March 9, 2007

Cutting page intake

The last two books I’ve read have been 700 and 900 pages respectively, and though I do like devouring books, these have been awfully big meals. I look forward to some less sprawling novels in the near future; next up is Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert. And we just got Lisey’s Story by Stephen King from the library. Stuart is currently in the midst of it, but he says that I’m going to love it when my time comes.

But I am so glad I read Middlemarch. My monthly classics plan is doing wonders to close up some holes in my reading, and each book I’ve read so far, I would pity having missed forever. The book was extraordinary, and it’s been said before, but all I wish to say is that I agree. The scene that to me demonstrated Eliot’s force as a writer and character creator was when Dorothea calls on Lydgate, and meets Rosamond for the first time. This was a fair way into the book, and by this point I knew both these women intimately. And I could not fathom that they could be ignorant of one another, because they were each so vivid to me. Besides, how could anyone not know Miss Brooke? Each of Eliot’s characters were so persuasively people.

And then the Richard Dawkins vs. Peter Kay affair. Who could beat up whom? We’re Peter Kay fans at our house, and Stuart went off Dawkins with The Ancestors Tale, and so we’re betting on the boy from Bolton.

March 3, 2007

Full Disclosure?

I don’t really see how one can attack a collection of letters, except on two terms: the first, maybe you don’t like reading letters; the second, the letters are boring. As my entries of late have made clear, Decca: The Collected Letters of Jessica Mitford was hardly boring. This book was absolutely enthralling, and Mitford’s letters found their way into my dreams. Epistolary dreams! You can’t fathom it. This was such an absorbing book, a twentieth century overview, and a record of one absolutely fascinating life. Jessica Mitford was a complex, exasperating, difficult woman, but she was brilliant, funny and sharp, and I have never before gained such an intimate understanding of character from a book as I did with this one.

And so, when one takes a collection of letters that are decidedly not boring, the plan of attack must be through character. Fine, I suppose. Though that seems to me a strange approach for a book review, and probably inappropriate. And no doubt, Jessica Mitford herself would not disagree with Daphne Merkin’s review in Slate that she was neglectful mother, that “vitriolic archness was her first and last defense”, or that empathy was not always her forte. Etc. etc. (though I think this reviewer simplifies her character considerably– eg. why she “airbrushes” her deceased son from her memoir, because she could not bear to relive his death through writing about it).

What is inexcusable, however is for a reviewer to write such a review, with its snide attacks, and not mention that she herself is rubbished in the book, perhaps underlining her perspective? Decca, page 706: Sez Decca: “[Did you read the] New Yorker women’s issue? Some good, some awful. One of the worst was by someone called Daphne Merkin, v. long and all about how she craves to be whipped (she’s a masochist) with nary a joke in it. Marina looked up “Merkin” in the OED– says it means “a pub*c wig”.

So perhaps Ms. Merkin had a bone to pick, but shouldn’t she have been a bit more honest about picking it?

March 1, 2007

The Library at Night

Many book gatherers could perhaps write a book such as this one, inspired by their own collections. Though of course most of them aren’t blessed with Alberto Manguel’s erudition– the feature which makes this intensely personal book of such wide interest. In The Library at Night, Manguel approaches his library as a work in progress whose completion is a most fortunate impossibility. The book itself is similarly constructed, of pieces and anecdotes connected by chance to make a history of libraries, and librariness. And though, as Manguel (via Virginia Woolf) points out, the difference between reading and learning is wide, that one can do both with this delightful book, and with such pleasure, must double its force. The history of the new library at Alexandria, the man who was buried in his apartment in an avalanche of books, book mobiles by donkey in Columbia (the biblioburro), the internet’s undying present, the history of the British library or the contradictions of Carnegie. How to catalogue books, or to find room for books, the best shapes for rooms for books. Political, whimsical, artful and bursting with stuff. The Library at Night was not intended for everyone, but to those for whom it was, this book will prove a valuable and indispensable addition.

February 24, 2007

Injurious Reads

Everyone is right. Disgrace is wonderful. And Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford is impossible to take in morsels– I keep binging. Now reading Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin. Upcoming: The Library at Night.

I had a reading-related injury today when I read whilst brushing my teeth, paid too little attention to the latter activity, brushed too hard and and now my poor sweet gums are ailing. Reading is a dangerous business really. Sometimes holding the book makes my elbow ache.

I just came back from a splendid dinner at the beautiful new home of Natalie Bay whose fine company made the evening fly by. We’ve lived in all the same countries and so we spend most of our time talking about things no one else can stand to hear about. Which suits us well. And we’re off to Peterborough for the weekend, and the temperature calls for brass monkeys.

Further, Tide Simple Pleasures has rendered our apartment redolent with something slightly synthetic, but we like it. It smells better than we do. And, all real pleasure this week has been brought to us by crumpets.

February 21, 2007

Blood Sports by Eden Robinson

Where Eden Robinson’s first novel Monkey Beach was a supernatural story mixed with Native lore, Blood Sports is a gritty urban suspense tale, though both books have in common a startling brutality and no aversion to gore. The new book’s differences in tone, style and subject matter do help to keep comparisons with Robinson’s incredibly successful first novel from being a first point of criticism, and they also demonstrate her development as a writer.

Blood Sports is the story of Tom, who is trying to put his past behind him and focus on the future with his partner Paulie and their baby daughter Mel. However as the story opens with a letter written to Mel to be read on her eighteenth birthday, a reader can infer that his domestic dreams will be thwarted. Soon into the book Tom and his family are launched into an absolute nightmare of torture, connected to events in his and Paulie’s pasts involving drugs, crime and dodgy deals. And these scenes would be unbearable to read if we did not know from his letter that Tom, Paulie and Mel emerge all right in the end, however damaged.

Where Robinson’s writing is most compelling is in her depictions of light in the dark. Tom and Paulie’s relationship is strong against all odds, in a bleak and horrible world. Similarly Tom’s love for his daughter is ever present throughout all his agony, particularly in the letter he writes for her. And of course, as in Monkey Beach Robinson also writes the dark with skill– scenes of torture and desperation that had me cringing and wincing, and she didn’t shy away from any of it. So of course, I couldn’t either.

Robinson has produced a literary thriller. Literary because her prose is important, but also because one cannot rip right through this book in order to get quick to the end. This is not an overly accessible text– parts are written as flashbacks, hallucinations, letters and video transcripts, all of which provide quite subjective perspectives upon the book’s events. Robinson spells out nothing. The reader must tread carefully through the story and put the pieces together, keeping an eye out all along for more answers. This technique is engaging and for the most part successful, though I did lament the absence of a narrative voice in the rather mechanical video transcripts, only because Robinson’s voices are so wonderful.

February 18, 2007

Don't eat things you find

Today was a rather bookish Sunday, as Stuart devoured Chart Throb and I turned page after page of To Kill a Mockingbird to get to its magnificent end. Oh Atticus. When I read this book ten or eleven years ago, the precocious children impressed upon me, but the greatness of their father got lost in adultland. This time around he was the centre he was meant to be. Again, that this book is extraordinary is hardly news, but it’s nice to be reminded. And afterwards I baked banana scones from this recipe. I used whole-wheat flour instead, but they were absolutely exquisite. Oh, and last night we watched Rocky II. We loved it.

February 16, 2007

Fierce

Upon a recommendation, I read A Passion for Narrative by Jack Hodgins and found it so illuminating. I don’t really believe you can learn fiction from a book (except books of fiction, of course), but I’m right in the middle of my big project and reading such a guide at this stage is quite practical. Shines light on what might be wanting, and made me think of a few things I never even considered. And then I can go right to my story and apply what I’ve learned. The book also dealt with matters of structure I’ve been grappling with. My aim is to have my story done by the end of this month so that I can spend March dealing with it as a whole. Though this aim would be more achievable if February were just a bit longer. Though if February were any longer, I would probably lose my mind.

On lending books— most people who know me know me well enough not to even ask. Lending out a book fills me with terrific anxiety and I don’t feel better until it’s back in its home. Because as much as I love books as objects, I love my library as an entity even more. When I prune my shelves, however, I always make sure I give away the discards. I have a moral objection to profiting from books. I feel that karmically I will benefit somehow by spreading that love– whether to a college book sale, or a friend.

Now reading Ladykiller, which I would sum up as “fierce”.

My Valentines Day haul was ace: I got a box of Celestial Seasonings Tea. I gave Stuart a grapefruit. And I also made him a chocolate treat from a recipe in Globe Style (“Triple Chocolate Attack”), though I made plenty and got to enjoy as much as he did.

February 14, 2007

Radiance by Shaena Lambert

Radiance would be the story of Keiko, a “Hiroshima Maiden” who comes to America in 1952 for plastic surgery on her facial scars. It is quickly apparent, however, that this story belongs instead to those she meets during her sojourn– people who see her as an opportunity to fulfil their own personal longings. And all of them want to hear her story:

~’Tell me about Hiroshima.’ But she is. She is. It is a map she carries in her body, where north holds the hills and, beneath them, the wide suburban avenues, the streetcar rails dusted with snow. South is full of winding cobbled streets, smelling of fish. East beyond the castle is a flat plain that reminds her of her father. Here soliders practice their drills and formations, carrying black bayonets.~

Hiroshima is a place of many stories. For me, for many years, Hiroshima was a book by John Hersey and a photo of a mushroom cloud. While we lived in Japan, we visited the city twice and it became one of my favourite cities in that country, with beautiful canals, a vibrant atmosphere, and nearby Miyajima, which might just be my favourite place in the world. Lambert plays with the idea of a storied Hiroshima in a marvelous way. How a city’s name has come to stand for such atrocity, and yet behind it are the stories of the people who live there. And similarly are stories woven throughout the novel– in particular the story of Daisy Lawrence, Keiko’s American “host mother” who is dealing with her own personal trauma when Keiko comes to stay. Keiko herself remains a cipher right to the novel’s ambiguous end.

Daisy comments that once Keiko comes, everything seems to be “carrying a double shadow, so that you could never be sure if what you saw was strange or natural.” It is the same experience for the reader, who can never be sure whether incidents are interpreted through characters’ neuroses, or can be seen for what they are. This ambiguity is particularly effective as the narrative takes place during the era of McCarthyist paranoia, and Daisy’s own husband is called to testify about his affiliations. But at the same time, so many unanswered questions leave a reader a bit unsatisfied too. More of a focus could have aided this: with so many double shadows, and you long for something solid to hold.

The multitude of perspectives is one problem in this text. Swinging between characters results in such bizarre situations as Daisy seemingly noting her husband sitting in the car “watching her stout, muscled buttocks” as he dropped her off at the train station. Similar awkwardness exists in some of the prose: a sentence like “The pilot… stepped jauntily down the steps” is absolutely crying out for a better verb, or an editor. I was uneasy about some of the metaphors connected Daisy and Keiko: that the former takes off her girdle and is imprinted with flowers, as victims of the atomic bombs are burned by the patterns on their kimonos, and while the connection is jarring, I did not find it particularly informing.

But as the above passage about Hiroshima indicates, Lambert is capable of very strong writing. And this story gathers momentum as it goes, culminating in twists and turns that took me completely by surprise. Perhaps Radiance is a book of too many stories, but the story at its core, which is Daisy Lawrence’s, is well-played out until the very end. And Keiko’s story too, even in her reticence. She proves a most intriguing trickster figure, never explained away and this contibutes to the novel’s magic aura. Using a remarkable blend of Japanese and American lore, Shaena Lambert’s Radiance tells the stories which underwrite the history we think we know.

February 11, 2007

Cheating

I’m totally cheating because I’ve gone on a YA spree. I am justifying this by explaining that I am dealing with a young protagonist at the moment and so it’s good to have some exposure to that kind of voice, but the truth is that I love the Anastasia books. They are so clever. I went to the library yesterday to return one and brought home four more, as well as a couple of other young adult novels. And I say that I am cheating because I read one in an hour, and then mark it on my list of Books Read Since 2006 and now I’m at 199 and I don’t know if that’s quite right. Now reading Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin. I love Laurie Colwin.

February 8, 2007

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was absolutely stunning. If you read it, I promise you will like it. The story of Arthur Seaton, a factory worker in 1950s Nottingham with insatiable tastes for married women and liquor, and the smartest, deepest soul. Really a cracking story with humour, a marvelously rich and complex character, a reflection of a time, and oh the language. Concluding with “Well, it’s a good life and a good world, all said and done, if you don’t weaken, and if you know that the big wide world hasn’t heard from you yet, no, not by a long way, though it won’t be long now.” This is the most subtly delicate masculine book I’ve ever read.

And I read it because of this article from The Observer last month about Nottingham now versus then, and the idea of reading any book set in Nottingham really appealed to me because I used to live there and I miss it all the time. There is something about reading about a place where you’ve lived (I particularly remember feeling this whilst reading Russell Smith’s books when I was an undergrad). Even if the book is set fifty years before you set foot in that town, and the Raleigh Factory is gone now, and all the rough places are even rougher and even the nice places aint so nice anymore. I would posit that reading a book about a place you know well is a vastly different experience from reading a place you’ve never been, or a place that never was. They’re whole different species of reading, I think.

It was also interesting to read Saturday Night and Sunday Morning having just read No Longer at Ease and Things Fall Apart (which was published just a year after Sillitoe’s novel). And the relationship between Achebe’s postcolonial Nigeria and Sillitoe’s 1950s Industrial Midlands, which is just fascinating. And I thought this even before the African character Sam rolls into Nottingham and they reckon he’s so good at darts “as a legacy left over from throwing assegais”. Just these similar themes and emotions experienced by the protagonists, and the fact that a “Morris” automobile is a status symbol for Achebe’s Obi, and yet Sillitoe’s Arthur dismisses an ancient one as a step below a car.

It’s a brilliant book. I wanted to read it slow and well, just to see how the words worked. And I have been making an effort to read more books written by men, as I’ve been far too discriminatory in the past. I’ve enjoyed this broadening of my horizons. It was also nice to see that Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was one of the 1001 books I must read before I die. That list is a bit man-heavy, really, and lately I’ve been wracking up a score.