Reading Matters

A visit to Hodges Figgis, Dublin, Ireland

I'm still in Ireland, where I've been on a rather extended birthday-trip-come-summer-holiday since last Thursday evening. We've been dividing our time between Dublin and County Wexford, dodging the rain showers, thunderstorms and wet weather. (If this is summer in Ireland, I hate to think what winter is like!)

On Tuesday we did a bit of sightseeing around Dublin town, and paid a visit to Hodges Figgis, which I believe is the biggest bookstore in Ireland (although I'm happy to be corrected, if that's no longer the case). It is also the oldest, having been founded in 1768, although it has moved from its original location and is now situated on Dawson Street.

In fact, anyone who has read James Joyce's Ulysses may recall that the bookstore gets namechecked, although I don't think Joyce is referring to the present location. (Joyce also namechecks the Davy Byrnes pub, which is around the corner. I quite enjoyed drinking a quiet pint at the same bar at which Leopold Bloom stops for a gorgonzola cheese sandwich and a glass of wine. There's a few pics of Joyce up on the wall as a tribute.)

Sadly, Hodges Figgis is no longer independent, because it was bought by HMV (which also owns Waterstone's -- there's a branch across the road) a few years back, but it's still decked out in the Hodges Figgis green and gold livery and has a distinctive feel and flavour of its own. There are no "3 for 2" tables here, but piles and piles of books on floors and tables at €3.99 and €4.99, which is effectively half-price.

The shop is spread across three floors (according to the Dublin tourism website, it houses 1.5 million books!) but I kept to the ground floor, and even then I concentrated pretty much exclusively on the Irish literature section. Honestly, as someone who has a penchant for Irish fiction, it was like discovering a little slice of heaven. I'm still raving about it days later.

Basically, one very long wall was crammed floor to ceiling with everything from Samuel Beckett to Oscar Wilde. And for the first time ever I saw all of Jennifer Johnston's titles nestling up against one another -- generally the book stores I frequent only ever stock her latest offering, if you're lucky.

Conscious that I had to get everything home in a suitcase, I restricted myself to five books, but if I lived in Dublin I'd probably have walked out with a dozen more. It was just blissful working my way through the shelves, rediscovering books I'd already read, and finding ones I'd never heard of.

In the end I plumped for:

Sebastian Barry's debut novel Annie Dunne
Hugo Hamilton's Disguise
Aidan Higgins' Langrishe Go Down
Nuala O'Faolian's memoir Are You Somebody?
Orna Ross' A Dance in Time.

If you want to visit, the store is located at 56-58 Dawson Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. It doesn't have a website.

'Dancing Backwards' by Salley Vickers

Fiction - hardcover; Fourth Estate; 261 pages; 2009.

Is there anything more blissful than reading a new Salley Vickers' novel? This one, a birthday gift, was gobbled up rather greedily, and already I'm feeling a little bereft that the book I waited so long to read has now been finished all too quickly. It could be a long time before another Vickers' novel comes along...but, as ever, the wait will be worth it.

Having read all of Vickers' back catalogue bar one, I had high expectations for Dancing Backwards. It didn't disappoint. Once again, it's another delightful tale with Vickers' trademark gentle intelligence stamped on every page, every sentence.

It tells the story of Violet Hetherington, a widow with two adult children, who goes on a spur-of-the-moment transatlantic cruise to New York. It is here that her pal from university and one-time poetry tutor, Edwin, resides. From the outset, it's apparent that Violet, or Vi as she likes to be called, is nervous about her Manhattan rendezvous and has a back-up plan in place should the visit turn sour: she'll simply get back on the Queen Caroline and continue the cruise to Acapulco, no harm done.

As Vi settles into her six-day voyage, she finds the time and space to reflect on her past, and it is these reflections, told in a simple but candid prose style, that allows the reader to come to understand her "undefined" relationship with Edwin and how it shaped much of her life from the late 1960s to the present day. You learn how they met, how they moved in together and, tragically, how their friendship fell apart.

And all the while, Vickers never resorts to the cloying sentimentality to which other writers (I'm thinking Maeve Binchy here) might succumb. Instead, she builds up a subtle, bittersweet tale that has a gravitas that only makes the story more real, more affecting.

Along the way, she also spins an entertaining tale about Vi's time on board the ship; how she lets go of her natural reserve to make friends with unlikely fellow passengers; and learns to ballroom dance for the first time in her life. These interactions prove to be subtle life lessons for Vi, helping her to shake off the tired domesticity of her former life as wife and mother, and rediscover what it was like to be young, carefree and with her whole life in front of her.

I've not read any reviews of this book as yet, so I'm not sure how it's been received by the world at large. While it explores many of the same themes -- paths not taken, lives only half-lived, self-discovery and the possibility of change, regardless of age -- apparent in Miss Garnet's Angel, this is an entertaining and thoughtful read. I enjoyed it immensely.

'My Last Confession' by Helen FitzGerald

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 272 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Helen FitzGerald is an Australian writer based in Glasgow, Scotland. My Last Confession, her second novel, is billed as "intelligent chick-lit" although I'm not sure it entirely fits into that genre, because it's also a thriller and has a dark noir-ish edge running through it. Littered as it is with drugs, violence, incest and male rape, this is no fluffy, comforting read, but an electrifying one that will keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next.

The story is narrated by Krissie, a single mum who's spent the past couple of years living in her parent's spare bedroom with her artist boyfriend Chas, while they get their lives in order. Now determined to forge a new life together, the couple move out and Krissie lands herself a job as a "criminal justice social worker", more commonly known as a parole officer.

Things start well when she exposes a client's secret plan to live with the children he is convicted of sexually abusing when he is released from prison. "With my first pre-release meeting fresh in my mind, I felt on top of the world, ready for anything," she says. "Hell, I was shit hot." 

But it's her second client, a man accused of murdering his mother-in-law, which lands her in hot water. Convinced that he couldn't possibly have committed such a gruesome, brutal crime, Krissie does a spot of private investigating that puts her life and the lives of her loved ones in danger. Or, as she puts it on the first page, in her "tips for parole officers":

1. Don't smuggle heroin into prison.
2. Don't drink vodka to relieve stress.
3. Don't French-kiss a colleague to get your boyfriend jealous.
4. Don't snort speed.
5. Don't spend more time with murderers than with your son.
6. Don't invite crack-head clients to your party.

I raced through this book in two sittings. Krissie is a quirky kind of character, in many respects too naive for her own good. But it is her hire-wire act in which she struggles to come to grips with a new job while looking after a young child and trying not to jeopardise her relationship with Chas that makes her incredibly realistic. And despite her obvious flaws, she's immensely likable helped by a very wicked self-deprecating sense of humour.

But what makes My Last Confession really work is not just the easy-flowing narrative (which occasionally switches into third-person) and great characterisation, but FitzGerald's ability to shock the reader. On one page you can read about Krissie's dreams of wearing a white wedding dress and on the next have the brutal intricacies of a woman being butchered thrust in your face. And the ending, which delivers a nice punch, ties everything up neatly and succinctly, making this a terrific and satisfying crime thriller, highly reminiscent of my old fave, Nicci French.

I'm now looking forward to reading FitzGerald's debut novel, Dead Lovely, and her latest hardcover, The Devil's Staircase, to see if she can maintain this high level of momentum.

40 books

By the time you read this I will be off celebrating my 40th birthday. In order to mark the occasion I thought I would share with you the 40 most memorable books I have read since my teens. These are the novels that aren't necessarily the best books I have ever read, but the ones that have stayed with me or lead me off on further literary explorations. Most of all, these are the books that spring to mind whenever anyone asks me if I could recommend something "interesting" to read.

In alphabetical order by author, here is my list:

Watership Down by Richard Adams
I read this when I was 13 but had to wait for my father to finish it first! I was slightly obsessed by rabbits at the time (I had a pet one called Winnie) so I found this story about a group of highly anthropomorphised rabbits particularly gripping.

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
I'm cheating a little here, because this is actually three novels -- City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room -- presented together in a single volume. But the stories are interlinked and need to be read in the correct order so that you can appreciate Paul Auster's extraordinary ability to create the kinds of tales that haunt you forever. I still think about this book years after having read it.

Eucalyptus by Murray Bail
A modern fairy tale set in Australia, this one has a magical fable-like quality to the writing. It's about a man who plants hundreds of eucalyptus trees on his land. When his teenage daughter comes of age, he announces that she can only marry the suitor who can correctly name every single species of gum tree on his property. Yes, it's lovely, but it had special significance to me because I once had to memorise something like 130 different eucalyptus varieties (latin and common names) as part of a course I was taking in landscape design. Oh, the horror.

Book of Evidence by John Banville
Back when I was in my early 20s, this dark disturbing tale about a man who murders a servant as he attempts to steal a painting is the one that had me declaring Banville as my favourite author (to be later superceded by another Irish author, John McGahern). I still remember the thrill of reading something so amoral. It set me off on an exciting exploration of other books with edgy themes.

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
I have a love-hate relationship with Carey, but I adored this intriguing novel about two odd-balls -- an Anglican priest and a young heiress -- united by their love of gambling. The story, which is set in early 19th century Australia, involves Lucinda betting Oscar that he cannot transport a glass church from Sydney, across rugged, untamed wilderness, to a remote settlement 400km away. What a premise!

Play Little Victims by Kenneth Cook
This is one of those books that is not widely known outside of Australia and I believe it is now out of print. It's a beguiling satire about the state of humankind. I read it at school and it stayed with me ever since, and it got so under my skin that a few years ago I went on a mission to source a copy on the internet, because I wanted to read the book again if only to see if it was as good as I remembered. It was.

The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
This is a hilarious bawdy romp through Holy Catholic Ireland. In the review I wrote last year I described it as a "thoroughly wonderful, riotously funny, head-shakingly brilliant read. I loved it from the very first line to the last".

The Barrytown Trilogy by Roddy Doyle
OK, this is another cheat, because this is three books -- The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van -- in one. All are set in Dublin, all feature the Rabbitte family and all are very funny. Oh, and they've all been made into movies too, and they're incredibly faithful to the books. My favourite is The Snapper -- I've read the book twice and seen the movie about a dozen times, I love it that much.

Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff
An urban Maori family in the grips of alcoholism and domestic violence doesn't make for a particularly cheery read, but it's a devastating glimpse at lives caught between traditional and modern cultures. The film of the same name is often described as New Zealand's first indigenous blockbuster. I highly recommend both novel and movie.

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
A mesmirising slightly raunchy romp through Victorian London, this is the type of book you stay up all night to read and then feel bereft when you get to the end.

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
I'm a sucker for a war story and this one, set during the Great War, is one of the best. A sweeping historical drama, it's also erotic, poignant and tear-inducing. I read it and wept buckets. I don't think anything else Faulks has written before or since surpasses the brilliance of this one.

Towards the end of the Morning by Michael Frayn
One of the best -- and funniest -- books about journalism I've read. Blows Evelyn Waugh's Scoop out of the water!

Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Another book out of the dark and disturing canon, this allegorical novel leaves a deep and lasting impression. I can't help but think of the conch shell whenever I sit in a badly managed meeting, and the sight of schoolboys hanging around together sends shivers down my spine. Funny how these kinds of things are embedded in your consciousness 20-odd years after you've read the book!

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
This bitter but beautiful love story set in London during the Second World War is deeply moving. It's not a perfect novel, but it's a memorable one. It made me want to go out and read all of Greene's other books but as yet I haven't been able to bring myself to do so for fear of being disappointed.

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
I'm not a great fan of classic fiction, but I make an exception for Thomas Hardy and this novel, about a working-class man who dreams of becoming a scholar, is my favourite Hardy. I found it deeply moving. It also made me very angry, not the least because Jude is so hard done by, but because the social mores of the time meant he was ostracised for living with a woman without marrying her. Oh, the scandal!

Fatherland by Robert Harris
I love thrillers and am completely fascinated by the Third Reich, so this book, which imagines what the world would be like if Hitler won the war, appealed to me on many different levels. There were many imitations to follow (yes, I read some of them), but Harris' book remains the original and the best.

Due Preparations for the Plague by Janette Turner Hospital
Possibly the scariest book I have ever read about terrorism, to this day I start to feel on edge whenever any plane I'm in sits on the tarmac longer than it should...The central focus of the story is the hijack of an Air France plane in which the terrorists keep ten hostages as a negotiating card. It's a truly electrifying read, one that resulted in the hair on the back of my neck standing on end on more than one occasion.

My Brother Jack by George Johnston
An Australian classic, this is my favourite book of all time. You can find out why here.

The Christmas Tree by Jennifer Johnston
I'm a late convert to Jennifer Johnston, one of the most under-appreciated novelists working today. I've only read a fraction of her rather extensive back catalogue but this book, devoured (appropriately) last Christmas, is by far the favourite of the ones I've read so far. But, to be honest, anything with the Johnston name on it is well worth reading.

Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh
I'm not Catholic and I'm not Irish, but I am completely fascinated by this culture, hence my penchant for Irish fiction. This novel by Patrick Kavanagh, better known as a poet, is a lovely read about another era. It's crude, depressing and funny by turns.

How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman
This won the Booker in 1994 and I read it the following year. It's written in a working-class Glasgow dialect, which takes some getting used to unless, like me, you have an "ear" for the language (my paternal grandparents were Glaswegian so I just imagined my grandfather's voice when I read it). It's not exactly a pleasant read -- the main character, Sammy, is a violent shoplifter who is beaten up by police and becomes blind as a result -- but the voice is so searing and heartfelt and unique that it gets under the skin, and years later it will pop into your head completely unexpected!

English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
I'm a sucker for books set on ships and this one, about a Manx smuggling vessel that travels all the way to Tasmania, is a cracker.

Juniper Tree Burning by Goldberry Long
This book is definitely in my top 10. It's about an angry young woman, raised by hippies, grappling with her past following the death of her beloved brother. She's headstrong, aggressive and complicated, and the journey she embarks on is a highly emotional one. You kind of want to slap her and hug her at the same time. Definitely one to read again.



Seek the Fair Land by Walter Macken
This is the first part of a famous Irish trilogy. It's an action-packed adventure story set during Cromwellian rule, when Catholics were forced to abandon their faith in exchange for keeping their property and possessions. The language is slightly stilted and old-fashioned but the story is a gripping and unforgettable one.

The Great World by David Malouf
This is about two Australia soldiers, Vic and Digger, who become POWs during the Second World War and how that soul-destroying experience affects the rest of their lives. There's one particular scene in this book which remains with me more than a decade after having read it: of a POW guiltily gulping down food that does not belong to him while eyeballing his mate who has caught him in the act. That one scene says so much about the human condition, it still makes me cringe with a kind of knowing embarrassment.

The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
For a long time, I regarded The Butcher Boy as my favourite book. I think this was mainly due to the fact that up until that point (I was about 23) I had never read anything like it: there's very limited punctuation, little separation between dialogue and thought, and the narrator, Francie Brady, is a young boy who is slightly unhinged and commits murder. I still think it should have won the 1992 Booker Prize for which it was shortlisted.

The Barracks by John McGahern
I have a literary crush on the late John McGahern. This book, his first novel published in 1963, is about a young married Irish woman who discovers she has breast cancer but tries to hide it from those she loves. It is an absolutely heart-breaking read -- although punctuated by humour -- and it left such an impact I still think about it three years later. I was so impressed by this one, slim volume I went out and bought McGahern's entire back catalogue.

Three to See the King by Magnus Mills
If you've never read anything by Magnus Mills you're missing out on a treat. This was the first book of his I'd read and it was so strange and beguiling that I have followed his career very closely ever since. It's a fable, told in anorexic prose, about the grass not being greener on the other side.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Do I have to explain this one? This classic dystopian novel is about a repressive, totalitarian regime where everyone is under close government surveillence. It's one of those chilling reads that seems remarkably prescient given it was written in 1949.

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Is there anyone out there who hasn't read this book and not felt absolutely devastated by the end? This one had such a profound effect on me when I read it in 2005 that I wasn't able to write a review. I just didn't know how to put into words the deep impact the storyline had had on me. It wasn't the horrific Columbine-style school massacre that evoked such strong feelings, rather it was the whole nature versus nurture debate and whether career women can, in fact, make good mothers.

The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Peter Wahlöö
Before the current popularity of Scandinavian crime writers there was husband-and-wife team Maj Sjöwall and Peter Wahlöö. This one is described as a classic police procedural. The version I read was badly translated but it didn't take away from the addictive narrative and I've consequently squirrelled away several of their other volumes, which have yet to be read.

The Kommandant's Mistress by Sherri Szeman
This is one of those books I bought from a bargain bin for about $AU1 that turned out to be a sordid, spine-chilling read that took me a long time to get over. Part of me was so creeped out by the story of a Czech woman's experience in a Nazi concentration camp that I threw the book away. I then spent a dozen years trying to remember what the book was called in order for me to track it down again. It wasn't until I accidentally stumbled upon it in a bookstore a couple of years ago that I realised this was the novel that had haunted me for so long. I couldn't bring myself to buy a new copy, but part of me would love to read it again to see whether it was as devastating as I remember it to be.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt
I spent my university years working in a bookstore to fund my studies and this was one book that every single staff member raved about. We had a battered office copy that did the rounds of all the bookshop assistants, and when I read it I promptly went out and bought my own copy because I loved it so much.

Requiem for an Angel by Andrew Taylor
Holed up in bed with chicken pox at the ripe old age of 33, I devoured this trilogy in a feverish blur. Each of the three novels — The Last Four Things, The Judgement of Strangers and The Office of the Dead — is a separate story in its own right, but taken as a whole the force of their impact is more shocking and horrifying than one could imagine. Because the stories go back in time, not forwards, the reader comes across clues and discovers secrets which strip away the layers of the past to reveal the roots of an unspeakable evil.

Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
A birthday present from a friend, I read this on holiday in the Canary Islands in 2000 and didn't want the story to end. Set in the 17th century during King Christian IV of Denmark's reign, it's an enthralling historical drama about royalty, betrayal, ambition and power. It's one of those stories that transports you back in time so expertly when you lift your head from the page you're surprised to find it's no longer 1629!

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
I've read all of Tyler's work but this one was my first and for that reason alone it holds a special place in my heart. We actually studied this book at school for Year 11 English; I was lucky to have a series of very good English teachers who encouraged my love of reading -- apart from the chap who thought it was a good idea to get 15-year-olds to read The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, which so tainted my experience with espionage novels I've not read one since.

Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth
Another brilliant seafaring novels, this one scored the Booker Prize in 1992. It's set on an 18th century slave ship and, as you'd expect, explores themes of morality and corruption. This book is also in my Top 10 faves.

Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers
A sweet, sweet story set in magical Venice. The beauty of the story is not so much the pitch-perfect descriptions of Venice's ruined grandeur and her wonderfully evocative past, but in the "growth" of Miss Garnet who goes through a slow metamorphosis from a shy, retiring spinster who is cut off from her emotions to an assured woman not afraid to experience life, even if that means she might be exposed to pain and heartbreak in the process.

Tree of Man by Patrick White
It took me two goes to read this book by the late Australian author Patrick White. An extraordinary story about ordinary people living on the edge of the Australian wilderness at the turn of the 19th century, it follows the ups and downs of Stan Parker and his wife Amy  struggling to survive the harsh environment. At almost 500 pages and with no real plot of which to speak, this is not an easy read but it's a rewarding one. Which is pretty much a fair description of most of White's work -- or at least the novels of his that I have read.

Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
Another book I read at school, this one had me clamouring to read everything Wydham ever wrote. While I'm not sure Triffids is his best, it's the one I recall most fondly.

Things I've enjoyed on other blogs

Annabel Gaskell has a fascinating post about her visit to a second-hand bookstore with a difference. I've really got to get myself to Northumbria one of these days.

I love Steerforth's finds as he trawls the nations books on behalf of an internet bookseller, identifying rare and collectible titles that have been donated to charity shops. Earlier this month he found a signed first edition of Evelyn Waugh's autobiography and last week he stumbled upon some rather strange titles about Australia and New Zealand. Great stuff.

Ever wondered what it was like to be a translator of literature? Trevor of The Mookse and The Gripes blog provides a wonderful interview with Chris Andrews, an Australian, who has translated the works of Roberto Bolaño and César Aira. Oh, to be bilingual!

Speaking of translated works, Maxine of Petrona presents a great list of translated fiction to read this summer. I've added Johan Theorin's Echoes from the Dead to my wishlist, as his name keeps cropping up all over the place.

The Resident Judge of Port Phillip has a wonderful review of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and The City. 

KevinfromCanada reviews one of my favourite books by one of my favourite authors: Amongst Women by John McGahern. Having banged on about McGahern so much, I'm really pleased he enjoyed it!

New look

In case you're reading this via Bloglines or another RSS reader, I've tweaked the design of this blog. There's a few glitches that need to be ironed out, so bear with me while I do a bit of tinkering over the next few days. Hopefully, come Sunday evening, I should have everything up and running as per usual. Thanks for your patience.

My Borders raid

If you'll excuse the fuzzy picture taken on my CrackBerry, this shows the haul I nabbed at Borders on Oxford Street tonight. You may have heard that Borders is closing five of its branches, including its 39,000 sq ft flagship store in London's Oxford Street, and that all stock -- yes, all stock -- is currently half-price.

I turned up at about 5.45pm with the world and his wife, and made my way to the first floor fiction department. I did the rounds twice, scouring the half-empty shelves for anything that wasn't chicklit or "supermarket schlock" and managed to discover quite a few little gems. It was interesting to see the literary fiction that had been overlooked -- for instance, entire pockets of John McGahern, Jennifer Johnston, Graham Greene, Colm Toibin -- lying there waiting for someone to snap up.

As you can see, most of my haul comprised Penguin Modern Classics (discovering their distinctive white spines was like finding gold among the dross). Here's what's in the pile, from the top down:

• Robert Drewe's The Bodysurfers
• Jennifer Johnston's This is Not a Novel
• Elizabeth Jolley's The Well
• Irmgard Keun's Child of All Nations
• Hilary Mantel's Eight Months on Ghazzah Street
• Carson McCullers' The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
• Patrick McGrath's Trauma
• Dorothy Parker's The Collected Dorothy Parker
• Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
• Muriel Spark's The Ballad of Peckham Rye
• Andrea Maria Schenkel's Ice Cold

If you live in London and are interested in attending the sale, be prepared for some ultra-long queues at the checkout (I waited almost 45 minutes). The fiction department's looking a bit empty, but there's still plenty in the crime section and quite a lot of new release paperbacks, albeit a limited selection. You can find out more here.

'Personal Velocity' by Rebecca Miller

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 224 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Seven women, seven stories. That's the best way of describing the latest book from Rebecca Miller. Although this isn't actually Miller's latest book. Personal Velocity -- a collection of short stories -- was first published by Doubleday in 2002; Canongate republished it last week.

I didn't expect to like it very much, based on two reasons: short stories tend to leave me cold; and Miller's runaway success, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, didn't really do it for me when I read it last year. But I was prepared to be convinced otherwise, and so I took it to work and over the course of a week or so read a chapter each free lunchtime. (Interestingly, each chapter is perfectly digestible within an hour, which has me wondering whether I've been missing a trick when it comes to short stories: perhaps I should be reading them one at a time rather than back to back, as I usually do, which means they all run into each other and nothing seems to stick.)

The blurb of my edition claims that the stories here are a "brilliant portrait of the multi-faceted lives we all lead" but I didn't particularly recognise myself -- or any woman I know -- within the pages. What I found here were women trapped, whether by circumstances, marriage or insecurity. Most are troubled, even though it might not be immediately obvious. For example, my favourite story, the opener dubbed Greta, about an editor of rather lame cookbooks who scores the biggest coup of her career, has a rather sad tale about a disappointing, one-sided marriage at its heart. Greta finds the courage to leave her husband in the end, but it doesn't feel like a victory to be celebrated.

I found myself very much enjoying many of stories in this collection, particularly the tale of Delia, who escapes her abusive husband, and the inter-connected tales of rich and beautiful Julianne and her dowdy housekeeper Bryna. But, like any collection, not everything appeals and there were a couple of stories that had me going, so what?

For that reason, I found Personal Velocity a little hit and miss, but if you liked The Private Lives of Pippa Lee and enjoy short stories, it will probably appeal.

The seaside residence where Dickens used to stay on the Kent coast

At the end of the month I will celebrate one of those godawful birthdays with an "0" in it. On the weekend I was whisked away on a surprise (early) birthday trip to the coast of Kent. We travelled there by train and stayed in a lovely little hotel in Ramsgate.

On Saturday afternoon we caught the local bus to Broadstairs for a bit of a potter around. The coastline here is dominated by a grand-looking house (see above) perched on a cliff top, and it was only when I discovered a tourist information sign that I realised it is known as Bleak House.

Yes, Charles Dickens used to stay here when he came to Broadstairs. The original building, which dates to 1801, used to be called Fort House. It was extended a century later.

According to this website, "Here in a small study looking straight out across the sea, Dickens wrote the greater part of his most famous novel, David Copperfield. Here he played with his children in the garden. Here he entertained his intimate friends, men famous in literature and art. This was the house that occupied a special place in his heart. This was the house that inspired the title of one of his greatest works - Bleak House." 

Apparently Dickens loved Broadstairs (I'm not surprised; it's gorgeous and quite upmarket compared to Ramsgate) and spent many summers here from 1837 with his family. In some respects the town is a bit Dickens crazy.

There's a museum dedicated to him (closed when I arrived, so I didn't get to visit it), a pub named after him (yes, I had a pint here) and there's a Dickens Festival held every year.

You can find out more via the Wikipedia entry and the official Bleak House website.

'The Harrowing' by Robert Dinsdale

 

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 320 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Into the vast canon of Great War fiction comes another book set in the muddy trenches of France and Belgium. If you're anything like me you will have read novels like this before, you will have come to learn of the blood, the mud, the barbwire, the stink, the mustard gas and the godawful fear of going-over-the-top, and you will wonder if there is anything left untold about this deadliest time in human history. In other words, is there any point in writing yet another First World War novel? Haven't we heard all this before?

Like the best war novels, first-time novelist Robert Dinsdale takes a familiar subject and gives it a new twist, just as Erich Maria Remarque did with All Quiet on the Western Front (telling the story from a German perspective) and Sebastian Barry did with his Booker shortlisted A Long Long Way (telling the story through the eyes of an Irishman caught between two wars). In this case, The Harrowing is about two teenage brothers caught up in a war of their own; the First World War acts as a mere backdrop to their doomed and troubled relationship.

The story opens in Leeds, England, in January 1916. William Redmond, the elder brother, has awoken to find himself in hospital recovering from a nasty head wound. The wound, which plunged him into a long coma, was inflicted by his younger brother, Samuel, who inexplicably stoved his head in with a stone while the pair walked across a deserted moor.

Samuel is then banished, by his parents, to fight in the fields of Flanders, even though he is underage. When William discovers this, he vows to join the Chapeltown Rifles in order to find his brother and bring him back.

'What's the matter with you,' snarls the old man [his father]. 'Don't you understand what we did for you? It's finished. You don't have to go. Your brother is gone, and you're set to stay.'

And so, Dinsdale sets up a rather brilliant question in the reader's mind: why would a brother want to kill another? And, more importantly, why would the wronged brother feel it necessary to go out of his way to help the brother that wanted him dead?

The title alone makes it obvious that this is a story based on Christian theology, specifically the "harrowing of hell" in which Christ supposedly descended into hell to forgive all those of their original sin. In an interview on the Faber & Faber website, Dinsdale says:

The implication, of course, is much bigger than the simple story allows. By the time of Christ’s ascension, Judas Iscariot -- whose betrayal condemned Christ -- was dead by his own hand, and thus damned to his own eternity in Hell. But in his harrowing of Hell, Christ would also forgive the man whose betrayal sent him to his agonising death -- in effect, he would reach out and lead the man who killed him into Heaven.

I think it's important to grasp this concept to understand William's actions, although it's pretty clear within the first 30 or so pages that the siblings are polar opposites: William is the good brother, the saint, while Samuel is the bad brother, the sinner. This is mirrored in their attitudes to the war, established before the incident on the moor, when William states that he wants to sign up because it was "the only good thing to do" but Samuel insists that it's not for him.

And other people note their differences in character: a drunkard tells William that Samuel was "just a little boy when the Devil called his name"; an uncle confirms that William has "always been a good boy" implying that his sibling hasn't. This allows you to build up a clear picture of the two brothers, even if it seems a little too simplistic, a little too stereotyped. But later, as events unfold, both behave in ways that are so out of character, you realise that Dinsdale has offered up two very complex human beings full of contradictions and flaws.

By its very nature this is a somewhat grim and oppressive novel, with barely a glimmer of light to illuminate the darkness. But despite this I found myself reading it compulsively, if only to determine what it was that made both brothers behave so oddly. Ultimately, there is no neat ending here, no cut-and-dried solution, but as an exploration of moral courage and human fallibility, The Harrowing is a superb novel that marks Dinsdale as a writer to watch.

A literary cricket team

The 2009 Ashes series starts tomorrow, which means the Australian and English cricket teams will be battling it out over five test matches for this little urn (pictured left). The urn reputedly contains a burnt bail but is actually symbolic of the body of English cricket which "died" after England lost to Australia -- for the first time on home soil -- at The Oval on August 29, 1882.

(For those unacquainted with the vagaries of cricket, The Ashes is one of cricket's most celebrated rivalries. It only involves two nations -- Australia and England -- which meet every two years for this clash that takes on epic proportions, especially if it looks like England might actually win a game!!)

But what's this got to do with books, I hear you ask. Well, I received an interesting email from Abe Books today, which claims that JM Barrie, he of Peter Pan fame, created his own literary cricket team called the Allahakbarries back in 1890. The line-up included H.G Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jerome K Jerome, G.K. Chesterton, A.A. Milne and P.G. Wodehouse! How's that for a line-up?

This remarkable celebrity team was celebrated in a slim book, privately published by Barrie in 1890, called Allahakbarries C.C. A revised edition appeared in 1899 and a reprint followed in 1950 which contained a forward by Don Bradman -- Australia′s legendary batsman. The pre-1900 copies are extremely hard to find and much sought-after by rare book collectors. However, the 1950 reprints are relatively easy to find and also affordable with prices under £60.

You can find out more on the Abe Books website.

Meanwhile, to get into the spirit of a summer of cricket, I think I might just dig out Joseph O'Neill's Netherland -- unless anyone's got another cricket-in-fiction suggestion for me.

Bookish links

• You may remember I reviewed Selling Light by Effie Gray recently, one of six new books published by London-based independent publisher Roast Books. I was therefore delighted to find out more about the publisher, Faye Dayan, via an interview carried out by Clare Dudman on her always-interesting blog Keeper of the Snails. Definitely a publisher and publishing company to watch closely, me feels.

• Yay! Salley Vickers has a new novel out.

• There's a great article in the Daily Beast about authors promoting their own work via blogs and book groups. "To make a living off of fiction, most writers must be as attuned to marketing as they are to writing," says reporter Francesca Mari.

• KevinFromCanada has a drool-worthy post about his collection of Everyman’s Library books. Makes me want to start my own project, but I might concentrate on Penguin Modern Classics or Persephone books!

• The Irish Times publishes a round-the-world list of the latest crime novels.

• And finally, here's something not exactly bookish, but wacky and fun: The Google Earth alphabet found in Britain's hedgerows, roads and building!

'The Book of Rapture' by Nikki Gemmell

Fiction - paperback; Fourth Estate; 269 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Nikki Gemmell is an Australian author based in London who achieved international acclaim with her 2003 novel The Bride Stripped Bare, which was originally published anonymously on the basis that the subject matter was too provocative.

Prior to this she wrote three other novels -- Shiver; Cleave (published in the USA as Alice Springs); and Love Song -- none of which I've read. However, I've long been familiar with Gemmell's work, mainly as a broadcast journalist, first, on Triple J, the ABC's youth network, back in the early 1990s (she filed memorable reports on a scientific expedition from Antarctica; her girlie voice used to grate), and second, more recently as a commentator on the BBC's Newsnight Review.

This latest novel, The Book of Rapture, is a strangely haunting story set in an unnamed country at an unspecified time. It feels dystopian but lacks the true grit and misery of that genre, and yet there's something slightly creepy and oppressive about it.

The story is narrated in the second person by a married woman whose involvement in a top secret scientific project has put her life, and the lives of her young family and husband, in danger. To protect her children -- her daughter Soli and twin boys, Tidge and Mouse -- from the security forces she has them drugged and spirited away to a secret hiding place. When the children wake up they find themselves alone in a basement room, where they are supplied with food and occasional companionship by a family friend, B. But when B stops coming they find themselves having to survive without any adult supervision whatsoever, which makes them take risks that other, less resourceful, children would shy away from...

This is a weird premise for a novel but it's an exciting one. The narrator's omnipresent voice means you experience the children's actions through the mother's loving eyes, and so when she is fearful for them the tension ratchets up a few notches, making this a particular heart-hammering read in places.

But it's also a highly intellectual read, because this book explores many difficult, rarely discussed topics that are so pertinent to the way we live our lives today. The narrator, having developed a weapon of mass destruction like no other, finds herself questioning her husband's spirituality, because, to her, religion and science are incompatible. Indeed, she later tells her son that she was wary of religion because

...you hated all the rules and boring lectures, you thought it was a weakness, a lack of intelligence, and you're not into all that dependent thought. 'It's this beautiful, singing lie, my lovely, and eventually all the faiths around us will exist nowhere but the history books'.

The novel also raises questions about whether it is possible to be moral and ethical without believing in God. And it also explores whether goodness can evolve (although, interestingly, it doesn't look at the other side of the coin: whether evil exists or how it develops).

There's a lot here about raising children and how their upbringing can shape their world view, as well as the struggle between opposites who are married to one another and the compromises they must make to ensure their love survives.

But the overriding message I came away with was this: that it is possible for humans to grow and change and become less judgmental and more compassionate, and that the differences between people -- their races, religions and societies -- should be cherished not abhorred.

As you might be able to tell, The Book of Rapture provides much to cogitate on and mull over and digest. It's quite unlike anything I've read before and so it felt entirely new and fresh and experimental, a genuine credit to the writer when you consider how many books I've read in my lifetime.

'Snuff' by Chuck Palahniuk

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 208 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

I'll be perfectly frank: I did not expect to like Chuck Palahniuk's latest paperback release because of the sordid subject matter. I wasn't sure I would be entirely comfortable reading about an aging porn star attempting to break the world record for serial fornication with 600 men on camera.

But Palahniuk delivers such an extraordinarily funny story that you can't help but laugh your way through it. And before long you realise that this isn't a novel glorifying pornography. If anything it sends it up, pokes fun at the ridiculous nature of it and highlights how warped you would have to be to participate in a gang-bang that is being filmed for public consumption.

The story is told from the perspectives of three men - Mr 72, Mr 137 and Mr 600 - as they wait in the queue for their turn in front of the camera. Sheila, the wrangler who runs the green room, also narrates her side of the story.

If you think this sounds like the real life story of Annabel Chong, the pornographic actress who became famous by engaging in 251 sex acts with about 70 men over a ten-hour period, setting a world record in 1995, then you'd be right. But Palahniuk ratchets things up a gear or two, and makes the whole concept a terrible macabre joke by suggesting that the exercise, which might just kill Cassie Wright, will act as a launching pad for the careers of 600 desperate men happy to do anything to get in the history books. Or, as Mr 600 so aptly puts it:

Cassie Wright will be dead, but her backlist of videos, everything from the Ass Menagerie to her all-facial compilation Catch Her in the Eye to the classic A Separate Piece will turn into solid gold. Bang the Bum Slowly. Boxed collector-edition sets. The eternal Marilyn Monroe sacrificial goddess of adult entertainment.

As you would expect for a novel of this type, the language is crude and not for the faint-hearted. And whilst the subject matter is taboo, Palahniuk makes the history of it wholly fascinating, scattering intriguing and little-known facts throughout, such as Sheila's claim that Hitler invented the first blow-up sex doll, which, as my own internet research has revealed, is actually true:

During the First World War, I told her, Hitler had been a runner, delivering messages between the German trenches, and he was disgusted by seeing his fellow soldiers visit French brothels. To keep the Aryan bloodlines pure, and prevent the spread of venereal disease, he commissioned an inflatable doll that Nazi troops could take into battle. Hitler himself designed the dolls to have blond hair and large breasts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden destroyed the factory before the dolls could go into wide distribution.

Quite clearly this isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but having read pretty much all of Palahniuk's previous work I wasn't going to let this one slip by. I very much enjoyed it. And the ending is an absolute riotous cracker!

The Book Group: our first meeting

You may recall that early last month I wrote a post entitled Calling all London book bloggers. Want to join our book group?  I was essentially responding to Simon's plea to start a relaxed, friendly group in central London.

Well, I received a few emails from interested parties, as did Simon, who also managed to rope in some of his friends, and together we hosted our first book group meeting on Thursday evening. There were 11 brave souls in attendance, and over several convivial drinks, we took it in turns to share our favourite books with one another as a kind of getting-to-know-you session.

Ever the dutiful reporter, I took along a notebook and jotted down the titles that were named (long-time readers of this blog will automatically know which one of these I chose):

• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
• My Brother Jack by George Johnston
• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• The Pursuit of Love/Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Diaspora by Greg Egan / Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
• Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
• A Place to Live: And Other Selected Essays of Natalia Ginzburg by Natalia Ginzburg
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I am hoping this incredibly varied selection, which spans everything from science fiction to non-fiction, classics to best-sellers, will be indicative of the kinds of books we will read over the months to come, a real mish-mash of styles and genres to broaden everyone's reading palette.

We plan on meeting once a month and we'll take it in turns to choose a book for everyone to read and discuss.

The first selection, made by Simon, is The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, so even if you don't live in London and can't make the group, you're more than welcome to read it as I'll be reviewing it here at a later date, so you can drop by and leave a comment.

If you're interested in attending the group, or want to find out more, Simon's published a very comprehensive page on his blog which should answer your questions. Alternatively, you can email me.