Happy Paper/Cotton (UK/USA) Anniversary, one and all from Lady Fancifull

Tags

Bits and Bobs, Bits and Pieces, Other Stuff, Ramblings

Two years on,  a myriad words, and some pictures too…………

Well, my dear bloggy regular friends, irregular friends, just-dropped-by-on-the off-chancers and even the ‘Help! I’m lost, didn’t mean to be here at all – what IS this place’ accidental landers – today marks the start of year 3, as yes, this is our second anniversary!

Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1935 – first 10 paperbacks!

It feels a bit more like that at the moment than ‘my bloggy birthday’, so I’m afraid that rather than providing a birthday cake I could suggest some PAPER presents we might give/have given to each other, appropriately, (for here in the UK) as this is primarily a bookie review blog, but, curiously the-across-the-ponders have a different ‘which anniversary is it?’ UK does COTTON on the first anniversary, PAPER for this one, but the USA reverses it. (Wiki doesn’t give information about what other countries designate the yearly anniversaries to be – so tell us yours!)

Reading between crisp cotton sheets – one of life’s pleasures!

Not that I’m implying that there is any kind of marriage going on between me and my by-all-accounts 375 odd followers. Nor am I implying that any of you are remotely odd……except, when I come to think of it……………..

But I am aware of the intangible, but definitely THERE sense of community and relationship that exists across the blogosphere. I’ve got used to the regular popper in and outers, and several of us have confessed that we WORRY when regular likers, commenters and waving hallo-ers stop dropping by, we hope they are okay – particularly if we visit them regularly and there have been NO POSTS.

Anyways, anyhows, anywheres, (cue for a song)

thank you very much, from the top and bottom of my TBR pile for your visits, comments, reflections, recommendations and addings to my bookspend, and for preventing me from just spouting off my noisy opinions into thin air over the last 2.

It’s invidious in some ways to single out any of you, as you all brighten my days and, to those who just sneak a quick peek and then rapidly decamp, thank you too for brightening my stats!

But singling out can’t be avoided really. My dear old North of the Border chum has been there from the very start – in fact, blame her for my bloggery at all, as ’twas she who emailed me to say ‘I’m starting a blog’ and encouraged my faint heart to follow suit.

For FictionFan………

Actually FictionFan – let’s hear it for FictionFan deserves many more kudos and high fives than mine – she has really taken the art of turning a blog into a thriving and chatting salon, meeting place and community, especially for those devoted to reading, though her interests do spread much wider – men in wet shirts, men in tight shorts, not to mention aliens from outer space, shiver me timbers moments and crime detection, all helped down with chocolate and more chocolate. She is a wonderful promoter of all our blogs, and has certainly introduced me to other bloggers through that promotion. My special wishes to you FF of lots and lots and lots of paper -or at least eInk, from your blogging community. May your TBR reach 4 figures (runs hurriedly away from FFs glare of crossness!)

For FictionFan….

And across the pond are the always fascinating postings of the inestimable Jilanne Hoffmann and her blog The Writer’s Shadow Jilanne is also part of a collective of writers The Dogpatch Collective and, whether on her own blog, or as part of the collective is TIRELESS at promoting other writers. She is particularly passionate about not only books for children – but to encourage children to be the creative writers and artists of the future – there’s a real sense of a community extending through time, as well as space. She doesn’t post that often (because she’s clearly busy writing!) but it’s always a pleasure to find one of her posts popping up in my reader. Happy Annie Versary, Jillane!

Divided from the mainland by a smaller body of water is Jersey’s own Cleopatralovesbooks Cleopatra is one of the queens of bookie memes, and a visit to her site will generally give the hapless visitor a choice of 5 or 6 books per post, which she might entice you with. Shopping has never been so easy, though restraint might be needed in order to avoid a TBR increasing by a handful at a time

A couple of other UK bloggers have featured hugely on my radar this last year. Crimeworm unsurprisingly is a fan of books about worms (!) but we discovered we are both extremely fond of spies, or at least, books about spies. So, if you were wondering who might have been lingering around your blog, hidden behind a newspaper, a false moustache and engaged in trying to compose invisible ink messages, it could be her, or it could be me

Now I don’t know whether Jane – aka FleurInHerWorld should be heartily congratulated by me, or whether I should shiver in anxiety when one of her posts pops up in my reader, since she is my new ‘spend Spend SPEND!!!!!!!’ friend of this year (and in fact, the tail end of last, too) not to mention her skilful ability to stack my TBR higher and higher. There seems to be a never-ending list of authors heading my way, many, wonderful women writers from the middle years of the twentieth century, introduced to me by Fleur. We clearly share a delight in the natural world, and many of the books (of all kinds) she seems to point my way are by writers, whatever their genre, who have the ability to engage with the landscape.

And, finally, finally, but by no means at all, leastly, there are a couple of people who have really, really, been most wonderfully supportive and appreciative of my blogging.

Firstly, writer and gardener Stepheny Houghtlin who is incredibly encouraging, and enthusiastic about the books and stuff which get my attention and I hope will get yours, too.

Secondly, Underunner from New Zealand. I can’t link to her blog for you to follow and check out – because I don’t think she has one, or if she has it is very secret (maybe she too has an interest in espionage!) But Underunner has given me a lot of likes over the last 2 years, and its always jolly to see the ‘underunner liked your post……….’ pop up Thank you underunner

Thank you ALL, mentioned or not.

And, now I am TWO (and some of you are TWO WITH ME) I think I can look forward to sharing more books like this with you:

I think NEXT year is leather…….

Meanwhile, before I go getting into training for my third year, a little shameless self-promotion of a couple of my most successful posts, with no idea why, except that I suspect that my most avid readers must be anatomists and rose growers with a deep love of philosophy and a fascination with wolves:

This review was one of the first I posted, early in April 2013. The Philosopher and The Wolf continues to be my most popular post; clearly, a lot of visitors search the web for pictures of wolves, and come here from a wolfish image search.

Slightly behind in popularity is an even earlier posting, one of the job lot of previous Amazon reviews I posted on my second day as a blogger, to kickstart the site with some content

Soberingly, this very popular post (at least with people paying their first visit) is also a remarkably SHORT review.

C’mon though, you don’t expect those who are only one day old to be talking a lot, do you, whereas toddlers never pipe down, hence my present garrulousness.

Anatomy of A Rose is indeed a great book, but, I would have thought, hardly a best-seller!

WOT?? No CAKE???????????

Advertisement

Tana French – Broken Harbour

Tags

Book Review, Broken Harbour, Crime Fiction, Ireland, Irish Fiction, Police Procedural, Tana French

A crime novel about much more than dead bodies

Tana French is an author new to me. On finishing this, her fourth book I am unsurprised to find that she won the 2012 Irish Crime Fiction Award with it, as it is an extremely satisfying, thoughtful work, which stands easily as a book of literary fiction, subject matter, crime and detection.

Set after the Lehman Brother’s financial collapse of 2008, when the effects of world-wide recession hit what had been the booming, but now slowed-down ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy particularly hard, French examines Ireland, culturally, politically, economically, through the lens of the Dublin police force, and, particularly its murder squad.

She has taken a slightly different approach – rather than follow the fortunes of one particular detective, she follows the squad as a whole, and focuses on a different detective in each book. This gives a really detailed, rounded approach, as though of course different personalities will work procedures in their individual ways, the reader gets a sense of the whole process of investigation, in its day-to-day grind, the meshings and antagonisms of individuals, and the methods and the madness of solving a crime, and bringing perpetrators to justice and securing convictions

I hope this doesn’t make ‘the procedures’ sound dry – French is anything but dry in her writing – but she is meticulous, and creates believable detail, fascinating story and depth characters in time and place.

The central investigating detective, Mick ‘Scorcher’ Kennedy is a fiercely controlled, absolutely by-the-book policeman, with a rookie partner he is prepared to properly train. Kennedy is almost obsessively treading a thorough, correct path, and through the course of the book his own psychology and history shows why – there is indeed ‘background’ here, and every reason why he has not gone down the maverick, hard-drinking, law-unto-himself route.

Ghost estate, Wexford

The brutal crime which sets this story up is a savage attack on a middle class couple and their two children, living in a kind of new-development ghost town beyond Balbriggan, Fingal. Now called Brianstown, previously Broken Harbour, it had a connection to Kennedy’s boyhood, but has become both symbol and reality of when boom turns to bust.

French winds up a tight and twisting story as the solution seems to fall one way and then another, and, always, the story of individual lives is played out truthfully, but the wider cultural context has an equal weight.

This is a gripping police procedural, an extremely well written and chilling thriller, gritty and dark – but there is nothing gratuitous about the violence: – French does not present it as entertainment, but as an indictment of a system which created the means for it to happen

In every way there is, murder is chaos.

I remember the country back when I was growing up….There was plenty of bad there, I don’t forget that, but we all knew exactly where we stood and we didn’t break the rules lightly. If that sounds like small stuff to you, if it sounds boring or old-fashioned or uncool, think about this, people smiled at strangers, people said hello to neighbours, people left their doors unlocked and helped old women with their shopping bags, and the murder rate was scraping zero.

Sometime since then, we started turning feral. Wild got into the air like a virus and it’s spreading…..Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone.

The final step into feral is murder. 

This found its way to my ‘must read’ on the back of a strong recommendation and an excellent review of this by Fleur In Her World, who has been hugely responsible for much of my book buying since I discovered her site  She hasn’t let me down yet!

Broken Harbour Amazon UK
Broken Harbour Amazon USA

Patrick Hamilton – Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky

Tags

1930s setting, Andrew Greig, Book Review, London setting, Modern Classics, Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky

An extraordinary trilogy of hope and despair in thirties London

Patrick Hamilton’s trilogy of bar and street life in London in the late twenties and early thirties, linked by their three central characters, was originally published as three works : The Midnight Bell, in 1929 when Hamilton was 25, The Siege of Pleasure 3 years later, and the final volume, The Plains of Cement in 1934. They were then republished the following year as this trilogy, Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky

The novels are drawn in part (or the first one is) from aspects of Hamilton’s own rather destructive life. Although they could indeed be read singly, without reference to each other, and in any order, it is through reading them sequentially that the widest understanding happens.

The Midnight Bell is a West End pub. Two of the bar staff are Bob, who yearns to be a writer and is something of an auto-didact, and Ella, a plain, good natured young woman who is in love with Bob, although she has no hopes in that direction, as she is aware that his considerable physical charms, his wit, likeability and intelligence – not to mention his own intense susceptibility to pretty women, put him out of her reach.

Bob has a growing problem with alcohol, but at the beginning of the novel it is no more than heavy drinking, and there is every likelihood, in his mind, that he will fulfil his literary ambitions, and make something of himself. Ella, the perfect kindly barmaid does not drink, and seems the least damaged of the three central characters. The other protagonist is Jenny, a ravishingly pretty young prostitute, aged 18, whose entrance one evening into The Midnight Bell will be cataclysmic for Bob

(The trilogy was broadcast as a BBC drama the set has been uploaded, in small segments, to YouTube)

The Midnight Bell is Bob’s story, a decline and fall, laid absolutely low by love. As Bob himself is a witty man, this book ripples with Hamilton’s sparkling word play and mordant observations. In fact, for my tastes, the self-deprecating humour, as an antidote to the darkening story, was almost a little overdone. In Hamilton’s later books – most specifically in The Slaves of Solitude, his brilliant and sly humour is much less overt, and instead sparkles darkly and judiciously, rather than `and here’s another funny line’

The much, much, bleaker The Siege of Pleasure is Jenny’s Story. Picking up at the end of the Midnight Bell, when Jenny’s destruction of Bob is almost complete, Hamilton almost immediately back tracks to show how Jenny, who is not consciously wicked, became a woman of the streets. Unlike the destructive, vicious and racketty Netta of his other highly acclaimed novel, Hangover Square: A Story of Darkest Earl’s Court, another stunningly beautiful, completely amoral woman who uses her beauty to part men from their money, Jenny, though absolutely self-obsessed, has a kind of charm and a desire to please. Jenny’s dark destruction is also due to alcoholism. The Siege of Pleasure also seethes with Hamilton’s socialist, egalitarian politics – Jenny is a well-drawn individual woman, but she is also a representative of the unfairness of the class system. The best she can hope for is a life in service, and, at the start of the book, becoming the live-in housekeeper and cook to a trio of elderly siblings, represents a big step up on her own humbler, violent beginnings. Her fall is rapid and its start happens in a single evening.

Tottenham Court Road Station, 1930s

But, for me, the stand-out is Ella’s story, in The Plains Of Cement – London and the area between Oxford Street and the Euston Road, form the bulk of it, though the glamour of theatre land, and the poverty of Pimlico, are also drawn. Ella is a good young woman, kindly, and with a kind of commonplace store of cliché driven phrases, which however come with a homespun innocence from her. She is another with few prospects, and, her only escape could come through marriage, except that she accepts her plainness is unlikely to make this likely. One of the denizens of the bar is a truly irritating, desperately lonely on the verge of elderly bachelor, Ernest Eccles. Eccles is screamingly annoying, the kind of person whose conversation is full of meaningful innuendo which is at the same time WITHOUT meaning. The developing courtship (if indeed that is what it is) is wonderfully handled, and Ella, appreciating Eccles’ good qualities, must juggle moral choices – she has a dearly loved mother, and a hated, bad-tempered stepfather – also working in the bar industry, fallen from almost being a `self-made man’ to a bottle and glass washer. Ella gives half her earnings to her mother; the stepfather is mean as well as an emotional bully.

This again is a bleak book, but it is the writer’s wonderful humour, light touch, fine ear for dialogue, and the internal running commentary of Ella’s thoughts whilst her `out in the world’ external doings and sayings are happening, that makes his work such a delight to read.

The excruciating progression of Eccles’ courtship of Ella, and her frustration, embarrassment and changing feelings towards her elderly admirer, moment to moment, are wonderfully drawn. – here is an excerpt where Eccles is holding forth, but Ella is fixated on the fact that he has a particularly noticeable tooth, which is presently distracting, whilst Eccles is holding forth about his various ‘Funny Little Habits’ of which he is inordinately proud:

The Funny Little Habit under immediate scrutiny was his Funny Little Habit of being Rather Careful in his Choice of Words – in other words, his objection to swearing.

‘I mean to say It’s Not Necessary, is it’ he was saying

‘No…’ said Ella, tooth-gazing.

‘I do think it’s so unnecessary to be Unnecessary‘ said Mr Eccles, getting into slight tautological difficulties. ‘You know what I mean – don’t you?’

‘Yes. I do.’ She wondered if it would have been any better if it had come down straight. Even then it would have wanted the point filed off to get into line with the rest.

‘I mean to say if you’ve got to use expletives why not just use ordinary, decent, everyday words?’

‘Yes. Why not?’ (His other teeth of course were in excellent condition for his age.)

‘I always think it was such a good idea,’ said Mr Eccles, – ‘a fellow I read about in a book. Instead of saying “Damn” and “Blast” and all the rest, whenever he was annoyed he used to say “Mice and Mumps – Mice and Mumps”

‘Oh yes?’ (Couldn’t a dentist break it off halfway down, and then crown it?)

The detailed, authentically delineated Ella comes from the same kind of world as Enid Roach in Hamilton’s The Slaves of Solitude – and Ernest Eccles, though not consciously bullying, in the manner of the obnoxious Mr Thwaites in that book, is equally a boor, insensitive, solipsistic and insufferable in his pomposity. Hamilton writes from inside his central female characters utterly believably.

The autobiographical basis for the first novel in the trilogy came from Hamilton’s own love affair with a prostitute, and his own alcoholism. His father, too, was an alcoholic, an unsuccessful writer, and made an early, disastrous marriage to a prostitute. Out of his own dreadfully destructive nature and nurture Patrick Hamilton created finely crafted literature. Alcohol, and its potential for destruction, as well as its ability to create a rose-tinted world, runs through all three books, as does the various ways in which capital exploits labour

In the end, despite the humour, the storyline, the well drawn characters, and the marvellous journey of 3 novels sequentially, which can be enjoyed as solo outings, it is Hamilton’s depth and humanity which grabs me, every time. His touch may be light, and have at times an almost Restoration style comedy of manners going on (the trajectory of the courtship between Eccles and Ella) – but light, in Hamilton’s touch, is never limited to the superficial, and he has an enviable ability to whisk aside the surface, and leave the reader heart-clutchingly aching as they engage with, not only his central characters, but ourselves. He is some kind of witness to the lives all those who are not the explorers who discover continents, the astronauts who step on other planets, the rulers of nations, but those who live inside the ordinary dwellings, the denizens of those Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky Amazon UK
Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky Amazon USA

Ronald Welch – The Gauntlet

Tags

Book Review, Children's Book Review, Historical Fiction, Knights, Medieval Setting, Ronald Welch, The Gauntlet

Excellent adventure for boys 8-12, with an interest in medieval history and warfare

I was interested to read this Carnegie medal winning author from the 50s, and found this an enjoyable read (though with some reservations, as detailed in the last paragraphs) I discovered that this particular book was not the Carnegie medal winner – that is another with the same overall setting – medieval warfare – Knight Crusader.

Peter Staunton, a young, clearly upper-middle class boy, and his ditto friend Gwyn, are staying with Gwyn’s uncle `in the Welsh Mountains’. As Gwyn (devoted to things scientific) and Peter (drawn to history) walk in the ruins of an ancient Norman Castle, Carrag Cennen, Peter discovers a medieval gauntlet, which has the mysterious power, as he later discovers, to take him back in time to 600 years ago.

To aid the young (or even the adult) reader, Gwyn’s uncle and the friendly local vicar, history buffs both (like the author) offer twentieth century instruction on the Normans and their battles with Welshmen and women whose lands they had captured. Very fortunately for Peter this advance tuition does happen before he does, in the end, go back in time, preventing him from making a complete idiot of himself.

Gwyn’s Uncle and the friendly Rev do also manage to darkly tell the boys about certain local myths which will explain why and how Peter has the mysterious gauntlet experience, since it turns out he is descended directly from the de Blois Norman knights whose castle it was. And, surprise, surprise, once back in time, he also meets a boy who looks remarkably like Gwyn but is the son of the main Welsh chieftain, active in resisting those Norman Conquests in his area.

I have no hesitation in recommending it to its target audience – any boy who is a fan of invented warfare, of the Star Wars variety, might be intrigued by the same tales of derring-do carefully set in a very real, but equally `alien’ world – that of 600 years ago.

Carreg Cennan Castle, Wiki Commons

As an adult, there is probably a little too much obvious instruction of the reader about the things he doesn’t know, using Peter’s lack of knowledge, to be credible – it’s a device I particularly get irritated by in adult fiction, where two characters, who WOULD have knowledge, are made to give the reader, who lacks the knowledge, vital technical information – the device where Einstein turns to Niels Bohr and says, “so, Niels, remind me about the basics of particle physics, there’s a good chap!” – Or, in this case, Peter, firmly back in the fourteenth century, son of a powerful knight, who all his life has been defending the territory, is continually saying “so what exactly is a trebuchet?” “what is a mangonel?” and the like. Curiously, Roger de Blois, Peter’s fourteenth century father, does not seem to wonder why his son seems to have forgotten everything about medieval warfare, armoury, jousting, falconry and the like.

Fourteenth Century Jousting : Codex Maness, Wiki Commons

Some books written for children do seem to be able to be read with critical surrender by adults – this was not one of them, I felt every one of my more sophisticated and mature years, and the gender gap, very keenly – not to mention the uneasiness of someone who is sensitive, as a denizen of a `United Kingdom’ of the substrate of patronisation of the Celtic races which is part of our history. I’m not quite sure, even for young boy readers in the time this was written, whether this would have been such an enjoyable book if you were Welsh, as opposed to English.

Although adventure loving girls interested in history might also find much to appreciate in this, I would suggest that the lack of any female role model for a girl to identify with could prove a little puzzling and frustrating. There is only one female of any note, the central character’s mother in the fourteenth century, and though she demonstrates an ability for elegant dress, and is an authority on genteel table manners in the period – she spits on the floor, never on the table itself – and manages to gnaw on bones without dribbling down the front of her elegant apparel, this may not be enough for a girl reader who would like to know her own part in history. Oh, there is a particularly smelly old witch who makes a brief appearance, whom pretty well everyone thinks is a fool, not to mention far too grubby to take seriously. But that is it, as far as females are concerned. As a well-past-my-girlhood adult reader, I could enjoy this in a manner which tries to think myself into the mind and heart of a small boy, but I’m pretty sure that it would have annoyed me as a young girl, as even back in the day, I definitely preferred `children’s books’ which did have at least one young female who did rather more than model fashions, look pretty, and play admiring and passive audience to the young (male) adventurer

So – probably a fabulous book for a young boy who is not Welsh, who loves tales of the olden days, a good bit of derring-do, and fine writing. For them this may be 5 star, I’ve docked a star because I can’t escape from the culture of my own time, place and gender.

I guess this IS the advantage where enemies are intergalactic – you can make the bad guys anyone and no one!

The book is completed by the original black and white illustrations by T.R. Freeman – well it is in the 2015 UK republished edition from OUP

Ronald Welch was the pen name of Ronald Oliver Felton, teacher of history, and Headmaster of Okehampton Grammar School. He died in 1982, and the usual author picture does not seem to freely exist

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

The Gauntlet Amazon UK The Gauntlet Amazon USA

Dorothy B. Hughes – The Expendable Man

Tags

1960s setting, Book Review, Crime Fiction, Dorothy B. Hughes, Golden Age Crime, Novels about America, The Expendable Man

Stunning Golden Age crime thriller which will leave the reader reeling

Being more than a little tired of the interminable violence-graphically-described-in-titillatory-fashion-against-women which seems to be the clichéd bedrock of some crime writing, I have been turning my attention to some earlier writers, particularly those whose work is literary fiction, subject matter: crime.

And so it was that I discovered the American author Dorothy B. Hughes, 1904-1993. For some reason, Hughes stopped writing, or, at least, was not writing for publication any more by 1963, and this novel, The Expendable Man, was her last.

It has been picked up, and re-published by the ever-excellent Persephone Press. Persephone publish/republish forgotten classics by women, many of them from the early part of the twentieth century. Where they differ from other publishers with a similar intent, is in the individual beauty of their physical books – cover and end-papers, particularly, are wonderfully designed to subliminally, rather than glaringly, hint at the flavour of the book within.

The Expendable Man’s cover is curious – a uniform, (as if trying not to project anything noticeable, remarkable, out-of-the-ordinary) unbroken grey. The inside covers are a strange, unsettling, oppressive series of compressive, abstract shapes – chocolate brown against a dull, dark turquoise/teal background, with a peppering of white dots. A rather brave choice in all – not alluring, yet, nevertheless, compelling in an odd manner.

The Expendable Man is set in America – Los Angeles to Arizona, in 1963, and is most firmly rooted in the politics of that time. Politics and law both at large, and how they play out within the hearts and minds of individuals.

This was a golden time in America’s view of itself, the American Dream – at least for those who already were the haves of society. America had a charismatic, dynamic young president, championing liberal values, respected at home and abroad. But the times also had (when do they ever not) darker, more sinister undercurrents.

This is actually a book which is very hard to adequately and enticingly review – because there is very little a reviewer can say about it, if they are not to spoil the necessary journey which each reader must make. I’m particularly glad I picked this up without any prior knowledge, except that being a Persephone book, it would be well-written, that it was a ‘golden-age crime’ and that it had been described, on publication, by the New York Times as :

the author’s finest work to date, of unusual stature both as a suspense story and as a straight novel

And, that NYT reviewer spoke truly – this book delivered. Here is as much as I can say:

Hugh is driving from Indio to Phoenix. Against his instincts, he picks up a young female hitchhiker. He knows this is probably not a sensible thing to do, but he is a decent man with younger sisters, and thinks it is better that he be the one to do this, rather than leave her perhaps to be picked up by some other, less decent man. The highway is deserted and dark is approaching. The girl, who definitely looks and acts more than a little aggressively, is clearly someone with something to hide. And appears to be one of the dispossessed poor. And everything moves downhill from there on in. Quite rapidly, and quite unstoppably.

Something about the book is, right from the start, implacably tense and oppressive, even the description (which hooked me immediately) of the landscape, in the opening paragraph :

Across the tracks there was a different world. The long and lonely country was the colour of sand. The horizon hills were haze-black; the clumps of mesquite stood in dark pools of their own shadowing. But the pools and the rim of dark horizon were discerned only by conscious seeing, else the world was all sand, brown and tan and copper and pale beige. Even the sky at this moment was sand, reflection of the fading bronze of the sun

Hugh has something about him. He seems more than a little uptight; more than a little fearful; perhaps, even a little prone to suspicion and paranoia. Yet the reader must accept that he is a good man, and senses that his motivation for picking up the teenage girl is exactly what we are told it is. Hugh’s tension, Hugh’s curious nervousness instantly infects the reader, and we too make the journey, uneasy, and compelled.

More can’t really be said…..but if you are looking for a wonderfully taut, psychologically authentic, brilliantly written suspenseful crime thriller, which will deliver surprising and truthful shocks, and set you thinking hard – do read it. It’s a stunner! Highly recommended

In a rather wonderful afterword, in this Persephone book, which analyses the filmic quality of Hughes’ writing (several of her books were made into films, and she  did work as an assistant on Hitchcock’s “Spellbound”, is the quote below, from a publication where Hughes describes her work method:

The germ or seed was always a place, a background scene. And against that background, there began a dialogue or monologue; whatever it was, a conversation. Then I would begin to recognise the characters. The plotting was the final step; it was people and places that interested me, not gimmicks

Dorothy B. Hughes in 1923

All of which rather reinforces the sense of authenticity in this undoubtedly page turning book. Sure plotting there is, but this proceeds at a correct pace. Having set the oppressive opener, that sense of a huge and weighted landscape, the journey of this was pretty well inevitable, and did not really rely on barrel-loads of coincidences.

And…….sorry Statesiders, for some unknown reason this marvellous American writer does not seem to be available on Kindle, YOUR side of the pond, nor is your wood book version the delectable Persephone one.

The Expendable Man Amazon UK
The Expendable Man Amazon USA

Edmund White – Hotel de Dream

Tags

Book Review, Edmund White, Gay and Lesbian Literature, Hotel de Dream, New York

Dream or Reality?

Edmund White, American writer whose subject is often the sexual mores of society – as a gay man born in 1940 he has lived through, and charted, many changes in attitudes towards same-sex relationships – here writes a rather brilliant book about the dying days of nineteenth century realist writer and journalist, Stephen Crane.

Hotel de Dream mixes known facts of Crane’s life and known at-the-time assessment of his character, with plausible `what-if’ invention. Large sections of the book contain the dictated work of a last novel, The Painted Boy, which Crane, painfully dying from tuberculosis, coughs up his life’s blood to finish, dictating it to his `wife’ Cora Taylor, in wrenched out, feverish whispers

Crane, who did die from a final pulmonary haemorrhage, from TB, in a health spa in Germany, at the ridiculously young age of 28, was a writer in the naturalist, realist tradition. He had a passionate social conscience, and empathised with the disadvantaged and powerless in society – particularly those outside respectability. He had been involved in a law case, protecting a prostitute against an unlawful charge against her. The case was lost, and Crane himself censured by sections of society which had lauded him for his literary gifts. He had met Cora, who also became a journalist, and was separated from her second husband, though not divorced, and ran a bordello Hotel de Dreme, in Florida. Settling in England for a while, Crane become the friend of Joseph Conrad, Henry James, H.G. Wells, and Ford Madox Ford. In England, Crane and Taylor lived as, and were believed to be, husband and wife.

Stephen Crane

However, White’s book is not purely a biography, or even a straight biography written as fiction. Although Crane had dictated his final work, as he was feverishly dying, to Cora, that work was The O’ Ruddy, not The Painted Boy

The Painted Boy, the novel within the novel, is White’s imaginative invention, and within it, Crane inserts himself as an observing character, so there are various mirrors, illusions, inventions, but delivered with realistic imagination, using known facts, as well as `what if…….’

White’s central idea for The Painted Boy, was to say `what if’ this writer who was known to have understanding and acceptance for those who were outside conventional morality, who was humane and empathetic, had encountered those who at the time were absolutely seen as deviant and abhorrent – the gay community – and, particularly, poor young boys who turned to prostitution as a means of making a living.

He charts a love story between Theodore Koch, an upright, conventional, married banker, who falls headlong in love with an abused street boy, Elliott. Crane is also a character within the book, who meets the boy (who is dying of syphilis, as Crane himself is dying with his own disease) and, despite an initial abhorrence, is moved to an act of kindness towards the starving boy, gains his trust, and hears his story, with which, as writer and journalist, he wants to honour the dispossessed, and also castigate society with.

The more Elliott talked the sadder I felt. His voice, which had at first been either embarrassed or hushed or suddenly strident with a whore’s hard shriek, now had wandered back into something as flat as a farmer’s fields. He was eager to tell me everything, and that I was taking notes, far from making him self-conscious, pleased him. He counted for something and his story as well.

I found this an absorbing and tenderly written book, and was further intrigued by White’s afterword, where he not only reveals `what’s true and what ain’t’, but also, explores the fact that Crane’s earliest biographers (who had known him) were also fabulists. One of them, the critic James Gibbons Huneker, who also features in the `real’ sections of White’s book, did recount the meeting and conversations between Crane and a young male prostitute, and recorded that Crane began to write a book about his story, perhaps to be a companion piece to an earlier story of a female prostitute `Maggie, A Girl of The Streets’ Although this in part clearly acted as a springboard for White’s Hotel de Dream, recent researches have revealed that Huneker, and the other early biographer did not always possess pens which flowed with the light of truth

The subtitle of this book of White’s is ‘A New York Novel’ as it is the tail end of the nineteenth century and the gulf between the world of sophisticated, moneyed sensibility and the impoverished, desperate life of the streets in New York, which is the subject matter of White’s novella within a novel.

Edmund White – Hotel de Dream Amazon UK
Edmund White – Hotel de Dream Amazon USA

Nella Larsen – Passing

Tags

1920s America, Book Review, Harlem Renaissance, Nella Larsen, Passing

Confined by race, class and gender in 1920s America

Nella Larsen’s Passing was originally published in 1929, and is a chilling, chilly account of the politics of race, class and gender. Larsen was an African American, seeing with a rather steely eye into some of the uncomfortable accommodations which might be made in order to best gain the riches and rewards which America offered the educated and wealthy – at least, those who were white – or could ‘pass’ as such

Irene Redfield, involved in charitable foundation work to advance her race, married to a doctor, could indeed ‘pass’ for white, but would regard this as a betrayal of her race. She only uses ‘passing’ in order to gain anonymous access to comfortable places such as tea-rooms in elegant hotels, where, if she didn’t ‘pass’ she would be unable to enter.

A chance encounter brings her in contact with another ‘passing’ woman whom she has not seen since their girlhood. Clare Kendry however, made different choices through her ability to ‘pass’ Clare has been living as white for some years, married to a white man who is casually racist, she is a part of that wealthy white urban middle class.

Irene and Clare have taken very different approaches. Irene has lived more comfortably, protected from harsh economic realities through her husband’s position. She is upright, disciplined, correct, gracious and inflexible. She is also, it seems, a person of principle but her principles are arrived at through rationality. She is actually, a little chilly, and very controlling.

Clare, by contrast, whose early life was less privileged, lives as an accomplished survivor, exploiting her extraordinary beauty and grace, and the fact that no one in her present milieu dreams she is anything other than one of them. The challenge for Clare though, is that this has led to her losing all contact with ‘her’ people.

It’s funny about ‘passing’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.

This is a short, most interesting book, rescued from being purely sociological observation by a believable, developing story. The challenge I found was that the writer’s style is a little too structured and measured – whether this is because this fits the rather chilly controlled manner of her central character, Irene, I’m not sure, but this is told in the third person, so I suspect it is the author’s voice. I do have a preference for more lyrical writing – Larsen is an Enlightenment voice, rather than a Romantic one

There are several versions of this book – some of the ‘wooden book’ versions come with quite a lot of analytical material, contextual essays and the like, but my Kindle download was without any of these, to my disappointment

Finally, a couple of pingy thingies. Thank you to the ever redoubtable FictionFan, championer of other bloggers, who faithfully skips around the blogworld bringing back delectable delights from other bloggers to tease our TBRs with. I had never heard of Nella Larson, and FictionFan featured this, in a cache of 5 wonderful litfic finds

The original review which caught her attention came from My Book Strings

Passing Amazon UK
Passing Amazon USA

Lissa Evans – Crooked Heart

Tags

Book Review, Crooked Heart, Home Front, Lissa Evans, Second World War

A warm-hearted, well written story: Unusual friendship in World War 2 on the Home Front

I had enjoyed, with reservations, Lissa Evans earlier book, Their Finest Hour and A Half, also set on the Home Front during World War 2, which featured a film crew turning out Ministry of Information Films. Evans has a nice line in both humour and pathos, but my reservations of that earlier book were that characters verged a little into caricature, and the book could have withstood a lot of cutting and paring back

In this later book she has done that paring back, and turned her attention to a smaller number of characters and central relationships

Noel is a 10 year old precocious orphan. Fiercely intelligent, a loner, a bit undersized and easily bullied. And he has a godmother whom he adores, and with whom he lives, rapidly heading for dementia and desperately trying to keep it together. Mattie is home schooling him, in rather anarchic fashion – particularly in left-wing politics, abhorrence of war, and feminist politics (she was a suffragette who was imprisoned and force fed for those pains) Both Noel and Mattie are desperately trying to avoid the authorities finding out how bad things are, and, particularly, neither want Noel to be evacuated to a safer place as the blitz begins to bite.

Unfortunately, all attempts fail, and an officious relative of Mattie’s steps in and Noel is evacuated to St Alban’s.

He is a rather unattractive looking child, and has retreated, in grief, to stoic silence, leading to all concluding he is simple minded. As it is the prettiest, most spic and span children who get first picked by host families, Noel is the shop-soiled reject no-one wants. Until Vee, a desperately poor cleaner, on the verge of middle age, living by her wits, supporting her elderly mum and feckless adult son, sees an opportunity for a little extra cash coming her way, by taking in Noel for the duration. Much cleverer than Vee, who is actually possessed of a great deal of imagination and survivor instinct, given half a chance, the two slowly begin to make common ground, finding, for Vee, ways to avoid continuing to be the victim that class and some bad judgements have made of her, and, for Noel, putting his fertile intellect in the service of money making scams gives him the first small beginnings of escaping from grief.

Evans has created a couple of extremely likeable oddball, misfit characters whose relationship with each other, initially built on mutual dislike, slowly moves towards something bordering a kind of mutual respect based on what each can gain from the other, into a warm heartedness based initially on `being crooked’ in order to survive. There is plenty of humour to be found in the sharp exchanges between the two, with Vee, especially having much to learn from the greater intelligence and wisdom of her young evacuee

We’re telling people you’re my boy and then you’re using words like…like “original” and “hence” No one from St. Albans ever says “hence”. And you should say “my mum” not “my mother” and anyway you just don’t sound right. You sound as if you come from somewhere posh and I sound 
`Common’, said Noel.
Vee coloured. `You don’t say things like that about people’, she said. She fiddled with her hat. She thought she’d been looking smart and now she felt like a greasy rag. `You don’t know anything about me,’ she said. `I was at school till I was fifteen, I was clever. I wanted to be a teacher.’ 

The nicely drawn supporting characters include Vee’s dotty mum, endlessly writing letters to Churchill and Chamberlain, offering them advice on winning the war, her adult son Donald, exempt from call-up through a dicky heart (and scams of his own to pursue) and another very aged suffragette whom Noel befriends.

What I particularly liked, is that for all Evans’ light touch, there are real emotions which the reader is confronted with. We end up rooting hard for this most unlikely pair of individuals, individually and together.

A definite feel-good read.

Crooked Heart Amazon UK
Crooked Heart Amazon USA