J.D.Salinger – The Catcher In The Rye

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Book Review, J.D. Salinger, The Catcher In The Rye, Young Adult Fiction

Re-reading long after I left the age…………………

I read ‘Catcher’ for the first time when I was in my teens, and believe I may have read it again around 5 years later. It seemed interesting to try in again long after that time when the rapid hormonal changes are putting you through extreme autonomic nervous system hyper-arousal – fight, flight, dissociation and ‘whatever’ freeze

And what a very different (though enormously enjoyable) experience it has been, leading me to reflect much more on the writing than I ever did. When I read it, it was long before it was deemed necessary to get teens into reading by ‘books aimed at teenagers’ We were reading classics in school, dealing with adult themes, and expected to read them in an adult and sophisticated way (admittedly, my education was geared towards pushing us all into academia, so we were expected to pull ourselves upwards from an initial place of interest and enthusiasm)

Now, I gather that because this is about a teenager, written first person, it is deemed to be fit to ‘encourage’ reluctant readers – I think it’s absolutely the wrong book to be forced to approach in a lit-crit way, at the time when your relationship with it might be purely emotional identification – or, it might be too uncomfortable to observe, up close and personal your own psychology when in the middle of it. Not to mention the fact that some of the language will feel very dated – I wonder how books written by adults with a teen narrator will fare in 50 odd years’ time (Catcher was published originally in 1945. And, no, that’s not when I first read it!) I suspect the endless like, like, whatever dialogue – if the author really attempts to pin down current youth buzz-speak, will make for throw-the-book-against-the-wall annoyance. Salinger is pretty sparing of his I assume 1945 young-slang but I suspect it might distance a teen reader, as it will make it feel dated.

I think in many ways it is an ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’ read, and far more interesting for an (ahem) mature reader. I really appreciated this time round, Salinger’s skill.

Firstly, that first-person narrative. Perhaps of late this has been overdone. I know a lot of readers dislike it intensely and find it false. When appropriate (like any stylistic choice) it works brilliantly. And this is, for sure, appropriate. Had Salinger decided on the narrator as third person god approach, the wonderful mismatch between the dismissive ‘whatever’ thoughts of Holden Caulfield and his tenderness, how much vulnerability of any kind ‘kills’ him, be it impoverished nuns with straw baskets or what happens to the ducks in Central Park in the winter. The swiftness of his movement from prickliness to vulnerability and compassion and back again is beautifully done, and very truthful.

In many ways, for those unfamiliar with the book, not a lot (externally) happens. Intelligent, sensitive, prickly-as-a-succulent-cactus Holden Caulfield, second son of an eccentric, gifted, clearly damaged, family. The third child died young, of leukaemia, before the start of the novel, and the shock-waves have hit everyone hard. Holden himself is at that stage where he is most unforgiving of everyone around him BECAUSE he is so vulnerable to their vulnerabilities – prickle is a defence against pain. He has just been expelled from his latest expensive school. He is a youngster with an attitude, self-destructive, wasting of his talents without being able to see quite why that might matter. The ‘story’ of the book is the three or four days between the expulsion and when his family would expect him home for the normal term end. Holden is looking back at that period, from a time some months in the near future, and he is telling his story possibly to us, but maybe to someone else – who that might be is suggested, quite early on.

He does his best to put his listener or his reader off wanting to know more, but, as he is both wittingly and unwittingly quirky and amusing, no doubt the reader, or the listener, will stay involved for the ride

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They’re quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They’re nice and all – I’m not saying that – but they’re also as touchy as hell.

The push-away, draw-in, sullen whateverness of this complex teen – not to mention teen-age itself makes for a read which is moving, funny – and deservedly has become an iconic book. Probably as much for those looking back through the mists of time feeling relief they are far away from its giddy heights and treacherous plummets.

The Catcher In The Rye Amazon UK
The Catcher In The Rye Amazon USA

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Rebecca Hunt – Everland

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Antarctic, Book Review, Everland, Rebecca Hunt

Hell is other people in a very very cold place indeed

I don’t know why a person who feels the cold and loves the heat is so drawn to literature set in the frozen wastes, nor why I should spend so much time terrifying myself with fantasies of being abandoned and isolated in a polar landscape, but I do, and I am a reader driven to read fact and fiction about isolation and chill

So, Rebecca Hunt’s Everland, and its subject matter, two separate, 3 person scientific explorations of a penguin and seal colony in Antarctica, one in 1913 and one in 2012 was an obvious read for me.

And very absorbing and satisfying it proved too, even if it didn’t completely satisfy, as some of the obvious parallels and obvious differences between the two expeditions felt a little like an excellent idea which was getting overworked.

In both centuries (the two time-frames are interwoven with each other) there is a mother ship, from which 3 individuals are chosen to be the expedition which goes to `Everland’, an island in Antarctica (invented) . In each case, there are `political’ dynamics over the choice of one of the team. And in each case, the leader of the team is highly experienced, their second in command is hard working and practical and the third, the scientist, has rather been foisted on the other two against their wishes, in order to satisfy and secure funding, because of their connection to powerful people. In both cases, there is one team member who is implacably opposed to the `freeloader’ scientist who is a liability, though they are well-meaning, in such a harsh environment, and the other team-member who is more kindly. In each case, as everything unravels it is the one who is most implacably opposed who shows a transcending nobility.

The make-up of both teams show the changing times. 1913, Napps, Millet-Bass and Dinners are all men, by 2012 the make-up of the team is 1 male, Decker, and 2 females, Jess and Brix

Hunt is brilliant at bringing home the chilly, hostile, savage and beautiful environment. The book is full of moral ambiguities, and, particularly in the 1913 section, the complexities of relationship and status, and the conflicts between public and private faces are excellently done.

In the end, the later exploration, one undertaken as a kind of `anniversary’ of the earlier one, was rather less satisfying. Once Hunt had set up the conceit, making a kind of mirror reflection with a twist, as the plot developed, the reader knew roughly how things were going to play out, and the reading experience of the 2012 became a little like a compare and contrast jigsaw. I did not experience involvement with the modern section. It seemed a little forced into a shape.

Recommended, with some reservations

I received the book as a review copy from the publishers via NetGalley

Everland Amazon UK
Everland Amazon USA

Alison Case – Nelly Dean

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Alison Case, Book Review, Nelly Dean, Wuthering Heights

A grand attempt at Wuthering

I’m normally a little leery of the books which re-visit, or take a tangential visit, sparked by well-known, well-loved classics. Few manage it in a way which can do anything other than demonstrate the foolishness of the attempt.

In my mind, it’s only Jean Rhys’ `Wide Sargasso Sea’ which managed to create something new and wonderful in its own right, without it being compared to its progenitor, Jane Eyre, and found wanting. Wide Sargasso Sea stands in its own right as a wonderful book.

Whilst I don’t believe Alison Case’s Nelly Dean scales the heights of Wide Sargasso Sea, it’s certainly a well-written, absorbing book, and her original Wuthering Heights inspiration, housekeeper Nelly Dean, taking centre stage on this one is made real enough to spend time with, and the invented characters of her own world, the mainly below stairs workers, rather than the landowners, are also rounded and fascinating.

Case very wisely has Cathy, Heathcliff and the Lintons as marginal figures, this is Nelly’s story, and, to some extent, Hindley’s

You won’t find much of this

There were two aspects which pulled me back from total surrender:

Firstly, the construct taken from the original book, where Nelly recounts the history of the family to Mr Lockwood, is here changed into Nelly writing a long (470 page long) letter to Mr Lockwood which she knows she will never send, but it’s the means of her reliving her own story for herself. Making her a writer of her story gives her an education and erudition which is not as credible as making her the verbal narrator, as Emily did, so it stretched my disbelief a little.

Secondly, and more seriously, I felt that there were sections which stretched credulity way too far. No plot spoiler here, but how the `second generation’ – Hareton Earnshaw particularly, is woven in with an explained ‘magical’ twist felt a step too far. I missed the curious, almost supernatural darkness of Emily’s original, which perhaps gained its power because it was never really explained. Case injects this darkness using a local herbalist/wise woman/witch, but some aspects of this did not really work for me.

In the end, I would say I enjoyed this more as I was engaged in reading it – but reaching the end of the novel, and where the threads were tied up (I could see them coming) and neatly boxed, I found myself less enamoured of that wrap, and thinking about the book after finishing it, my enjoyment of it was lessening.

Case is, by this showing, an accomplished writer, and I will certainly be keen to see where she goes from here.

Nor will you find much of this :

What does come across clearly is the book was engendered by her love of the original, her knowledge of, and love for, other fiction of the period – it has clearly been an organic and natural inspiration rather than one driven by someone in marketing saying ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea if we commissioned authors to rewrite………..’

Case’s book is one which can certainly be appreciated on its own merits. Had I never read Wuthering Heights, I would certainly have enjoyed this, perhaps a little more. And I do recommend it

I received this as a review copy from Amazon Vine UK

Nelly Dean Amazon UK
Nelly Dean Amazon USA

Herman Koch – Summer House With Swimming Pool

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Book Review, Crime Fiction, Dutch author, Herman Koch, Humour, In Translation, Summer House With Swimming Pool

Unspeakably incorrect, shockingly funny, designed to offend: doesn’t completely pull it all off

My goodness, Herman Koch cheerfully uses his razor sharp pen to slice open and blood-let all the things we dare not say, and perhaps dare not think. Both women and men who are more thoughtful and separated from their caveman past may find themselves gasping in some sort of horror – and also, perhaps, barking with guilty laughter.

Marc Schlosser, the central character of Koch’s book, (translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett) is a doctor who once had rather noble ideals, but now has a clientele of the wealthy or famous, whom he pretty much despises. They come to him with their concerns about their failing sexual performance and allure, their fears about cancers in unspeakable parts of their anatomy, and at times for the under the counter dispensing of medicines which will enable them to party hard as they did in their youth, or to shuffle off this mortal. But most of all, they come to him not because he is in any way a better doctor (he knows he isn’t) but because he gives them a 20 minute session instead of a shorter session.

Patients can’t tell the difference between time and attention. They think I give them more attention than other doctors. But all I give them is more time. By the end of the first sixty seconds I’ve seen all I need to know. The remaining nineteen minutes I fill with attention. Or, I should say, with the illusion of attention

Married (happily) to Caroline, with two daughters, Julia, who is a budding nymphette, and pre-pubescent Lisa, Schlosser is absolutely not above seducing other women. He blithely tells his female and male readers, that, sorry, this is all the drive of biology. However (and he again will excuse this via biology) he is also a hypocrite. One of his patients is a famous actor, Ralph Meier. He despises Meier, a grossly overweight and disgustingly, overtly lecherous individual, but really begins to hate him when Meier makes an offensive and public pass at Caroline, at a first night party. Caroline thinks Meier is pretty loathsome too. Which is why it is rather surprising that Schlosser accepts an invitation to visit (with his wife and his daughters, naturally) Meier and his wife in their holiday home – that ‘summer house with swimming pool’ Caroline can’t understand why, as Marc finds Meier pretty disgusting, and she also finds him pretty disgusting, the invitation has been accepted by Meier, who goes out of his way to arrange holiday plans so that they will be ‘in the area’ and turn an informal invitation, formal.

Marc, without any shame, lets the reader know (first person narrative) that he has designs for a bit of nookie with Judith Meier, in the same breath that he is castigating Meier for his unbridled and offensive lechery. The only difference between the two is that Schlosser is a subtle seducer, not an indiscriminate grabber and fondler of female flesh. Rather, he seduces, like he doctors, providing an illusion of paying attention

So far, so wickedly funny and offensive, mixed together. Things rapidly turn very much darker on that holiday, however, and humour, for the most part, gets left behind. Schlosser will come to suspect that Meier, with the collusion of his family and friends, have been responsible for causing hideous harm and ruining lives. And he will seek to exact a terrible, undetectable revenge.

Told by mixture of flashbacks and flash forwards to the present, the book opens with Meier about to face a reckoning of sorts.

I stayed hooked nearly all the way to the end, but the resumption of a fairly crass bit of humour, and a ‘hell hath no fury’ proverb wriggle out wrap (sorry, can’t say more, spoiler alert, but those who have read the book will know what I mean) felt inauthentic and lazy.

Enjoyed a lot, lost a star for the last 20 odd pages.

I received this as a review copy from the Amazon Vine programme UK, following its recent release as a paperback (hardback came out last year) And I also remembered this came very highly recommended indeed by FictionFan who wrote a sterling review at the time, though it remained on an undecided back burner for me, till offered it on Vine.

Summer House With Swimming Pool Amazon UK
Summer House With Swimming Pool Amazon USA

Isabel Allende – Ripper

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'Magic Realism', Book Review, Crime Fiction, Isabel Allende, Psychological Thriller, Ripper

Utterly implausible, a denouement with more holes than a colander, yet, most curiously, enjoyable.

Chilean author Isabel Allende, known as a `Magic Realist’ author, has written her first thriller/crime novel in Ripper. Although it involves the all-too-predictable `there is a serial killer on the loose’ territory – albeit one who is a million miles from the even more predictable savage-dismemberment-of-beautiful-women territory which appears to be the stock in trade of the genre – it is remarkably unlike most crime writing. Perhaps that (and of course, the author’s credentials) is what acted as its lure.

Magic Realism, and particularly South American Magic Realism, is often labyrinthine and circumlocutory in structure. A shaggy dog story which rambles happily all over the place, entering into tangles, picking up burrs and thistles in its coat, enjoyably snuffling hither and thither, gathering all sorts of snippets and detritus. The earthy, fascinated by small detail tangle of this-and-that IS the point. The journey, and everything on it, including the dead-end detours, are what matters, far more than an express London to Edinburgh straight up along the high speed tracks predictable journey.

So Allende brings that to this story, and peoples her world with the weird and wonderful, the odd-ball, the eccentric – which is actually all of us, if we bother to get behind the façade – and the undoubtedly messy hotch-potch of some 500 pages, kept me reading, sometimes with irritation, raised eyebrows, pursed lips, muttering `ridiculous!’ Yet curiously enthralled and fascinated. Allende’s voice is persuasive, warm, charismatic. Lovable not despite, but because of the rich and fussy detail.

`Ripper’ in this San Francisco set novel is nothing to do with the nasty Jack, the equally nasty Yorkshire, or any of those all too overt other real misogynists. Or the thousands of invented sociopaths which people many books in the genre. `Ripper’ is the name given to a small global band of rather oddball geeks who solve murders `as an on-line game’, and severally adopt various avatars and skills to do so. So there is a `Sherlock Holmes’ for example – in reality a baseball cap wearing cool dude living in Reno. The tempestuous gypsy Esmeralda is the avatar of a New Zealand based boy confined to a wheelchair. There is a `psychic’ – in reality, an hospitalised anorectic, visionary through her extreme starvation. The games master, and leader of the group, is San Francisco based Amanda. Amanda is 17, but she is also, often, going on 10, in her emotional innocence and child-like enthusiasms, and simultaneously, going on 900 in her Methuselah like intelligence and wisdom. Wrapped around her little finger is her grandfather Blake, an author. Blake is also one of the Ripper players – his avatar is that of Amanda’s henchman and gofer, Kabel. She bosses him around hideously. Amanda’s father is Bob Martìn, (ha ha, for English readers, a doggy joke) a Police Chief. Martìn is `in real’ trying to solve the murders which are hitting the city. And, by nefarious means, gaining access to inside information, `Ripper’ is attempting to solve the cases too. (no prizes for guessing, true to golden age crime traditions, who does best, the ams or the pros)

San Francisco Womens Building Wiki Commons

So far so good – until things all get close to home. Amanda’s mother, Indiana (Indiana and Bob separated long ago but remain friends) is a New Age good-hearted, far too innocent, far too credulous and space-cadetish healer. She is an aromatherapist and Reiki practitioner and Allende leaves no crystal unturned and no `vial’ of oil unopened to richly egg a stereotype. Indiana is also gloriously beautiful (so clearly, she will be a victim) and very sensual.

Stir well, in San Francisco’s Armistead Maupin Tales Of The City cauldron, and Allende drops in astrologers, the campy camp, a collection of noble animals (delights for dog and cat lovers) a noble and injured Navy SEAL with a prosthetic leg, any number of ancient women with superb kitchen skills and earthy wisdom – and of course, somewhere there will be our murderer. Actually, she signals this quite early with big waves – I fingered the perp, accurately, from the off – though there were some very surprising twists and potential herrings and attempts to throw us, at a late stage, off the scent.

I have to say that one of the major twists and revelations I did not see coming. And perhaps that was because, with even a little objective thought, it was of such utter implausibility as not to have crossed anyone’s mind. What amazed/amused me, though, was despite the gaping holes in any credibility, which caused my eyebrows to hit the ceiling, and my mouth to downturn in critical disapproval, my page turning frenzy was increasing, and was enjoyable despite the eventual utterly silliness.

The book is full of intentional (and I think, unintentional) humour – some of the
characters almost wallow in their ability to wear a cliché well, and Allende has fun with us as she paints them in glaring primary colours and then twists a bit – and I even wonder whether the utter silliness of the solution isn’t part of her joke and genre spoof

So, surprisingly, recommended – but only to those prepared to leave scientific and linear rationality at the door, and surrender to a kind of hectic carnival where anything might happen. And does Northern European Noir this isn’t!

Rarely have I enjoyed anything with so many flaws so much!

Originally written in Spanish, the book is translated by Ollie Brock and Frank Wynne

Ripper Amazon UK
Ripper Amazon USA

Marjane Satrapi – Persepolis – The Story of a Childhood

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Graphic Novel, Iran, Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis, Persepolis - The Story of a Childhood

Iran – An educative child’s eye view

Marjane Satrapi is an Iranian author and illustrator, now living in France, who was born in what was then called Persia in 1969. Her parents were members of the intelligentsia, communists, and descendants of the Persian Royal family. Some family members had been imprisoned by the Shah. She was 10 when the Shah was overthrown. Her family had demonstrated against him, but were opponents of what became known as ‘The Islamic Revolution’ Aged 14, in 1984 Marjane was sent away to Austria by her family, who could see the writing on the wall for her as a young girl in a country becoming ever more fundamentalist.

In her foreword, to this book, Persepolis, The Story of a Childhood, published in translation into English in 2003, Satrapi demonstrates a deep love of her country and its cultured history. Part of her aim is to offset the West’s view of Iran as a country of belligerent, fundamentalist fanatics and terrorists :

I believe that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists. I also don’t want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their homeland to be forgotten

And all of the categories of sufferers in the last sentence, were also members of her family, her close friends – and of course, she herself was in that last category.

So…..what is it which might lift this book out of being a harrowing, awful, account of suffering?

Though it certainly contains much harrow, this is a graphic novel – which might indeed be read by the young adult, as it is an personal account of Marjane’s childhood from aged 6 to when she left her home in 1984. But I would say it is primarily a graphic novel for adults. It has been compared, believably, to Art Spiegelman’s Maus, which deals with the Holocaust, and its effects on survivors and their families, through the same medium.

This is of course – as all recounting and interpretations of history are – a subjective account. But the subjective view of events has its own truth, and when a narrator is clear enough to let the viewer see their subjectivity, it is enormously helpful. Academic tomes strive for objectivity, and sometimes believe they are completely objective, but all our views are coloured by our own cultural and personal backgrounds

Enough of the polemic

Marjane is a delightful little 6 year old – a child who is both political in her viewpoint (early reading was a comic book version of ‘Dialectical Materialism’) who can ‘play revolutionaries’ with her schoolfriends, wanting to be Che, Trotsky or Castro – whilst still holding to her first ambition – her family were atheists, but Marjane wanted to be a prophet when she grew up, her ‘Holy Book’ that of Zarathustra, the Persian, not the Arabic religion. Marjane spent quite a lot of time talking to God, who in her mind looked remarkably like Marx ‘except Marx’s hair was a bit curlier’

I read this with a mixture of laughter and tears. We view, often, globally, casting entire nations as devils or angels – my angels, your devils. We all can do with reminding that all nations are as full of individuals, with their own unique histories and stories, as our own.

There is a further autobiographical graphic novel, Persepolis 2, in which Marjane covers her difficult adolescence in Austria, and an eventual return to Iran. The author, as stated, now lives in France, has published more books, and is also an award-winning film-maker – Persepolis and her novel, Chicken with Plums, were both filmed, and she has both directed and written screenplays, both of her own work, and of others.

Persepolis – The Story of a Childhood Amazon UK
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Dodie Smith – I Capture The Castle

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Book Review, Cold Comfort Farm, Dodie Smith, Humour, I Capture The Castle, Pride and Prejudice

A Trip Down Memory Lane Even Better Than The First Time…..

I first read Dodie Smith’s impeccable `I Capture The Castle’ way back in nineteen hundred and frozen to death when I was some few years younger than her precocious, intelligent, wise beyond years and yet innocent narrator, Cassandra – she is 17. No doubt I was equally precocious, at least. Cassandra, daughter of a highly eccentric, impecunious writer-with-a-block, fancies an authorial career for herself (as indeed to some extent I did in my early teens)

Cassandra Mortmain, her beautiful older sister Rose, her even more beautiful stepmother, Topaz, artist’s model and artist herself, ferociously intelligent younger brother Thomas, and unwaged Greek God handsome-but-with-a-slightly-dim-expression general help Stephen, her aforementioned writer Father, and her dearly loved dog and cat, live practically below the breadline, in a stunning, decaying castle. Everyone had seen better times, financially, and everyone is aware that a tea of bread and margarine might come to seem luxurious any time soon:

Rose is ironing……it will be a pity if she scorches her only nightgown. (I have two, but one is minus its behind.)

Dodie Smith set her book, published in 1948, before the war, in the probably early 30s. She had begun writing it in 1945, and had worked and re-worked it revising it for two years. The book shows evidence of the painstaking work only in its perfection. It is beautifully crafted, and has that gorgeous felicity of seeming to have sprung in effortless ease, trippingly, from the authorial pen. There is no sense of the blood, sweat, toil and tears of its gestation.

Dodie of course also wrote 101 Dalmatians

Cassandra, wanting to exercise and develop her writerly skills, keeps journals (you have a sense Dodie herself may well have had a similar history) She is a witty, almost but not quite winsomely so, young girl, full of feeling, the ability to be cynical, but warm-hearted and affectionate. And, like many young girls, she has some dreams about her own future, which involve both romance and vocation. This is the story of both, starting from a place where the family’s finances preclude them ever meeting suitable young men, despite the fact that the more worldly Rose realises that marriage to a moneyed man is probably the family’s best option, and that she is the only one placed to achieve this. Both Rose and Cassandra realise they have certain parallels to an earlier pair of sisters – Jane and Lizzie Bennet, especially when a well-heeled couple of Americans take up residence in a nearby grand house

Especially for my dear fellow blogger Fiction Fan, there is indeed a bathing in wild water scene (tasteful and very very funny) but not involving Colin Firth

Another sparkling literary nod may have been to Stella Gibbons – Topaz, with her tendency to commune with nature (running out into the fields in her nightgown with probably nothing on underneath, and creating symbolic art works) could be some kind of relation to Elfine in Cold Comfort Farm. Stephen, whose Greek God looks will make him something of a hit with a Bohemian set, is a little like a reluctant, noble, introverted Seth.

Cassandra’s joyous combination of intense feeling, curiosity, intelligence and most particularly her already well-developed powers of observation and mastery of writerly skills make her an absolutely enchanting first person narrator. This is a book to relish, word by word, from start to end.

Some have expressed frustration with the ambiguous ending. Personally, I find that it, too is sheer perfection. That is certainly what I feel as a more sophisticated reader than the 13 or 14 year old I was when I read it last. And I suspect (as I was precocious) I may well already have approved the ambiguity.

This is not a `book for young adults’ (though it certainly can be read with great enjoyment by them) It is a book for anyone who might like to see the world through the eyes of a particularly enchanting young woman, and for anyone who appreciates light touch wit, irony and enjoys literary referencing.

How can you not want to embark on a journey whose first sentence begins

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea cosy……….I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring-I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house. Though even that isn’t a very good poem. I have decided that my poetry is so bad that I mustn’t write any more of it

I can begin to see how Smith influenced several other writers, too

Recommended. Perhaps best saved for a day when the world seems sad and bleak, and your get up and go has indeed got up and gone. A feel-good book, but one which won’t leave you longing to eat chilli peppers and horseradish to get rid of the cloying taste of saccharine

It was made into a film in 2003………..unfortunately, the trailer (on You Tube) rather made me gag and reach for the chilli and horseradish. Romola Garai as Cassandra, Bill Nighy as her father and Sinead Cusack as the forceful American mother of ‘ Darcy and Bingley’ were all, I’m sure, wonderful value – but it was the saccharine of the trailer which rightly or wrongly made me feel that a chocolate box cover approach may have been taken. The opening out of the story so that other people’s point of view happens, rather than everything seen and recorded through Cassandra’s filter, means I shall likely give this one a miss, and let Dodie’s sharp and tender pen be the onlie begetter

I Capture The Castle Amazon UK
I Capture The Castle Amazon USA

William Boyd – Sweet Caress

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Book Review, Sweet Caress, William Boyd

Picturing the Twentieth Century

William Boyd has always been ‘a safe pair of hands’ in my eyes, as a novelist. He always writes well, he writes with interesting perspective, creates well-rounded characters and has a strong sense of narrative, a story well-told.

And those novels where he examines the sweep of the twentieth century through the eyes of generally a creative mover and shaker of some kind, such as The New Confessions (a film-maker) and particularly Any Human heart (a writer) are particularly gripping, rich and rewarding reads.

So I was delighted to discover that Sweet Caress was following this successful and fascinating route, for Boyd fans – another follow the arc of the century, with the protagonist this time a photographer, and one, moreover, who married the art of photography (as opposed to snapshots) with major world event – a war photographer. What is different in this novel is that his central character, and narrator, is female. There are always challenges in trying to feel and interpret the world across gender. Inevitably, it is going to be women who will really assess whether his first person narrator (this must surely be the most difficult way of writing inside another, that ‘I’ voice, in crossing the biological divide)

And I do have to say I wasn’t completely convinced that Amory Clay was believably female in her sensibilities. Clever Boyd to give her a neutral and unusual name so that she kind of holds, for this reader at least, the imprint of another similarly named Amory – Amory Blaine from F Scott FitzGerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise. It rather gave an androgyne quality so that Boyd’s Amory came trailing the clouds of post first world war youth and hedonism, like her Fitzgerald namesake.

What Boyd sensibly avoided was to write the detail and the emotion of Amory’s sexual encounters. Perhaps nowhere are we so inside our gender as in those bodily sensations.

“Rolleiflex f2-8-F” by Sputniktilt – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.

Where I couldn’t quite connect Amory Clay as female was in a curious disconnection from explaining how she was feeling within her relationships, the emotional tenor of them, whether as lover, or, more particularly, as mother. It’s certainly not true that all women are more feeling, all men more thinking, in tone, but there was a kind of distance from her feelings, with Amory, given that Boyd had chosen the first person narrative, the character inside her own head, that did not feel quite like a female. I could, just, rationalise this by relating it to her profession – a photographer is standing outside the situation and observing it, and, given that she was a public photographer, a photojournalist, her profession will have led her to something that makes a comment about situations rather than inhabits it. And this was underlined by the structure of the book – it is peppered with photos from Amory’s album, from her first, early snaps as a child, to photos she took as a War photographer in the Second World War and in Vietnam, so there is a lot of describing what is going on in her own life, deconstructing and commenting on her own life and feelings as if she were an outside observer of it.

This sense I had of a disengagement with emotion does not in any way mean that Boyd is a writer who is disengaged with emotion. I think back to Lysander, the central character of Any Human Heart, who was intensely emotional – a particularly suffused with feeling man.

Structurally, the book alternates between the central character, an elderly, widowed woman living in the far north of Scotland, in a settled degree of rural isolation, in the present, or near present, and going back to her beginnings, moving forward in the journey of how she got from there to here. She was an interesting and fascinating person to spend a life journey with, and there are the usual trademarks in these kinds of books of Boyd’s – real people, real events, drift in to the edges of Boyd’s imaginary characters, giving the feel of biography as much as fiction, though he doesn’t (thankfully) take outrageous liberties with the real people and force them into some kind of close or meaningful encounter with his fictional people.

Having spent a lot of time trying to put my finger on what makes this novel not quite reach the pinnacle of satisfaction that Any Human Heart had, I was still captivated and held by it, warm towards it, though it definitely had sections which did not quite work. I understand that the photos in the book were various pictures he had found (presumably in some sort of photo job lot from various second hand photo outlets) and enjoyable though the pictorial interludes were, occasionally I did wonder whether the pictures chosen had driven the story being written, rather than a story, which the author then tries to find pictures to underline with. There is a section late in the book, an American strand, which felt particularly contrived rather than organic

Nonetheless, Boyd’s hands are still safe, even if not as brilliantly so as in many of his other outings

I received this as an advance copy for review, in digital format, from the publishers via NetGalley

Sweet Caress Amazon UK
Sweet Caress Amazon USA

Jacques Loussier Trio – Vivaldi The Four Seasons

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Andre Arpino, Jacques Loussier, Jacques Loussier Trio, Music review, The Four Seasons, Vincent Charbonnier, Vivaldi

Lacking the plangency and heart thrill and squeeze of the original………and yet…….

The Jacques Loussier Trio – Jacques himself on piano, Vincent Charbonnier on bass and Andre Arpino on drums, here bring their jazz interpretation of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – two instruments to provide what an orchestra does, in terms of melody texture, tone and harmony, and with a much stronger emphasis on rhythm, with that third instrument being percussive.

Many years ago, in the brief period when I stopped listening to classical music by safely long dead composers, I came across a jazz version of The Four Seasons – no idea who by, I had mistakenly thought it must be Jacques Loussier, due to his connection with Jazz Bach – but I’ve recently come across this definitely Loussier version. And very fine it is too

I do have to say that the original orchestral piece, with the richness of the different tones brought by more instruments, and the dominance of melody and harmony which classical music has, over overt rhythm, is full of much more visceral, heart, soul, spirit grab than a jazz version is likely to be, for me. Classical pieces (well certain classical pieces, if well performed, and Four Seasons is one) seem to unlock my tear ducts, and I will listen, tears (without obvious simple, named emotion behind them) will pour down my face, and I will feel the music stretching itself as if into the fascia of my body. Not a cerebral response, not a ‘this is pleasant’ response, but a kidnapping, a taking over.

Anyway, this, I do like a lot, it is marvellously pleasant, and I nod along, very happily, tapping my feet, thinking all sorts of things. It is bright, it is skilful, musical, playful, inventive. And I am very happy for all those things. I do not want to be kidnapped and held hostage all the time. I can admit to being very fond of this CD. It is not the madness of the coup de foudre of falling in love, which Vivaldi’s original is for me.

Warmly, not madly, besottedly, taken out of my senses and transportedly, enjoyed. I do think there may be something particularly supernatural about the violin and its powers…………

Jacques Loussier Trio – Vivaldi The Four Seasons Amazon UK
Jacques Loussier Trio – Vivaldi The Four Seasons Amazon USA

Jackie Copleton – A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

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A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding, Book Review, Jackie Copleton, Japan, Nagasaki, Second World War

A Delicate and Redemptive Story of Nagasaki

Jackie Copleton, the author of A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding, was working in Nagasaki as an English language teacher in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on that city. This book has in some ways been percolating away for 20 years.

In her foreword, Copleton states her aim, with this book :

When we talk about conflict we tend to divide the warring sides into the good guys and the baddies. This book was never meant to be a story about blame or accusation. I wanted to pull something good from the ruins of the city

It was that stated intention which drew me to this, as it rather suggested a writer of emotional nuance and depth, and the following was the clincher:

The more you research a subject the more it shatters into different interpretations. We view history through the prism of who we are, what we believe, how we see ourselves and how we want to be perceived. We pick through the bones of the past until we find the narrative to suit our needs

So…..clearly Copleton is a thoughtful person with clear aims and empathy and imagination towards different stories, different viewpoints.

But is she a novelist? Resoundingly so

Yes, this book does look at the moment of impact, when the bomb fell, and there is a detailed and searing account of the blast and its horrific consequences. This chapter is stark and terrible, but it is not the big set-piece climax or story of the book

In some ways, this is a story of an ordinary family, leading ordinary lives, with ordinary secrets, lies and cupboards of skeletons. It is the terrible impact of ‘pikadon’ (brilliant light, boom – the sight and sound of that bomb) on those ordinary lives with their ordinary skeletons which the book follows, giving us a picture of Japan through the eyes of her central character. Amaterasu Takahashi, an elderly Japanese widow, living in a retirement home in America in the nineteen eighties. Amaterasu and her husband Kenzo left Nagasaki after their daughter, Yuko and her son, their grandson, Hideo, aged seven, died in the blast. Amaterasu’s story, however starts, aged 15, shortly after the end of the First World War in Nagasaki, in a very different kind of Japan.

When the book opens the elderly Amaterasu is alone, lonely, secretive, living with terrible secrets, and a feeling of guilt. She feels it was through her fault that Yuko was in the direct epicentre of the bomb’s impact, on that day. She, rather than anyone else, caused Yuko’s death. She keeps herself to herself, and since her husband’s death gets through her days with just enough alcohol to take the edge off her unbearable anguish.

The past breaks through when a middle aged Japanese man, dreadfully burned, dreadfully disfigured, unexpectedly knocks at her door and announces himself as that long dead grandson, a lucky survivor of pikadon. And his story, and the story of how in the end he found her, and the documentary evidence he brings, unravels the secrets, the skeletons, the lives.

Interspersed, at the beginning of every chapter, are excerpts from An English Dictionary of Japanese Culture, by Bates Hoffer and Nobuyaki Honna, which take a word which describes a Japanese ethical, cultural or philosophical concept which has no direct Western correlation, and picks it apart, explains it. The concepts chosen are to some extent unfolding in the succeeding chapter

Memorial, Nagasaki Peace Park, Wiki Commons

There is a kind of modesty, an elegance and restraint in Copleton’s writing, in the voice of her central character, the letters and diaries written by protagonists in this story, which rather honours and embraces a country which is now so Westernised – but, also, so strange to Westerners.

I read this as a copy for review, from the Amazon Vine programme, UK and it’s one I highly recommend. The story is one the reader needs to discover for themselves. I did guess quite a lot of what might be going on, probably because I have read some other fictional books with a Japanese setting, so putting two and two together about certain characters, I was not as a reader surprised by narrative. Which made not a jot of difference to my pleasure in the reading.

A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding Amazon UK
A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding Amazon USA – digital edition

The digital edition is available in the States, the Hardback will not be published there till December. Available as hardback and digi now in the UK