Dennis Glover – The Last Man In Europe

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Book Review, Books about Books, Dennis Glover, George Orwell, The Last Man In Europe

As clearly, accessibly and authentically written as the subject himself would have insisted on

The title of Dennis Glover’s faction about George Orwell and his writing, was a possible work-in-progress title for Orwell’s last novel, the extraordinarily reverberating Nineteen Eighty Four

Australian author Glover has very clearly penned an absolute labour of love here, which though drawing strongly from Orwell’s writing and from various biographical and historical writings of his times, is crafted as a novel, and in language which tries for the clarity and immediacy of Orwell’s own writing.

Eric Blair the man was someone of great complexity. I confess he was very much a hero of my youth, and not only the novels, but the much cherished 4 volume Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, published by Penguin still maintain their battered, thumbed presence on my bookshelves

Glover’s book starts really with the writing of Keep The Aspidistra Flying, published in 1936. Central character Gordon Comstock, a shabby, high minded unsuccessful writer, castigates and vilifies the bourgeoisie, and exists on the edges of genteel penury, whilst working in a bookshop and seeking to find a way to bed his girl, Rosemary, when neither of them have the money to find privacy to do so, in a world of sharp eyed landladies living on the premises.

He started walking. Bleakness. Why did he have to be good at bleakness? Obviously, to represent failure, bleakness was inevitable. But how many writers had become successful by depressing everyone? Such writers were usually famous after they were dead….You didn’t buy books in order to feel gloomy, did you? For 10/6 you wanted a little happiness and pleasure…..Bleakness, it occurred to him, meant he would never be able to afford to marry. He picked up a piece of brick and threw it over the embankment at the water, but it landed in the mud

Orwell himself drew heavily on his own experiences with this one, a reflection of the challenges between being a high minded writer and a successful one. Not to say the challenges of getting published in the first place.

Orwell moved with ease – well, the results moved with ease, however hard the writing itself may have been in the crafting – between fiction, whether mined from his own experiences or from the lives of the times, and from his investigations into the reality of what life was like, particularly for those on the margins of society, or at least, deprived from present power which might shape society. His writing on the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia, which is also covered here, on the life of the poor, The Road to Wigan pier and Down and Out in Paris and London are also explored.

Glover beautifully delineates Blair the man, Orwell the writer and avoids slipping into hagiography.

I found myself moved and excited by Glover’s fictional imaginings, – how particular ideas, phrases, events might have made their way into his two most bleak and warning fictions – Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four – for example, the horrific rat episode in his last book, juxtaposed with reality on Jura, in a damp, decaying, isolated abandoned farmhouse, where he had retreated to in order to write and edit his last novel. At this time, Orwell was in severely failing health, with tuberculosis. His specialist had forbidden writing, through the exertion any activity was placing on his lungs, and he had also had several excruciating sounding procedures carried out to try and manage the condition, before then being treated with a new medicine, Streptomycin, which was also not without horrific side effects at the dosage required.

He realised with a shudder that the future wasn’t something to look forward to, but something to be frightened of. Yes, it was coming alright

I found this section of Glover’s book almost unbearable and heartbreaking, even though they were leavened by the satisfaction found in the crafting of the writing itself, by the dying man

For the first time, he was no longer certain he would live to see the world rebuilt. And even if it was rebuilt, maybe it would all happen again, people’s memories being so short

I recommend this most warmly to Orwell’s admirer’s – but also, to those for whom the subject himself may not be so well known. It stands on its merits as a very well crafted, thought provoking novel

This was a wonderful choice by my on-line bookclub so well done to the pickers of the titles and to those of us who voted for this one (including me!)

The Last Man In Europe UK
The Last Man In Europe USA

Lucy Mangan – Bookworm : A Memoir of Childhood Reading

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Book Review, Books about Books, Bookworm, Children's Books, Humour, Lucy Mangan

Lucy Mangan leads readers through a long distance reading journey with map, compass and excellent orienteering skills

Oh heavens, I didn’t want to get to Journey’s End, I really didn’t. This is an utterly delicious romp up hill and down dale through a childhood’s (Lucy’s) adventures between the covers of books.

Now Lucy was born in the 70s. She is not of my generation, so some of her childhood reads were certainly books I had never heard of, never mind read, but I just didn’t care, and chomped up, with equal delight, travels through books known and unknown. She also details experiences (as an adult I assume) with the whole history of childhood reading, indeed the production, the when and the why, of books written for children, whether, as in the high Victorian era, to morally educate and save young souls from temptation, or, – revolutionary, to entertain, to open up worlds, to surrender to with blazing delight.

IF you are a lifelong reader, IF you fell upon being read to with feverish delight and anticipation, but BURNED to take control of this for yourself, IF you still half regret the loss of that falling-in-love with reading, a kind of entrance into Paradise, DO NOT WAIT A MOMENT LONGER – you must have this book, you must read it, like you must draw breath.

This is an utterly joyous journey through the literature of childhood, from the earliest days of putting strange shaped squiggles together and suddenly grasping that c a t (for example) meant something – well, I guess that moment is equal to the moment serious greybeards first began to decode hieroglyphs.

Magic, that’s what

But Mangan is not only a wonderful chronicler of literature for children (the academic analysis) she is brilliantly right there within the experience of the exposure at the time of a child’s reading. She writes with as much joy and gusto as she reads

Pointless to describe the waystations on her journey, but this book is as much to be filed in Humour (she is one gloriously witty woman) as it is in Biography or factual tome about the history of children’s literature

Rarely has a book simultaneously made me laugh out loud so much whilst also educating me

Suffice it to say, Mangan had me, firmly following her guided tour, from this, early comment

Was your first crush on Dickon instead of Johnny Depp? Do you still get the urge to tap the back of a wardrobe if you find yourself alone in a strange bedroom

To which I could only shout YES! YES! Even if Johnny Depp was not yet a crushable entity when I first ‘crushed’ Dickon

Photograph by Romain Veillon from his book Ask the Dust

I was delighted to be offered this as a review copy as a digital ARC, and, have discovered to my delight that Mangan has written other books. WHICH I SHALL BE BUYING.

My only cavil (and I don’t know whether this was purely ‘digital ARC challenge’ or not) is that the author’s delightful habit of footnote and footnote within footnote asides does not work well in the digital format. It would work perfectly on a printed page, where the visual signs of long footnotes can happily spill over several pages without reader confusion.

Bookworm UK
Bookworm USA

Paraic O’Donnell – The Maker of Swans

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'Magic Realism', Books about Books, Irish writer, Paraic O’Donnell, The Maker of Swans

Of roses, swans and the ordering of fine things in great rooms……….

Paraic O’Donnell’s strange, seductive, immersive Gothic literary creation had me pretty well hooked from the off.

Set in a time which is not immediately clear, it has an eerie, crumbling quality which feels almost Gothic Victorian – except that the dramatic opening involves the arrival of cars to the crumbling mansion which is the main setting. However, at a later point in the novel, where some back story of one of the central characters will be revealed, the mode of personal transport appears to be horses, with the theft of ‘a good horse from a coaching inn’ . As some of what is going on in the book is tied in with a secret society, mysterious powers, and some indication that those connected with the society seem to age more slowly than the rest of us, it’s perfectly possible some kind of Rip Van Winkle effect is happening………………

This is a difficult book to categorise in some ways. It inhabits some kind of nether world which is not exactly magic realism, not at all faery, somewhat fantastical, whilst at the same time much involved with reality, and, even more so with the power, mystery and magic of artistic creation itself. Particularly writing. It’s also a mystery, a thriller. And beautifully written.

Millais – The Lady Of Shallott 1854

Where Paraic O’Donnell has particularly scored is in his creation of character and relationship. Clara is an unusual young girl, an astonishingly gifted artist, and someone with an imagination of great intensity. The true potency of that imagination and artistry will become clear as the story progresses.

 ‘What art must do is attempt, as nature has, to assemble the tissues of beauty for itself. It must construct its own rose from the raw air, endow it with its colour, its small weight, its tender volutes – even its scent. Art must set this thing before us, must assert its reality in the void of our disbelief. It must make it live’

Clara strains against the impulse to yawn, She is thankful that she has never been made to go to school. It is this sort of thing, she supposes, that children must endure in classrooms all the time 

Clara is also mute, and in some ways self-sufficient. She is not emotionally withdrawn, though, and her strongest connection is Eustace, who is a kind of minder, retainer, butler, major domo, possessed of both brains and muscle, and employed by the owner of the crumbling mansion, Crowe. Crowe is dissolute and louche, a genius of a writer, though exactly what he is writing is again, something to discover. He might almost be the writer of everything which ever was. Crowe, Eustace and Clara exist in some kind of equable state. Unfortunately this is shattered at the start of the novel. Definitely the worse for drink, and in a squabble over his latest woman, Crowe kills a would be rival, unleashing the forces of retribution. Those forces will be implemented by shadowy members of the strange secret order Crowe belongs to. Eustace, who is the central character, the central point of view, for most of the novel, is the one who will try to salvage things, to prevent the un-spelt out punishment which Crowe must suffer, as the murder has broken an immutable law of the strange society. Eustace is deeply loyal, there is some strange history to be discovered between him and Crowe, but most of all, he wishes to protect Clara, the mysterious child, and keep her from harm.

Altered Reality Royal Photographic Society Ribbon. Photographer Michael Maguire: Morning Mist

The agents of harm are also a little strange. Chastern is a dying academic, deeply envious of Crowe’s creativity, deeply disdaining his crudity and indulgence in fleshly pursuits. Chastern has his own ‘minder, major-domo, retainer and all the rest, – a sinister, watchful, highly intelligent, dangerous and deadly one.

There are definitely god-games being played, and things get remarkably dark and messy

O’ Donnell creates his immersive story wonderfully well. The book is not presented in linear fashion, there is a lot of cutting back and forth, in time and place, but for the most part this is managed really well, and I enjoyed the gradual unpicking of the past as the story progressed insistently towards ‘what happens next’ page turning suspense

I must confess to a sense of disappointment in the ending of the book, the two final confrontations. The games played with the reader (well, this one) the hints and allusions had been most enjoyable and atmospheric, but I fell out of complete surrender at the end

Nonetheless, a very impressive first novel. If you were intrigued by, for example, The Night Circus, or Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, for both quality of writing and the compulsive, authentic strangeness of the created world, I think this will appeal. Like those two novels, it is much more literary than fantasy fiction.

I must also comment on the delectable cover image, which drew my attention to the book. It is both beautiful, and, having read the book, is in keeping with major themes; far more than ‘the title is swans, a picture of swans’ . The artist is Sinem Erkas

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

The Maker of Swans Amazon UK
The Maker of Swans Amazon USA

Tim Parks – Where I’m Reading From: The Changing World of Books

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Book Review, Books about Books, Literary criticism, Publishing, Tim Parks, Where I'm Reading From: The Changing World of Books, Writing

A selection of walks in literary landscapes – bring your compass

Having been totally gathered up and engaged by Tim Parks wonderful The Novel: A Survival Skill, which re-examines an aspect of literary criticism which became heavily frowned on, in academic circles ‘The Biographical Fallacy’, I was keen to proceed further with Parks’ reflections on literature, its practice, its audience, and the community who consume it.

The more recently published ‘The Novel’ takes the central idea of a relationship between the writer, their family dynamics and the kind of characters, relationships and unconscious psychological beliefs the writer and their works will inhabit, The Novel explores this in depth, looking at a body of work by four authors – Dickens, Hardy, Joyce, Lawrence – and assessing them through a systemic psychology lens. Parks is also open enough to explore his own writing through this lens

This earlier book contains shorter essays, some little more than a page or so of reflections, on various other topics, though the systemic psychology approach is one of the topics under discussion, and in some ways, I found the overarching explanation of this further clarified my reading of that more detailed book on this topic :

It’s a central tenet of systemic psychology that each personality develops in the force field of a community of origin, usually a family, seeking his or her own position in a pre-existing group, or ‘system’, most likely made up of mother, father, brothers and sisters, then aunts, uncles, grandparents and so on. The leading Italian psychologist, Valeria Ugazio further suggests that this family ‘system’ also has ‘semantic content’; that is, as conversations in the family establish criteria for praise and criticism of family members and non-members, one particular theme or issue will dominate

Where all this proved an exciting idea for me as a passionate reader of literature, is that of course the playing out of a particular theme in family dynamics can also explain the authors and their writing that we ‘gel’ with, the voices which resonate with authenticity for us (assuming of course that the writer has some mastery of the tools of their trade) Readers themselves come from family systems with semantic content!

In “Where I’m Reading From” Pears looks at other considerations around writing. He is particularly interesting in examining how the increased globalisation and world-wide marketing of books, from the off, is leading to a flat-lining, and uniformity of writing and subject matter. Authors, agents, publishers in search of the greatest sales will search (consciously or unconsciously) for what is going to easily translate globally. Writing, in any language, which relies on nuance and local, regional variation will be far less easy to translate with retention of the rhythms and subtlety of the original language than writing which is less subtle and more direct.

What seems doomed to disappear, or at least to risk neglect, is the kind of work that revels in the subtle nuances of its own language and literary culture, the sort of writing that can savage or celebrate the way this or that linguistic group really lives

Obviously there will always be anomalies to disprove any trend (the 2015 Booker prizewinner might be cited)

Pears has lived in Italy since 1981, and is also a translator and teaches translating, so illustrates some of these ideas by reference to the kind of writing which is more, or less, likely to be attractive ‘world-wide’. There is a tendency for books which are deemed to be able to ‘go global’ to have foreign rights and translations already on the table by the time the book is published in its original language. And he is persuasive about the way this influences writers.

There is a tendency (and I know as a reader I also look for it) – to find what is ‘universal’ in a book, a kind of recognition of global common humanity, across place and time. Pears argues around this consideration, and others, debating concepts which we may not have thought about :

what if the quality of some fine works of art lies exactly in their relationship with the local and the contemporary, with the life that it has been given to them to experience here and now?

All this reminded me of those crude ‘marketing ideas’ which had various well known authors attempting different takes on Jane Austen’s well-loved books – which, after all, are about much more than story. Austen famously focused on her ‘little bit of ivory, two inches wide’ and rooted her work in her time, her place. Pears made me think about how translation must always be challenging, as semantic style will have nuances for native speakers of any language which cannot adequately be conveyed :

Style, then, involves a meeting between arrangements inside the prose and expectations outside it. You can’t have a strong style without a community of readers able to recognise and appreciate its departures from the common usages they know

He is pretty scathing about the whole modern writing ‘industry’ and examines the tensions which are inevitable between the writer’s need to make a living (which they might wish to do from their creative craft) and what happens when the whole focus, and the sense of ‘self-worth’ for the writer IS geared to getting published, getting sales, getting world-wide rights. Who is the most successful writer – is it the blockbuster author with film rights, is it someone who has hit the pulse of the whatever-is-on-trend or is it the writer with a drawer full of rejections, but nevertheless working slowly, refining their particular unique voice, improving their craft. And then of course, there is the dreaded ‘writer’s block’ :

One of the problems of seeing creative writing as a career is that careers are things you go on with till retirement. The fact that creativity may not be coextensive with one’s whole working life is not admitted

Unlike “The Novel” which explores the journey of a particular idea deep, broad and wide, “Where I’m Reading From” is like a delicious book of possible literary journeys. The reader can take almost any chapter, embark on the reflections Parks offer us, and find useful rumination for days.

I’ve barely scratched at the surface, and it is no doubt a book I shall come back to, picking up certain thought-journeys and running along with the route Parks opens out. He is suggesting possibilities, not closing things down, topic done and dusted. Interestingly offering discussion.

Where I’m Reading From Amazon UK
Where I’m Reading From Amazon USA

Katarina Bivald – The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

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Book Review, Books about Books, Iowa, Katarina Bivald, Swedish Author, The readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

…And they all read happily ever after in small-town Iowa

I received this enchanting, quirky, feel-good romance with a definite fairy-tale structure from the publisher, Chatto and Windus, via NetGalley, in return for an honest review.

And my honest review is as cheerily warm and appreciative as the book itself

Anyone who knows my book reading habits knows I have a predilection for hefty, often existentially suffering lit-ficcy stuff.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t be utterly delighted by much more cheerful fare – as long as it has a bit of bite and tang along with the sweetness – and this has, oh it has, because of the well drawn, individual characters, some of whom are distinctly crotchety and odd-ball.

Sara Lindqvist is a shy, spinsterish Swedish woman who adores reading, and worked in a bookshop. She strikes up an epistolary friendship with an elderly woman from Iowa, Amy Harris, who is also a great lover of books, and lives in a small town, Broken Wheel, which is dying. Much of their letter writing exchange, which goes on for over 2 years, is about books, and they send these to each other. Amy is clearly the kind of person with a big heart, and a lot of wisdom and patience, who rather enjoys the small foibles of humankind, and nonetheless has visions of wider horizons.

John says I think about historic injustices too much. Maybe he’s right, but it’s just that it doesn’t feel historic to me. We never seem to be able to accept responsibility for them. First, we say that’s just how things are, then we shrug our shoulders and say that’s just how things were, that things are different now. No thanks to us, I want to reply, but no one ever seems to want to hear that

Eventually, Sara sets out for a 2 month holiday to visit Amy.

Unfortunately Amy happened to die whilst Sara was en route…………..

Flicr, Commons, photographer TumblingRun

So, what IS this book about – small people with a fair share of problems, a lot of humanity, and the fairy tale of a person who is the glue who brings people together. Amy was that person for Broken Wheel, and Sara, to her surprise, discovers that she is some kind of combination of both fairy godmother AND Cinderella, and, indeed, that pretty well everyone can go to the ball!

Tipping a definite nod to the that true story of how bibliophiles engaged across the ocean – Helen Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend…., features both the letters between Sara and Amy, and the strange and magical account of what might happen when a passionate reader rides into town with her cavalry of books, and somehow magic happens

Rest assured, to those who dislike the genre, this is not ‘magical realism’, it is, however, realism made out of ‘in an ideal world’ rather than realism full of grit and despair.

Flicr Commons

Passionate readers will delight at the appearance of all sorts of books, from the very highest of brows, to the most populist of beach reads.

The last thing Sara had done was get hold of a new shelf, on which she placed every unreadable book she could find, alongside every Pulitzer Prize-winner, Nobel Prize recipient and nominee for the Booker Prize

First-time author Katarina Bivald had her book published in her native language (Swedish, of course) in 2013. And I can offer no higher praise to her translator Alice Menzies than to say I had to keep checking the title page in disbelief that this was a novel ‘in translation’ Beautifully done.

And Bivald, like her heroine, is also a bibliophile who is not quite sure whether she doesn’t prefer books to people……….though the evident generosity in her writing, and her viewpoint shows she rather loves both

Bivald’s lovely warmth, humour, whimsicality and heart in the creation of her small-town community reminded me, yes, of the Hanff book, yes. of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, but also of Armistead Maupin’s wonderful community in his ‘Tales of The City’ novels. It’s not just the subject matter which brings up comparisons, its also the joyousness, the heart, the humour and the artistry

We have perhaps become too used to thinking of Scandinavian writers as being the source of noir crime fiction. If this book is an example of Scandi RomCom – bring it on!

Sara couldn’t help but wonder what life might be like if you couldn’t daydream about Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy (how had she decided on that name? One of literary history’s most inexplicable mysteries), because you yourself had created him.

If I were to be a little picky, I think the book might have been a tad tighter as we got towards the end we are inevitably getting towards, and Bivald could perhaps have stepped on the accelerator, as within the last few chapters we know the destination, and kind of want journey’s end, rather than to admire the view one last time, but this is a small observation. 4 ½ stars, easy (rounded up to 5)

And, unless you are lucky enough to be a NetGalleyer or some other recipient of ARCS, Patience, I’m afraid, is needed as publication is on June 18th, and I will flag a reminder as the date approacheth…

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend Amazon UK
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend Amazon USA

Helen MacDonald – H is for Hawk

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Autobiography, Birds, Book Review, Books about Books, Falconry, H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald, The Natural World

Love, death and the wild, wide world

Helen MacDonald’s aching, raw story of loss and relationship speaks so much of longing that reading it is as much about being fed, sustained by grief, as her hawk is fed by the death it has dealt. Indeed the two, love and death, are linked.

We carry the lives we’ve imagined as we carry the lives we have, and sometimes a reckoning comes of all the lives we have lost

We love because we will lose, or be lost to, that which we love. It’s the presence of death which fiercens the love. Mabel, Helen’s hawk, is of course overwhelmingly real – but that reality is thickened by all the metaphors accreting to her. The potency is the potency of what the hawk represents, in history, in literature, in imagination to us.

Wiki Commons, Photographer Steve Garvie

To me she was bright, vital, secure in her place in the world. Every tiny part of her was boiling with life, as if from a distance you could see a plume of steam around her, coiling and ascending and making everything around her slightly blurred, so she stood out in fierce, corporeal detail. The hawk was a fire that burned my hurts away, There could be no regret or mourning in her. No past or future. She lived in the present only, and that was my refuge

There are 3 major strands in this book. The first, which created or re-created all the rest, is the loss of MacDonald’s father, Alisdair MacDonald, the photojournalist, and the bottomless grief that brought a sundering of relationship, an absence.

There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will be a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are

As a child, MacDonald had been obsessed, possessed by falcons, birds of prey, and then, specifically, the goshawk. So the second strand is the making of relationship. She returns to everything that initial possession was about, and engages on building a relationship with a goshawk. Which she discovers can only be done by negating herself, becoming an absence, as, initially, in any way, the presence of human is too harsh for the incredibly highly charged, responsive, awareness of a terrified hawk. Human space can only become tolerable to hawk by the patience to not intrude

And, finally, she examines another writer T.H. White. White was also a passionate hawker. He was a man painfully within his challenging contradictions. Like the goshawk, one with a charged, reactive nervous system. White had recorded his own story of relationship with goshawk, The Goshawk. I hope that the success of MacDonald’s book encourages the re-publishing of White’s, as I’m now anxious to read it.

Much of White’s account (there are plenty of extracts in MacDonald’s book) is dark, anguished, irrational. And much of MacDonald’s book is also outside the rational – there are many accounts of her vivid dreams, the boiling of raging emotions, the unendurable overwhelm of feeling. But this is part of the power of this book. We are not creatures of reason alone, reason the visible tip of a fiery iceberg beneath.

MacDonald’s book was another one of those which I read with a sense of some deep value I can’t articulate – through a mist of weeping. The value is that of having, often, no idea at all of the why of that weeping. All I can say is that, for me, weeping without any obvious, recognisable emotion behind the weeping is a way in which my body seems to respond to something being named from a place of authenticity. Reason says ‘I don’t understand’ but, on some deep level, the fabric of my being responded

In my time with Mabel I’ve learned how you feel more human once you have known, even in your imagination, what it is like to be not. And I have learned, too, the danger that comes in mistaking the wildness we give a thing for the wildness that animates it.

A book this raw and personal somehow calls forth the raw and personal response from the reader. I would have liked to have read it slowly and savouringly, and maybe this is what I’ll be able to do, at some point, on a re-read, as I know the writing is very fine, and the information, about hawks, landscapes, T.H. White, and more, of interest. But I was not able to read it like that. Instead, a savage gulping down of chunks of it, thrown this way and that by feeling and sensation. Longing, I suppose. That desire to experience the world through the sinews of some other than human understanding.

H is for Hawk Amazon UK
H is for Hawk Amazon USA

Linda Grant – I Murdered My Library

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Book Collections, Book Review, Books about Books, ereaders, I Murdered My Library, Linda Grant, Reading about Reading

A witty, thoughtful exploration into books, Kindles and downsizing a collection

This essay by Linda Grant is unfortunately ONLY available to those with ereaders, meaning the blissfully Kindle resistant will be deprived of its wisdom, pathos and humour.

Perhaps it is Grant’s vicious little revenge on those who have not moved home into a smaller place, and thus been forced, as she has, to perform an act of cruel culling on her lifetime collection of books.

I found MUCH to nod sagely at, and much to underline, on my KINDLE. However, nothing beats the pleasure of annotating and underlining on a REAL book, as Grant herself alludes. Yes, I know, some readers faint in horror at the idea of marking books in this way, but I have always regarded reading as a dialogue between writer and reader, a relationship between reader and what they read. Hence, riffling through my ancient, dusty, texts, some, like Grant’s dating back to childhood, it is the imprint of my physical presence at the time(s) I engaged with the tomes, that matters. Not just the writer’s words, which are the same, Kindle or book, and I may indeed have underlined and crossly or ecstatically commented on, in that furiously annoying neutrality of peck peck typing in the e reader format – but, the colour of the pen or pencil hastily picked up, the particular energy of my underlining or commenting, the handwriting itself – which has changed, and continues to change, over time, the smears of what was clearly a chocolate, or some tomato coloured sauce, across a page, the curious bus ticket hastily used as book mark – but to a place I swear I have never, ever been to – all this sings of relationship

To those who are muttering ‘vandal, brute’ at evidence of such cavalier ill-treatment of my own books, I would riposte and say that such greedy, energetic handling shows evidence of extreme love. I CHEERED at Grant’s assertion about her library of books, inhabiting and overflowing in the house she is downsizing from

The glory of the library for me is how many of the books are in poor physical condition. They are books that have been read and read intensely. They are knocked about and shopworn.I would be ashamed of a book whose spine was not broken

Grant details the agony of parting with her history – sure, SOME but not all of the older books will be available on Kindle, for re-read, and she will buy these when re-reads call, but, as she says, the physical books mark the passage of her years, a history of who she was, and hold intense memory in a way that does not happen with ereaders. To stand in front of one’s own bookshelves, if you are a life-long and voracious reader, is to see, as Grant confesses :

What I saw, swelling with self-important pride, was evidence of how I had constructed my own intellectual history through reading

Grant contrasts the swings between the airy freedom produced by the library held on a Kindle, with the feelings of devastation caused by the casting aside of some dusty tomes, and the keeping of others, in order that she will be able to fit into and live inside, her new, much smaller space

Melk Benedictine Abbey Library, Austria, Wiki Commons

Now at least half of the thousands of books I have bought are gone. It is one of the worst things I have ever done.

The Kindle though, offers a freedom to enlarge the fonts of books which she can no longer read with tiny text – books that therefore remind the reader of ageing, of death, of loss. What once could be read, now can only be perused with magnifying glasses

But she also talks, with some spite and acerbic observation of the great tendency of style and design over substance – selling her house, the estate agent winces at the overflowing bookshelves, which are evidence of mess, and clutter.

Estate agents do not think that books furnish a room – books make rooms look messy….They completely destroy the impact of the accent wall. Books are too personal as objects to be displayed

I too, cannot help it, but to visit a book free home makes me uneasy. It is the very messiness of books, like the messiness of real, physical life, unsanitised, which books represent, which lures me. A bookshelf offers an intimacy into who someone is, and out on display, this is an intimacy a visitor is allowed to look at

For Grant, her real, physical library gives access to something deep:

I return in memory and imagination, but I return by taking a book down from the shelf, and reading a few pages. That is a library. A full larder for the soul.

I’m astonished, and not a little embarrassed that what Grant produced in a mere 28 pages in this essay should have led to me writing so many words (believe me, I could have written many more!)

In defence – I will say that this little essay of hers packs a world and a time into those 28 pages. Not surprising really, as readers of Grant’s novels know, she is a writer who chooses her words well, and writes ‘about stuff’ even when she is being ‘entertaining’. She uncovered more in her 28 pages than many denser tomes about books, reading, writing and the history of all this might have done.

I Murdered My Library Amazon UK
I Murdered My Library Amazon USA

Samantha Ellis – How To Be A Heroine

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Book Review, Books about Books, Feminism, How To Be A Heroine, Samantha Ellis

Fiction which writes our own inner scripts, and how we choose to live

Samantha Ellis is a British playwright whose family background is Jewish Iraqi. Her heritage has informed her writing and a search for her own identity which both acknowledges cultural and historical roots and seeks to escape from it by forging her own unique contribution, free from the expectations of that close-knit culture.

In this wonderful book, “How To Be A Heroine : Or What I’ve Leaned From Reading Too Much” , which must delight any voracious reader, and most specifically, any voracious female reader, she explores, with wit, humour, intelligence and creativity, not to mention a fine style, a trawl through literary creations who shaped her, whom she adored, was annoyed by, betrayed by, inspired by.

We all need role models to aspire to, or, as Ellis suggests, to help form ourselves, or partially model ourselves on. Intriguingly in this book, she suggests the models for many of us may be in literature, where we receive ideas of how to live, who we might be

Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon doing some Wuthering

The genesis of the book came from a passionately argued conversation with a friend. Tempestuous and dramatic, in search of a great passionate love, Ellis realised she had internalised Cathy from Wuthering Heights as a role model, whilst her friend argued for the cool, rational and realistic Jane Eyre, for her integrity and refusal to be anyone’s victim.

This sets Ellis on a wonderful journey from the classics of children’s literature, through to great and modern classic writing, and she demonstrates her eclectic, unsnobby reading tastes by even finding some positive lessons to learn from the heroines of Jilly Cooper and Jacqueline Susann! The dynamic she tussles with, over and over, is love, and work – and the validation (or lack of it) for female creativity, the female artist. There is both a personal story going on here, and a wider story about how literature helps us shape our place in the world. Her final literary heroine is Scheherazade, from 1001 nights, who offers inspiration both in her transformation over her relationship and as a storyteller, as an artist :

No writer is writing me a better journey. No writer is guiding me through my misunderstandings and muddles and wrong turns to reach my happy ending. And then I realise I am the writer. I don’t mean because I write. I mean because we all write our own lives. Scheherazade’s greatest piece of storytelling is not the stories she tells, but the story she lives

Ellis combines serious intent, with wonderful wit, panache, and whilst taking her journey seriously, has great droll fun at her own expense – and that of her heroines.

Finally rethinking her relationship to Cathy Earnshaw and Jane Eyre, she says, thinking of the Haworth moor hike with a friend which started the journey of this book :

The brilliant sunshine was very Jane weather, I thought; pleasant clear and rational. It would have rained for Cathy, there would have been thunder and lightning. And (said a small, but firm Jane voice) we would have shivered and eaten soggy sandwiches hunched under the hoods of our waterproofs

The book contains a useful index and a bibliography of all the texts.

      Vivien Leigh in optimistic spirit : After all… tomorrow is another day.

I found this a wonderful, layered book, about many things – the writer herself; the creative impulse; the growth of child into adult; literature, and the joys of fiction; changing attitudes to fiction, and its value; the changing attitudes towards women, as reflected in fiction, especially women’s attitudes to themselves and their aspirations; the different ways in which we might analyse literature, from a pre-and post-feminist perspective. Not to mention the enduring subtext by which we still so often define ourselves in relationship with men, the tug between love and work, the perceptions of marriage and motherhood.

I recommend this book enthusiastically, and will no doubt revisit the texts I know, and explore the ones I don’t

As a post-script: Part of the enjoyment of this book is the imaginative argument the reader may have with the author about the MISSED heroines, as each reader perhaps considers `and which literary characters influenced ME?’ The one I wanted to thrust upon Ellis, who crossly loved and was also hugely angered by Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Princess, was the much more feisty, proto-Pantheistic Mary from Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. Definitely one of MY early heroines!

Along the way, her books and writers examined, range far and wide from Marilyn French, The Women’s Room, Lucy Honeychurch in E.M.Forster’s A Room With a View, Hardy’s Tess, Austen’s Lizzie Bennett, Louise May Alcott’s March girls, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Princess, Hans Anderson’s Little Mermaid, The Sleeping Beauty, Jane Eyre, Nancy in Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, Flora Poste in Stella Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm, Scarlett and Melanie from Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind, Salinger’s Frannie. Jilly Cooper’s bonk busters, Erica Jong, Germaine Greer, Lily Briscoe and Mrs Ramsay from Woolf’s To The Lighthouse.

And more. Many more. She is nothing if not broad church in her potential heroines!

How To Be A Heroine Amazon UK
How To Be A Heroine Amazon USA

Susan Hill – Howards End Is On The Landing

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Book Review, Books about Books, Howards End Is On The Landing, Reading about Reading, Susan Hill

The pleasure of curling up with a good book about the pleasures of curling up with a good book

Susan Hill’s book about her books and the profound nature of the reading experience is unalloyed JOY. The premise is simple, she searches for a book from her shelves which she can’t find, gets lured by the contents of those shelves, and decides to explore her bookshelves more deeply; this sparks her to write a book about the experience.

This is much, much more than one of those dreary ‘list’ books – books you should read before you die, top classics etc etc. She spins off into a relationship with reading itself, and also some of her favourite books take her into accounts of writers she has met.

She did attract some reviews which commented negatively that the book is just ‘name dropping’ It doesn’t come across like that to THIS reader. Hill is a writer who had her first book published aged 18. She’s been fortunate to have mingled with literary life, and, personally, accounts of her brief meetings with, for example, such a wide range of ‘different greats’ as Edith Sitwell, Ian Fleming and even Benjamin Britten are utterly fascinating.

She’s an eclectic, unsnobby quirky reader – and I guess that’s why I find her appealing – someone who is as at home with Ian Fleming as they are with the book of Common Prayer, Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll and Trollope (Anthony) as well as Victorian diarists but NOT Jane Austen is an interesting mind.

Though I don’t share her discomfort with Jane I found her Austen immunity interesting.

There are also chapters extolling favourite reading places, the physical experience of reading, the pleasure of fonts, dustjackets and bindings, and, constantly poking through, a sense of books as mysterious, totemic objects with perhaps a secret life of their own…….she muses about which books might be happy or unhappy to be sitting next to its booky neighbour. Magic realism!

A charm (literally!) and an utter delight.

And maybe the subtitle  ‘A Year Of Reading From Home’, just MIGHT be a piece of useful advice for myself (and compatriot bookiephiles) as i gaze in horror on the huge and mounting wobbly piles of unread books (often added to following squints to see what others are reading) which exist on chairs, bookcases and of course, almost invisibly and therefore more dangerously, on the Kindle. With the unread Kindles at 86, and the piles on the chairs (never mind elsewhere) at 40 plus I reckon that if I DID manage Hill’s  ‘only read what you have at home’ that could comfortably see me through the year, and if it didn’t, well the pleasure of re-reads would be there. Will I do this? Unlikely, dear reader, unlikely. Maybe if no bookie bloggers read or blog about their reading, if Amazon reviews all vanish, if I wear a sign saying DO NOT TALK TO ME ABOUT BOOKS around my neck, if I never pick up a newspaper or magazine which has book reviews, hear or watch any programme about writing, writers etc. I probably need casting away on a desert island with only the unread books, no internet access, and helicopter drops of food parcels. Ah well. I’ll happily re-read Hill again!

Howards End Is On The Landing Amazon UK
Howards End Is On The Landing Amazon USA