September 24, 2014

Marvelling at The Mitfords

I am sad that today we live in a world without a Mitford sister, not a single one, as The Duchess of Devonshire has died at the age of 94. Debo was close to my heart as it was to her Chatsworth House that I visited in 2004 whilst experiencing a throat infection, and fell down in a faint among the sheep droppings, and it was still worth the trip. This was at the height of my Mitford-mania, after I read Mary S. Lovell’s The Mitford Girls and became utterly fascinated. They were connected to everything! Debo’s husband’s late brother’s wife’s was John F. Kennedy’s sister, Kathleen. The commonplace variety of banana is called Cavendish was named in the 15th century for her family line. Plus she was a Duchess. Sister Nancy was the comic novelist; Diana divorced a Guinness to marry Oswald Mosley, which led to a falling out with Decca, who became a communist and ran away to fight in the Spanish Civil War (before immigrating to America to become a journalist); Pamela was a lesbian, and otherwise (comparatively) dull, except she had an Aga that matched her eyes; and yes, Unity, Hitlers girlfriend, who shot herself in the head at the advent of World War Two. Has non-fiction ever been so fascinating? They were like the Spice Girls, but smarter, longer lived, and with fascism. Such amazing, compelling lives. (I love that they were fictionalized in Jo Walton’s excellent Small Change trilogy).

I have a whole shelf packed with Mitford books—the Lovell biography, theirs and Decca’s collected letters, Decca’s non-fiction and autobiographies, Nancy’s novels, and even Debo’s collection of columns, Counting My Chickens. I cherish every one of these and always will, even more so now that the sisters are all gone. Stranger than fiction—they’re proof of that. The best and worst of Englishness—they’re a reminder of the spectrum of human experience.

I even wrote a poem about them, back in the time in which I did such things as write poems.

Extremism was so fashionable that first season

“Why must all my daughters fall for dictators?”
~ Lady Redesdale (Sydney Mitford)

Extremism was so fashionable
that first season.

At the races my daughter won herself a diplomat
and my husband and I my husband and I
concerned with crashing stocks had our veritable sigh
and we folded our hands and nodded then,
as he stood on a box and took up his pen
because she looked on so loving
I couldn’t help but be pleased,
in spite of his wife, in spite of their life
and his radical politics leaning far right.

There was the matter of war in Spain
which (she said) was just a prelude.

This was the littlest daughter, always contrary,
“I will run away, you’ll all be sorry.”
When she finally fled, it was to throes of war
and she didn’t bring a stitch to wear,
to fight for the reds or marry for love
just to be where the action was happening.
She had to deny her former life
to prove her worth as working-class wife,
they came back to fight for the cause from their home
on the slummier side of South London.

The man of the year was a small man
seeking room to grow.

My middle daughter found him on her travels
my sullen, silly girl, by his words became so serious
when she sang them in her own voice
we consented, it was her choice
but he was such a charming gentleman
when he had us all to tea.
(But this is when the trouble starts, as you will see)

Solidarity was demanded on the homefront
but for us, this was impossible.

My golden older daughter and her lover- now her husband-
the coincidence of their ideological proximity
translated to sympathy for the enemy
and this daughter of mine, fond of long days and wine,
spent war years charming the Holloway Prison for Women.

The littlest one fled to America, still wedded to her cause,
kept her affiliations testifiable, and sincerity undeniable-
she had rallies and babies and books to write and
for seventeen years she refused to cross the line,
she fought the fascist front known as The Family

My husband and I- my husband and,
as his opinion of the Germans was established years before
when he’d lost a lung fighting in the First World War
and he could not abide by the company
of the leader with whom I’d had the pleasure of tea.

Especially not while the world was coming apart
at its bursting Versaillesian seams.

And my silly daughter could not abide by bursting seams
to choose between England and the man of her dreams
on September first, nineteen thirty-nine
she put a gun to her temple in an attempt to stop time.

My outspoken daughters had been drawn to men
who could outspeak them.

They dared to defy us with dictators- an original act of rebellion-
typical; no middle men, they loved instead
their moustaches and regalia their marching men with unbending knees
Prussian fortitude, Yugoslavian ingenuity
and all those ideals that had the trains run on time.
I could not raise a shallow woman; my daughters
my twentieth-century casualties, there was a time
behind every powerful man was a good woman
and I had birthed nearly all of them.

December 10, 2007

The Mitfords Edited by Charlotte Mosley

Here is not a book for the common reader: you have to know and “get” the Mitfords in order to appreciate Charlotte Mosley’s collection of their letters The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters. My journey towards such knowing and getting began about five years ago when I read Mary S. Lovell’s biography The Mitford Girls. I’d plucked it off a shelf in Waterstones one day whilst on a lunch break, and I can’t remember now what possessed me to do so, but I was enthralled by these sisters, their family and their story. Nancy, the lady novelist; Pamela, who had her Aga custom-painted to match her blue eyes; Diana, who married a Guinness heir and then left him for the leader of the British Fascists, was fond of Hitler and never repented; Unity the Nazi, whose own fondness for Hitler led to her suicide attempt two days after England declared war on her beloved Germany in in 1939, where after she lived brain damaged until her death in 1948; Jessica the Communist, who ran away to the Spanish Civil War and then to America where she made a career for herself as a “muckracker”; and Deborah, who would become the Duchess of Devonshire.

Only England could have made them, and only in the twentieth century at that. Their story is the century summed up, from society balls to “Well Lady, the inevitable has occurred, Dinky is going to have a baby by a black man”. Their relationships best understood by the phrase: “I naturally wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him if it was necessary… but in the meanwhile, as that isn’t necessary, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be quite good friends.” I’ve written plenty here about my Mitford leanings. How I’ve loved the other volumes in my Mitford library since the Lovell: Nancy’s novels, Jessica’s memoirs, even Debo’s book (I visited in Chatsworth House in 2003 and would have enjoyed it much more had I not been terribly ill at the time and having to keep collapsing on the grass amidst sheep poo). I read Decca’s letters earlier this year and absolutely adored them.

This collection of letters is essential, and I found them fascinating– though I didn’t enjoy them as much as Decca’s. Perhaps a collection between six people wouldn’t have the same narrative arc? And also that Unity’s and Diana’s letters were so disturbing, the latter right up until the very end as she perpetually viewed herself as victim (though the years she spent imprisoned during WWII for her relations to the Germans must indeed have been traumatic). But I learned so much new stuff here, about Debo and Pamela in particular and how interesting (but not inter-esting) each one was in her own right. Debo is also as fine a letter writer as her far more literary sisters. That though Jessica and Nancy were terrible liars, this trait was not unendearing somehow. That the homeliest sister turned out prettiest in old age (I think, at least– Pamela). How impossibly hard is one life, and any life, even one which is most extraorder.

What an amazing bond is sisterhood, which these letters demonstrate. The jokes, secret languages, grudges, traumas, and joys. Collections of letters also manage to represent death like no other literary form I’ve encountered (as I found when I read Carol Shields’ letters in June) –the absolute silence of a writer’s cessation is incredibly powerful, and real. With Nancy’s and Pamela’s in particular, and then in the end that blank page. To think of all the life that created these, which is as palpable as the page upon which they’re printed.

January 5, 2011

You have to be a speedy reader

I’ve long followed the dictum of Dr. Seuss who wrote in his great work I Can Read With My Eyes Shut, “You have to be a speedy reader because there’s so so much to read.” I’ve also come under the influence of Art Garfunkel (naturally), who keeps an online list of books he’s read since 1968. (I wish I had kept such a list online. My own “Books Read Since 2006” disappeared with my hard drive in June 2009). And however much I enjoyed Steven Beattie’s post calling for slow, considered reading, for an end to the competitive reading fad (and, for those of you who get out more than I do, such a thing actually exists), I must now mount my own defence of the speedy read,  because it’s the only way for me.

It comes naturally to me, reading books quickly. For a while, I tried to slow down, but it made me miserable. When I read, I find that I’m not racing to the next book as much as I’m barrelling through the book I’m in, and I love the momentum. I love taking in a book all at once, or as much as possible, in one sitting. Devouring, live and whole. The way blood pumps through my veins is how I like to read my books, pulsing, surging, singing, vital.

I love how reading one book after another illuminates the most curious connections. I love how reading quickly permits such breadth, and bizarre reading tangests for the fun of it: Barbara Pym, all the Mitfords, my Judith Viorst-a-thon etc., and still keep up on what’s current. I love how a book in a day means that the book was my day, inextricably tied, and therefore my books read list functions as a kind of diary.

And yes, I love my books read list (now Since May 2009), which doesn’t necessarily have to be numbered, I realize, but the numbers are something tangible I’ve built out of book after book. A commitment to reading lots isn’t always a commitment to reading too quickly– it means reading instead of any number of things, such as television, bedtime, or walking down the street bookless. It’s making reading a main priority, which is something to be celebrated. This kind of commitment can be a joyful one too, and not a chore. I am really happier reading (a good book) than when I’m doing most anything else in the world. It’s not a competitive sport with other people as much as with myself: I want to read all the worthwhile books that exist in the world, or at least as many as I can possibly manage.

Being a fast reader doesn’t mean I’m a bad reader, particularly because I’m conscious of the drawbacks to my furious reading pace. Which is the reason I started my books read list, for tracking purposes. Which is the reason I started blogging about books in the first place: to provide me with a space for reflection, a way to engage deeper with the books I come across. Which is the reason I make a point of rereading books as often as I do (and that’s the great thing about speedy reading: it gives us the time to do so).

It is possible for quality and quantity to be most excellent bedfellows. I will indeed be heeding Steven’s challenge for us “to read better: to be more sensitive, expansive readers, to enter more deeply into the text, to actively engage with books on an intellectual, aesthetic, and linguistic level”, but there’s just no way I’m slowing down, because I’m only getting started.

October 13, 2010

Vicious Circle reads: The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

The Vicious Circle assembled in The Junction last night to talk about Tove Jansson’s The True Deceiver. Some of us had read Jansson before, and copies of Fair Play and The Summer Book were passed around. Most us really liked this novel, one of us thought it was okay. Based on Jansson’s photo in The Summer Book, we thought she resembled a Moomin a little bit. And then we talked about the Moomins, which none of us were really familiar with, but everyone we’ve overheard who is familiar had talked in terms that were only glowing.

One of us thought the prose was strange. Not bad, but just weird, but maybe it was the translation? It was noted that Thomas Teal had apparently kept his translation very close to the original. The narrator switched from first person to third person in a such a subtle way you could almost miss it, and this subtlely was the case with everything in the book. Was Katri narrating the third-person sections? We could argue either way. It’s odd discussion a book where everything leads one in a circle.

Some of us really liked the shut-in, isolated, wintry, in-from-the-cold sense that abounded through the story. We wondered which of the two main characters had triumphed in the end– who was the “true deceiver”? Impossible to say, and we argued both ways (and then we ate some dops). We commented on the gaps in the prose, in the narrative– how oddly the perspectives were filtered. Very unconventional, and allowing for such surprising glimpses. We wondered where Katri’s intentions had come from, what had gone on before the novel began. How had she garnered such respect in the village? What were her feelings for Edvard, and what had been the feeling she felt when she changed her mind about what she had told him. We speculated, but were never sure.

Katri was always questioning, doubting, second-guessing her own intentions. Was there good reason for this? Did she really believe in her own honesty, or was she just telling herself, and what’s the difference? When she confesses to Anna at the end that she hadn’t been cheated, is Katri confessing her own deceptions, or is she finally deceiving now having realized the consequences of her brutality.

We were fortunate to have a children’s illustrator in our midst, and so we talked about Jansson’s portrayal of Anna whose job was the same. The same as Jansson’s too of course, and we note the games she played with autobiography in her works (this insight via Ali Smith in her wonderful introduction). Why did Anna stop drawing the rabbits, but it was suggested that the problem had been the rabbits’ cutesiness, that with their flowers they were not honest. That after years and years of drawing the same thing, maybe Anna wanted to try something different. We remarked upon the incredible merchendization of cartoon characters, which led us to Hello Kitty douche.

Somewhere along here, off the rails, there was a joke about radial tires and blowjobs. We went and helped ourselves to more guacamole. Broke out the sweets– YUM: apple pie. The cats came and went as we chatted. Our numbers were fewer, as some of us were elsewhere preparing to give birth, or else working. We kept bringing it back to Tove though– what was it like to live in a small village? Lesbian undertones? And then we talked about Stieg Larrson. Among other things. And it was, unsurprisingly, a most wonderful evening.

Other Books mentioned during our meeting:

• The Summer Book and Fair Play by Tove Jansson
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• Turtle Diary, novel by Russell Hoban (which became a movie)
• Franklin’s Thanksgiving
• Kiss the Joy as It Flies by Sheree Fitch
• Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick
• anything about The Mitfords
• Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock
• As For Me and My House by Sinclair Ross
• A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez
• Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller

July 13, 2010

Yes we have some bananas

It’s been more than a month since I last discussed being obsessed with bananas, and so much has happened since then! My quest for banana biodiversity in The Annex turned up plantains in Korea Town, and plantain chips at Sobeys (which tasted just like potato chips, which is sad when plantains are so much better). Eventually, I found baby bananas in Chinatown (and they are sweeter than the Williams Cavendish we’re all accustomed to), and red bananas at WholeFoods (and they even more so, delish). I also learned that banana biodiversity is limited due to more complicated factors than I initially supposed– we don’t find the Gros Michel banana anymore, because they’ve been wiped out by Panana Disease, and other kinds of bananas are pretty much impossible to export.

I read Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World by Dan Koeppel, and was relieved to find that the banana obsessed spot the globe. In some countries in Africa, people depend on them for sustenence. North Americans have made them more popular than the apple. In Leuven Belgium, a whole research centre is devoted to preserving the banana, which is under threat due to being a) sterile and b) susceptible to disease. I also learned what it means that the plant is sterile, and how it grows anyway (from clones of itself that come up in the roots). I learned that India is pretty much banana central in terms of biodiversity, but because export is where it’s at banana-wise, local varieties are being pushed out to make room for the Cavendish.

I learned that the Cavendish banana gets its name from a connection to Chatsworth House, now home of the last Mitford sister (and aren’t the Mitfords connected to everything?). What banana republic actually means, and how United Banana (now Chiquita) used its influence to have the US government overthrow the government of Guatamala in the ’50s. The terrible treatment of banana workers, which continues to this day, but companies take no responsibility for because they only sub-contract these workers. That a strain of Panana disease has hit Cavendish plantations in Asia, and if it arrives in North America, bananas are in trouble. That genetic modification is the only way to save the banana, which doesn’t even have the same points against it as most GMO arguments, due to the banana’s unique placement. I want to try the lakatan banana one day.

And now I will copy the recipe for plantain quesidillas which have been rocking my world lately (and it also makes a very good pizza topping). I got the recipe from a handout at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, and it’s absolutely delicious.

1) In medium frying pan over med-high heat, heat 1 tblespn veg oil. Add 1 plantain coarsely chopped (though I used 2) and saute until golden, about five minutes. Transfer to bowl and set aside.

2) Heat 1 tblespn in saute pan, add 1 med chopped onion and saute until golden, about 4 mins. Add one cap of rinsed black beans, 1/2 cup fresh cilantro (which I never used, subs parsley), 3/4 teaspoon of ground cumin, 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper (which I never used), and saute until mixture is heated, about 5 mins.

3) Mix bean mixture, plantains and 1 cup of grated cheese and, using potato masher, mash mixture until it forms a thick paste.

4) In pan, heat small amount of oil over medium heat. Place one tortilla in pan, spread on bean and plantain mixture, and top with a second tortilla. Heat until bottom tortilla is golden brown and cheese is melting, about 4 mins. Flip and heat reverse side. Remove from heat, cut into wedges and serve with sides of choosing (they recommend sour cream and/or salsa, I never used sides).

February 1, 2010

Meet the Smiths

I’ve got a family of Smiths on my bookshelf. Probably you do too. Mine are diverse but an excellently harmonious bunch. There’s Ali, of course, of The Accidental and Girl Meets Boy. And then Alison, of the poetry collection Six Mats and One Year. Next is Betty, who wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Beside her is Ray, then Russell, and Zadie, who have brought to the library Century, Muriella Pent and White Teeth/On Beauty, respectively.

This is the largest clan in my library, save for the Mitfords who don’t actually count because they’re really sisters. And I’m not sure if this bunch is alike or unhappy in their own way, but I like how their jackets rub together anyway.

December 16, 2009

The Post

If I had to pick just one thing about the English novel, I don’t think I could, but if pressed to pick five things, one of them would have to be the post. Much in the same way that cell phones are pivotal to contemporary plotting, the British postal system is essential to the 20th century Englist novel. As are teacups, spinsters, knitting, seaside B&Bs, and the vicar, or maybe I’ve just been reading too much Barbara Pym, but the mail is always coming and going– have you noticed that? Someone is always going out to post a letter, or writing a letter that never gets posted, or a posted letter goes unreceived, or remains unopened on the hall table.

My day is divided into two: Before Post and After Post. BP is the morning full of expectation, anticipation, and (dare I?) even hope. AP is either a satisfying pile on the kitchen table, or acute disappointment with fingers crossed for better luck tomorrow. In my old house I was in love with the mailman, but that love remained unrequited because I was in grad school then and he only ever saw me wearing track pants. When we lived in Japan, I once received a parcel addressed to me with only my name and the name of the city where we lived (and humiliated myself and was given a sponge, but that’s another story.) When we lived in England, the post arrived two times a day and even Saturday, but the only bad thing was that when I missed a package, I had to take a bus out to a depot in another town.

All of which is to say that I love mail as an institution, as much as I love sending or receiving it. I once met a woman who told me that her husband was a mailman (though she called him a “letter-carrier”, I’m not sure if there’s most dignity in that), and I think she was taken aback when I almost jumped into her arms.

So when I read this piece in the LRB by a Royal Mail employee regarding the recent British mail strike, I had mixed feelings. I was troubled by the bureaucratic nightmare that is the Royal Mail of late, the compromise that comes from profit as the bottom line, the explanation of how Royal Mail is part-privatized already, their focus on the corporate customer. “Granny Smith doesn’t matter anymore,” this piece ends with, and they’re not talking about apples, but instead their Regular Joseph(ine) customers. Those of us whose ears perk up at the sound of mail through the letterbox, at the very sound of the postman’s footfall on the steps.

I took some heart, however, from the article’s point that it is a falsehood that “figures are down”. “Figures are down” appears to be corporate shorthand to justify laying off workers, increasing workloads, eliminating full time contracts, pensions etc. Apparently the Royal Mail brass has no experience on the floor, they’re career-managers (and they’ve probably got consultants) who come up with ingenious ways to show that “figures are down”. Mail volume, for example, used to be measured by weight, but now it’s done by averages. And during the past year, Royal Mail has “arbitrarily, and without consultation” been reducing the number of letters in the average figures. According to the writer, “This arbitrary reduction more than accounts for the 10 per cent reduction that the Royal Mail claims is happening nationwide.”

So yes, none of this good news about the state of labour or capitalism, but what I like is this part: “People don’t send so many letters any more, it’s true. But, then again, the average person never did send all that many letters. They sent Christmas cards and birthday cards and postcards. They still do. And bills and bank statements and official letters from the council or the Inland Revenue still arrive by post; plus there’s all the new traffic generated by the internet: books and CDs from Amazon, packages from eBay, DVDs and games from LoveFilm, clothes and gifts and other items purchased at any one of the countless online stores which clutter the internet, bought at any time of the day or night, on a whim, with a credit card.”

This is hope! I do love letters, namely reading collections of them in books (and particularly if they’re written by Mitfords), but I’ll admit to not writing many of them. My love of post is not so much about epistles, but about the postal system itself. A crazy little system to get the most incidental objects from here to there. I like that I can lick an envelope, and it can land on a Japanese doorstep within the week. I like receiving magazines, and thank you notes, and party invitations, and books I’ve ordered, and Christmas presents, and postcards. I like that in the summer, Harriet received a piece of mail nearly every single day.

And I really love Christmas cards. Leah McLaren doesn’t though, because she gets them from her carpet cleaner and then feels bad because she doesn’t send any herself. I manage to free myself from such compunction by sending them out every single year, and in volumes that could break a tiny man’s back. Spending enough on stamps to bring on bankruptcy, but I look upon this as I look upon book-buying– doing my part to keep an industry I love thriving (or less dying). Yesterday, I posted sixty (60!) Christmas cards, though I regret I can no longer say to every continent except Africa. Because my friend Kate no longer lives in Chile, but my friend Laura is still working at the very bottom of the world so we’ve still got Antarctica, which is remarkable at any rate.

I love Christmas cards. I send them because I’ve got aunts and uncles and extended family that I never see, but I want them to know that they mean something to me anyway. And it does mean something, however small that gesture. These connections matter, these people thinking of us all over the world. Having lived abroad for a few years, I’ve also got friends in far-flung places, and without small moments of contact like this, it would be difficult to keep them. It’s impossible to maintain regular contact with everybody we know and love, but these little missives get sent out into the world, like a nudge to say, “I’m here if you need me.”

I also send them because I’ve got these people in my life that I’m crazy about, and I want to let them know as much. Particularly in a year like this when friends and family have so rallied ’round– let it be written that it all meant the world to me, then stuck in an envelope and sealed with a stamp.

But mostly (and here I confess), I write Christmas cards because people send them back to me. I’ve never once received as many as I send, but the incomings are pretty respectable nonetheless. I love that most December days BP, I’ve got a good chance of red envelopes arriving stacked thick as a doorstop. And if not today, there will be at least one card tomorrow. I love receiving photos of my friends’ babies, and updates on friends and family we don’t hear from otherwise, and the good news and the hopeful news, and just to know that so many people were thinking of us. We display them over our fireplace hanging on a string. It is a bit like Valentines in elementary school, a bit like a popularity contest, but if you were as unpopular as I was in elementary school, you’d understand why strings and strings of cards are really quite appealing.

I love it all. That there are people in places all over the world, and they’re sticking stuff in mailboxes
pillared or squared, and that stuff will get to us. That at least one system in the universe sort of almost works, and that I’ve even got friends. And then– this is most important– what would the modern English novel be without it?

December 4, 2008

Notable

What are the odds? That for the second year in a row Pickle Me This has read six (6) books out of the New York Times 100 Notable. And that also for the second year, I’ve read the first and second books listed (which raises one’s expectations a bit, no? But then they’re in alphabetical order). Books featured that we love including American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen, Home by Marilynne Robinson, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson, and Yesterday’s Weather by Anne Enright. The list also includes Richard Price’s Lush Life, which I just might be receiving for Christmas.

From the Globe and Mail 100, we’ve read a far more respectable 12, having noted here The Girl in Saskatoon by Sharon Butala, Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings by Mary Henley Rubio, The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters by Charlotte Mosley, The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews, Stunt by Claudia Dey, Coventry by Helen Humphries, The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan, Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith, Home by Marilynne Robinson and Goldengrove by Francine Prose.

Stay tuned for the Pickle Me This Picks of ’08, still to come.

December 12, 2007

Post on my mind

Steph with more to say about post has reminded me of my own Ultimate Post Office Story from when we lived in Japan two and a half years ago– do have a read. And I will shut up about post soon, but these days as I read 800 pages of letters, visit my local PO weekly and anticipate red envelopes in my mailbox every day (and they’re beginning to trickle in) the whole thing is very very much on my mind. With pleasure.

November 29, 2007

Youth and Consequences

Non-fiction has taken over the household. Husband is currently reading The New Kings of Non-Fiction, edited by Ira Glass, and keeps proclaiming its greatness from the sofa. And I have begun my non-fiction commitment binge– I just finished Jan Wong’s Beijing Confidential. I must admit that I am yet not suffering from lack of life as I thought I might have been. No, there was life aplenty in Wong’s book, and even if there hadn’t been, I am taking supplements of The Mitfords anyway. I don’t miss fiction yet. But there are five books still to go in my binge, and not all as narratively driven as Beijing Confidential either, so we shall see.

As a reader I will never cease to be fascinated by how unlikely books can inform one another by virtue of being read in close proximity. Though really it’s unsurprising to think about how much a book of letters between six infamous British aristocrats and a Canadian’s Maoist memoir/ travelogue might have in common– I just never considered. But both are in many ways concerned the political impressionability of youth– terrifyingly, really. How much power a young person can come to wield, unknowingly or otherwise. The predictability of it all as well: the twin yearnings for belonging and independence which are so often the root of political extremism. The ways in which consequences are so little considered reminded me of both India Knight’s recent column “The young’s invincibility illusion” and my recent reading of Esther Freud’s Love Falls. Anyway, more on this will be forthcoming in my reviews of both books.