Margaret Forster – My Life In Houses

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Autobiography, Book Review, Margaret Forster, My Life In Houses

A fine sense of place indeed

Margaret Forster has always been a writer of precision about ordinary lives, creating very particular, sharply observed people in particular times and places who, because they are so specifically detailed, can stand for universals also.

Here, she writes her own autobiography, in many ways, but through the lens of her own precise fascination with the nuts and bolts of the material world we live in. Specifically, in this case the nuts and bolts being the houses we live in, the houses which shape, define, stand for and hold our lives in place and time.

The book (which I was very happy to receive as an advance review copy from the publishers) starts with a quote from D.H. Lawrence which outlines the premise:

The house determines the day-to-day, minute-to-minute quality, colour , atmosphere, pace of one’s life; it is the framework of what one does, of what one can do, of one’s relations with people………….looking back on my life, I tend to see it divided into sections which are determined by the houses in which I have lived, not by school, university, work, marriage, death, division, or war.

Forster is very particular and precise about the houses she has lived in, starting from modest origins in the late 1930’s on a council estate in Carlisle, and progressing through lodgings in Oxford, as a student, to renting with her husband Hunter Davies in the Vale of Health, and then, as they both became successful writers, buying their first house (where they have lived for over 50 years) in Kentish Town, and also including a couple of residences in Malta and Portugal, where they decamped with their young family, and then later in a weekend cottage in Caldbeck, and finally once their children had grown, to live for 6 months of the year in isolation in the Lake District and then back to Kentish Town for the autumn and winter

Forster and Davies some years ago in front of their Loweswater Home

Along the way in this fascinating book Forster examines not only her own particular life by reference to the houses she lives in, but changing social mores, trends in the mobility of neighbourhoods, communities and social classes, and the way in which place becomes a repository of a life, rich through the memories accrued in connection with that place.

For example, it was fascinating to read that even so recently as the early 30s, when the social housing estate where she would be born some years later, was being built, in order to ‘clear the slums’ of Caldewgate, Carlisle, budgeting considerations made decisions which a modern reader finds appallingly mean-minded. Very few of the Caldewgate dwellings had an internal water supply, and none had their own lavatory. The new houses built on the Raffles estate, by contrast would have not only their own water supply, but even a bathroom, which contained a bath – but no sink, and more pertinently, no toilet. Cost savings created the decision to give each dwelling its own lavatory – but made this an outhouse.

Jumping much further forward to when Forster and Davies buy their own very ramshackle first house on ‘the wrong side of the Heath’ (all they could afford), in Parliament Hill Fields, this came cheapish because it contained a sitting tenant as a result of the 1957 rent act. Of course, as time wore on, the area became desirable, gentrified and smart, and she details the changing demographics, not to mention the years of pouring money into a house which initially they thought they would live in ‘until they could afford Hampstead’ but still inhabit to this day, their relationship with a house initially dour, depressing and glum having changed, as dwelling and owner ‘connect’

Forster’s Room in Kentish Town, photo by Eamonn McCabe

She also addresses, in a very direct way, the facing of her own mortality, with an as yet unresolved (in the pages of the book) debate on whether to die at home or in a hospice, when the options for ‘managing’ her diagnosis of cancer which has metastasised, run out.

Forster’s narrative voice, her ability to tell a story engagingly, with light touch humour and warmth, make this an engaging as well as a fascinating read. She is a writer who draws the reader in, rather than holds them at bay, creating a feeling of intimacy.

Publication date is November 6th in the UK

My Life In Houses Amazon UK
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Esther Freud – Mr Mac and Me

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Book Review, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Esther Freud, Glasgow School of Art, Mr Mac and Me

Beautiful, observant writing about place; intricate and respectful characterisation, but lacks the dynamic of plot

For the first two-thirds of Esther Freud’s outbreak of first world war, Suffolk coast set novel, I was absolutely content with her fine delicate observations of the natural world, of the world of her twelve year old central character and first person narrator Thomas Maggs, the only surviving son of the local Innkeeper, a man too full of disappointment and of using his own beer as a solution. Tommy is a bit of a dreamer, a quiet observant boy with a twisted foot, fond of drawing, yearning to go to sea, though his disability will preclude that.

The thrust of the book looks at the unchanging world of this shoreline community and the precipitation of war as the start of change. The light draws summer visitors, artists. One such is Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his artist wife, Margaret MacDonald, all the way from Glasgow.

Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh The Heart Of The Rose Wiki Commons

Freud has woven a story of the known biography of a part of Mackintosh’s life – he did spend a year at Walberswick, at the lead-up to and first year of the war,and did get briefly arrested on suspicion of being a spy of behalf of Germany as his constant prowling along the coast, examining birds and the horizon through binoculars was misinterpreted as passing signals to Germany. The local home front was expecting invasion to start along the Suffolk Coast.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Cactus Flower, Walberswick Wiki Commons

Freud examines art, the natural world as an inspiration for art, and the artistic productions and relationship of Mackintosh and MacDonald through the eyes of her sensitive narrator, on the cusp of sexual awakening, longing to escape the life mapped out for him, and with his own desire to go to sea, to travel, to create art and to heal the dysfunctions within his family.

Her evocation of time and place is always beautiful, proceeding slowly and patiently along, but there came a point (following a scene at an auction, following the shooting down of a Zeppellin) where it suddenly felt as if Freud had realised that there ought to be some dramatic plot and drive to the end of the book, and the last 70 pages, not that successfully, in my opinion, particularly the final section, feels like a tacked on wrap.

As the story progressed, from time to time I came away from enjoyment of Freud’s finely crafted wordsmithing, and I found I did not always believe Thomas’s gender (despite his interest in a young Scottish summer visitor and in Margaret MacDonald) nor his class and degree of refinement.

A gentle, lovingly crafted book, more meditative than dramatic. Much is made of a local craft – rope making, and I wished for some of the tension of the twisted skeins of twine to have happened in a turning up of storytelling tension

Mac stops when we come to the top of the marsh and snaps off a twig of hawthorn. He examines its crinkled leaves and the swivel of its thorns and slides it into the pocket of his cape. He stops again when we reach Hoist Wood. There are old trees here, ghost trees I think of them, so long have their trunks been stranded from the sun, but their tops are green where they stretch them, and some leaves grow in shafts of sudden light

If you enjoy closely observed, sometimes elevated writing about the natural world, this will be a deeply enjoyable read (this was my enjoyment of it) but there isn’t the same mastery of the drive of story as there is in the observation of here and now. I did, however like it a lot and recommend it, though not unreservedly

I received this as a copy for review from the Amazon Vine UK programme

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Julie Fowlis – Uam

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Folk Music, Folk Music Review, Gaelic music, Julie Fowlis, Uam

Uam, Uam, thank you ma’am

On the cusp of Scotland’s historic vote, it seems only fitting to post a review of one of my favourite ‘daughter of Scotland’ singers, Julie Fowlis, who sings traditional songs – in Gaelic. Her voice is as ever, properly sweet (not cloyingly so) true and clear. I have several albums by Fowlis, first encountered some years ago in a festival in Galway.

I had no idea what she was singing about in terms of precise detail or story but the emotional places she sings from are outwith the need to understand the words. Music can really be language enough

Julie Fowlis, as she always does,  continues to inhabit a musical space of passion, generosity and joyfulness. On this album she also shares songs with other chanteuses of an older generation, Mary Smith and Eddy Reader.  This follows Fowlis’ belief that a song is a gift (Uam means from me) which is passed to the listener, and if that listener is also musical they may pass it on to another listener in performance. So there is the sense of this music being handed down through the generations.

I’m not Scottish, but the sense of ancientness and ‘in the blood’ness in this music is palpable. Maybe its just Fowlis’ own inhabiting of the music with such integrity.

As well as the wonderful strange vocals (but here is a link to the page of her website which lets you read the lyrics in translation into English there are the complex musical rhythms and textures of the instruments to delight the listener

As ever, she’s produced a haunting album, even the songs of sorrowful yearning speak of joy at feeling itself, and the joy of music. Fowlis may indeed be something of a star on the Celtic music scene, but to listen to her albums, and indeed to see her live, is to experience a performer who serves the music, and the audience for that music, not her own ego. All the musicians shine!

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David Mitchell – The Bone Clocks

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Book Review, David Mitchell, Epic, Post-Apocalypse, The Bone Clocks

David Mitchell, flawed, is still a far finer writer than many writing at the top of their form

David Mitchell is a curious writer – he has the ability to effortlessly inhabit many different kinds of voices, of differing character, and believably writes first person narrative from a male or female perspective, from young and old, from different cultures, places and indeed from different times. (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas)

He can also plagiarise himself, mock himself, and write concertedly in a single voice (Black Swan Green)

He is an author who is always best read with focus and attention, as even when he is being most flashy, most showing off his writerly ‘bling’ the reader will suddenly be dropped into playfulness with words, juggling voices and genres, pastiche, and – when you think you have this man’s measure as a sleight of hand merchant, a music-hall master only of illusion and cleverness which needs admiration (and might evoke a little envy) , he drops you down into darkness, suffering, existential terror and pain, despair, cruelty, soulfulness and all the unbearable truths that make the glitter and legerdemain necessary as a foil to the depth.

The man is almost TOO clever, and I sometimes wonder if his refusal to be pigeon-holed creates a certain distrust of him, from certain quarters. He is an unpredictable writer – except that he is always an excellent one.

Here, he is back to the voices of several narrators, with the linking devices of major and minor figures from previous sections of this book (or previous books) turning up as major or minor characters in later stories.

As in Ghostwritten ‘interconnection’ is a major thread. And so is writing itself – Mitchell’s ‘cleverness’ asks you to look at the illusions art creates – he pulls you into the story, and pushes you out, effectively saying ‘this is illusion’ The deliberate Alienation Effect’

Rameses Temple, ‘Ozymandias’ Photographer Steve F.E. Cameron. Wiki, Commons

The central image which floated, always, through for me, was the image of a poem by Shelley, Ozymandias’. Death stalks, ‘look on my works, ye mighty, and despair’ Ozymandias builds a monument meant to give him a legacy through the ages, and that is the inscription. Time, and entropy, has caused the monument to crumble, and the inscription is what remains. Ozymandias is the mighty who despairs, in the end. And this is a theme, the desire to avoid aging, the helpless, hopeless desire to avoid that end, to live for now, as glitteringly as we can

So, this major theme – cheating ageing and death, the desire for immortality, – for us as individuals, or collectively as a species, is explored severally.

Empires die, like all of us dancers in the strobe-lit dark……as last year’s song hurtles into next year’s song and the year after that, and the dancers’ hairstyles frost, wither and fall in irradiated tufts…DNA frays like wool, and down we tumble; a fall on the stairs, a heart-attack, a stroke; not dancing but twitching. This is Club Walpurgis. They knew it in the Middle Ages. Life is a terminal illness

The central, linking character who starts off the journey in 1984 is Holly Sykes, a 15 year old from Gravesend (Hah! Mitchell slyly peppers his novel with reminders, obvious and subliminal, of his themes) She is stroppy, tremblingly in first love, and full of attitude. Holly also has a younger brother aged 6, strange and wise beyond his years. At this point, Holly’s voice is pretty well normal for a 15 year old lovelorn girl with some lip and feist to her nature. BUT, there are strange incursions from a mysterious set of people who could almost have strolled in from the hinterland between the two incarnations of Mr Banks – that is Iain, and Iain M.

Love is fusion in the sun’s core. Love is a blurring of pronouns. Love is subject and object. The difference between its presence and its absence is the difference between life and death

And these incursions do re-occur, throughout the book. Yet, it is in no way ‘magic realism’. The real is very real….and yet, reality is not quite solid, not quite fixed. Neither does this sit as science fiction, nor fantasy. Mitchell resolutely eschews the neat pigeon hole of genre. Yet he picks and weaves in genre stock in trade as he chooses. And, for my money, he does this consciously, precisely, and largely, well.

The second section, 1991, in which Holly also makes an appearance (as indeed does another character from that first section) follows the journey of a sharp, amoral, upwardly very mobile young man, Hugo Lamb, and stands as a critique of early 90’s Thatcherite inheritance – ‘there is no such thing as society’ Hugo fits right in. Yet there is more, and underneath the razzamatazz and the fierce partying he has a clarity about this ‘Ozymandias’ legacy, of all comes to dust – there is a wonderful section on this where Mitchell dazzles, as he so often does, as a sleight of hand, magician of words, and the reader (well this one) enjoyed hugely the demonstration of linguistic delight and playfulness

The third section, into 2004 sees us back in ‘the Holly fold’ and she and her family, 20 years older, are gathered for a family wedding. The narrator of this section is someone we have met before, now an acclaimed war reporter, embedded in Iraq, and back briefly to attend that wedding. The reporter is deep in the here and now of events at the wedding party, but is having also another internal dialogue (as we do, since often most of us are both in our here and now AND either reliving memory or imagining future memories) That other dialogue concerns war torn Iraq, and there are many arising conversations and thoughts which demonstrate Mitchell’s ability to get underneath and inside black and white viewpoints into nuance. He is, as ever, much more than merely a clever writer. He is a writer with emotional subtlety. Empathy, compassion and tenderness, as well as intelligent analysis and a display of dazzling skill in working with words, all guide his writing

The fourth section brings us to now, and to a little ahead of now. And our central narrator here (oh dangerous, Mitchell, this game, but how WELL you walk the tightrope) is a dark and bitter version of the writer you might have been – one passed over several times for a thinly disguised version of the Booker (as Mitchell has of course been, several times, and again most recently) and moreover a version of the Booker now bankrolled by a thinly disguised Sir Alan Sugar. There are vengeful little cracks made by our narrator (part of the peripheral circle from section 2) about the incestuous world of publishing, writing, literary fashion. In many ways Mitchell is setting himself up as his own fall-guy in this section. But it’s lovely, audacious stuff

Again we meet Holly, and, again there is a sustained influx of what some might call ‘fantasy supernatural elements’ Except – Mitchell reminds us that there are other cultures who take some of this quite seriously. There is a section set in Australia where Holly taps in to Aboriginal myths, Aboriginal ways of interpreting the world. This feels quite important – Mitchell himself has been castigated from some quarters for his usage of ‘fantasy’ when he is a serious literary writer. And yet….IF he had been a writer from some cultures, I have no doubt the ‘mythic culture he is writing from, would not have been dismissed. It is as if a serious twenty-first century literary writer, not a genre writer, who is British, should NOT BE DOING THIS.

I riff on notions of the soul as a karmic report card; as a spiritual memory-stick in search of a corporeal hard-drive; and as a placebo we generate to cure our dread of mortality.

The fifth section, set in 2025, is the one where the ‘fantasy elements’ really bite hard, with some psychic battles between the forces of good (Horologists) and bad (Anchorites) are played out, with Holly Sykes again, now in her 50s, with a grown up daughter, being played for, or being played with. Here is the section where I believe Mitchell’s risk-taking does not really quite work. Elemental battles between the forces of dark and light have of course been part of many great pieces of classical literature, but also have a tendency to reek of Komik Kuts, and I don’t think Mitchell makes a completely clean escape from the latter.

At this point, I was veering towards a 4 star. Until:

The final section, Sheep’s Head, is set in 2045. Holly is in her seventies, living in rural Ireland. We are in the period of the Endarkenment, heading towards the end of days – not through any supernatural agencies, only through our own neglect, greed and wastefulness, our ‘live now and let future generations pay later’ mindset. Climate change has, as the warning voices insistently tell us, created many changes, much of the earth is uninhabitable. Elderly nuclear reactors have sprung leaks, political instability and the emergence of new power bases, the collapse of the global economy, the rise of militia, the end of taken-for-granted-endless-supplies of fossil fuels, gas and oil, and thence electricity has ended everything we take for granted. The technological advances of recent decades are gone. Mitchell presents as brilliant, bleak, and heart-breaking a future, with small lights bravely attempting to keep the kindness of humanity, still flickering, as I have ever read.

People talk about the Endarkenment like our ancestors talked about the Black Death, as if it’s an act of God. But we summoned it, with every tank of oil we burnt our way through. My generation were diners stuffing ourselves senseless at the Restaurant of the Earth’s Riches knowing – while denying – that we’d be doing a runner and leaving our grandchildren a tab that can never be paid.

For sure, this is not by any means a faultless book. But flawed Mitchell is a far more rewarding read, to my mind, than many writers at the absolute top of their form.

Finishing this book, puts me back in the same place as every previous one of his books – other reads, will for a while feel curiously empty and lacking.

I’ve probably made this given the graphics, seem far too gloomy whereas Mitchell as ever marries vitality, lushness and a celebration of livingness in his writing, a vigour, a dizzying delight, with that darker undercurrent of what happens when life itself, in all its teeming forms, is held cheap

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Margaret Atwood – The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

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Book Review, Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

Deft, sly and playful reworking of the Odyssey story – from the woman’s POV

This is a sharp and acerbic story, examining what it might be like to be the ‘patient woman who weaves and waits for her husband to return from derring-do and being heroic’

Atwood wears her learning and her feminism lightly, but the sharp examination of what it might have been like to have been female in Ancient Greece, just prior to the Trojan wars, is nevertheless pointed and stark.

Penelope, Odysseus’ ‘patient wife’ is stuck in Ithaca whilst he roisters about for years, being a hero. Atwood cuts the myths about the Sirens and Circe down to human size, slyly suggesting Odysseus and his men have just bigged up some prolonged stays in brothels.

Penelope tells her story from the Underworld, occasionally casting a jaundiced eye on the 21st century. She looks back at her girlhood and marriage to Odysseus, what it was like to be a minor princess and political pawn. There’s a fairly large cast of Classical gods and heroes, all given the Atwood treatment – for example, Penelope’s mother, a Naiad, is predictably a little short on maternal feelings:

she preferred swimming about to the care of small children…..there she sat on her throne….a small puddle gathering at her feet

Helen of ship launching fame (Penelope’s cousin) is vapid and self obsessed.

                John William Waterhouse – Penelope and The Suitors (1912)

The story is told with dry wit by Penelope herself, and also is commented on and burlesqued by her 12 maids (who were all savagely hung by Odysseus’ son Telemachus) – this is no spoiler, its all in the Odyssey, and anyway Penelope alludes to the end of the story at the start.

This isn’t an Atwood with the weight of The Blind Assassin, or Alias Grace, but very present underneath the light touch humour and playful illusion, the laying bare of the results of patriarchy are as uncompromising as ever

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Jake Wallis Simons – The English German Girl

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Book Review, Jake Wallis Simons, Second World War, The English German Girl

For about the first 2/3rd of the book, I felt the author did not put a foot wrong. This was an absorbing, and beautifully written novel based on the Kindertransport, where Jewish children, with great difficulty, were weaved through impossible bureaucracy to safety, before Britain and Germany went to war, after the invasion of Poland. Simons writes most beautifully; he has a real flair for the surprising image – ‘ravens of guilt’, – without becoming self-consciously literary. He is excellent at the nuances of character, can evoke time and place brilliantly and precisely, and the narrative is good – for most of the time.

The evocation of the slowly gathering forces of fascism, and the inability to believe that the seriousness of its threats were real, were carefully and realistically handled, in this story of an upper-middle class, Jewish intelligentsia family, in Berlin. The feeling of despair and dislocation of the central character, Rosa, once she arrives in the UK as part of a Kindertransport group, is also beautifully and believably handled.

Kindertransport Arrival, London 1939, Wiki Commons

However (can’t say too much, in order to avoid spoilers) I felt that once the novel moves from the Norwich setting, and indeed the reason for that move, the story itself became more formulaic, and Simons began using coincidence upon coincidence in order to get a nice tidy ‘wrap’. The complexity and reality of his characters deserved a less predictable outcome, a greater ambiguity. Life has a habit of being untidy, unfinished. More could also have been made of the fact that German nationals – even escaped Jewish German nationals, were often suspected of being spies, and thus faced an even more desperate time as asylum seekers. This is certainly hinted at, but could have steeped a little more clearly into Rosa’s daily consciousness.

I felt some red-pencil work would have benefited the book, and prevented a bit of the rather drawn out sequence in the blackout, on the streets, whilst bombs were falling. The ending was always obvious, and its length unnecessarily contrived.

Simons, despite a faltering towards the end of the book, is certainly one to watch.

The English German Girl Amazon UK
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Susan Hill – The Soul of Discretion (Serrailler 8)

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Book Review, Simon Serrailler, Susan Hill, The Soul of Discretion

Just when I thought the Serrailler series might be running out of steam…….

Susan Hill was a fabulous and thoughtful writer of complex and often dark psychology long before she embarked on the crime genre

So when, all those years ago, she joined the ranks of detective novel writers, with an on-going cast of characters, to appear novel by novel, she was never going to abandon her initial writerly strengths and vision, and would instead bring these to her interpretation of the genre.

She begins with a particular person DCI Simon Serrailler, as her detective to follow and over the years (this is outing 8) traces the development not just of Serrailler himself, and relationships he has as a professional, the development of and relationships of individuals within his team, but also looks at Serrailler within his immediate and wider family, and their development. That family of course also being set within a particular time and place ‘Lafferton’ a small cathedral town, somewhere in Southern England.

This gives, as the series wears on, Hill a chance to explore much wider themes, within the lives of her characters, and the culture of the times. The particular ‘crime’ which may be the page turning element of the plot will spread out into the lives of the community at large, and Hill may also investigate further ethical and philosophical themes and sub-themes in each novel, as well as charting how decisions from Central Government may be filtering down onto the ground. These will obviously be around policing and judiciary, and may deal with issues such as economic migrants and how they are viewed, but, as Serrailler’s sister Cat Deerbon is a doctor, the exploration of the changing face of health-care and policies relating to this, are also, increasingly, at the centre.

This might make her sound dry, white-paper minded and pedantic. Anything but – it adds depth, integrity and interest. Continuing readers of the series know all the above, and my advice of course for the first time reader would be that though this (book 8) is absolutely fine, as they all are, to read as a stand-alone first book, if you enjoyed it, go and explore, in order, the rest of the series, from book 1, and work your way through, then reading this again, for even more enjoyment.

Later books in the series have explored strong meta-themes.

Broken dolls, Wiki Commons

In this one, we are back into the territory of sexual crimes – and the wide context is about consent, and who is capable of giving consent; sex without consent is always violation. Centrally, we are in the horrid territory of organised paedophilia, but there is also another story going on around adult rape, and issues of power between the sexes. Hill is never salacious, there are no accounts designed half to titillate as they repel, but she does not hesitate to make the reader understand difficulties, injustices, ambiguities and still bleak challenges within the legal system

She also continues to explore a theme which surfaced in Serrailler 6, around terminal care, and assisted dying, death itself – both un-natural, visited through violence by one on another, and the process itself which comes to all, which in the main we find so difficult to engage with. As a contrast to the difficulties in Serrailler 6, we have here, through Cat Deerbon’s medical practice, an exploration of what proper hospice care could offer, what is being lost through cost-cutting policies, and indeed a humbling (for Deerbon) and revealing series of conversations with a patient in the process of dying (this is no spoiler, it is very obvious, immediately, known to Deerbon, known to the family) This is part of the ‘heart’ of the book, an exploration of communities, both what is supportive about communities – and of course, that flip-side, the community of perversion which the police story is all about.

Initially, I started this book with a sense that maybe the series had run its course, that there was nowhere else to go. I do believe Hill proved me wrong. There are very certain developments, and onwards, not to mention an ending which has beautiful poise.

So yes, I will be interested in Serrailler 9, should Hill want to take us from that poise, onwards.

Her books are not really about guessing plot, we know who, we often can surmise, through the meta-themes, ‘and who else’; we often also know generally why (the litany of human chosen wrongdoing often comes down to simple motives), but the trick, or the point, is to get down to the particular weft and weave of individuals.

I received this as a digital ARC, via the publishers, Random House Vintage, complete with a few strange vanished sentence or clause endings, and the odd typo, which I assume will be corrected by an eagle-eyed and diligent final proof reading. That aside, recommended

Publication date in the UK 2nd October, Stateside has the same date for Kindle, but next year for the ‘proper bookie book’
The Soul of Discretion Amazon UK
The Soul of Discretion Amazon USA