The Charming Quirks of Others

In eight days I read three novels.  That's unusual and tells me how much time I spend doing crosswords!  The third was the seventh in the Isabel Dalhousie Novels series by Alexander McCall Smith. I've only posted on one of the others in the series: book five.  The problem with AMS is that the books have such a sameness because they are a continuation of the same core characters; the same places in Edinburgh and its environs; the same mentions of WH Auden; the same frequent use use of quotidian, egregious and palimpsest; the same charming strengths, failings and foibles of the characters; even the plots seem to be a variation on a theme.  It's all very comfortable and I love it for that.

It's taken me this long, though, to really appreciate that all that is just a comfortable way of delivering a treatise on what, for want of a better explanation, I shall call philosophy for the non-philosopher.  It's all done in bite-size pieces for the mind easily to assimilate.  One can accept it as a simple story or one can actually think.  The latter goes against the grain with me but this time I actually did (occasionally).

I can never recall reading a full review of any of his books but I must do so at some time to see how anyone actually gives a synopsis which isn't just 'copywriters blurb'.  The cover blurb for this book says "... the wife of a trustee of an illustrious school asks Isabel to look into a poison pen letter that makes insinuations about applicants for the position of principal.  And what's more, when a pretty cellist with a tragic story takes a fancy to her husband-to-be, Isabel finds herself contemplating an act of heroic and alarming self-sacrifice."  Frankly that tells the potential reader nothing about the book: certainly not a thing of value.

AMS is always throwing little teasers into his stories too: "...the rule was almost universally ignored and its authority, anyway, was questionable. Who established the precept anyway?  Why not split an infinitive if one wanted to?  The sense was easily understood whether or not the infinitive was sundered apart or left inviolate."  

There is also a rather interesting discussion on goodness which, for me, touches the issue of whether goodness if there because it is or whether it is there because we are told it is (by, e.g., a religion). 

Oh yes.  There's a great deal of though to be had amongst all that comfort.....if, that is, that's what one wants.

The Importance of Being Seven

This is Alexander McCall Smith's sixth book in the 44 Scotland Street series and the second book I've read in less than a week.  There's little to be said about this series that I haven't already said.  The familiar characters and, for those of us who know and love Edinburgh, it's descriptions and use of the area make it a very 'comfortable' read.  

I have said on a number of occasions that I sometimes find AMS's continual references to W H Auden (a poet whom I don't enjoy) and vaguely ostentatious displays of his prodigious knowledge slightly irritating.  In addition I appreciate that using words like quotidian and palimpsest may increase the knowledge of many of his readers who might not otherwise come across such words very often (count me amongst that number) but to use them continually.........  That's a very minor point though because the series is rather like eating chocolate: once you have started then you will finish.

As always there is a plethora of quotes but some that come to mind in this book are:

The beautiful are forgiven; no matter how egregious  their shortcomings , they are forgive. 

Most of us, if pressed, are made uneasy by change.  We recognise its importance in our lives and there are occasions when we persuade ourselves that it's for the best - which, of course, it often is - but at heart we are concerned that, if change comes, it will bring with it regret 

'But we all waste opportunities,' said Domenica.  'Every single one of us.  Every young person does it.  It's because we think we have so much time, and then, when we realise that our time is finite, it's too late.' 

'Indeed' said the professor. 'But we are all fortunate in one way or another.  The task for most of us is to identify in what way that is, would you not agree?'

Teacher, Teacher!

Back in the distant days of January this year Librarian posted a review of the book Village Teacher the fourth in a series of six books by Jack Sheffield.  It sounded good enough to risk buying and on Amazon I took advantage of a special offer and bought the whole six for the price of one.  Over the last few days I read the first in the series: Teacher, Teacher!

Over the last few years I have read a few books by former teachers calling on their experiences in that profession: The Other Side of the Dale by Gervase Phinn and Freda Bream's  Chalk, Dust and Chewing Gum being two of them.  I didn't post on them unfortunately.   Freda Bream was a New Zealander who also wrote about her experiences as a postie in Whistles for the Postie and a host of who dunnits as well as another book of her teaching experiences I'm Sorry, Amanda.   Gervase Phinn has written more books following his experiences in education.

The one thing about being a teacher is that there is a wealth of material to be called upon if one is inclined to use it.  All three authors have very easy, comfortable and amusing writing styles.  

In Teacher, Teacher! Jack Sheffield has introduced a 'love interest' without interfering with the 'stories' of life during his first year as the head teacher of a village school in Yorkshire during 1977-78.  The book had me laughing out loud on several occasions and made me feel very sad on others.  It's a light read and a very enjoyable read.  It's also, in my view, well written.  One would have to work hard not to enjoy it.  

In speaking of the school groundsman - a former farmer - he says: "It (soil) was his creation following many hours of honest toil by a man who had grown old in the bosom of nature and measured time in the changing of the seasons." 

It having been agreed that a fortune teller known to the school Caretaker, Ruby, would be asked to tell fortunes at the school fete: " 'Will you let her know please, Ruby?' asked Anne. 'Perhaps she knows already' said Sally mischievously".  

Librarian's review is here.

The Black House

I really should resurrect Eagleton Notes properly because last night I finished Peter May's book The Blackhouse.  I can think of no book I have read for many years that kept me so riveted to it: particularly towards the end when I couldn't put the light out until I'd finished it.  It's complex (though not really complicated)  and, in parts, implausible (are not most novels?) but the characters and places are so real it's uncanny.  Having lived the majority of my years on Lewis makes it all the more poignant and I can see many of the characters in people I know or am acquainted with.  Contrary to at least one reviewer I do not think it is insulting in any way to the people of what has long been my home.  Every place has it's characters both good and bad and Lewis is no different.  Some of the less central characters who are there for the embellishment of the story though not from Ness are immediately recognisable (sometimes as an amalgamation of real people).

The descriptions of the Island and the places (I'm fortunate enough through my work, for example, to have been all over the Lews Castle before it was declared dangerous and closed to the public) are wonderfully evocative of the place and reading the book here in New Zealand I was transported back to Lewis: almost like being beamed there à la Star Trek.

Oh yes, the story.  Police officer, unpleasant senior police officer, friendly and loyal police officer colleague, murder, deaths and so much more (some of which would sow ideas which could give the stories - this is not one story - away).  Frankly you don't need to have a synopsis: it seems to me in many ways that the murder is just a way of having a setting on which to hang (sorry) the characters who are really what I think the novel is all about.

I would stick my neck out and say that I think that anyone I know who reads this book will enjoy it at one level or another.

I bought it on Kindle (as I will now do the others in the trilogy) but when I return to Lewis I will have to have the real copies as well. 

Frances Garrood, Novelist

I have now read Frances Garrood's three novels: all on Kindle. Usually I would write separate reviews (usually being a rather loose term given that I haven't written any book reviews for several years) on Eagleton Book Notes but this is one post and it isn't a review. Why? Several reasons: I follow Frances's blog and feel that I know her (to the extent that I am more acquainted with her than with any other published novelist) and although quite different there is a commonality shared by the three books.

Any book that starts off "Nobody expected Ernest to die.  Least of all Ernest." had to be worth some further exploration.  So I explored and found a source of enjoyment, pathos and a whole gamut of emotions.   One of the things that all three books have in common is that they are about ordinary (well, fairly ordinary) people doing what fairly ordinary people do.  Another is that I can't help the feeling when I read some of the interpersonal relationships that the author is speaking with a great deal of personal experience.  I know that there is a theme that recurs in all the books of which I have some experience and I don't see that anyone could just imagine the emotions that go with being in that situation.  But then I'm not an author and I don't have a very vivid imagination.

Getting back to Dead Ernest this is not, in many ways, a comfortable book.  Leastways I found parts of it very uncomfortable indeed.  Unfortunately without giving far too much away I can't really say more.  

I enjoyed the books.  If you are a person who is very uncomfortable with emotional issues then you may, just may, be able to enjoy these on another level but you will miss out.  I'd suggest you give them a try anyway.  The order doesn't really matter.

I do know that Meike who blogs at From My Mental Library has written reviews of all three books.   I wanted to write the opening to this post without re-reading her reviews but I shall now go and do that and I would also suggest that you read her posts at Dead Ernest, Basic Theology For Fallen Women and The Birds, Bees and Other Secrets.

The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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!"