Friday Five: Books Read in June

 

1. Why Does My Dog Do That? by Sophie Collins (Ivy Press) - This helpful pocket-sized book is laid out with a page of text next to a line drawing and a question about dog behaviour (I read it for my animal care course). There are fifty questions altogether, split into sections of ‘puppy to adult’, ‘a dog’s-eye view’, ‘you and your dog’, and ‘solving problems’. The simple and practical language addresses concerns such as fighting, rolling in foul-smelling matter, trembling, biting, ignoring commands and overstimulation. The advice is mainly to remain calm, positive and consistent, while understanding that a dog is not a small human and has its own behaviour which should not be anthropomorphosised.
2. Root of the Tudor Rose by Mari Griffith (Accent Press) - If you like historical fiction with a smattering of facts and setting, you could do worse. The story is told as a straightforward romance and the feelings of the participants are interpreted in terms of modern sensibilities of love and motherhood, contrasting with contemporary political arrangements and treatment of women and children. Catherine de Valois is the young (French) bride of the great Henry V of England (and France), but she is lonely and vulnerable because she is a foreigner at court. Things worsen after Henry's death as she is forbidden to remarry but must remain in the public eye as the mother of the present king. She attempts to keep him safe from the factions at court - the Yorks and Lancasters mainly - while rather inconveniently falling in love with the Welshman Owen Tudor. It becomes a Mills-and-Boon-style romance with forbidden love and a servant who knows and keeps the secret, while the occasional historical record is dropped into the fictional romance to keep it real.



Catherine de Valois (1842) by Edward Hargrave

3. Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Abacus) - Books about writers can be tedious and self-indulgent. This is so self-consciously the latter, that it is great fun and a form of parody. Arthur Less is a failed gay novelist, about to turn fifty, who, in order to avoid attending his ex’s wedding, goes to any invitation he receives for promoting his book so that he can say he is busy. It is a sort of travelogue as he flits from adventures in one country to another, unable to settle anywhere and struggling to avoid consequences or meaningful interactions. In an increasingly crumpled blue suit he travels from New York to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Paris, Morroco, Japan, and finally India. He remains cheerful, reflective, naive and charming throughout, and he really is jolly good company.  
4. Unfinished Woman by Robyn Davidson (Bloomsbury) - The trade paperback title of this memoir was Portrait of an Imaginary Woman, which begs the question as to who exactly is the unfinished woman: Robyn or her mother? Her mother died by suicide and, although the author claims it didn't affect her, she spends the rest of the memoir explaining how it has. Best known for the travel book, Tracks, in which she recounts her solo trek across 1,700 miles of Australian outback, she comes across as aloof and condescending. She believes in anarchy and looking out for oneself, and has a dim view of community with little time for therapists. She maintains, "Scratching around in the landscape behind you, looking for terrible things, has always struck me as being… indulgent.” One could level this exact accusation at the process of writing a memoir. Complaining about the difficulty of promoting her book and touring with other writers (she counts Doris Lessing and Bruce Chatwin among her friends), she whines, “I feel myself hurrying towards the end, wanting to leap over decades, race towards release from this fairy-tale task. It is exhausting to sift through the sediment, exhausting to keep repeating ‘I, I, I’.” Not as exhausting as it is to have to read it.
5. Death Comes to Marlow by Robert Thorogood (HQ) - In the second of the Marlow Murder Mysteries, we once again spend time with the three unlikely women who solve crimes and assist the police with their enquiries in this cosy murder series. A man is murdered on the morning of his wedding when a large bookcase topples over on to him from within a locked room. Was it really an accident? Of course it wasn’t. But everyone has an alibi. With its arcane detective workings it is very pacy and easy to read, if not particularly demanding. I love the setting (naturally, it's my home town), and I also like the cover with the upturned duck sticking out of the water. There are specific mentions of real places and businesses (car repairs; cafes; pubs; hairdressers; art galleries etc.) that make one wonder whether they might have sponsored the book in exchange for a namecheck. It is a fine book to read at the weekend or to while away the time on a holiday when nothing really matters.

The three women of the TV series, The Marlow Murder Club (Jo Martin as Suzie Harris, Samantha Bond as Judith Potts, and Cara Horgan as Becks Starling)

Friday Five: Books Read in April

1. Come Death and High Water by Ann Cleeves (MacMillan) - This is the second in the George and Molly Palmer-Jones series in which Ann Cleeves acknowledges the influence of the Golden Age mysteries. A group of birdwatchers gather for a committee weekend on an island which is cut off by a storm and a high tide. The first victim is the cartoon-like character (which the author revels in creating) Charlie Todd, who will obviously be bumped off as he has decided to sell off the island and everyone has a motive for murder. Each suspect is interviewed separately by the curt and proessional Superintendent who has been sent over to conduct the investigation, while our man George observes and passes comment on the proceedings. He is dedicated to the task, but also swept away by the brleak and beautiful scenery. “Nothing mattered but the effort of walking against the wind, the sand stinging at his eyes and the surface water blowing around his boots.”
2. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (Penguin) - This novel is so similar to Bernadine Evaristo's Girl, Woman,Other that I'm surprised there wasn't a plaigirism case. This was written first and is American, whereas Evaristo's focusses on the British immigrant experice. The book has a family tree in the beginning, which is essential, as it covers the lives of several different characters, each one in a separate episodic chapter, but all related. The stories of the multiple generations descending from Ghana have distinct female voices and a shared focus on the historical and social complexities of the Black female experience.
3. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (Corgi) - In the thirteenth novel of the Discworld series, Terry Pratchett takes pot shots at organised religion, squabbling philosophers and the nature of belief. These are such easy targets that this novel feels lesser than many of his works, like shooting fish in a barrel. The story opens in the city of Omnia, whose chief god, Om, has been reduced to a pitiful existence in the form of a turtle because no one really believes in him anymore. Gods need belief to live and thrive, and they fear becoming small gods, barely existing out in the desert wastelands with no believers at all. Mere mortals struggle to make sense of life – hence the plethora of philosophers – but the gods are literally above it all, playing games with humans as their playthings. The novel was written in 1992, but its discourse on certainty in religion and politics feels particularly pertinent in our post-truth world thirty years on.
4. The Dead of Winter by Nicola Upson (Faber & Faber) - This is the ninth in a series featuring the writer Josephine Tey as a detective. It's a smart concept (I believe it's also been done with Agatha Christie in a similar role) and although I haven't read any of the others, this was enjoyable enough out of sequence. The novel is set in 1939 where Nazis and swastikas abound, and Hilaria St Aubyn is raising money for refugees by hosting a Christmas party at a castle on St Michael’s Mount, which people bid to attend. The mystery guest, accompanied by Tey’s old pal Detective Chief Inspector Penrose, is none other than the world’s most famous movie star, Marlene Deitrich. It’s all a bit bonkers and quite fun as the incongruity of the joy of seasonal festivities mixes with the horror of murder. It’s full of thrilling set pieces, such as being at the mercy of the tides and the weather with all communication lines cut off. There are also some genuine plot twists which keep it intriguing. 
5. The Choke by Sofie Laguna (Allen & Unwin) - This is relentlessly grim; Australian poverty porn with a rape thrown in – in the style of Trent Dalton. Everyone is suffering some form of trauma and neglect, and most of the physical violence is perpetrated against women. Justine lives with her grandfather, pop, as her mother, Donna, died giving birth to her, and her father, Ray, comes and goes at random. She has two half-brothers, who fare no better in the paternal stakes, and their mother, Relle, will not even look at Justine as Ray left her for Donna. Pop is a Korean vet, struggling with PTSD, and Justine’s only friend is Michael, a boy who is taunted at school due to his cerebral palsy. Told through Justine's eyes, this simply doesn't ring true - she is capable and dyslexic, in a world of firing guns, collecting eggs and smoking cigarettes but has no idea about pregnancy. You know where this is going. 

Friday Five: Street Libraries

One of the things I have enjoyed about lockdown is the walking I have done around the suburbs. With limited time allowed for exercise and a limited radius in which to do it, I have been varying my routes close to home. These wanderings have taken me past many delightful street libraries, which inadvertently showcase their suburb. Yes, there are different shapes and sizes, and they contain different books aimed at different readers, but one thing they all have in common is a desire to share with their community, and I think that is rather wonderful.

Five Street Libraries:

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Friday Five: Favourite Books I Read in 2020

I have been checking my spreadsheet of what I read in 2020 (yes, these things need to be taken seriously) and I see that I read 60 books and 24 plays last year. I rate everything that I read out of five, and these are the highest-ranked books that I read last year. Yes, I know there are more than five, but the post fits the profile. I can't claim that they are of last year because I only read one book actually published in 2020 and that didn't make the list (The Insider by Christopher Pyne, since you ask, rated a 3.5). 

My Favourite Books I read in 2020

1. The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood (2005) - a retelling of the myth of Odysseus as narrated by the 'faithful wife' left behind while her husband travels the world having adventures. It's sharp and witty and short. 4.9/5
2. A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles (2016) - When people use words like charming and delightful, I tend to shy away, but this book is everything it promised to be. Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to live out the rest of his life in house arrest in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow. He befriends the guests and the staff and manages to spin an epic tale in a confined environment. Published before hotel quarantine was a thing we all recognised, expect this to be made into a film. 4.8/5
3. Ducks, Newburyport - Lucy Ellmann (2019) - I wasn't sure I ever would, because I borrowed it from the library twice (having to return it because it was reserved), but I finally finished it. And wow! Just wow! It's one hell of a challenge (what with being over a thousand pages long and nearly all one continuous sentence), but so rewarding. I am so glad I persevered with this book. It's so complex and insightful and devastating and affirming, and I'm going to miss it. 4.8/5
4. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo (2019) - The joint winner of last year's Booker Prize, this exploration into the lives of twelve black British women is absolutely life-affirming. Each narrative is individual yet they weave together, with some of the stories overlapping to create a tumultuous landscape of love, loss, sorrow and joy, while touching on timeless issues of race and feminism. This might sound worthy and intense: it is, but in the very best way.  4.8/5
5. Becoming - Michelle Obama (2018) - Michelle Obama relates the experience of what it's like to be a black woman in a white man's world. She explains how it feels to sacrifice her own career to support that of her partner; to balance the needs of the country with those of her family while being under intense pressure and scrutiny; and how to remain true to her values in a job with no position description but an overwhelming weight of expectations. And she does it all with grace and style. 4.7/5
6. The Warlow Experiment - Alix Nathan (2019) 4.5/5 - This novel is based on the true story of an eccentric Victorian gentleman, Herbert Powyss, who conducted an experiment; he placed an advert in a newspaper asking for a man to volunteer to be placed in isolation in his cellar for seven years with ‘every convenience desired’ but ‘without seeing a human face’. John Warlow was the only person who answered the advert, ‘a semi-literate labourer with a wife and six children to provide for’. Alix Nathan imagines how this experiment might have worked, or not, and she has created a rich novel of mental manipulation. She imagines that Powyss wants to see how a mind would cope without social contact and write up his findings to present to the Royal Society.



7. The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places - Neil Oliver (2018) - Neil Oliver's story of the British Isles is very personal to him as he shares the places that he thinks are important to the story of who we are. It's fascinating to read his explanations, to remember landmarks or consider them in new ways. It also makes one consider which places one would include in an individual account (For the record, that would be Pendle Hill, Anfield, Manchester Free Trade Hall, Teddington Lock and Marlow Bridge for me.) 4.5/5
8. Finding Baba Yaga - Jane Yolen (2018) - This contemporary retelling of an iconic myth is written entirely in blank verse. It is reminiscent of the artful design of a Russian Matryoshka nesting dolls, as elements of Slavic myth, Russian folklore and fairy tales cleverly fit among the contours of American realism. It also explores a number of themes including the nature and power of language, the journey from childhood to adulthood, the relationship between religion and language, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ words, the unique dynamic of female friendships and the mother/daughter relationship. It is familiar; it is unique; it is brilliant.4.4/5
9. Dream Angus - Alexander McCall Smith (2006) - Part of the Canongate Myth Series, this novella adapts the Celtic myth of the Celtic God of Dreams. It's concisely and charmingly written and introduces vignettes of characters who drift through the story with all the strange combination of directness and magic that I expect from the writer of The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency and 44 Scotland Street series. 4.3/5
10. The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai - (2006) Winner of the Booker Prize 2006, and the reason I read fiction. It is an atmospheric elegy to a bygone era, taking the political (national divides; crumbling international alliances; religious and cultural diaspora) and making it personal (family relationships; love and tolerance; self-identity). Set in the Himalayas and the USA it has a wide scale and detailed language. 4.3/5
11. Hollywood Wants to Kill You: The Peculiar Science of Death in the Movies - Rick Edwards and Dr Michael Brooks (2019) - According to the authors, “It may not sound great, but it is. Partly, because it’s an excuse to explore science. Much of scientific endeavour is really about finding ways to avoid death.” It is also an excuse to revisit disaster movies and question whether they really were as crap as you thought. Apparently, despite the fact that all trainee managers at NASA are shown Armageddon to see how many of the 168 factual errors they can spot, drilling a hole into the centre of an asteroid and blowing it up from within is still the best way of dealing with this potential threat. 4.3/5
12. The Bear and the Nightingale - Katherine Ardern (2017) - A historical fantasy set in Medieval Russia that incorporates elements of Russian folklore? Yes please. A blend of mythical creatures and Orthodox Christianity? Yes again. Finding out that this is the first part of a trilogy that promises more evocative prose and atmospheric settings? Thrice yes!4.2/5
13. The Wall - John Lanchester (2019) - Described as the new 1984, this is sharp and bleak dystopian fiction that isn't so far removed from the present. The younger generation have to patrol the wall and protect what is theirs from the Others who want to come and take it. If anyone gets over the wall, the same number of people (and those who failed to defend it) are put out to sea. It's very powerful and very grim. The first line is, 'It's cold on the wall' and I literally shivered all the way through this (short-ish 270 pages) novel. 4.2/5

Bedside Book Pile Update

At the beginning of 2019 I took a photo of the pile of books by my bed, with the hope that I would have an entirely different stack by the end of the year. At the beginning of 2020 I took another picture. Readers, I did it!

I've peaked too early, with the conclusion - it's like turning to the last page before continuing with the story (people who do that blow my mind) - but for those who would like to play along with the moves of the game, they began in this post, and they follow below:

Bedside book pile July 2019

In July I only read one book from the book pile, and it was Kerry Young's Gloria, which I admit I chose because of the cover and the plaudits - from The Guardian ('a vivid portrayal... heartfelt, sparky and affecting), Independent on Sunday ('A punchy tale of pungent characters and impassioned entanglements'), and The Observer ('A blindingly good read'). The author was born in Jamaica and has mixed Chinese and African heritage; she is hailed as 'stand-alone talent in the new emerging generation of writers from the Caribbean region'.

This is Kerry Young's second novel; the first was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, and apparently many of the characters are the same - I haven't read it but it would appear to be almost the same story told from a different viewpoint. There is violence, prostitution, illegitimacy, class conflict, prejudice and redemption. I enjoyed it up to about half-way through, and then I began to get bored - it had nothing fresh or original to say and the pidgin English style became tiresome. Many others disagree, so maybe I should try another of her novels, but I'm not really in any hurry to do so.

Other books I read in July that were not on the list were The Bus on Thursday by Shirley Barrett (easy-to-read part thriller; part supernatural; part comedy novel about a primary school teacher's issues with mental illness in a rural NSW town), Ghost Milk by Iain Sinclair (a damning critique of grand projects; from urban developments and shopping malls to the structures involved in the London Olympics), and Rocky Road by Robert Wainwright (subtitled 'The Incredible True Story of the Fractured Family Behind the Darrel Lea Chocolate Empire', it covers the 'experiment' of a woman adopting children to be playmates for her 'natural' children and the consequences thereof).

Books read from pile: 17/25

Bedside book pile August 2019

In August I read two books from the pile and two not. John Irving's Last Night in Twisted River covers much of his usual ground - bears; large-breasted women with largely undefined personalities; wrestling; writers; running and being attacked by dogs. It is brightly written with an eye for detail (the logging industry is well represented) and a fair bit of fourth wall breaking.

I also read Today I Am A Book by xTx, because my peculiar reading scheme dictated that I needed to read a book by an author beginning with X. All of the short, poetic segments (it feels wrong to call them stories, and, besides, they have the tart juiciness of an orange) in this collection are introduced with the words ‘Today I am a…’ It is a great creative writing exercise, and a way to express thoughts and feelings, but a lot of them are complicated and negative.
 
Bonus reading (books not on the list) were the graphic novel adaptation of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (each chapter illustrated by a different illustrator gives it a sort of disjointed feel) and The Book of the Heathen by Robert Edric, which has a heart-of-darkness feel to the nineteenth century Congo explorations undertaken by a European mapmaker and anthropologist companion.
 
Books read from pile: 19/27

Bedside book pile September 2019

In my rules, it counts if you add a book to the pile and read it in the same month. Hence Someone Like Me by M.R. Carey counts. It has a good, creepy cover, and the novel has overtones of Stephen King, rooted in reality with strong doses of popular culture, and the central theme of split or multiple personalities. 

I also read Boys Will Be Boys by Clementine Ford, which is excellent. While it has less of the explosive passion of Fight Like a Girl, it features more cohesive arguments and channels the rage of gender injustice in a more constructive flow.

Not on the list, but I read it anyway, was a new version of The House f Bernarda Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca, this time adapted by Rona Munro. It was suggested to me by a friend that I might like to direct it, but I am not keen, as the story still basically just features a bunch of women sitting around waiting to get married and hating each other because they are not the chosen one. The modern translation may try to bring out the injustice of the situation, but it is still a gender nightmare. 

I also added An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma, because it was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker prize. It may be dressed up with classical mythology and Igbo traditions, but it is basically a patriarchal tale of a man behaving badly when he doesn’t get what he wants from a woman.

Books read from pile: 21/29

Bedside book pile October 2019

October was a great month for reading for me, with Harvest by Jim Crace, shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize, being one of the highlights of the year. It is glorious, beginning in a bucolic vein (like Hardy’s pastoral interludes) but rapidly becoming much darker and more claustrophobic. Set against the movement from common land to enclosures; wheat crops and cattle to sheep it asks questions about private ownership of public land, when there are changing masters who is in charge of themselves, and how easy it is to blame women as witches to provide easy scapegoats.

Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet began with Autumn, published last year, and continues here with Winter. The subject is quite different but many of the themes are familiar. It is written in a continuous fluid style, but with short sentences and without irksome stream-of-consciousness. The novel embroiders snatches of literature and legend into a rich tapestry: a retelling of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol for our times. This is a novel of stories and interpretations. We are given tales of fertility; the Green Man, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and defenders of past rituals and natural bounty. Smith combines the richness of the past with the frustrations of the present and a glimmer of hope for the future, believing that communities and compassion can overcome division and isolation.

Mum gave me a copy of The Salt Path by Raynor Wynn, which I read and left with Scarey Sis, who I thought would enjoy it as much as I did. The author loses her home for financial reasons, and her husband is diagnosed with a terminal illness. With no ties to bind them, and very little money to support themselves, they set off to walk the South West Path. The tale is as much about the 630-mile trek as it is about homelessness, compassion and the state of the nation.

Books read from pile: 24/31

Bedside book pile November 2019

I practically devoured The Testaments by Margaret Atwood; a thinly-veiled polemic against totalitarianism. In her acknowledgments at the end of the 2019 Booker-Prize-winning novel, Margaret Atwood thanks “the readers of The Handmaid’s Tale; their interest and curiosity has been inspiring.” If my desire to know what happened after The Handmaid’s Tale is in any part responsible for the writing of this book, 35 years after its predecessor, you’re welcome. It’s been a long time coming, but it is certainly worth it, and after all this time, it still has a clear directive: “We must continue to remind ourselves of the wrong turnings taken in the past so we do not repeat them.”

For something completely different, I read The Cat who Sniffed Glue by Lilian Jackson Braun - it was on my bookshelf so why not? It's a light-hearted mystery featuring an eligible bachelor, and two Siamese cats. It positions itself firmly in the category of 'cosy mysteries', subsection; if you know what to expect from this genre; you won't be disappointed. 

A friend recommended that I read Brothers by Yu Hua. It is a sprawling and picaresque epic focussing on step-brothers Baldly Li and Song Gang. The first half of the novel concentrates on their childhood and adolescence during the Cultural Revolution, and the second half features their adulthood, successes and otherwise during the early period of China's Opening-Up. It is wry, ribald and Rabelaisian with plenty of sex and violence delivered as farce and satire.

Books read from pile: 25/34

Bedside book pile December 2019

I was quite busy reading in December; one of my favourite pastimes so no complaints here! I also polished off four books that were on he list, and one that wasn't. Starting with the one that wasn't,  A Universe of Sufficient Size by Mirian Sved was a recommendation from a friend. Spanning continents and three generations, this rich novel of mathematics, politics, friendship, family, sexuality and love, features numerous time and narrative shifts. And I loved it.

Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao also details an incredible friendship, also across continents and decades. But the persecution in this one derives from sexism rather than fascism and the women in this novel (Savitha and Poornima) are variously raped, abused, starved and mutilated because they are female and they are poor. It becomes a touch stereotypical, which is a shame, because it could have a lot to say beneath the layers of cliche.

The Girl Before by JP Delaney is supposedly an erotic thriller, but it feels a little predictable and formulaic. It's not about a girl, before, after or present; it is about a house and a man’s viewpoint of manipulation and control. It is an entertaining read, but it is not earth-shattering. Shock value isn’t everything, and its veneer wears off very quickly - maybe it's time to give this style of book (girl in the title = unreliable narrator) a rest.

If it is not already apparent, let me state that I love books and books about books, so Ex Libris by Ross King, which purported to be about a whole library, should have really stocked my shelves. But it felt flat, partly due to the confusing plot, which was all over the place (and not in a good way), and partly due to an over-indulgence in historical research - I know it's set in the 1600s and the author is very knowledgeable about the period, but I didn't feel as though he needed to shoehorn those facts in at every available and inopportune gap in the narrative. 

Where I was overwhelmed with insight and anecdote was Anthony Holden's biography, Olivier. He was a theatrical colossus and he made as many right as wrong choices of production and partner, but he remained dedicated to a craft that changed rapidly from stage to screen. It's also fascinating because it was written 40 years after Olivier's acting heyday and 40 years before today's judgmental generation. Holden, therefore, manages to review Olivier's towering performance of Othello without once mentioning the awkward issue of blackface. Those were different times indeed.

Books read from pile: 29/35

Bedside book pile January 2020

And so I begin again...

Friday Five : The Evolving Book Pile

At the beginning of the year I took a picture of the pile of books on my bedside table. By the end of year, I expect I shall still have a pile of books, but I would like them to be different ones. This is the six-monthly record of the evolving nature of that pile.

Bedside book pile January 2019

In January I read My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, and All in the Timing by David Ives from my pile. I picked up the former while in Powell's City of Books in Portland. I was considering reading it over Christmas, but Christmas is supposed to be cheery and this book is anything but, so I waited until afterwards to embark upon it. A fourteen-year-old girl grows up dealing with nature and approaching adulthood through adventure and grit; like a female version of Huckleberry Finn with an added whack of abuse that is agonising to read. Happy New Year! 

The Symapthizer was lent to me by a friend who claimed the prose is beautiful. He's right. Mind you, it won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, so he's not alone in thinking that. It covers a range of genres from espionage thriller to darkly comic political commentary, and, because it deals with the Americanization of the Vietnam War, it nods somewhat vigorously towards Graham Greene. 

David Ives' All in the Timing is a collection of fourteen short plays set in surreal situations. Overlapping scenes, non-linear time, multi-faceted characters, literary allusions and fluid language make these a thoroughly entertaining cerebral challenge. David Ives is a comic genius who has put the play back into playwright. 

I also read Wicked Sisters by Alma de Groen, which was not in the pile. I am part of a committee which is producing this fantastic play in a couple of months in which four women meet up after the death of one of their husband's and learn more about him and themselves in the space of a wine-fueled evening than they ever knew or wanted to know.

Books read from pile: 3/11

Bedside book pile February 2019

In this month I read The Overstory by Richard Powers from the pile, and several others that weren't in it. The Overstory was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize - it considers the narrative of life above ground, while maintaining that everything is connected beneath it. There are diatribes upon trees; growth; concentric circles; timelines; length of time taken to replace and regenerate; the fact that we have missed our opportunity and are now all doomed.

I also read The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner, which was similarly shortlisted - set in a women's prison and told in the first person through flashbacks, it details the lives of the inmates with a combination of mind-numbing boredom and bone-crunching brutality. We learn that these women are largely incarcerated due to poor choices made in the face of so few opportunities.

In keeping with the theme I read the winner of the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, A Horse Walks into a Barby David Grossman (translated by Jessica Cohen). It is a very short but very complex novella about a comedian who falls apart on stage. It is set in Israel and packed with lines that are certain to offend, but it presents a clever comparison between the individual and society, and how disease spreads from within to become all-consuming. 

The plays I read were Melancholy Play by Sarah Ruhl, which is admirably bonkers and addresses the issue of why we find sadness so attractive, and A Doll's House Part 2 by Lucas Hnath. I've never been a fan of people penning sequels to the works of others, but I have been asked to audition for this play, so I thought I should at least read it. I like the ideas and concepts about the need for equality in all things, but I'm yet to be convinced of its necessity.

Books read from pile: 4/14

Bedside book pile March 2019

March's reading was quite varied and included a few from the pile. Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince, the Selfish Giant and Other Stories is full of tales of practical characters in fairy-tale situations where beauty is admired above all, which leads to bitterness and anger when youth fades. I read it as a child and dug it out again after seeing both the film The Happy Prince and the play The Judas Kiss in the space of a couple of weeks.

Silent Women: Pioneers of Cinema edited by Melody Bridges and Cheryl Robson is a collection of essays about the women who helped to shape the film industry: actors; directors; editors; marketers; producers; managers - there is a lot of historical content explaining how roles were not so strictly delineated (many women had creative control but were not called directors) and how various movements in the past affected their status in Hollywood and elsewhere. More recently, 1995 was “the peak of female director hires in the United States. For the next twenty years, women directors would face stasis and decline in employment.” In fact, only 1.9% of directors of the top-grossing one hundred films of 2013 and 2014 were women.

I'm not usually a fan of stream-of-consciousness novels (James Joyce and Virginia Wood test my patience to the limit), but the self-obsessed need to express every tiny thought no matter how banal, fits the teenage narrator of Milkman perfectly. Anna Burns' 2018 Man Booker Prize winning novel is set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, (or 'the problems') as they are called here: it is almost comical (in a Monty Python People’s Liberation Front sort of way), but people are killed for these minor details, so the humour is very dark.

Having heard nothing about Of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra, I got it out of the library on a whim due to the title and am so glad I did. The multi-layered story about censorship and art, which covers many decades, nine narrators and a variety of styles, remains absolutely engaging throughout. It is one of those weird coincidences that one of the characters mentioned in the novel is Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, the titular character of Alma de Groen's time-travelling The Woman in the Window, in which anything is possible in a world where quantum physics explains different dimensions.This play, with its dual narrative thread of repressing poetry in the past and future for political purposes will be produced by Canberra Repertory later in the year. It's a great story with powerful themes and plentiful scenes - I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Books read from pile: 8/16

Bedside book pile April 2019

In April a friend lent me Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak, and I liked The Book Thief, so I gave this a go. Big mistake. And I mean big. Huge. It is clearly meant to be an homage to Homer but, while Homeric epithets may work in epic poetry; repetitive descriptors, sonorous syntax and quirky sentence length are tiresome in this novel. The novel revolves around five boys growing up in a rural suburb in New South Wales, and at almost 600 pages, it reads as if Zusak doesn’t know where to start, or finish, or even what to say.

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry was a lot more successful, in which (to copy from a Guardian review), 'An Essex village is terrorised by a winged leviathan in a Gothic Victorian tale crammed with incident, character and plot'. From the book pile I also began to read Every Last One by Anna Quindlen, until I realised that I already had, and so returned it to the library.

Books I read that never made it into the pile were The Mao Case by Qiu Xiaolong (the sixth outing for Chief Inspector Chen, who has to solve a crime in Shanghai and Beijing, which may or may not involve Chairman Mao), The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (which I read to help a student at work with a school project), and The Long Take by Robin Robertson. The latter was another shortlisted nominee for the 2018 Man Booker Prize and is a poetic work of brilliance, historical worth and impermanence, as the noir narrative exposes the black and white cinematic qualities of city developments and PTSD.

I also read Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill because she is my favourite playwright and I am trying to find plays with strong female characters - this has four of them (all over sixty) who chat in the back garden with dialogue charged with incident and heightened reality.

Books read from pile: 11/18

Bedside book pile May 2019

I persisted with Anna Quindlen in May and read Still Life with Bread Crumbs. It's fine; gentle and comforting although occasionally it can also be a touch clichéd. The novel deals with loneliness, depression, mental illness, and creative temperament. These are big issues, which are important to address, but the treatment at times feels a little superficial. In the Blood by Lisa Unger is a perfectly readable thriller about missing college friends and maniacal children that didn't make me lose any sleep.

You Say Potato: A Book about Accents by Ben Crystal and David Crystal, on the other hand, is an absolute ripper. The father and son combination, with an almost intimidating knowledge of acting, Shakespeare and linguistics between them, riff on the topic of accents: where they come from; how they evolve; how they are influenced by fashion and attitude; and how "we think people should be proud of their accent, whatever it is.”

Not in the pile (but I read them anyway), were How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman (about which I feel rather conflicted), and Votes for Women and Other Plays edited by Susan Croft - still on the lookout for strong female roles, I thought I could do worse than approach this anthology of plays, sketches and monologues to celebrate the centenary of the Suffragettes. It is, indeed, fascinating in its range and scope. 

Books read from pile: 14/ 21

Bedside book pile June 2019

I managed to read two book from the bedside pile in June, and what wonderful ones to choose. Simon Armitage wreaks amazing magic with his translation of Gawain and the Green Knight, which is funny and modern, while adhering to the style and traditions of the original. I read it and then I read it again out loud, because the words are supremely satisfying and they cry out to be spoken.

I also read Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay, which is a well-written series of essays about feminism and other things: from the traumas of fat camp to the triumphs of scrabble tournaments; good journalism and social responsibility; lessons learned from teaching and the guilt of enjoying reality TV and rap music. 

Because we went for a long weekend to the coast and because I like to read books set in similar habitats to my environs, I finished off the mid-year by reading The Alphabet of Light and Dark by Charlotte Wood (an over-wrought piece about a woman drawn back to her home town after her father - the lightkeeper's - death, which won the Australian Vogel Literary Award in 2002 and readds like it was written by a creative writing graduate. It was.) and Dance upon the Air by Nora Roberts (in which three women represent earth, fire and air, and have brown, red and blonde hair and combine their spiritual powers to defeat men and commune with nature and blah, blah, blah...).

Books read from pile: 16/24

Total number of books still in the pile from the beginning of the year: 3/11

We Can Be Heroines

How to be a Heroine: Or, What I’ve Learned from Reading Too Much  by Samantha Ellis 

After an argument over which Brontë sister (Charlotte or Emily) wrote the best novels, Samantha Ellis decides to revisit all the novels she read in which she found the heroines from her younger days. Approaching them as an adult she asks who has the better heroines, and to what are they teaching girls to aspire? It transpires the answer is mainly marriage and motherhood. “All the heroines’ stories seemed to end in death or marriage.”

As a child she read fairytales, in which the heroines are usually passive princesses waiting to be rescued by a man. In these stories mothers are evil, jealous harridans, and mature women are bitter, ugly old crones. Angela Carter delightfully subverts these themes in her re-imagining of the tales in The Bloody Chamber, which Ellis read with glee.

She intersperses the literary critiques with anecdotes from her family history, outlining her feelings of displacement and her struggles to fit in. She notes that the stories from her childhood were no longer satisfactory as she grew up. Whereas she identified with the feisty heroines, many of whom were creative types, she was horrified to find that Anne of Green Gables and Jo March (Little Women) both give up their writing when they eventually get married to devote themselves to ‘family life’. Instead she found herself attracted to Shakespeare’s characters, who resisted their families and broke society’s rules.

Her undergraduate reading reintroduced the notion of female passivity and that suffering had value – all the heroines did it, and it ennobled them. From Clarissa by Samuel Richardson to Miss Julie by August Strindberg or Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, all these noble women suffered terribly for their dignity, and it doesn’t go unnoticed that all these beatific portraits are written by men. Once again she turned to theatre and its inherent vitality. She loved her theatrical heroines and their environment in which there was a lot of superficiality, but also “people who were open about their ambitions, ready to live with thin skins and open hearts”.

It seems that Ellis has fallen out of love with Cathy, and has changed her mind about her heroine. “Back then, I wanted my heroines to show me new ways to be, like heedless, selfish Cathy. I didn’t want heroines who mirrored my own anxieties too accurately. But maybe I’ve changed. Or at least: maybe I’m changing.” She concludes that our tastes change as we grow older, which is natural and perfectly acceptable. “I’m beginning to think all readings are provisional, and that maybe we read heroines for what we need from them at the time.”

Maybe we read to learn things; maybe we read to escape; maybe we read to find new characters and role models; maybe we just read. And if our reasons to do so, and the characters we admire change from time to time, that seems perfectly understandable too.