Separating Fact from Fiction: The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy by Barbara Vine

Viking

Pp. 343

When Gerald Candless, a critically acclaimed author dies, his daughter, Sarah, is asked to write a memoir of her beloved father. As she starts to research his childhood and origins – i.e. his life before she was born – she soon discovers multiple discrepancies in the narrative. There follows a domestic investigation into family secrets that might make a man change his name and adopt an entirely new persona.

As with many Barbara Vine novels, the timeframe switches back and forth between past and present, and all the family members are affected by the consequences of one man’s actions. Each chapter begins with a ‘quote’ from one of Gerald Candless’ novels, allowing the author to play with her story-within-a-story motif, as Sarah plays amateur sleuth and attempts to mine fact from fiction. The moth on the spines of Gerald Candless’ books (and the jacket of this novel) proves to be a ‘clue’ in the manner of an old-fashioned detective novel, and simultaneously represents a subtle homage by Barbara Vine to the art of cover design.

The secrets are often to cover historic scandals, such as illegitimacy, unwed mothers, class distinctions and homosexuality, which would not raise an eyebrow today. She writes with sadness that such issues could lead to misunderstanding and even murder.  Another familiar trope is the notion of blood being a metaphor for generational inheritance (both positive and negative), while also being a vital fluid.

Like PD James or Robert Goddard, Barbara Vine writes literary suspense novels where the characters are more engaging the plot, and the themes are apparent from the start. Rather than racing to the end to find out whodunnit, the reader spends time with the characters wondering how they feel and what they are going to do about it.

Friday Five: Koala Tea Time

There was another one in the Koala Tea Time set, which had a cute koala and a cup of tea image. The idea was that it spelled out, 'I love spending koala-tea-time with you'. I guess you just had to be there. I gave it to my friend as a gift before I remembered to take a photo of it, so you'll have to take my word for it. 

This next one is from the Absolutely Fabulous set (one of which was featured in a previous Friday Five). All of these designs are from Elise Ross at Spruce Craft Co.

This last one is from the book Feminist Cross Stitch by Stephanie Rohr. I stitched it for International Women's Day and asked on my Facebook page if anyone wanted it. A friend who teaches history in New Zealand requested it, thinking it would be a welcome additional aid to her classes on female suffrage, so I framed it and sent it to her. I'm happy to share any of my cross stitch pieces if you would be prepared to give them a good home. Just let me know.

"The idea that women's rights and human rights are one and the same was first put into writing in the 1830s by female abolitionists. The concept has since been used by many feminist leaders, but perhaps one of the best-known uses of this particular phrase came during Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. This quote is still relevant today, especially when many rights, such as access to education, reproductive rights, and freedom from gender-related violence, are considered up for debate. It seems like a lot of people could still use this reminder." - Stephanie Rohr

Trouble in Paradise: How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

 

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

Tinder Press

Pp. 308

The title refers to a cautionary tale parents tell their daughters not to be willful, as the child in the narrative loses an arm due to curiosity when she enters a tunnel despite dire warnings. The message misfires when Lala (she who is told the tale by her grandmother, Wilma) wonders whether the girl could cope without the limb, swapped for following passion. She is cautioned, ‘but how will she sweep the house with only one arm’? She questions whether a woman’s worth is judged by her housekeeping, and maybe she would rather lead an adventurous life.

Unfortunately, her adventures do not lead to happiness. The novel is set in Barbados on a beach straight from the brochures of paradise. White folk live in tall, gated houses, while violence, prostitution, drug smuggling, murder and other criminal activities exist beyond their gardens, and everyone carries a gun. The police turn a blind eye to the abuse (particularly of women) until it enters those houses of those who go to embassies and ruin the tourist trade.

The community is steeped in intergenerational violence and abuse. Mothers beat their children because they do not want them to go bad and need to whip the devil out of them; they fear that sparing the rod is the cause of the child’s failings. Lala marries Adan, who regularly beats and rapes her, even while she is recovering from a traumatic birth. He commits robberies to pay for his lifestyle, which escalate to drug smuggling and murder in a sort of subplot to the novel. His cruelty leads to a tug of war with their newborn (known only as Baby because they have not yet decided on a name), which results in the death of the child as she is dropped on the floor.

Girls are routinely raped by their male relatives: Lala is the child of her mother, Esme, and her grandfather, Carter. The young women are sent away to remove the temptation, while the man is not considered to be at fault. Lala is made to sleep in the outhouse to avoid her grandfather’s attentions, or how else can he resist? Women are pursued by men. The policeman who investigates the Baby’s death pursues Sheba and refuses to accept that she doesn’t want his protection; Adan fixates on his ‘outside woman’ despite being married to Lala.

"A grown man cannot help himself, she explains, in the presence of a young Wilkinson girl. This is the way it has been for generations. It is not the man’s fault, says Wilma, there is nothing he can do about it. It was this way with her mother before her, her daughter and granddaughter after her. It was this way with her."

In some ways, the novel, full of descriptive scenes and local patois, is reminiscent of those by Alice Walker, Toni Morrison or Alan Duff. Characters struggle to connect with community and lash out at those who seek to reinforce their culture without understanding the roots of reggae or Rasta, merely turning gangsta. When Wilma holds a funeral for Baby, Adan does not attend because he is wary of her connection to culture, although he tells his friends that she is a bitch and “he not going anywhere around her or her house.” He is alone and left behind in the world where he has lost his local bonds.

Even Lala is infused in her beliefs, although they may not support her – her grief, trauma and post-partum depression are explained in superstition. “She is convinced also that supernatural beings are conspiring on her daughter’s behalf to make her understand that she will pay for her part in her death.” She fears a “wicked duppy” is playing tricks on her, putting cans of formula in the cupboard, although she knows she has thrown them all out, sprinkling the scent of baby powder in the house, and “It is this duppy, or another, equally malevolent, who infuses the peculiar sound the paper bag of flour makes when she is making dumplings and it hits the floor with the same sound she heard when Baby was dropped.”

Reviewers have called the book unflinching, claustrophobic, pitiless, and relentless. Focussing on murder, abuse, a violent marriage and the death of a baby, it is certainly no light-hearted tale, but there is a slight glimmer of hope towards the end, and it is ultimately compelling. It is exquisitely constructed, with flashbacks to flesh out the characters and the pathways that have led them to this Barbadian beach, and it is a great achievement for a debut novel.

Friday Five: Ides of March

La Morte di Cesare (1805) by Vincenzo Camuccini

Well, today's the day that all self-elected senators should probably avoid temple steps, just in case all their so-called mates gang up on them and stab them in the back. Or so says Shakespeare, anyway. The soothsayer tells Julius Caesar on more than one occasion to beware the ides of March, but does he listen? No, he does not. And the rest, as they say, is history.

As with many people educated through the British school system in the 70s and 80s, I learned much of my history through Shakespeare plays. It was a great grounding for understanding the true definition of fake news, which allowed me to filter out a lot of the nonsense promulgated by white men talking about subjects they didn't really understand, but who had a following because they wrote a good speech, or got ghost writers to do it for them. In keeping with that theme, here are five Shakespeare quotes that relate to calendar dates.

1. "Beware the Ides of March", The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Act I, scene ii (15 March)
2. ''And gentlemen in England now a-bed/ Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,/ And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks/ That fought with us upon Saint Cripin's day."- Henry V, Act IV, scene iii (25 October)
3. "Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past: Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?" - A Midsummer Night Dream, Act IV, scene ii (14 February)
4. "On Holy-rood day, the gallant Hotspur there,/ Young Harry Percy and brave Archibald,/ That ever-valiant and approved Scot,/ At Holmedon met,/ Where they did spend a sad and bloody hour." - Henry IV, Part One, Act I, scene i (14 September)
5. Twelfth Night - Yep, the whole play. (5 January)

IWD Autumn Haiku

Like fruit, you say I 

bruise too easily, but you 

make me fall so hard.

Friday Five: Books Read in February

1. The Other Slavery by Andrés Reséndez (Marine Books) - If you mention slavery to most people in America, they think of the despicable African slave trade. They may even consider the ongoing trafficking among Asians, Latin Americans and Europeans. While Andrés Reséndez does not for a second diminish these atrocities and horrors, he does want to bring the homegrown slave trade of millions of Native Americans to national and international attention. The book is scholarly and academic following the history and laws (or lack thereof) that he believes are largely unknown and should receive greater recognition. He argues that slavery rather than disease and misfortune is the true reason for the decimation of the indigenous population of North America. Covering Caribbean islands, Mexico and the early territorial governors of the U.S, this powerful thesis is, in the words of a considered review published in the Los Angeles Times, "one of the most profound contributions to North American history [ever] published."



Painting of Indian soldiers from the Coritiba Province escorting Native prisoners, by Jean-Baptiste Debret



2. Takes One to Know One by Susan Isaacs (Grove Press UK) - Corie has retired from her role as a counter-terrorist agent for the FBI to become a wife to federal judge, Josh, and a mother to his daughter, Eliza. Although she still does some consultation work for the FBI, she ostensibly leads the perfect suburban life complete with a dog called Lulu, a ‘cover’ job recommending Arabic literature to a publishing house, and weekly lunch meetings with fellow freelancers at a French restaurant. And she is bored senseless. So, when she suspects a member of the group of being up to no good – he always picks the same seat to watch his car, changes phones often and makes frequent interstate trips – she imagines that he must have a secret life, and she sets out to investigate. Are her instincts, honed by training at the Bureau, correct, or is she desperately trying to create some excitement, and Pete from packaging really is simply bland? I love the fact that some people made donations to Long Island charities by bidding to have a character named after them, which is a great idea. This is a very easy-to-read novel, which combines the excitement of law enforcement with the tedium of suburban domesticity. It may hurry to its conclusion, but the characters are warm and engaging, which makes them enjoyable company.
3. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Canongate) - My sister's choice for the family book club, it has an easy-to-read style and an uplifting premise, suggesting that we can all have a second chance at life. It begins with Nora attempting to take her own life because she sees no future and is riddled with regrets, but she gets transported to a magical library where she has a chance to live out all those previous lives she wishes she could have chosen and realises that the one she has isn't so bad after all. And she gets the chance to go back to where she was and live it. It's very nice and tidy and a little bit twee, and completely unrealistic - she still has to return to the life from which there is no future, and most people who consider suicide really have no hope left. It is endorsed by the Daily Mail, which gives us an idea as to what to expect, and is clearly crying out to be made into a Netflix series. 



George Whitman, proprietor of Shakespeare and Company

4. Shakespeare and Company: A History of the Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart edited by Krista Halverson (Shakespeare and Company, Paris) - Shakespeare and Company is an English bookshop in Paris, run by Americans - originally Sylvia Beach and then George Whitman (descended from Walt), who oversaw its move to the left bank of the Seine, in the shadow of Notre Dame, followed by his daughter, also called Sylvia. The bookshop is an icon of Paris, frequented by locals and homesick tourists alike, myself included. This glorious coffee-table book is divided into decades and contains photographs, graphic novel images, copies of newspaper articles, historical content, and the autobiographies of the Tumbleweeds. The Tumbleweeds were people who came to stay for a couple of days and helped out at the shop in return for a bed (or sofa, or place on the floor) and two meals a day; George asked them each to write an autobiography of approximately two pages, which collection he intended to publish. He was an incredible person with an eccentric nature - he 'cut' his hair by singeing it with a candle, travelled the world, and believed that books, knowledge and sharing were the staples of life. 
5. The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose (Allen & Unwin) - In 2010, an artist, Mariana Abramović, created an art installation, The Artist is Present, whereby she sat at a table in MOMA opposite visitors to the gallery, who had queued for the privilege - 1,554 people sat with her over 736 hours and more than 850,000 people observed from the sidelines. Marco Anelli photographed all the sitters and published a book, Portraits in the Presence of Mariana Abramović. Both Abramović and Anelli appear as themselves by permission in this novel. The rest is made up. It is a novel about the characters who sat or observed, and how the experience affected them, including Arky Levin, a film score composer whose wife is dying and who has legally requested he doesn't visit, although she permits her daughter to so do. Jane Miller is a recent widow who travels to New York and spends all her time at the exhibition - are all these people now connected? The novel addresses existentialist questions about human nature and art and whether either one can exist in a vacuum or whether we need to relate to common environment and shared experience. It reads like a performance itself and emphasises that its value is in the reader's reaction. 

Mariana Abramović and exhibition goers at The Artist is Present

Friday Five: Les Fameliars!

Back when we were in Ibiza (was that really almost a year ago? Oh, how I miss it), we came across statues and sculptures of a little sort of monster all over the place. The Fameliar is a little elf with a big ugly head, a big mouth and a terrible voice, which can only be found in the islands of Ibiza and Formentera.

A plaque at the foot of one of the statues explained, "according to tradition there is an ugly little being which, nonetheless, is capable of carrying out any job it has been given quickly and properly. The drawback is that it only knows how to do to things: work and eat. So, the only two words it knows are 'Feina o Menjar' (work or eat)! Anyone who wanted to have a 'fameliar' had to go under the old bridge of Santa Eularia on the Saint John's night with a black bottle, pick a certain flower that could only be seen on that night and place it into the vessel. Once it was well sealed, there was nothing special about the bottle but, as soon as it was opened, the 'fameliar' would appear, anxious and demanding work or food. The problem of the 'fameliars' is that they are so hard-working and they carry out the master's commands so fast that, once the job is over, they eat everything in the larder in the blink of an eye."

I know there are only four of them, but there are three pictures of one of them, so I reckon that works out. 

Prison Performance: Mad Blood Stirring

Mad Blood Stirring by Simon Mayo

Doubleday

Pp. 387

Simon Mayo’s first novel for adults concerns a relatively unknown incident about a massacre at Dartmoor Prison where American sailors were being held in 1815 after the end of the three year-year conflict between the United States and Britain. The peace had not yet been ratified and there were thousands of prisoners of war crammed into Dartmoor, frustrated, angry and turning to violence. This much is true, and the novel is packed with solid descriptions of prison life: crowded bunks; appalling food; general boredom; thoughts of escape and political intrigues; and the constant backdrop of fear and danger.

Inspired by true events, the detail is precise including the initial march to the prison, the labour of snow-clearing, the smallpox outbreak and vaccinations against it. The sailors are segregated by choice, with the black sailors in Block Four, where they sing gospel songs and perform plays which they take very seriously. King Dick ‘rules’ Block Four, and the Rough Allies attempt to rule the rest, with violence and intimidation.

Sixteen-year-old Joe takes on the role of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet that is to be performed with great passion by the inmates of Block Four, although they bowdlerize the text. The kiss between the lovers is fraught with danger partly due to the homosexuality (punishable by flogging and further brutality) and also because Joe is white, while Romeo, played by Habakkuk (Habs) Snow is black. The title of the novel is taken from the opening scene of Act Three of Romeo and Juliet, and here implies but the growing unrest in the prison, and the illicit feelings that Joe and Habs develop for each other.

Highlighting the theatrical elements, the chapters are divided into Acts, some scenes are presented as scripts, and there is a list of characters at the beginning. There are many characters and they are not all fully formed with some aspects that could have made great stories relegated to mere subplots, causing the novel to read a little like the first draft of a film-script, albeit in a well-defined setting.

Love the Show Steve! Friday Five: BBC Radio 1 DJs.

BBC Radio 1 played a big part of my formative years. It was my musical background; I felt comforted by familiar tunes and challenged by new ones. I defined my style through sounds - those I liked and those I didn't. The music made up my identity. There were the road shows, the drive time mixes, the morning routines, the chart release countdowns, the ridiculously catchy-jingles, the in-jokes and the wonderful lack of advertising. I didn't actually realise how wonderful that last point was until I started to listen to commercial radio and wished the station didn't have to keep being interrupted by the utterly banal - how naive I was not to know that was capitalism. 

Of course, it wasn't just the music; it was the personalities and their presentation. I learned a lot about mic technique and public speaking, just by listening to others. I learned there was a time to be controversial and opinionated and a time to let others speak their views. As this is was a public service broadcaster it was meant to be apolitical (as with all things which are supposedly non partisan, the right thinks it is too left and the left thinks it is too right), but as it targeted the 15-29 age group, it mainly focussed on 'youth issues' if it strayed into that territory at all.

Annie Nightingale

I'm mentioning it in the past tense because I stopped listening it to it when I left the UK in 1996. It is still going, as it has been since September 1967. Recently I have been thinking of it often, however, as several of the DJs to whom I used to listen have died, with the most recent being Steve Wright. So here, for Friday Five, I thought I would pay my respects to some of the great BBC Radio 1 DJs of the recent past (in alphabetical order). 

1. Annie Nightingale (1940-2024) - one of Britain's trailblazing DJs died earlier this year and it was a great loss to the musical community. As the first female presenter on BBC Radio 1, she specialised in championing new, experimental and underground music. She hosted afternoon request shows, afternoon slots, evening shows, and current affairs shows. In the late 1980s she considered leaving radio after becoming disillusioned with popular music, but instead became interested and involved with acid house music from 1989 onwards, playing it on her Radio 1 show before it became mainstream. She travelled and performed as a DJ at festivals all over the world and continued playing house music on her show until her death. 
2. Janice Long (1955-2021) - Janice Long (née Chegwin - big sister to Keith) presented a weekday evening show (Monday - Thursday, 7-10pm) featuring a mix of new music and current affairs. I used to listen to it as I did my homework (it ran from 1984-1987). She left the station in 1988 to have a baby, and was not offered a way to return, so she moved to Greater London Radio instead. It's her voice I remember most, as listening to it in my bedroom was an almost daily occurrence for me. 
3. John Peel (1939-2004) - The longest-serving of the original DJs on BBC Radio 1, he broadcast regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004. He was an absolute inspiration and a devoted Liverpool fan. He chatted away on the radio about new bands to whom he had been introduced by his son, William. With his avuncular attitude and eclectic taste, he showcased a number of genres from pop, dub and reggae to punk, post punk, electronica, indie rock, extreme metal and British hip-hop. His radio show was noted for the regular Peel Sessions- four songs recorded by an artist in the BBC studios, many of which became definitive versions - and the Festive Fifty, which was he only countdown that mattered. When I lived in Manchester I would occasionally walk past him on Oxford Road as we both hurried to or from work/ class, and it would always make my day to be in the presence of greatness. 



John Peel

4. Mike Smith (1955-2014) - Mike Smith was the presenter of the weekday lunchtime show on BBC1 from 1983-4, but it was his stint on the breakfast show from 1986-8 that brought him to my attention. He was charming, friendly, chatty, and a comforting presence, one of BBC TV's main presenters at Live Aid in 1985, and a regular presenter of Top of the Pops. He mainly played chart hits and new music from mainstream bands - nothing startling - with a family-friendly approach. He also piloted helicopters and married Blue Peter co-presenter, Sarah Greene. He seemed like a thoroughly wholesome chap. 
5. Steve Wright (1954-2024) - Steve Wright was one of my childhood DJs, whose show Steve Wright in the Afternoon had a cast of characters performing irreverent skits, inspired by the style of his mentor Kenny Everett. The 'posse' included producers and radio staff who joined in with the spoof and sketches. The program ran from 1981 to 1993 and it was what we listened to on the bus on the way home from school. The style - known as the zoo format due to the general feeling of chaos - became legendary and defined what it was to be a DJ at that time. It wasn't enough to just play music; you had to be a personality as well and to entertain above all. As he said himself, "It's a tabloid newspaper of the airwaves - fast, fun and packed with info. Something for everyone."

A Refusal to Die of White History: Modewarre

Modewarre by Patricia Sykes

Spinifex

Pp. 90

Modewarre is the indigenous word for musk duck, a creature at home on land, water and air. Through her poetry, Patricia Sykes explores various histories and the boundaries between them which blur and blend. She splits the poems into three sections: House of the Bird, House of Water, and House of Detention, examining words and their connotations, dwelling on reflections, refractions and altered perceptions.

Naming things robs them of their magic and power, as we use “language, so impossibly cumbersome/ for discovering the true weight of things/ the grandmother would have known”. The literary fragments are almost Sapphic with physical and sensual meaning: “as always the modewarre/ places faith in its eggs/ yolk and the sun/ breed each other”. The strong bonds of belonging and connection to land go beyond words, until the frustration is clear in a poem such as eponymous, “to the interrogator who keeps asking/ ‘so are you still suckling on myths of place?’/ I say try the enigma address/ the bird who keeps vanishing in water –”

The poems recall the land and the life before the colonists came, and also the sheer incomprehension of the invaders dealing with the loss. In eupathy (right feeling of the soul) she sees the land from above as though flying with the eagle. “to talk now/ of whether this is still so/ or if the eagles in free flight/ are an option/ to speak of/ options, land, again/ once more/ not as that which was taken/ is un-ownable/ contracting and crowded/ but as lava shift/ the heat of a river/ always underfoot/ in a molten indifference/ to politics”. There are layers of knowledge contained in a word, such as the poem, ‘brid’, eight darkness in which ‘brid’ is the name given by Nyangangu, a Yolgnu artist of Northeast Arnhem Land, to her bird carving. “there, where you are,/ bred of earth, breeding sky/ working the uplift, wingbeat/ as if sculpting a refusal/ to die of white history”.

The world is a palimpsest and so is the brain – our thoughts and memories are malleable. Birds connect people and places, and are often totems for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, helping to define kinship with people, their Country and nature, connecting to the roles and responsibilities of a mob, offering protection and foreshadowing danger and momentous events. This connection extends throughout the world as the birds migrate along their own songlines.

Means of expression are insufficient, with even mechanics of speech and typing unable to capture the richness of the language. “this keyboard’s/ tireless tap-tap mouth/ which cannot voice/ the interior ‘n’ in Nyangangu/ the one with the tail/ the sound of ‘ng’ in singer”. And yet the words can be damaging and belittling. “how the eyes like linguists are never satisfied/ how they’ll poke and pry into any lexicon”, wanting to preserve and capture, destroying the natural.

The poems in House of Water are concerned with childhood, disease, death, invasion, cattle, birds, and bunyips. Roads are built over traditional lands, only to crumble and fray at the edges demonstrating their impermanence in the liminal space. “what never was field/ become paddock become/ fences become livestock/ the cattle the sheep/ foraging for the hoofprints/ they lost the last time/ they departed a shore”.

In the House of Detention, the poems move on to highlight migrants trapped in refugee camps, prisoners in cells, wives in marriages, women in motherhood, caterpillars who will one day be butterflies, political constraints, and people wanting to be “at home in every world/ where exile does not exist”. In great-aunt narrative among the excised lands, Sykes leans upon the double meaning of refuse (verb and noun) as it relates to denial and pollution: “oh my Canberra…/ high city of presumptive cleanliness/ among the dirty waters exuding from the workplaces/ the smell of your refusal laws”. She uses a rare capital letter in this poem, which must surely be ironic as her punctuation is clean and almost entirely absent.

Modewarre is a great collection of powerful fragments, connecting words to the echoes of previous language both spoken and unspoken. It is a reminder that we are merely one of millions of moving parts that comprise our environment, expressing a concern for what will happen to the delicate balance once we form a pyramid and place ourselves at the apex.

Friday Five: Books in Song

One of the books I read last month was by Richard Brautigan. I read it because of the song, Have You Ever Heard a Digital Accordion by the fabulously bonkers band, The Lovely Eggs. And it made me think how much I have learned from music, as lyrics have frequently piqued my interest to learn more about historical, political and literary facts and figures. So here are five authors referred to in song that I have investigated further due to a lyric or two, or an entire song, or several. 

1. Brendan Beehan - there are many Pogues songs which namecheck the Irish poet, novelist, playwright and activist. Due to songs such as Streams of Whiskey and Thousands are Sailing I read The Quare Fellow, An Giall (The Hostage), Borstal Boy, Confessions of an Irish Rebel, and a couple of biographies by Michael O'Sullivan and Ulick O'Connor. As a man who joined the IRA aged 16 (after having been a member of the 'boy scout group' of the organisation aged 14), embarked on an unauthorised solo mission to blow up the Liverpool docks (for which he was imprisoned in a borstal), was sentenced to prison for attempted murder aged 19, promoted the use of Gaelic (which he taught himself to write and speak while in prison), lived in Paris and New York, and suffered alcoholism and related health complications including diabetes, it is little wonder that Brendan Beehan appealed so much to The Pogues. Some of his writing is exceptional, and he is largely known for his pithy epigrams, such as 'I only drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not' or 'There's no bad publicity except an obituary'. 
2. Albert Camus - A favourite of pretentious young men who liked to be thought of as enigmatic and tortured while having existentialist crises, but who actually turned out (as I learned to my cost) to be self-obsessed and intensely dull. Camus was born in 1913 in Algeria to French parents, and he was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II in 1940. He joined the French Resistance and edited outlawed newspapers, opposing Stalin and the totalitarianism of the USSR - his politics were more libertarian socialism and anarcho-syndicalism. After the war he became a celebrity speaker, had numerous affairs, published novels, essays and plays, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, becoming the second youngest recipient of the award (after Rudyard Kipling). Killing an Arab by the Cure makes a lot more sense after reading L'Etranger (The Outsider), I'm a big fan of isolated community narratives, so I was intrigued by La Peste (The Plague), and the name for the Prestwich post-punk band fronted by Mark E. Smith was taken from his last novel, La Chute (The Fall). 
3. Jack Kerouac - Natalie Merchant (lead vocalist and primary lyricist of the band 10,000 Maniacs from 1981-1993) probably is influenced by the Beat Generation of American novelists, poets, and self-entitled young men. They included Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski, and favoured stream of consciousness writing, jazz music, spontaneous travel, heavy drinking and widespread promiscuity... for men. Kerouac published wrote over a dozen novels and as many poems, with On the Road being the most famous and the only one I could bring myself to read. On the Road is a rambling, indulgent, misogynistic account of a road trip taken by Jack Kerouac with Neal Cassady across the United States and Mexico full of drugs, violence, soul-searching and machismo. It's greatly lacking in chapters, paragraphs or general structure and reading it feels like being bludgeoned by a Hemingway wannabe. Apparently Kerouac wrote it in 1951 with the assistance of his pregnant wife, Joan, 'supplying him with Benzedrine, cigarettes, bowls of pea soup, and mugs of coffee to keep him going', while he lived at home with his mother. In thanks, they got divorced and he refused to acknowledge paternity of the child until it was proved through a blood test when she was ten. He only saw her twice in his life, which ended aged 47 when he died from an internal haemorrhage caused by cirrhosis. The lyrics to Hey, Jack Kerouac by 10,000 Maniacs (released 1987) includes the lines, "You chose your words from mouths of babes got lost in the wood/ The hip flask slinging madman, steaming café flirts,/ In Chinatown howling at night." The music of the song is exquisite; the inspiration for the lyrics tiresome and disappointing.
4. Sylvia Plath - If all of the other authors mentioned here are read by every teenage boy who fancies himself as a misunderstood genius, then Sylvia Plath is the female equivalent for girls. Naturally, it doesn't end well for her and after being clinically depressed for most of her adult life, she died by suicide in 1963 aged 30. Incidentally, while many women read the male authors, I wonder how many men read the female ones. Apparently Nigel Blackwell (singer, guitarist and songwriter for Half Man Half Biscuit) does, or at least he refers to Sylvia Plath in the brilliant song, The Light at the End of the Tunnel (Is the Light of an Oncoming Train), which was released in 2002. Of course, I had already Sylvia Plath poetry collections, The Colossus and Other Poems, and Ariel, the semi-autobiographic novel The Bell Jar, and Janet Malcolm's biography about Plath's tumultuous relationship with Ted Hughes, The Silent Woman before this particular song came out (I was an undergraduate of English Studies in Manchester after all), but it's harder than you might think to find songs that refer to female authors. As Half Man Half Biscuit lament the loss of a relationship with a woman who has moved to Notting Hill and changed her sphere of social influence, they state, "For when you're in Matlock Bath/ You don't need Sylvia Plath/ Not while they've got Mrs Gibson's jam".
5. Oscar Wilde - It's almost impossible to imagine that The Smiths would exist if Oscar Wilde had not gone before. Screamingly pretentious with gladioli hanging out of his back pocket, Morrissey had that same pathological need to be noticed and considered witty and brilliant above all else. Despite the recent fall from grace - embracing a far-right political party and publicly spouting racist and sexist views - his lyrics from the cutting edge albums of the mid 1980s were instantly appealing to those who felt they were the social underdogs of Thatcher's Britain. The musical brilliance of Johnny Marr (guitarist), Andy Rourke (bassist) and Mike Joyce (drummer) certainly didn't hurt, and elevated the band to indie-god-like status, but it was the lyrics (written mainly by Morrisey and Marr) that were taken to heart in teenage bedrooms across the country.  "A dreaded sunny day/ So let's go where we're wanted/ And I meet you at the cemetery gates/ Keats and Yeats are on your side/ But you lose/ 'Cause weird lover Wilde is on mine." I became utterly obsessed with Oscar Wilde as a result of The Smiths and read every one of his plays, short fictions, poems, essays and novel (there was only one). I also practically haunted Cimetière du Père-Lachaise (where the body of Wilde is interred) when I lived in Paris (before the frankly repulsive habit caught on of people kissing the tomb and leaving lipstick marks), reading Richard Ellman's definitive biography (for which he posthumously won a Pullitzer Pride) while sighing dramatically and occasionally weeping. Pretentious, moi?

Friday Five: Books Read in January

1. The Chimney Sweeper's Boy by Barbara Vine (Viking) - When Gerald Candless, a critically acclaimed author dies, his daughter, Sarah, is asked to write a memoir of her beloved father. As she starts to research his childhood and origins – i.e. his life before she was born – she soon discovers multiple discrepancies in the narrative. There follows a domestic investigation into family secrets that might make a man change his name and adopt an entirely new persona. The secrets are often to cover historic scandals, such as illegitimacy, unwed mothers, class distinctions and homosexuality, which would not raise an eyebrow today. Like PD James or Robert Goddard, Barbara Vine writes literary suspense novels where the characters are more engaging the plot, and the themes are apparent from the start. Rather than racing to the end to find out whodunnit, the reader spends time with the characters wondering how they feel and what they are going to do about it.
2. Treacle Walker by Alan Garner (4th Estate) - This short and pithy fantasy was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022. Using the language of folklore and myth, it imbues trees, birds, stones and bogs with specific meanings, as linguistic word play heightens the fairytale elements of the power of nature and the land. Young Joe, trying to make sense of his world, meets the rag and bone man, Treacle Walker, who leads him through mirror worlds and comics that come alive with characters such as Stonehenge Kit, the Ancient Brit, who fights Whizzy the Wicked Wizard and his chums the Brit Bashers. Hiding behind antiquated and poetically nonsensical language that calls to mind Dylan Thomas, Gertrude Stein, Roald Dahl and Lewis Carol, Garner explores the world of modern politics, environmental crises and whether or not to 'correct' neurodiversity with medication. For a short work, it has received a lot of attention with very mixed reviews - many American critics found it 'boring', 'not easy or accessible' and are frustrated by its lack of linear narrative, which is like catnip to me.
3. Eric by Terry Pratchett (Gollanz) - When feeling down or overwhelmed, I find Terry Pratchett reliable in cheering me up and relaxing me. Of course I read the books in order, but for some reason I missed this one out - it may be the fact that the title consisted of the crossed out Faust replaced by the name Eric. Eric is a teenage boy who is seeking world domination, and intimate relations with beautiful women. He manages to hack into the demon world (full of endless meetings, memos and policy statements) but unfortunately for him, he summons up the ineffective Rincewind (last seen in Sourcery). It's a welcome return from the hapless chap and his savage but loyal luggage. Rincewind still has glaring gaps in his knowledge (quantum mechanics are 'people who repair quantums, I suppose') but he is still making valiant attempts to save humanity and, more importantly, stay alive. Chortles aplenty.
4. The Diversity Gap by Bethaney B. Wilkinson (Harper Collins Leadership) - The subtitle of this book is Where good intentions meet true cultural change, where the diversity in question is mainly race-related. It offers suggestions of how to make meaningful progress rather than simply ticking boxes or attempting to improve the public image. These things take time, involve actually listening to people, welcoming all opinions (especially uncomfortable ones), believing in the experience  and perception of others, paying people for their 'diversity leadership' (informal as well as formal), and sharing power. The last one seems particularly difficult to accomplish as leadership roles tend to be filled by the dominant cultural vision who want to hoard the power of decision-making to themselves and conduct projects their way, claiming it as a kind of perfectionism as if that were a good thing. The author uses corporate jargon and marketing speak, and repeats phrases immediately in bold as if they were giving a TED talk for the hard of understanding. Despite this being extremely off-putting, they do make some good points. “If we focus on questions related to diversifying teams, but fail to ask questions about sharing power, we miss the mark.”
5. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Granta) - Eleanor Catton was the youngest winner of the Booker Prize with the longest book in 2013 (The Luminaries). She clearly has talent, and she displays it again here in Birnam Wood. It's quite a lengthy novel (423 pages) and there is a lot of exposition, with the balance too much in favour of tell rather than show. Birnam Wood is the name of a renegade group who want to take back the land for common ownership and guerrilla gardening. The members make strange bedfellows with a billionaire who made his money in drone technology and says he wants to build a doomsday bunker but will let them use the land above ground and even finance their project. One former member of the group, feeling jilted by the organisation in its current form and desperate to make a name for himself in investigative journalism, decides to dig a little deeper. Of course there are Shakespearean parallels - powerful ambition is ultimately destructive, there is an integral struggle over whether it is better to be right or rich, innocent casualties accumulate, and 'Birnam Wood was going to a better form of camouflage than he had ever dreamed'. None of this should be a spoiler, unless you've never read/ seen/ heard of Macbeth, in which case, it's a spoiler for that too. Lengthy debates about patriarchy, economics, nationalism, identity politics, intersectionality and capitalism - 'Didn’t we already solve that one?' - are reminiscent of those earnest down-the-pub conversations we used to have as students. Despite the cleverly-designed cover, not everything is black and white. 
6. A Bird in the Hand by Ann Cleeves (Pan Books) - The author of the books on which the series Vera and Shetland are based, Ann Cleeves wrote the first in this George and Molly Palmer-Jones series in 1986. The couple in question are retired, happy to travel the British Isles birdwatching, and solving the murders which invariably occur. George used to work at the Home Office (doing secret business), is good with details and has bouts of depression; Molly is a retired social worker who is good at listening and brings out the best in people. Naturally, they make a great couple. Both are restless with their current life and enjoy a new challenge. When a birdwatcher is found dead on a marsh with his head bashed in and his binoculars still around his neck, it is a great surprise to everyone in the small community because everyone loved him. Or did they? Of course, they didn’t, as this is an old-style mystery and secrets soon come to light complete with multiple suspects, red herrings, precise timings of the murder, poison pen letters, and suspicious alibis. 
7. Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan (Canongate) - This is not a book about trout. It is a cult classic that is part commentary on American society, part surreal absurdism, and part hallucinogenic travel memoir where the pictures from the trip (in every sense of the word) are not yet developed. First published in 1967, the book is whimsical in the way that it captures a moment in time, referring to undeveloped photographs as "in suspension now like seeds in a package." Short chapters, oddly specific similes and a total disregard for character development or narrative arc, mark it as a work of post-modernism that deconstructs itself, talks about its own front cover, writes and receives letters and is an item for sale at The Cleveland Wrecking Yard where it is sold by the foot length. Brautigan is the slightly more obscure favourite of the boys in college who also read Kerouac, Kesey , Burroughs and Vonnegut, which should indicate to a potential reader whether they will like him or not. 
8. The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith (W.W. Norton & Company) - This novel was filmed in 2015 (by Todd Haynes) as Carol starring Cate Blanchett as Carol and Rooney Mara as Therese. The fact that I can only remember Cate Blanchett is telling, as Carol is so wholly the focus of the novel that Therese is tantalisingly indistinct. Written in a world-weary glamourous style, it recalls the novels of Fitzgerald, Collette or Nabokov: everything is mentioned, but nothing is understood. Therese begins an infatuation with Carol which leads to a clandestine relationship - is it love, or is the much-older Carol toying with her affections to discard her like a plaything? As a set designer, Therese should be used to miniature worlds and deceptive appearances, yet she seems drawn into the dream as though Carol had some White Witch potential.

Friday Five: Curiouser and Curiouser

I have signed up to a monthly cross-stitch subscription through Spruce Craft. Each month I get a tidy package delivered to my door containing fabric, threads and designs for four themed cross-stitches. The first one I did was in October and the theme was from Alice in Wonderland. 

The December collection was sparkling hearts and unicorns. I turned some of them into cards and sent them to friends for New Year's greetings. Here is another (to make up the Friday Five). 

What Lies Beneath? The Opal Desert

The Opal Desert by Di Morrissey

Macmillan

Pp. 406

Di Morrissey sets place extremely well. In her dozens of novels, the scenery and landscape are immediate and infinitely better drawn than her characters or plotlines. The Opal Desert is, unsurprisingly, set in Lightning Ridge, Broken Hill, Opal Lake, and White Cliffs, where most people are exceptionally friendly and we learn about the precious stones and the community who mine them. The three women around whom Morrissey tells her tale, Kerrie, Shirley and Anna, are all fairly predictable stereotypes who overcome their personal obstacles in life-affirming ways, which may not be realistic, but are heart-warming.

Kerrie is our main character who realises, after her sculptor husband dies, how much he absorbed her life into his, and that she doesn’t get on with his children. For spurious reasons (a recommendation from a friend’s lawyer), she decides to head to opal country to find herself and reconnect with her own artistic side. She encounters a land rich with visual treasures, art galleries and bush art, inspired by painters such as Pro Hart and Jack Absalom. She admires the light and bright colours.

The Windlass by Kevin Charles (Pro) Hart

Naturally, Kerrie also learns about the flash of opals – white, fire, black – and their addictive appeal. She appreciates the act of opal mining because it is “relatively small-time… unlikely to ever become a huge and invasive industry like gas, oil and iron ore.” As well as the beautiful stones, she learns, “Sometimes miners dig up fossils of shells and sea creatures, even dinosaurs.” She is told that, “Australia is the only place in the world which has opalised animal fossils. They’re not only beautiful, but important scientifically.” There is some friction between those who want to collect the fossils for their historical value, and those who want to break them up and create unique pieces of jewellery for sale. This is an interesting aspect of the book and even non-geologists will appreciate the basic descriptions of which rock formations lead to which varieties of opals.

Our next character is Shirley, an elderly woman who lives in a dugout she rarely leaves (due to a mysterious past event), but she socialises with everyone. “Shirley’s just Shirley, but she knows a bit about everything. She’s our local historian, sort of. Lovely, lovely lady.” Shirley decides to record the stories of the old miners so they might pay testament to a way of life that was fast disappearing. “The mantle of keeper of the stories, the one who held remnants of a life that might otherwise be forgotten, settled gently and easily on Shirley’s shoulders.” Di Morrissey’s evocation of time and place make her a type of archivist too.

People who mine (and live underground) are often a little odd; they live on the fringes and have personal reasons for being there. One character states, “I like going out to the opal fields. Special people out there, too. There’re some gems, some oddballs, some creative types and those with opal fever. It’s a place that affects everyone. There are friendly people, and most don’t ask questions, but there are also shady characters and blatant sexism. When the young woman, Anna, is introduced, she has justifiable concerns about the tactile and intrusive nature of some men she encounters. Others become paranoid, afraid of gangs coming to steal their stones. “It’s not always sunshine and glittering opals… the dark underbelly of the opal fields… murders, mystery, ratters and ratbags.”

Beneath the rose-tinted idealism, lies hidden bias and unconscious racism. Young Shirley tells her partner, Stefan, “Our history comes from the continent itself, the landscape, and the opportunities for people to carve their own paths, using their skills and knowledge.” This becomes complicated when she ignores Aboriginal history, “It must be stultifying being lumbered with thousands of years of history. Here, in Australia, you have the opportunity to be creative and original without the burden of the past. This country is like a clean slate.” Clearly this was written before the words ‘young and free’ in the Australian national anthem were changed to ‘one and free’ in an attempt to ‘foster a spirit of unity’, acknowledge ‘the fact that we have the oldest continuous civilisation on the planet right here with First Nations people’ and ‘honouring the foundations upon which our nation has been built and the aspirations we share for the future.’

Many people head to the opal fields for a change of pace, which is admirable. One character states, “We all need time out, as they say, on occasion. But that’s all it should be, a space between decisions. It becomes very easy to drift. You see it happen out here and before you know it, you’ve lost a great chunk of your productive life.” This begs the question, why must you be productive; what is the definition of produce – is it capitalist growth, and is that why Indigenous culture is ignored because it doesn’t visibly contribute to the GDP? What is wrong with “drifting”? Perhaps it has to do with the nature of Morrissey’s storytelling, in which all is tied up neatly at the end. It seems easy to get to be a curator, train for world athletic events or have an exhibition of paintings. Other character’s mysterious circumstances are cleared up in a page or two and everyone gets closure. This makes the people instantly forgettable (so much for recording their stories) but the landscape lingers in the mind.

Lightning Ridge