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...

God Help Us: Winter

Winter by Ali Smith

Penguin

Pp. 322

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. Dickens opened his festive novel with the words, “Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.” Smith riffs on this idea. “God was dead: to begin with. And romance was dead. Chivalry was dead. Poetry, the novel, painting, they were all dead, and art was dead. Theatre and cinema were both dead. Literature was dead. The book was dead.”

So, what’s left? An ageing woman called Sophia imagines a child’s floating head to keep her company. She is visited by her son, Arthur (Art for short), who writes a blog called Art in Nature, which his ex-girlfriend, Charlotte, hates because it isn’t political. He explains, “What I do is, by its nature, not political. Politics is transitory. I watch the progress of the year in the fields, I look closely at the structures of hedgerows. Hedgerows are, well, they’re hedgerows. They just aren’t political.” Not wanting to admit he is alone, Art pays Lux, a girl he spotted in a bus-stop, to accompany him and pretend to be his girlfriend. When Sophia appears to be very ill, Lux contacts her estranged sister, Iris, to whom she no longer speaks. Iris turns up on the doorstep and recriminations and family resentments rise to the surface. The names with their connotations of sleeping heroes, guiding light and Greek gods are all pertinent.

The treatment of nature is centre stage – if Autumn was about Brexit; then Winter is about the environment, and the disasters destroying the planet and humanity. Iris is politically motivated, and the sisters dredge up memories of the Greenham Common protests, about which Smith seems almost nostalgic. She suggests that individuals can still make a different if they work together, as topics range from the Grenfell Tower to the insistence on stopping migrants; the political becomes personal and vice versa. The novel contains CND songs, and 1960-style rhymes about poisonous gasses and noxious chemicals. Horrifyingly, people are crowdfunding to raise money to stop rescue boats from helping refugees.

Having been impressed by Cymbeline, Lux originally came to England because it is the land of Shakespeare. In an obvious political metaphor, she says, “If this writer from this place can make this mad and bitter mess into this graceful thing it is at the end, where the balance comes back and all the lies are revealed and all the losses are compensated… then that’s the place I’m going. I’ll go there, I’ll live there.”

Language and communication are themselves under threat in this modern world. To glean information, people no longer talk to each other; they google things and the results are listed. Just as there is a disembodied floating head in Sophia’s imagination, words are split in half to create new meanings: get ahead; get a head; “I’m nobody’s child. I’m no body’s child.” Art examines the concept of snow and the connotations of the word ‘snowflake’. In one section, Art asks Lux a series of questions, and then we see her side of the dialogue separately as she answers them. Further indications that cohesive dialogue is breaking down is seen in parliament when a man barks like a dog at a woman who is trying to make a speech.

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. Winter is an incredible achievement – it was written to reflect the immediacy of the time (even the text is not justified, implying a sense of urgency), yet it feels fresh rather than hurried. It ends with another echo from A Christmas Carol: “In the middle of summer it’s winter. White Christmas. God help us, every one. Art in nature.” It’s enough to make the reader want to take to the streets.

Gathering Swallows Twitter in the Skies

Autumn by Ali Smith

(Penguin), Pp. 260

Shortlisted for The Booker Prize and hailed as the first post Brexit novel, Ali Smith’s Autumn shoulders a weight of expectation for a slim novel. While it stands steady on its exquisite legs, it is also part of a series of novels due to represent all four seasons. It recalls the ode to autumn with its mists and mellow fruitfulness; there is a sense of melancholy but it is also suffused with hope, colour and a love of all things bright and beautiful.

Elisabeth Demand befriends her elderly neighbour, Daniel Gluck, and slowly learns his stories, while he challenges her imagination and perceptions of society. Her mother is horrified that she chooses to spend time with an adult male and cannot conceive that it is entirely innocent. Is it? The novel flicks back and forwards through time but with helpful explanations such as ‘It was a Tuesday evening in April in 1993. Elisabeth was eight years old.’ Daniel described artworks and paintings to her, including the works of the first female pop-artist, Pauline Boty.

Elisabeth later becomes a lecturer in art history, two topics which are intrinsically intertwined. She was told by a lecturer that there were no female pop artists and she is determined to champion Pauline Boty, who refused to fit the boxes created for female artists and died prematurely in 1966. With her witty collages and subversive paintings, Boty becomes a symbol of all those who are “Ignored. Lost. Rediscovered years later. Then ignored. Lost. Rediscovered again years later. Then ignored. Lost. Rediscovered ad infinitum.” Time is fluid; it is linear but cyclical; very messy and frequently repetitive. Now Daniel is in a nursing-home coma and Elisabeth visits him, pretending to be family: he has erotic fantasies about which she will never know. He had experiences of the Holocaust, and there are clear parallels drawn between the treatment of foreigners then and now.

It is self-consciously literary and also aware of the cyclical nature of history. From the opening line – “It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.” – it is clear that everyone is feeling unsettled as the country tears itself apart.

“All across the country, there was misery and rejoicing… All across the country, people felt it was the wrong thing. All across the country, people felt it was the right thing. All across the country, people felt they’d really lost. All across the country, people felt they’d really won. All across the country, people felt they’d done the right thing and other people had done the wrong thing.”

Britain has just voted to leave the EU. Half of the village isn’t talking to the other half. A mysterious barbed-wired compound has sprung up nearby complete with security cameras and patrolling guards. Elisabeth’s mother, who is obsessed with antiques, decides to get herself arrested by throwing items of historic significance at the enclosure, “bombarding that fence with people’s histories and with the artefacts of less cruel and more philanthropic times”. A house in which immigrants live has the words GO HOME spray-painted on the wall. But later, the words, WE ALREADY ARE HOME, THANK YOU have been added, and bouquets of flowers left by supporters and well-wishers. There are seeds of hope and humanity scattered in this forlorn and morally bereft landscape.

Ali Smith acknowledges the pain of division and the beauty of inclusion. From nature with its seemingly haphazard approach to procreation and fertility, to the apparent clinical approach to grammar and semantics, she suggests that organic development will always triumph over control. Daniel dreams of becoming imprisoned in a tree and returning to the earth. Smith admires the polyglot of languages with words coming from all over the world (such as an intriguing section on a book young Elisabeth reads about a gymkhana).

This is a time of fear and certainty based on lies and fabrications. Daniel explains that the power of the lie is “Always seductive to the powerless.” We make sense of our world through the stories we tell and the ones we hear, whether they are presented as anecdotes or news. “Whoever makes up the story makes up the world, Daniel said. So always try to welcome people into the home of your story. That’s my suggestion.” We need more inclusion; we need more acceptance; we need more open-mindedness; and we need more books by Ali Smith.

Only Connect

How to Be Both by Ali Smith

(Hamish Hamilton)

Pp. 371

This ambitious novel twists strands of tales together like the DNA double helix molecule that symbolises the story. The first half concerns Francesco del Cossa in an out of body experience – she may be dead, but she doesn’t remember dying; perhaps this is purgatory? She is drawn to a girl who is looking at her painting in an art gallery. The second half concerns George, the girl from the gallery, trying to cope with the death of her mother, Carol, who became obsessed with the unknown painter of frescoes in Ferrara, Italy and took her daughter there to see them in situ.

The halves of the novel are both numbered One; half of the books are printed with George’s story first and Francesco’s second. They can be read in either order because everything is connected, and all things overlap. Sitting in an Italian piazza and discussing the prevalence of over-painting images, George’s mother asks her, “Which came first? The chicken or the egg? The picture underneath or the picture on the surface?” George says the picture underneath, of course. “But the first thing we see, her mother said, and most times the only thing we see, is the one on the surface. So does that mean it comes first after all? And does that mean the other picture, if we don’t know about it, may as well not exist?”

These palimpsests become a metaphor for life. Francesco is really a girl, but disguised as a boy so that she can have a career as an artist. Pictures record things past their death; they capture immortality. Carol was an art activist, “It was her job to subvert political things with art things, and to subvert art things with political things.”

After her mother’s death, George feels as though her life has been split into two entirely separate halves. “That before and after thing is about mourning, is what people keep saying.” She discovers a woman with whom Carol had a relationship, and George stalks and photographs her every day. She recalls how her mother used to think she was being spied upon and ‘Minotaur-ed’; was she just being paranoid? Or is this the self-enveloping effect of time’s continuum? Both art and surveillance involve watching and being watched, and there is always more going on than meets the eye. Carol taught George, “Nothing’s not connected. And we don’t live on a flat surface.” History is ever-present and the weight of all this connectivity can be oppressive.

The novel is a complex work of meaning and metaphor: a classic story of love and loss, told in a fresh and modern way. Both genre and gender bending, this is a work of parallel universes, palimpsests, fluid time and space, paranoia and mystery – almost too clever by half, and certainly challenging, but definitely memorable.