocking.

I was fascinated by the ludicrousness of the whole book: its plot, its setting, its characters, its language and its prose. I couldn't see why I should continue reading it and yet I couldn't put it down. Surely there must be a twist in the tale's tail. But no. Instead we end up with the ending of a romantic novella.

W are told that "The action of the story takes place in the near future." As it was written in 1930 and 1946 is in the story's past it is difficult to even approximate a time. However as air taxis are a commonplace it is nearer our time. But as mail appears to be delivered the next day it is presumably set some time ago! Ah. 'Tis full of puzzlement. And sukebind.

Quotes:

There was a son [a Sussex man] who was easy on the eye but slow on the uptake. [A current Sussex saying is 'Strong in the arm but thick in t' head']

'Who's "she"? The cat's mother?' [A saying of Mum's from my youth. Had she read Cold Comfort Farm I wonder.]

Nature is all very well in her place but must not be allowed to make things untidy. [A quote for Helen and CJ in particular.]

..a philosophic treatise.....not to explain the Universe but to reconcile man to its inexplicability. [That's one for me - I never did have an enquiring mind.]

She liked Victorian novels. They were the only kind of novel you could read while you were eating an apple.

I think we ought to dine out... to celebrate the inauguration of my career as a parasite.

And one must not forget the parrot. You did read CJ's posting, didn't you?

Yes. I enjoyed this book. But I'm still not really sure why.

The Remains of the Day

2008-10-16T07:00:00.001+01:00

Last week just as I was starting this book CJ posted on Ishiguro's book Never Let Me Go . I wondered whether I would have more to say than CJ. Well I'm a bit at a loss for words on this one. Did I enjoy it? Not really. Did it have a satisfactory ending? Not really. Did I learn something from it? Not really. Did I understand what Ishiguro was attempting to achieve? Not really. In fact it was a bit of a not really book altogether.

I started off enjoying the story, briefly, because I thought I had an idea where it was going. Wrong. The narrator of the story has striven (at the time of the narration) to be called a 'great' butler and is a self-satisfied, emotionless and, I thought, very unfeeling, uncaring and unpleasant person. I was sure, however, that Ishiguro did not intend him to be. Or did he? Now I'm not really sure.

One of the things about posting views on a book is that it does make one think back to what one has read. I'm sure that Ishiguro was trying to get far more issues across to his readers than I have managed to assimilate. But as I review the pages I fail to see those issues. The last pages talk of the evening being the best part of the working day (actually and metaphorically) hence making the best of the remains of the day. But if that is the message then........

I would add that the narration prose is wonderfully evocative of how one might expect a butler in a great house to communicate in the earlier and middle part of the twentieth century. How does anyone who has not lived through that era - in fact was not born in this Country - do that? But then the last four words of the book contain a split infinitive! Oh dear.

Would I rush to read another of his books (which I have on the shelf)? Not really.

Does God Believe in Athiests?

2008-10-15T07:00:00.000+01:00

No, I haven't read this book. Life's too short to drink bad wine and too short to read books which are a turn-off from the cover blurb never mind the first page. Mainly because, despite the title, the book is really a quite academic treatise in part (the part that traces the development of atheistic and agnostic thinking from the 'Golden Age' of Greek philosophy to the present day with Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Camus and Sartre thrown in for good measure) and the rest which is, as the existence of God cannot be proven, an exposition of faith.

I thought that the title, however, was brilliant and worth a mention for itself alone.

It did make me wonder whether in an analogy with the question as to whether a falling tree makes a sound in a forest where there is no one to hear it, if God does exist and doesn't believe in athiests do they exist?

Blogging About Books

2008-10-11T20:00:00.001+01:00

It had never really occurred to me to blog about books until I realised that I really enjoyed CJ's and Helen and Ian's Blogs. It's fascinating to know what other people are reading and what they find enjoyable or otherwise. It also gives one ideas for prioritising ones own reading.

From the blogger's perspective it is a memory jogger, a diary of books read and something to be re-visited.

I wish that I had kept up the index book I started when I was about 18 of the books that I had read. It was not a diary as such only a simple a list. How fascinating it would be, for example to know what I thought when I read War and Peace (twice, two separate translations! I think I favoured the Penguin Classics translated by Rosemary Edmunds, the Heron Books one, I seem to recall anglicised the names which felt inappropriate), Crime and Punishment (did I really understand it then, would I now?), London Bridge is Falling Down by David Lodge (read in 1971 it is the only book against which I placed a quote: 'Literature is mostly about having sex, and not much about having children. Life is the other way round.'), the whole Strangers and Brothers series by C P Snow (which I have re-read twice since), lots of Somerset Maugham (I devoured his books avidly but cannot remember a single emotion that they elicited from me), every C S Forester book published (a story teller par excellence) and so many more.

In fact when I see how many Russian novels alone I have read and forgotten about it makes me appreciate just how many books proper readers must get through. Then there are the books about which neither the author, the title nor the subject bring back any recollections whatsoever: Myself a Mandarin by Austin Coates or The Twelfth Mile by E G Perrault to name but two.

Ah yes, what if?

"What if? Big Lou's answer came quickly: One did not engage in such idle speculation in Arbroath. 'No point thinking about that,' she said 'It didn't happen'." The World According to Bertie.

Agatha Raisin And The Quiche Of Death

2008-10-09T19:58:00.001+01:00

In May CJ stayed with me and read some of the books on my shelves. One of these was Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death by M C Beaton. Naturally he wrote a blog entry on A Book Every Six Days. I couldn't remember what he had written (although I knew that he had enjoyed it) and had deliberately not re-visited the entry until I had read the book myself. Which I have done over the last few days.

This is the first of a series of Agatha Raisin murder mysteries. Agatha sells up her public relations firm and takes early retirement to a quiet village in the Cotswolds. She is the antithesis of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Booklist described her as 'A refreshing, sensible, wonderfully eccentric, thoroughly likeable heroine'. Which book, I wondered, had they been reading. Doubtless we will come to love her as we love Miss Marple but to describe her as any of those things is, in my view, palpably incorrect. She doesn't even have the virtue of being eccentric. She's friendless, boorish, rude, selfish and rather pathetic figure of an anti-heroine. Or was I reading a different book?

That may sound as though I didn't enjoy the character or the book. In fact I enjoyed both. And I will read another one. That will be the test for me. Will the next book continue to provide interest or will the novelty wear off very quickly?

Quotes

Not for the first time , Agatha wondered about British Rail's use of the word 'terminate'. One just expected the train to blow apart. Why not just sat 'stops here'?

'If you want to make your mark on the village, Mrs Raisin, you could try becoming popular.' Agatha looked at him in amazement. Fame, money and power were surely the only things needed to make one's mark on the world. 'It comes slowly,' he said 'All you have to do is start to like people. If they like you back, that is a bonus.'

The World According To Bertie

2008-10-07T07:00:00.000+01:00

For comfort food I turn to spaghetti bolognese, for comfort reading I turn to Alexander McCall Smith. As I started on the book I wrote those opening words in my blog posting and saved them for when the book was finished. A few days later the following paragraph written by Helen appeared in Helen and Ian's Book Blog : "People widely accept the concept of 'comfort food'. I wonder if anyone else has special books to which they turn and reread for comfort or inspiration?" Well I don't return to McCall Smith's books to re-read them (not yet anyway) and they don't inspire me But they are the spag bol of reading for me. They are undemanding, entertaining and, above all, comfortable. And for anyone with a knowledge and love of Edinburgh (as I do) the 44 Scotland Street and The Sunday Philosophy Club series are just that little bit more special.

Having said that there is something about The World According to Bertie (the fourth in the 44 Scotland Steet series) which seems to me to be rather self-indulgent on the Author's part. McCall Smith is an exceptional man - that cannot be denied. He was, amongst other things, Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh and served on national and international bioethics bodies until he gave it up in 1999 to concentrate on writing fiction after the global recognition of The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. However in this book his desire to show off his exceptional knowledge occasionally grates and appears to have been done for no other reason than to show that he has that knowledge.

That won't stop me reading the next one and the one after that. I love spag bol too much.

Quotes:

People who do that [decide that Edinburgh is too small for them and move to London] often then discover that London is too big for them, much to the amusement of those who stayed behind in Edinburgh in the belief that it was just the right size for them.

Money, education - these give you freedom, but they can take you away from your roots, your place.

We are here [in life] and by and large we seem to have a need to continue. In that case, the real question to be addressed is: how are we going to make the experience of being here as fulfilling, as good as possible?

...the English are half mad when they think nobody's looking.

Unhappiness in childhood was worse than the unhappiness one encountered in later life; it was so complete, so seemingly without end.

What if? Big Lou's answer came quickly: One did not engage in such idle speculation in Arbroath. 'No point thinking about that,' she said 'It didn't happen'.

...for most of us nothing very much happens; that is our life.

But was it better, he wondered, to be trapped [in a marriage] with a Porsche or not trapped without a Porsche?

Do you remember his book-distressing service for the nouveau riche? [CJ that would be a really good idea for you.]

The Piano Shop On The Left Bank

2008-09-22T07:00:00.000+01:00

I have just read the third book in a row which was a first publication by the author. None has disappointed me. When CJ and I were in a charity shop browsing through the books as we are wont to do I came across The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, subtitled The hidden world of a Paris atelier, by T E Carhart an American living in Paris. I was attracted to the book but for some reason let it lie and CJ acquired it. However it prayed on my mind and I eventually 'borrowed' it from him. I use the parenthesis 'cos he has allowed me to keep it after I fell in love with it.

Rarely have I read a book of such charm which has completely captivated me. Not just as a read but as an inspiration to look more closely at things. Carhart's subject is pianos but he could have brought a similar insight to some other subject. Around the subject he weaves a charming, quiet story of people, relationships and music.

This would not have struck me as a book which would have made it into the top selling lists but it would appear to be into its third paperback edition at least and when a friend saw it on the breakfast bar last week she, too had read it and was full of praise.

It is also quite a coincidence that the importance to the author of his piano was a very strong part of the story in C'est La Folie which I so enjoyed and blogged about a few weeks ago. And I learned from both books that it is the French custom when one's hands are wet or grimy to offer one's right forearm to shake instead of a hand.

I was amused by the Guardian's Reviewer's opening paragraph: "Picture the scene had Carhart taken his proposal to the more ruthlessly commercial kind of publisher. "Well, I want to write a book about how I hung around in Paris, and got friendly with a piano restorer," mumbles the author uncertainly. "Then I buy a piano from him, start playing again myself after 20 years, and think quite a lot about pianos." The publisher fixes him with a disbelieving stare. "And that's a book? .................." "

The Observer's reviewer concluded "Perhaps the best recommendation of his book is that it makes you want to reach immediately for Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Bach, Scarlatti and the other composers whose names litter the book; if his aim was to inspire in his readers a renewed love for the music, he has succeeded admirably."

I'm not necessarily suggesting that you read this book. Unlike the last two I've mentioned this may not be to everyone's taste. However I thought it was both enjoyable and inspirational.

Quotes:

"Life is a river" he once told me "and we all have to find a boat that floats."

"Ah, I never wait for 'eventually'."

I hadn't considered the suite, as the French put it, the follow-through to circumstances and events that lend life its air at once poignant and meaningful.

...on a modern grand piano [there is] a combined torque [on the strings] of over thirty thousand pounds across an entire keyboard. [Wow]

..even Voltaire dismissed the piano as late as 1774: 'The piano is a boilermaker's instrument compared with the harpsichord'. [Another of Voltaire's statements for me to take issue with with Fiona]

More than any other composer's, Chopin's music addresses the central paradox of the piano: how to make a percussion instrument sing.

'There are many ways of doing things, but there is always one way that is natural.'

'A polytechnicien knows everything, but nothing else.'

'We have to accept that things are ambiguous.'

I wanted to thank him. I wanted him to play more, but finally I saw that the sincerest form of homage would be to follow his lead and talk about the instrument. He knew that we knew [how great his playing was], and the rest was noise.

Before I Die

2008-09-19T07:00:00.001+01:00

I can't remember (so nothing new there then) whether friends who had read Jenny Downham's novel Before I Die and extolled me so to do, did so before or after CJ had read it and blogged it on A Book Every Six Days. Anyway it makes little difference because this week I read it. I am so glad that I did.

The book is ostensibly written for the teenage market. How many teenagers would appreciate it I'm not sure because the possibility of dying or even the idea of dying is too far away. The Before I Die website précis describes the novel thus: Tessa has just a few months to live. Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, drugs with excruciating side-effects, Tessa compiles a list. It's her To Do Before I Die list. And number one is sex. Released from the constraints of 'normal' life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up. Tessa's feelings, her relationships with her father and brother, her estranged mother, her best friend, her new boyfriend, all are painfully crystallized in the precious weeks before Tessa's time finally runs out.

Looking back over Andy's fight against cancer I see similarities of attitude on occasion; flashes of acceptance, optimism, anger, bitterness and so many more emotions that someone who has not faced the imminent probability of death by illness (and specifically by cancer) must find hard to comprehend. I certainly do. For most of us, the reality of someone young facing these emotional challenges is incomprehensible. But somehow the author guides us through the last days of Tessa's life with an astonishing understanding from all perspectives.

This is a book that everyone should read. I won't give a reason: there are too many. But, whoever you are, make sure that you have a large box of tissues to hand.

Quotes:

I want to live before I die. It's the only thing that makes sense.

How long can I stave it off? I don't know. All I know is that I have two choices - stay wrapped in blankets and get on with dying, or get the list back together and get on with living.

'What will happen if anger takes you over Tessa? Who will you be then? What will be left of you?'

I feel a strange warmth filtering through me. I forget that my brain is full of every sad face at every window I've ever passed.

'You want some sweet and lovely things, Tessa, but be careful. Other people can't always give you what you want.'

I want to die in my own way. It's my illness, my death, my choice.

I want to be empty. I want to live somewhere uncluttered.

C'est La Folie

2008-07-09T09:30:00.002+01:00

I never cease to marvel at CJ's blog A Book Every Six Days, not just because of its content (which so often fills me with enthusiasm that I never manage to convert into action) but also because of the fact that someone can read that many books. Having seen CJ read a book in the time that it takes me to do a crossword (I know, I've been told a million times not to exaggerate) I may not understand how he does it but I can at least sit and marvel at the feat. But it's not just the ability to read a book so quickly, it's also the ability to assimilate it and then comment upon it. Then I read Helen and Ian's Book Blog and was fired with more enthusiasm.

So I thought that for what will probably be the first and last time I would do a book posting.

Over the last few days I have read C'est La Folie by Michael Wright. The theme could lead one to believe that this is just another "ma première année essayant d'habiter en France/Italie...". Once I had managed to put Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence behind me I have enjoyed quite a few books on the theme. However Michael who had a head start over the majority of Les Anglais by speaking French (rather than English loudly) has written a book not of Provence or the Dordogne but of a town not too far away from where I am staying. The La Folie website says of the book that it is the true story of a jaded townie, fearful of Abroad and almost entirely ignorant about animals and plants, who gives up a successful media career to attempt to learn how to be a solitary peasant in the depths of rural France, accompanied only by a cat and a vintage aeroplane.

Actually I think that undersells it. Like many people who write about their attempt at a new life in a foreign land Michael is searching to find a way of living comfortably with himself. It is a book about a personal search to be a 'hero', a story with optimism and pathos and a raft of emotions. But above all it is not patronising. Even more than that, it is one of the few books that Sue and John and I have just read which made all of us laugh out loud - sometimes quite uncontrollably - on many occasions.

Quotes:

Even the goldfish add to my social picture, in their dreamy, silent way, their three bright-orange shapes gliding in the depths of the pool, permanently searching for something they've already forgotten they've lost. [Shades of The Drunken Goldfish methinks].

If, one day, I am to have a wonderful relationship with a woman, I first need to learn to be happy within myself, even when things are tough. And if I am to be a wise old man, I need to live through some difficulties first.

And then I woke up one morning and found that I could play it (Widor's Toccata) myself. It's amazing what the brain gets up to, while our backs are turned.

As far as I can tell the difference between flying in france and flying in Britain is that here in France pilots drink too much coffee whilst waiting around for the midday sun to cool, whereas in Blighty they drink too much tea whilst waiting for the clouds to lift.

It's difficult to be a hero when life keeps getting in the way.

And as the man in the paper-shop tells me, at least we're (Les Anglais) are not Parisians.

They (local ouvriers) earn what is needful to live, and ça suffit. In England this might look like laziness. Here it looks like contentment.