2017, the reading year. Reading Bingo, and onwards to 2018

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2017 Challenge, Bits and Bobs, Bits and Pieces, Book Bingo, Book Review, Happy New Year, Other Stuff, The Reading Bingo Challenge

2017 has been not the best of years, out in the world with the various heading-rapidly towards-disaster-and-foolishness events which certainly seem to be alive and well on both sides of the Atlantic.

It may or may not be coincidental that not only has it been a very bad year for my reviewing, but also for the memorable excellence of my reading (see next paragraph). I had a complete reviewing break for two months where I was working far too hard. I have been reading, reading, but seem unable to get my reviewing backlog down – currently just shy of 20 titles.

It has also been an unusually poor reading year in that a fair proportion of my reading did not make the ‘clear 4 star minimum. without rounding up’ for reviewing here – I only review what I am recommending. And some books were not good enough to stay with, and got abandoned, unfinished, unreviewed at all, anywhere. Punishment enough to read as far as I did, to spend further time thinking about such turkeys in order to write a review…life is far too short.

So, to that Bingo. I have tried where possible, to give preference to what is already  reviewed here – but there are titles which are still part of my backlog of what WILL be recommended reads, but are waiting to be reviewed.

There are links to all the original reviews on book titles within text, (as long as I HAVE reviewed them) not the pictures……and also, links to other blogs in places where thanks are due…….  If the chosen book is recommended by me but the review will be for future writing and posting, the link will be to that South American river site, where hopefully you can do a look inside.

More than 500  pages…..A good deal more, at 768 pages will be Mackinlay Kantor’s monumental American Civil War Pulitzer Prizewinning  Andersonville This is not available on Kindle though, and is something of a ‘forgotten classic’, winning its Pulitzer in 1956. More readily available at reasonable price Stateside, I read it as a small group ‘Buddy Read’ in my on-line book group, The Buddies each chose an American classic. I could easily have slotted this one into the next category, but as this was the only over 500 page novel I read which I can recommend………….(Other over 500s were abandoned turkeys. And I am vegetarian.)

A Forgotten Classic…..The Buddy group within the group again came up trumps (oh dear, that word has lost its original meaning, which I intended here), for our next lit-fic foray, ‘European (including UK)’ We gave one person two choices, as hers were short stories/novellas to attract more of the group to old classics (I think those of us in the Buddy might indeed ourselves be the old classics of the group !) So, not Flaubert’s most well-known novel, but the short, beautiful story of a faithful servant A Simple Heart 

A Book That Became A Movie…….there might have been several choices here, but the dark, perhaps horribly prescient, The Road seems almost too obvious a choice in the year where a dangerous and terrifyingly, elected man is escalating the despoiling of our planet

A Book Published this Year……has me staying Stateside with Jennifer Egan’s absorbing Manhattan Beach . 3 stories, interlinking, and a setting largely as America enters the Second World War, and women are moving into areas of the workforce not previously available to them.

A Book with A Number In the Title….Well I read a few, but the only one which I’m champing at the bit to recommend is one which is a scheduled post for next month, Joanna Cannon’s second book, to hit the stores on 11th Jan Three Things About Elsie There are reviews up (as positive, for the most part, as mine will be) but these are from Amazon Vine. Those of us who read and reviewed this from NetGalley are not allowed to post ours on Amazon till publication day

A Book Written by Someone Under 30…..Anne Brontë was only 28 when her second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published, and the following year, she was dead of consumption. Anne’s writing is being re-appraised, re-appreciated. She rather stands outside the Romantic Tradition of her sisters, and is being seen now in the light of being a feminist writer, a realist, someone with views which sit her beside politicised sisters. This one was my own choice for our Buddy foray into ‘Europe’ (as opposed to American), and old classics. How I finally came to read it, for the first time, will be the byline for another choice (non-fiction)

A Book With Non-Human Characters.…The weird and wonderful Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Cat’s Cradle Book was so happily brought to my attention by Jane from Beyond Eden Rock. Otherwise, this slot would have been filled by something which did not get reviewed on here. Unfortunately though, this delightful collection of folk tales told to kittens by their mothers is out of print, and I may have snaffled the last easily available, modestly priced on the internet copy. Keep your eyes peeled, habitués of second-hand shops for any chance found copies. It is lovely and features all sorts of talking animals

A Funny Book’s… place goes to a book which I so happily re-read, and is, indeed funny, but, oh so very much more than just a funny book. Gerald Durrell’s book about his childhood on Corfu My Family and Other Animals is a stunning delight for lovers of beautiful writing, of autobiography, and of close and loving observation of the natural world. This could also have won a place as a book which scares me….young Gerald loved all creatures……even including praying mantids, creatures which belong in my nightmares, mainly due to the detailed descriptions which terrified me, and which I read here as a child. Sadly, it was these which put paid to the fantasy that perhaps I could be a naturalist………

A Book by a Female Author… (sighs that this category might even be deemed to be necessary at all) but I am going to fill it with a book which is still waiting to have its 5 star, more if I could, review written. That glorious writer Rebecca Solnit, whose book Wanderlust: A History of Walking was one of the first load of reviews from my prior reviewing which I posted on here when I first started blogging. This year I read her book which probably fits this ‘by a woman’ category with nice irony and disdain Men Explain Things to Me and Other Essays

My book with a mystery….. almost turned out to be a double mystery. It is Elizabeth Kostova’s The Shadow Land I had adored her first novel The Historian, a historical/vampire story. I do not normally willingly read the vampire genre, but this was far more than an excuse for lots of gore, wooden stakes and the macabre. So even though the cover, and the setting (Romania) suggests the mystery will involve the pointy toothed ones, there are far more mysteries, and some, far deadlier and more chilling, which come along with twentieth century totalitarian politics

A book with a one-word title…….this must go to a wonderful writer on perfume, particularly natural perfumes. Mandy Aftel is a bespoke perfumer, teacher of perfume making, and, equally as important, a wonderful writer. She was in a prior life a psychotherapist, so her book is full of science, and of mystery and poetry. He description of natural perfume ingredients, and the potency of perfume, and its initial linking to the sacred, through the ages, is sheer delight. And don’t even get me started on the line drawings….Fragrant DOES have a sub-title, but I’m choosing to ignore that, as it is in tiny letters!

For my Book of Short Stories...I was very impressed with most of the stories in Jen Campbell’s The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night This is Campbell’s first foray into fiction …and a fine one it is too. She has a dark and vivid imagination, and I look forward to reading more of her imaginative writing. She may be known to those who love books about books, books about bookshops. As a bookseller in independent bookshops she has compiled a couple of books about the weird things customers say in bookshops, and also, a celebration of the world-wide quirkiness and style of independent booksellers

For my free space choice……There were so many I wanted to include here but I decided it must be Colm Toibin’s House of Names which explores the Oresteia story. I do particularly love Toibin’s explorations of myth and history. This left me feeling half here, half millenia ago. It was a hard choice, though, between this one and a couple of other books by less well established writers,; Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fires, and Sara Taylor’s second novel The Lauras were both singing a siren song. As was Richard Flanagan’s First Person, still stuck in my to be reviewed backlog

A book set on a Different Continent… yields that written by a favourite children’s author of mine, Marcus Sedgwick. Another book which seems a particularly pertinent one this year. Sedgwick has written a book for older teens set on the Mexican side of that proposed wall – so Central America. The cover of Saint Death is clearly designed to bring in YAs who like action and the macabre. It was the author (I have read many of his books) which drew me – I knew it would be a very different sort of book – and it is.

A book of Non-Fiction…. has to be Samantha Ellis’ Take Courage This is a kind of hybrid of biography, literary criticism and autobiography. The subject matter is Anne Bronte, her life and her writing, an analysis and review of how her writing was seen over the last 150 odd years, and also the influence of her writing on feminist writers. Ellis herself is one such. It was this book which made me, long, long after I should have done, pick up A Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I had fallen into the trap of not exploring her writing because of the way she had been dismissed by literary critics.

The First Book By A Favourite Author….must involve Ngaio Marsh, regarded as ‘The Empress’ of Golden Age crime. I am working my way sequentially through her canon (I think it is Book 10 which is waiting for its review before I am allowing myself to read the next. So, with a marvellous classic country house setting setting is the very first outing with wonderful Roderick Alleyn, A Man Lay Dead. Now the link is to a portmanteau review as my copy was a book containing the first 3 books, each of which gets its own review in the one post

A Book You Heard About On-Line might be another redundant category these days, given that so many of us discover books through bloggers, NetGalley, Goodreads, Amazon reviews etc. I am going to pick – because I really want to flag it up again ‘Samer’s’ The Raqqa Diaries, which I got as a digital ARC. This might also have been my ‘author under 30’ ‘Samer’ (anonymity essential, as his family are still in Syria) was part of a resistance group struggling both against the Assad Regime and against Daesh, who took Raqqa. Grim, humbling, heartbreaking and inspiring all at once

A Best Selling Book…. had me eventually surrendering to Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent which reminded me so much of the vitality and exuberance of writing to be found in Sarah Waters Victorian set writing. A similarly twisty turny delight in the Victorian period, the conventions of its literature, and the telling of a wonderful yarn. Assuredly, this was not just a book with an utterly gorgeous cover. I had feared it might only be a hyped book, and I ended up one of the many who fell under Perry’s spell

A book based on a true story…. was a marvellous crime and detective re-read, Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time published in 1951. And that I came to read it again, for possibly the 4th, but at least the 3rd time, was because its 1951 publication meant it was my choice for Karen of Kaggsy’sBookish Ramblings co-hosted The 1951 Club. Co host of this was Simon of Stuck In A Book The true story, of course, that the book is based on, is the mystery of ‘What Happened to the Princes In The Tower’ and the whole complexity of the end of the Wars of The Roses, and the Tudor Succession. Richard IIIrd, in other words, wintry discontent, glorious summer of the sun/son of York and all

A book right at the bottom of my TBR… had to be a book I kicked myself for avoiding for so very very long. The estimable Fiction Fan had recommended this to me back in 2015. I bought it, and it languished on the bedside table, hidden by newer purchases. It almost became a running joke – was i ever going to read it? It seemed a good idea to make it MY Buddy Read Choice for our ‘American classics’ And I completely fell under the spell of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral I must be honest though and say the rest of the buddies really did not like it and I think we all wondered if we had been reading the same book as each other. I remain so moved by it, and so glad I read it, finally

A Book Your Friend Loves….One of the buddies (can you tell there are a lot of plugs for this group who are wanting to recruit members….more later) strongly recommended John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies to me. And how right she was. Reminding me not a little of William Boyd’s spanning-the-history-of-the-century books, this is a beautiful, warm narrative of an Irish boy, from 1945 to 2015. Fact and fiction wonderfully woven together with ‘real’ characters occasionally drifting through the margins

A Book That Scares You….Well Fiction Fan scores tangentially here, pushing me towards Algernon Blackwood’s extremely scary The Willows – the link is to HER review, though I have also read and reviewed it on here. It would indeed have been MY scary one, except that a commenter on that review suggested I should check out Blackwood’s The Wendigo. I have to admit that the shivery chilly scale of terror did indeed get even higher. Be afraid….be very very afraid

A book that is more than 10 years old.. is going to be another marvellous Buddy read, or, in fact, another re-read, from the American book project. This was the choice of the person who recommended the Boyne, and was one we all thought terrific. Published in 1966 Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is the story of a crime which happened in 1959 and shocked America – just that, a murder which took place ‘In Cold Blood’ and seemed to be a reflection of a changing society, losing its sense of apple-pie security

The second book of a series…. is sometimes the category I fall down on, as I am not a big ‘series’ follower. Well, not this year! Once again my online group, but this time, the group as a whole introduced me to a new author, when we chose, from the 3 books offered by the co-hosts, Mick Herron’s first in his series about the Z listers of Intelligence, dark, terrifying, and very funny. So I read Slow Horses and was instantly hooked, up-ended surprised, shocked, delighted……and have gone roaring through all 4. Book 5 comes out next year – I can’t wait – but, yes, I also read the second book in the Slough House/Jackson Lamb series Dead Lions

So to a book purely on the colour of its cover – Blue..Well I feared I might have used blues up in other categories, but, actually the blue was a hard choice between several worthy contenders. I decided, in this remarkably dystopian year, to go for Jennie Melamed’s Gather the Daughters It is a horrific, beautifully written dystopia, which seems rather less ‘speculative fiction’ at this point, than one would like. It could easily have filled the ‘a book that scares you’ category, but for far less pleasant reasons. We read ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night for a kind of pleasure that we aren’t in a haunted house at this point – but, dystopias when we might be there, in some ways……….

So……..despite in some ways a disappointing reading year, due to the larger number of abandoned reads/so so, okay only reads, I’m delighted with the books on my ‘card’

And for those who might be interested in an online book club – we are a small group, choosing a book a month to do an online discussion of, which happens on a Sunday early evening. Those who can’t make the ‘live’ tend to post answers to discussion questions later. I have been very pleased with the more informal ‘join if you want’ Buddies this year, with those of us taking part reading something like a chapter a day and perhaps posting or offering a discussion point at some point during the week, and carefully avoiding any reading ahead reveals. Although UK based we currently have a Canada based member and have also had a Statesider Here is an email to contact one of the co-hosts if you want to find out more discussitbookgroup@hotmail.co.uk

And it only remains, this being my last post of 2017, to wish for all of us that our 2018s might be a year in which we see our extraordinary species embracing more of its amazing, inspiring side, treasuring our planet and our interconnectedness.

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Anne Brontë – The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

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Anne Brontë, Book Review, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Victorian Realism

The cold clear eye of the youngest Brontë: Marriage can seriously damage your health

I’m slightly shame-faced to say that until this year I had never read either of the two books written by the youngest Brontë sister, Anne, despite being an Eng Lit graduate, with a fairly sound lifetime reading of classics habit.

I had accepted, without exploring for myself, the generally expressed opinion that she was a lesser writer than her two more celebrated sisters.

And then I read Samantha Ellis’s wonderful biography Take Courage : Anne Brontë and the Art of Life. I very much admire Ellis’ writing, so the fact she was so warmly championing Anne meant I was going to rectify my ignorance of her writing. I had also been aware that she has very much been taken up by feminist readers and writers, as having a far less ‘romantic’ viewpoint, and engaging with far more realism, and, indeed, one could say political (left leaning) concerns.

Brontë sisters, by Patrick Branwell Brontë, with himself, originally between Emily and Charlotte, painted out by him

At the time, her writing, particularly The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was, on its first printing both popular and horrifyingly shocking, unmasking as it did, alcoholism, sexual abuse within marriage, adultery – and having a strong female character who takes the choice to break free of the despotism of her husband. This was Victorian upper middle class society, and marriage as commercial transaction, laid bare. Much of the filthy linen in society given a very thorough public washing.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published in 1848. It wasn’t until 1870 that the Married Womens’ Property Act gave women the right to own any property of their own – whether through the wages from their own work, or from inheritance. Before that time (and therefore at the time of this novel) marriage conferred ownership of the woman herself, and all her material assets, to her husband. Make a bad marriage, and there was little chance of escape, or to live independently. If a woman chose to leave an abusive marriage, without the right to take back control of any property which she had inherited, or to her own wages, if she could work, there was no way to support her children. Single women and widows had rights which married women had forfeited

The central character in the book, Helen Graham, makes an imprudent marriage, and has to find a way to disappear for her own safety and the moral safety of her son. More than this, Helen is strong, intelligent, and is able to make her own way as an artist, and support herself and her son through her art. In many ways, she is a kind of forerunner and beacon, in fiction, for the women Virginia Woolf was writing about and making clarion calls for in A Room of One’s Own

I found Wildfell Hall, in terms of its subject matter, marvellous, and yes, in many ways Anne’s creation seemed to speak in a far more profoundly and tellingly modern way than Emily or Charlotte’s. But – though the subject matter itself makes me completely understand why she has been rediscovered by feminists, I did find myself in agreement, still, with that judgement of her being a lesser writer than her sisters. She is far more polemical, and Helen at times is remarkably priggish, spouting page after page of extremely fine philosophical diatribe. The structure of the novel is also, perhaps, a less happy one. A large part of the book is a recounting, several years after the events of the novel, by one of the central characters in the book, Gilbert Markham.  This is done in the form of letters written by Markham to a close friend. The letters never, to me, seemed the kind of thing a man would write to another man, as there was far too much detail about upholstery, clothing, and the like. It would have been a far better decision to have told the story in the third person. Markham also assiduously copies out vast tracts of Helen’s journals in his letters to his friend. Which not only seems rather unethical, but, again, is not quite credible. Without wanting to reveal spoilers, there is also a rather incredible decision taken by the author, to keep information hidden from Gilbert Markham which leads to incidents of high dramatic misunderstanding. A simple revelation would have been what reality should have demanded.

So……….for the importance of Anne’s book, what she is writing about, and when, I absolutely admired it. She is, I think a writer of social realism, and also, despite the shock felt by some contemporaries that what she was writing about was degraded and horrible – an intensely moral one. The degradation and horror were that what she wrote about was real. She was assuredly not a romantic novelist.

Here is Anne, with Helen as her mouthpiece, talking about a disparity she regards as flawed, between the moral education of daughters and the moral education of sons:

You would have us encourage our sons to prove all things by their own experience, while our daughters must not even profit by the experience of others. Now I would have both so to benefit by the experience of others, and the precepts of a higher authority, that they should know beforehand to refuse the evil and choose the good, and require no experimental proofs to teach them the evil of transgression. I would not send a poor girl into the world, unarmed against her foes, and ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself

Although on publication the book was popular with readers, the establishment view was not so favourable, with some contemporary literary critics bemoaning the ‘coarseness’ of the writing and subject matter. For example, Charles Kingsley author of The Water Babies, criticised the book thus:

It is, taken altogether, a powerful and an interesting book. Not that it is a pleasant book to read, nor, as we fancy, has it been a pleasant book to write; still less has it been a pleasant training which could teach an author such awful facts, or give courage to write them. The fault of the book is coarseness–not merely that coarseness of subject which will be the stumbling-block of most readers, and which makes it utterly unfit to be put into the hands of girls…

As contrast, here is what Anne herself wrote, in the preface to the second edition, as a rebuttal to criticisms

When we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear. To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light, is doubtless the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers?

Anne by Charlotte

 

A powerful read, even though, in my opinion, it is not quite so satisfying purely in its literary merits.

The BBC TV production starred Tara Fitzgerald as Helen,  Rupert Graves as the handsome Byronic reprobate Arthur Huntingdon  and Toby Stephens as Gilbert Markham, the assiduous letter writer!

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall UK
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall USA

Madeleine L’Engle – The Young Unicorns

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Book Review, Children's Book Review, Madeleine L'Engle, The 1968 Club, The Young Unicorns

Read in time, for the 1968 club but bang-slap in the middle of my reviewing hiatus…..

Pressure of work had kept me away from reviewing for a good two months, and I have no idea, even now, when the reviewing backlog will get cleared, particularly as everything hots up again, work-wise, almost imminently.

Nonetheless, at the time I was keen to dig out from my shelves, and re-read, Madeleine L’Engle’s The Young Unicorns, which had been published that year

I had discovered L’Engle, primarily a children’s writer, as she would have been categorised, in the seventies. Her Newbery Medal winning book, A Wrinkle In Time, was published in 1962. This prize is awarded for ‘the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children’. The book was described as ‘a mixture of fantasy and science fiction’ Now, there are of course a lot of books written as ‘Young Adult’ these days, but this was a more unusual book at its time of writing, and the combination of mysticism, philosophy and rather horrifying, not to mention trippy vision, made this a book which was eagerly read by those who were turning on, tuning in and dropping out. ‘An evil planet where all life is enslaved by a huge pulsating brain’ could almost be a dire warning of technology to come, with the ‘brain’ one designed by us, but with capabilities far beyond those of its creators.

L’ Engle’s combination of scientific interest, rationality on the one hand (one side of the brain) and her spirituality and mysticism on the other, was one (and still is, in many many ways) which resonated very strongly with me. L’Engle, who died in 2007, was a Christian, and certainly active faith features strongly, with the Church seen as a powerful potential force for unity. L’Engle’s strong interest in science, and her Episcopalian faith meant that the right leaning fundamentalists within Christianity disapproved strongly of her writing, which was frequently banned from Christian bookstores. Her belief that

 “All will be redeemed in God’s fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones.”

would never have found (and perhaps will never find) acceptance by those who like to believe that some are more equal than others

So…..after a long introduction to L’Engle, whom I have been inspired to further read, or re-read, thanks to the initial push by the 1968 Club, what about this 1968 book?

L’Engle effectively wrote a couple of series of books, which do touch each other, through the meeting or cross-appearance of characters in one or other series. One series primarily concerns the artistic and scientific Austin family, the ‘Chronos books’ The Austin’s are the main players in this book. The other series of books feature the Murry and O Keefe families, the ‘Kairos books’ A Wrinkle In Time belongs to this series

The Young Unicorns is set in New York, at its time of writing.  Dr Austin is a scientist working on a laser micro-ray, which has huge potential for use in healing. However, there are others who become more interested in how the micro-ray might be used as a means of social control, a way of offering some manipulation of the pleasure and reward centres of the brain. Very Brave New World, but without the need for medication to be taken.

Dr Austin is an extremely kindly, moral man, but has a certain naiveté about him. The whole family is strongly musical, and have taken a gifted young violinist, Emily, into their home, while her scientist father, a colleague of Austin’s, is working abroad. There is a challenge for Emily and the Austins. Emily was blinded during what appeared to be a robbery at her home. The robbery appeared linked to the work Austin and others were engaged on.

In the bath Emily was singing. Vicky had learned that Emily did two kinds of singing: when she was happy she invented her own melodies; when she was angry or upset she picked more formal themes from the composers she was studying. Bach always indicated deep and serious thinking, coming to terms with some kind of problem. Chopin and Schumann were indications of self-pity, but were seldom heard. A purely intellectual problem, like trouble with her studies or memorizing from the unwieldy Braille manuscripts was apt to be approached with Beethoven or, by contrast, Scarlatti

Also at large in New York are a group of bad lads, the Alphabat Gang. Worryingly, this group appear to be more organised and manipulated than would be expected. Their numbers are growing. Even more worrying, there appears to be something rotten in the state of the Christian community which centres on New York’s cathedral. Some struggle for power is going on, and forces of light and darkness link both the Church itself and the Institute which Dr Austin works for.

And then, a mysterious genie appears, offering to grant one’s wishes, when the Young Austins, mooching around in an antique shop, rub an old Aladdin’s lamp………But this is not, in any way, a book about ‘magic’ – so what is going on?

This is a crime and mystery thriller, a good and thoughtful one. In many ways, her thoughtful depth and intelligent expectations of and for her young readers, (and older ones!) reminds me of Philip Pullman

Unfortunately, this book only seems to be available now in the UK as a collectable, second hand – without even market place copies at reasonable price. But, for those of you who pleasurably rifle through the shelves of second hand bookshops and charity shops, I really encourage you to snaffle up this, or any other L’Engle

Or head over Stateside, where that large Amazonian store has several market place copies, reasonably priced…..though shipping costs might render this advice stupid

Meanwhile…..Searching for some Scarlatti, finding the heavenly Hewitt, has sent me a scurrying for her two Scarlatti albums. Eagerly awaiting…expect musical reviews. The discs are not available as MP3s, so this YouTube offers the best chance.

The Young Unicorns Amazon USA

Rory Clements – Corpus

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Book Review, Corpus, Espionage, Rory Clements, Second World War, Spy story

Politics, espionage, murder mystery thriller: 1936, Fascism, Communism and a Royal Abdication

Rory Clements’ Corpus, the start of a new series, I assume, nods towards his well-established John Shakespeare, Tudor set spy thriller series. This is because, though set in that turbulent time of the mid-30’s where totalitarian politics are on the rise, and the only possible response to fascism appears to lead to war, his central character here is an academic, an historian, with a special interest in the politics of espionage in Elizabeth’s court, Robert Cecil and Walsingham.

Tom Wilde is an attractive hero, drawn unwillingly into mystery. An American, with strong links to the UK, he has sadness in his life, as a man whose beloved wife and child died in a car accident. He is no bed-hopping Lothario, though he is aware of feeling a strong attraction for Lydia, a fiercely intelligent literary graduate, poet and publisher, with strong anti-fascist and socialist views

Spanish Civil War – Women from POUM demonstrating against Fascism

It is 1936. No one of intelligence can be unaware that there are choices to be made. Spain is engaged in its own fight against Fascism. There are those engaged in furthering the influence of Fascism, and there are those engaged in countering that, and secrecies, and plots, are all around.

Meanwhile, in England, still a hushed up scandal, and possible constitutional crisis is looming. Edward VIIIth is seriously enamoured of an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson. There are those who would see him go – as much for his politics as for anything to do with the constitutional crisis between the King’s position as nominal head of the Church of England, and his desire to marry a divorcee. Edward’s politics were regarded suspiciously. It was thought that he would be more likely to interfere politically, rather than maintain the hands off stance of constitutional monarchy. He was also regarded in Germany as being sympathetic towards the Nazi cause, and so there were those abroad who felt Britain would be a better friend of the Reich if King Edward remained than if he abdicated. Stanley Baldwin, it was known, was implacably opposed to Edward marrying Mrs Simpson, and was inching abdication forward as the only possible solution

Chamberlain, Baldwin and Churchill

When a friend of Lydia’s dies in mysterious circumstances, back in the fiction world of this strongly ‘real world set’ book,  Wilde is drawn into trying to help her find out what has happened – and a real twisty, turny, wheels within wheels, where does anyone’s real allegiance lie tale begins to play out.

This scores, both in page turning plot, and in interesting history.

My draw back from 5 star is the result of the action man finale, where our motorcycling academic hero physically tangles with the bad guys he has been heading towards unmasking. Some might enjoy the derring do, but I generally find that action man hero stuff gets pretty unconvincing, given the real fragility of blood, flesh and bone, even given the fact that adrenaline rushes can numb awareness of horrid injuries

I’m certainly interested in going further with Wilde, and what looks like an intelligent series, and hope for tone down of the more Bondian, blockbuster film stuff, remarkably unreal as it pretty well always is

Corpus UK
Corpus USA

Christmas wishes for all of us……….

Tags

Christmas, Christmas Days, Christmas greetings

Wishing us all  good time spent with those we love, and those who love us. (and that the ones we love are the ones who  also love us)

May you find your Christmas time be everything you might wish – as far as reality allows (!) and, even if it isn’t, let us all wish for the grace, humour and compassion for ourselves and those in our lives to help all of us appreciate the moments

George Saunders – Lincoln in the Bardo

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American Civil War, Book Review, George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

“We must try to see one another in this way………..As suffering, limited beings”

George Saunder’s 2017 Booker Prizewinning novel ‘Lincoln In The Bardo’ was a read at turns engaging and frustrating. It certainly fits current Booker trends for having something novel and arresting going on stylistically, and for exploring its subject matter in an unusual way.

The central premise sets the individual pain of the loss of a beloved child for a parent, one who occupies a pivotal place in history, against the pain of many, following the carnage of war. The parent is President Abraham Lincoln, whose beloved son Willie died suddenly of typhoid fever, which fatally raged through him whilst his parents were hosting a glittering reception. Such receptions, then as now, were also crucial political events, and as the American Civil War was current, the state of the nation was a serious one.

Saunder’s novel was inspired by a piteous event, piteous image. Willie’s body was interred in a crypt in Oak Hill Cemetery. Accounts and sources at the time record the fact that Abraham Lincoln visited the crypt twice in the middle of the night, cradling the body of his dead son in his arms

Lincoln with his youngest son, Tad

‘The Bardo’ is a between state, in Tibetan Buddhism, potentially this might be a state of healing, certainly one moving towards some kind of resolution. Here, the between is death, and whatever is to come, after. This might translate as the Christian tradition of Purgatory.

Trap. Horrible trap. At one’s birth it is sprung. Some last day must arrive. When you will need to get out of this body. Bad enough. Then we bring a baby here. The terms of the trap are compounded. That baby almost must depart. All pleasures should be tainted by that knowledge. But hopeful dear us, we forget

Lord, what is this? All of this walking about, trying, smiling, bowing, joking? This sitting-down-at-table, pressing-of-shirts, tying-of-ties, shining-of-shoes, planning-of-trips, singing-of-songs-in-the-bath?

Metaphorically, then, the nation itself could also be seen in a ‘between’ –  the conflict of the war itself, which would lead to something else, in the end

The structure of the book is initially complex, though in fact, once the reader accepts it, it becomes clear

Various chapters cite published sources from the time, or from later academic analysis of political events. I don’t know whether all of these are true, because certainly on the digital version, all the citings are within the text, and there is no afterword or bibliographical listing. Some of these texts certainly are real, as I searched for book titles

The bulk of the book is made up of a collection of voices from that Bardo, between state of death, where the dead are still attached to the material plane, and have not lost their desire to return to the land of the living. Spirits – many, inhabit the areas around their own graves, and constantly return to longings for their former lives. Some of the spirits resolve and move on. The spirits dialogue with each other, and there are 3 major voices, representing different times in America’s history.

At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end, the losses we must experience on the way to that end

It is the shocking, hopeful, strangeness of the living father embracing the body of the dead son which has sent shockwaves through the as yet, unresolved, unaccepting community of dead spirits.

This all offers the chance for the author to explore, in poetic, sometimes very funny, sometimes heart-breaking way, class, race, gender divisions in America. The spirits of the unaccepting dead continue their own individual personalities, unique strengths, unique weaknesses, so there are a crowd of dissenting voices bickering, battling to be heard.

First reading of the Proclamation of Emancipation by Francis B. Carpenter

This is indeed a brave piece of writing, one in which several issues are being explored, but it is not a completely satisfying one, to me. Firstly, I did feel it outstayed its welcome somewhat. To paraphrase the ‘too many notes’ quip for Peter Shaeffer’s Amadeus, ‘too many words’

And, more seriously, there is a kind of ‘wrap’ explaining Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which seems a little too convenient, a little too neatly imaginative.

But……..despite flaws, a piece of writing which lingers

Lincoln in the Bardo UK
Lincoln in the Bardo USA

 

Algernon Blackwood – The Wendigo

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Algernon Blackwood, Book Review, Ghost story, The Wendigo

“Savage and formidable Potencies…..instinctively hostile to humanity”

I was steered towards Algernon Blackwood’s The Wendigo by someone who read my admiring review of The Willows, another creepy, wonderfully written novella or long short story by Blackwood.

And I must say that I found The Wendigo an even more unsettling read, though also showing Blackwood’s particular interest and strength – the wild, wild, natural world, far from civilisation, and how that ancient world might be at best, indifferent to the puny biped who so often despoils and abuses it, but, sometimes, unleashes a power which might be felt as malevolent towards us

I suspect one reason that The Wendigo worked even more powerfully on me, especially as a long, chilly dark nights winter read, is its own dark, chilly, Northern wintry setting

A small group of moose hunters set forth in Northern Canada. There are a couple of friends, rational men, one a doctor, one a younger Scottish man, more imaginative perhaps, a divinity student. They are accompanied by two guides, also friends of each other, one of whom, a French Canadian, is prone to an occasional dark melancholy. They also have a cook, probably Algonquian, North American/Canadian Indian

Algoquian folklore recounts the presence of a much feared, malevolent spirit, The Wendigo, which inhabits the dark forests.

Rituals of the Sleepless Dead – Dark Art by Dehn Sora

Blackwood’s story explores this. There is, of course, that tension between those who dwell in cities, more or less free from daily exposure to the great wild, and those who are more used to, and both more respectful, and perhaps more fearful, of its power.

Like The Willows, the trajectory of the story begins with a love and an appreciation of the wild, a delight in being far from cities, healthfully experiencing the majesty and awe of nature. And begins, bit by bit, to sow seeds of doubt and terror in the minds, in the imaginings of the characters in the story. Not to mention in the minds and imaginings of the reader.

The forest pressed around them with its encircling wall; the nearer tree stems gleamed like bronze in the firelight; beyond that-blackness, and so far as he could tell, a silence of death. Just behind them a passing puff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at it, then laid it softly down again without disturbing the rest of the covey. It seemed as if a million invisible causes had combined just to produce that single visible effect. Other life pulsed about them-and was gone.

It may be a while before I walk in forests again, unless the sun is brightly, brightly shining

The Wendigo Amazon UK
The Wendigo Amazon USA

Sylvia Townsend Warner – The Cats’ Cradle Book

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Book Review, Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Cat's Cradle Book

“If you speak Cat at all there is no reason why you should not speak it fluently. It is simply a matter of application”

The sparky, weird (sometimes a little Shirley Jackson-ish) Sylvia Townsend Warner has here written a rather wonderful book of ‘fairy tales’ from a particular perspective

The narrator, or perhaps we should say, the editor, comes by chance on an intriguing house in the English Countryside, It is

a seventeenth century house with a long façade and a reed-thatch roof. It gave an impression of slenderness, of being worn smooth and thin like an old spoon

The house and gardens contain perhaps 19, perhaps 27 cats and kittens. And the tenant of the house, and perhaps amanuensis and companion of the cats, is an unusually handsome young man (in the eyes of the narrator)

We cut a great deal of asparagus, and carried it into the kitchen. While I trimmed it and tied it in bunches he prepared nineteen fish dinners, and stood in the yard calling:

“The cats, the cats! The little cats!”

Besides the asparagus there was some cold pigeon pie and a plateful of sugar biscuits. And there was a bottle of vin d’Anjou, Several cats sat in the dining room, some on chairs, some on the window-sill, some on the large rosewood table. When, with the sugar biscuits, coffee and brandy were served, one of these, a massive marmalade cat, rose up and began to sip delicately from the wide glass

And perhaps we should draw a discreet veil over the swiftly erotic connection between this handsome young man and the narrator or editor of The Cat’s Cradle Book. What is really important is the speaking, and understanding of Cat.

The young man is fluent both in speaking and understanding – and, in fact, the love of his life was a remarkable Siamese cat he met whilst employed in Turkey, in the diplomatic service. Haru, the cat was a consummate storyteller, and like Sheherezade, beguiled with her stories. William, the young man, quickly began to study these, and other stories and which he realised were savage and instructive variants of the various myth and fairy stories which are so commonly told to children across the globe. It quickly becomes clear the original of ‘our’ fairy stories were tales told by generations of mother cats to their kittens.

And the stories are a little odd – for example, The Fox-Pope :

A fox who had been reading the Lives of the Saints was so delighted with the style of the book that he decided to become a saint himself. It seemed to him that he would be happiest as a hermit; so he retired to the Transylvanian Alps, taking with him a great bundle of lettuces and a cold chicken to eat on Sundays and saints’ days

These are not just whimsical and fey though. Townsend as a writer is far closer to Grimm (or Jackson) than she is to pretty Perrault. So we have crows feasting on the eyes of corpses, and our almost Fox-Pope resisting the nymph like temptation of a female rabbit whilst eating her litter ‘as solitude is essential to hermits’

                          Aoshima, Japan’s Cat Island

What we have here, then, is a collection of some of these cat’s cradle stories. But, before we can begin to enjoy them, it is only fair to warn the ailurophiles who are the ones most likely to enjoy these strange and literary tales, that though the narrator clearly loves cats, since she has learned to understand the language, though she only speaks it tolerably well, there is quite a lot of heartache to go through, as there is a high count of loved cats who are passed into cat afterlife. This is not due to human savagery, merely time, and the length of a life

This is a delightful collection – however, I feel both mean and heartless in championing it. The book is out of print, no digital version exists, and I may have snaffled the last inexpensive second hand copy, advertised on Abebooks, after a fellow blogger praised this collection, following a chance find in a second hand shop. The Cat’s Cradle Book was originally published in 1960 by Chatto and Windus.

We can only all hope that someone decides to reissue more of Townsend Warner’s books, or, perhaps, a wonderful epublisher of ‘forgotten’ minor (but wonderful) uniquely resonating voices from earlier in the twentieth (like Open Road Media) brings these back.

I note that Townsend Warner seems to be appearing and re-appearing on a lot of literary blogs whose authors are particularly active in championing unjustly vanished out of consciousness and print, writers, particularly those who were at one point so well served by Virago

And I must of course make obeisance to Jane from Beyond Eden Rock. She is one of the bloggers buzzing about Sylvia Townsend Warner and is indeed that blogger who found a copy of this, in a second hand shop. I did not trust time, and chance, and went screamingly in search on the Internet. You can read Jane’s alluring (or should I say ailuring) (!) review here

Raymond Postgate – Verdict of Twelve

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Book Review, British Library Crime Classics, Courtroom Drama, Martin Edwards, Raymond Postgate, Verdict of Twelve

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary their social existence determines their consciousness” Marx

Raymond Postgate’s Verdict of Twelve is a fascinating and absorbing variant of the crime novel.

Published in 1940, and with the concerns of the times embedded – anti-Semitism within society, an entrenched class system, the effects of culture, economics, politics upon the lives and outlooks of individuals – this is courtroom drama

A crime, one which will lead to the death penalty if the accused is found guilty, has been committed.

The reader is not directly introduced to the crime itself, initially. Rather, we meet the jury. And are given insights into the backgrounds of each of them, which allows Postgate, a pacifist, socialist, journalist, and a founding member of the British Communist Party, to present differing internal narratives, to show across class and gender, how the lives of individuals have been shaped by personal events, but also, far wider, by politics, culture, and the structure of capitalist society.

Once any group, no matter what, is separated by a general suspicion or merely a general belief from the rest of society, it is by that mere fact made different, and develops at once marked characteristics of its own

So this becomes a very interesting and well written crime novel. Whilst a lot of the Golden Age writers of the 30s were writing about crime committed by, and within, the privileged classes, Postgate is doing something very different. This is not just an entertainment (though it is a very well structured and entertaining read in the genre) It is educative.

After meeting the jurors, the case itself (a complex one, though the list of suspects is small, and the reader might, from their own sympathies, have clear ideas of who-dunnit not to mention why-dunnit.

Having met the jurors, and received a view which shows us that subjective judgements will play a very large part in the ‘Guilty/Not Guilty’ decision, judgements moulded by character, which is moulded by external factors as much as internal factors, we might be also being drawn into what our own decisions might be, as to the innocence or guilt of the person on trial.

Like most men of past middle-age he habitually faintly disliked or distrusted handsome men, especially dark handsome men, If there was any excuse he would classify them as shiny or foreign looking

The book ends with a wonderful rug-pull, to topple the reader.

I received this as a well-done digital ARC. It is part of the British Library Crime Classics series, a marvellous treasure trove for those preferring less detailed spatter of blood, gore and other bodily fluids which much modern crime writing seems to dwell on, somewhat gratuitously.

Series editor Martin Edwards provides an interesting Introduction, which I read, as is my wont, after reading the book. And was pleasantly surprised to discover that it had contained no spoilers. Instead, it was an account of Postgate himself, in the context of his own life and placing this book within the genre of other crime writing.

And once again, I’m indebted to FictionFan for bringing this to my attention, after I read her excellent review, back when the leaves were still turning gold upon the trees, autumn in full glory, and the need for thermals not even given houseroom!

Verdict of Twelve Amazon UK
Verdict of Twelve Amazon USA

Algernon Blackwood – The Willows

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Algernon Blackwood, Book Review, Ghost story, The Willows

Two Men In A Boat

Well to be pedantic, a canoe. It may start out jolly, but for sure it’s far from light-hearted

I read a whole slew of books around the witching end of October, but never got round to reviewing. As the nights are still long and dark, this chilling, genuinely creepy long short story or short novella by Algernon Blackwood should still make a reader shiver, starting nervously as winter winds rustle the branches against the windows

This story opens cheerfully enough. A couple of friends, boating enthusiasts, embark on a canoe trip down the Danube, and all in blissful, balmy weather

Starting out, hugely appreciative of their friendship, the delight in healthy exercise in the open air, the two friends absolutely appreciate the solitude and connection with the natural world which takes so many of us out into walking, running, swimming, or climbing ‘in nature’ What happy endorphins we feel, rushing through us :

Racing along at twelve kilometres an hour soon took us well into Hungary, and the muddy waters – sure sign of flood – sent us aground on many a shingle bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpool…and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed…We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in less than half an hour there was neither boat not fishing-hut nor red roof, nor any single sign of human civilisation within sight

Who has NOT delighted in feeling they are alone, or perhaps with a similarly adventurous companion, out in ‘the natural world’, feeling alive and unconstrained by cities, rules, regulations, civilisations?

And who has not, perhaps, had a sense that a world without (seemingly) other humans, might not be an alien one, perhaps, if not indifferent to us, then having a darker intent

I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind, and, one and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange distress. But the willows especially; forever they went on chattering and talking amongst themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out, sometimes sighing- but what it was they made so much to do about belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited. And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from another plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all discussing a mystery known only to themselves

Algernon Blackwood is utterly brilliant at the inch by inch turning up of terror and horror. There is nothing overdone here, nor is too much debunked by explanation. Instead, he taps into something quite animal and primeval. We might be able to laugh off ancient fear and awe of the wild, safe within crowded cities, but it lurks, oh how it lurks, for anyone with a modicum of imagination.

 Wiki Commons – Is There Anybody There…There..There?

And I must confess, for some days after reading this magnificent tale I felt a little uneasy, even walking beneath the tame trees in my local park. Might they, just, be plotting…….

And….I was alerted to this excellent ghost, ghouls and things that go bump in the night – even on a summer’s day, gem, by Fiction Fan, and read it as All Hallow’s Eve harrowed. Here is the link to her enticing review

The Willows Amazon UK
The Willows Amazon USA