Reading Matters

Triple Choice Tuesday: Other Stories

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Kirsty, from Other Stories, a Glaswegian outposted to Oxford, where she lives with her almost-husband. 

During the day she works in academic publishing, and her spare time is taken up with reading, blogging, "feministing" and talking to her cats. She also loves all things Victorian, having recently completed a part-time MA in Victorian Studies.

Kirsty, whom you can also follow on Twitter @kirstymch, is currently in hospital, so here's wishing her a very speedy recovery!

Without further ado, here's Kirsty's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

A favourite book: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

This is one of those books that everyone’s read, or if they haven’t, they know the basic gist of it. In that sense, it’s an “obvious” favourite book to have. My opinion is, however, that it’s a real classic for a reason: it’s a brilliant novel...

My own reading of it tends to fall along broadly feminist lines, and I do genuinely believe that Jane Eyre is a fantastic proto-feminist character. She does things on her own terms, speaks up for what she believes is right (even when it means suffering herself), never settles for second-best, and who can forget that wonderful line “I am no bird; no net ensnares me.” In fact, I’m well overdue for another read.


A book that changed my world: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

This was recommended to me by my English teacher in my final year of high school. Amazingly, our woefully under-stocked school library had a copy, so I took it home and devoured it in a couple of days. Set in an unspecified time in the near-future, Offred has been forced to become a handmaid in the new society of Gilead. Her own real family has been broken up, like most others, and now everyone must conform to the new standards or face death. Women bear the brunt of these new rules, and this novel really spoke to my emerging feminism as a 16-year-old. Written during feminism’s second wave, it still stands up in 2010. I am now a huge Atwood fan, and it’s all down to this book.


A book that deserves a wider audience: Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Gilman was an American novelist, journalist, social reformer, and lecturer who was active at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Her most famous work is The Yellow Wallpaper, a short story about a woman going gradually mad as she is made to suffer a ‘rest cure’. However, Gilman also wrote Herland, a feminist utopian novel, in 1915. It describes a group of male adventurers coming across an all-female colony in the wilderness. A fore-runner to the feminist utopian novels of the 1970s (by authors like Marge Piercy), this book taps into the trend of ‘social dreaming’ beloved of many radicals and feminists at the turn of the last century. Well worth a read – and it’s very short!

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Thanks, Kirsty, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Kirsty's choices? Have you read any of these books? I'm going to have to extract The Handmaid's Tale from my TBR, I think, because I have only ever heard good things about it. I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper a couple of years ago...

Introducing the Northern Ireland Season

As most of you know, I have a penchant for Irish fiction and have read and reviewed countless novels by Irish authors over the past nine years. But when it comes to books set in Northern Ireland it's a different story. I've only read one -- Colin Bateman's Divorcing Jack way back in 2001.

I hasten to add this hasn't been a conscious decision. I've certainly read my fair share of non-fiction about the Troubles (although nothing has been reviewed here), including Kevin Toolis' Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA's Soul and Eamon Collins' Killing Rage, but for some reason fictional accounts have never really crossed my path.

Given that the province has been somewhat in my thoughts lately, namely because of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, which finally came to an end earlier this month after 12 long years, it seemed like a good a time as any to explore the literary offerings around this key period in British/Irish history.

Over the next month I plan to read a selection of fiction set in Northern Ireland as part of a "Northern Ireland season". I've chosen five books, all of them from my TBR pile, apart from Stuart Neville's The Twelve, which I bought earlier in the week.

I'm planning to post reviews of each book on successive Saturdays throughout July. If you'd like to read along with me, whether it's just one book or the entire five, you'd be most welcome. I'm hoping that some interesting discussions may be generated in the comment section under each review.

The books I have chosen are an interesting mix of mainly literary fiction, with a crime novel thrown in for good measure, and I'm reading them roughly in chronological order in terms of the time in which they are set, from the early 1970s, as the Troubles begin, through to the Noughties when the peace process is in full swing.

Here's the schedule:

One by One in the Darkness by Deidre Madden (Faber and Faber 1996)

TO BE REVIEWED ON SATURDAY JULY 3

"ONE BY ONE IN THE DARKNESS is an account of a week in the lives of three sisters shortly before the start of the IRA ceasefire in 1994, undercut with the story of their childhood in Northern Ireland of the 1960s and 1970s. The history of both a family and a society, ONE BY ONE IN THE DARKNESS confirms Deirdre Madden's reputation as one of Irish fiction's most outstanding talents. It was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 1997."

Shadows on our Skin by Jennifer Johnston (Headline Review 1977)

TO BE REVIEWED ON SATURDAY JULY 10

"Derry in the 1970s: teenager Joe Logan is growing up in the teeth of the Troubles, having to cope with embittered parents, a brother who's been away and come back with money and a gun in his pocket, harsh school teachers, and the constant awareness of the military presence in the background. Central to the story is the friendship that tentatively grows up between Joe and Kathleen, a young school-teacher who brings a fresh perspective to his familiar world. SHADOWS ON OUR SKIN was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1977."

This Human Season by Louise Dean (Scribner 2006)

TO BE REVIEWED ON SATURDAY JULY 17

"It is December 1979. Kathleen's son Sean has been convicted of a crime on behalf of the IRA and sent to Long Kesh prison -- newly renamed the Maze. John Dunn has just taken up a job as a prison guard after leaving the army. Both will be shocked at what they find. Both will try to do the right thing, and fail. Neither will ever be the same again.

"Louise Dean's sensational new novel deals with one of the most explosive and morally complex incidents in recent British history. THIS HUMAN SEASON is a powerful, confronting, humane, and blackly funny examination of the lives of ordinary people when placed in the vice of history."

The Twelve by Stuart Neville (also known as The Ghosts of Belfast) (Vintage 2010)

TO BE REVIEWED ON SATURDAY JULY 24

"Sooner or later, everybody pays -- and the dead will set the price. Former paramilitary killer Gerry Fegan is haunted by his victims, twelve souls who shadow his every waking day and scream through every drunken night. Just as he reaches the edge of sanity they reveal their desire: vengeance on those who engineered their deaths. From the greedy politicians to the corrupt security forces, the street thugs to the complacent bystanders who let it happen, all must pay the price. When Fegan's vendetta threatens to derail Northern Ireland's peace process and destabilise its fledgling government, old comrades, and enemies alike want him gone. David Campbell, a double agent lost between the forces of law and terror, takes the job. But he has his own reasons for eliminating Fegan; the secrets of a dirty war should stay buried, even if its ghosts do not.

"Set against the backdrop of a post-conflict Northern Ireland struggling with its past, THE TWELVE takes the reader from the back streets of the city, where violence and politics go hand-in-hand, to the country's darkest heart. Stuart Neville's gripping thriller marks the emergence of a brilliant new voice."

The Truth Commissioner by David Park (Bloomsbury 2009)

TO BE REVIEWED ON SATURDAY JULY 31

"Henry Stanfield, the newly arrived Truth Commissioner, is troubled by his estrangement from his daughter, and struggling with the consequences of his infidelities. Francis Gilroy, veteran Republican and recently appointed government minister, risks losing what feels tantalisingly close to his grasp. In America, Danny and his partner plan for the arrival of their first child, happily oblivious to what is about to pull him back to Belfast and rupture the life they have started together. Retired detective James Fenton, on his way to an orphanage in Romania with a van full of supplies, will soon be forced to confront what he has come to think of as his betrayal, years before, of a teenage boy. In a society trying to heal the scars of the past with the salve of truth and reconciliation, these four men's lives become linked in a way they could never have imagined."

If there is anything in my reading list that has piqued your interest then please do beg, borrow or buy the relevant book/s and join me on the relevant Saturday. The more the merrier! It may not exactly be light reading for the British summer, but it should no doubt be thought-provoking -- and for those in the Southern Hemisphere, it might be just the thing for those long winter evenings...

'Stone in a Landslide' by Maria Barbal

 

Fiction - paperback; Peirene Press; 126 pages; 2010. Translated from the Catalan by Laura McGloughlin and Paul Mitchell.

If you read the same blogs as I do, no doubt you will have seen very many glowing and positive reviews of this one, the second to be published by new independent press Peirene. (I actually purchased this as a three-book set: the first book, Beside the Sea, was a hugely emotional read; and I am yet to read Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, which will be published in September.)

Stone in a Landslide was first published in 1985 in Catalan as Pedra de Tartera, but this is the first time it has been published in English.

Written in a very sparse style, it tells the life story of an uneducated rural woman, who is born into a peasant family in the Catalan Pyrenees in the late 19th century. Her name is Concepció, but her family call her Conxa:

I was convinced that a Conxa would be fat and beefy and, since I was so thin, when people asked my name I always thought they would burst out laughing and I'd feel bad. But Jaume [her husband] told me that saying my name was like eating a sweet, that it was the name of something small and delicious that he liked very much. It was as if he'd been born to take away my fears, to bring light where I saw darkness and to flatten what felt like a mountain to me.

In just 126 pages (and dozens of very very short chapters, some of which are only two or three pages long) Conxa's story covers a lot of ground at a clipping pace. Written from the perspective of an old woman, now retired in Barcelona, she recalls her life as a 13-year-old dispatched to work for her aunt and uncle in another village, her courtship, marriage and motherhood.

Conxa's gentle, timeless voice conveys the joy of her simple yet hard-working life, but this all comes to an unexpected and abrupt halt with the onset of the Spanish Civil War.

Little by little news comes. Some people talk about fighting and deaths in the south of Spain...others talk about atrocities in Barcelona. They say that the priests have gone into hiding. Ours hasn't been seen for two days. Jaume is exultant. He keeps saying that what the people have decided freely cannot easily be set aside, not even with guns. What does he mean, the people? The people means all the men and women who live in this country. I back away from these conversations and feel suffocated. Better not to ask anything.

Conxa's resultant confusion, and fear, resonates off the page. Life, once so simple, becomes complicated; the social becomes political; the local becomes national. 

Sadly, such big events, including the major milestones in Conxa's life (births, deaths, marriages) are given scant regard in the text: there just isn't the space. 

And while the author may have wanted to convey the simplicity of a rural woman's experience (Conxa is largely unfamiliar with the world beyond the fields she tends), I read the entire book feeling like an observer, and not a participant.  As a result, I didn't love this book as much as I expected, but I did enjoy being in the company of this quiet, reflective character.

'Red April' by Santiago Roncagliolo

 

Fiction - hardcover; Atlantic Books; 288 pages; 2010. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman.

Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo isn't your usual crime novel. Perhaps it might be better to describe it as socio-political thriller. Whatever the case, it's definitely hard boiled, as I guess you'd expect given it's set in one of the most violent places on Earth: the city of Ayacucho in Peru, where the communist party (Shining Path) began its bloody reign of terror in 1980.

According to Wikipedia, Ayacucho is also famous for its 33 churches, one for every year of Jesus' life. Holy Week, the religious festival held in the week before Easter, is a significant event on the calendar, and it is in this particular week of March 2000 that Red April is set. But the carnival-like atmosphere and the procession takes a back seat to the gruesome discovery of a burnt and mutilated body in a hayloft.

Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar is put onto the case. But he's out of his depth and seems strangely at odds with the military and legal rulers to whom he must report. When more bodies turn up, suggesting a serial killer may be on the loose, Saldívar buries himself in paperwork (his preposterously written reports are included in the text) and unwittingly becomes mired in a corrupt investigation that looks likely to end in Saldívar's own death.

His only saving grace appears to be the love of two women: his long-dead mother, to whom he's built a shrine in the bedroom in which she used to sleep; and Edith, a local waitress, with whom he develops a fledgling romance.

But, for the most part, Saldívar's story is an unrelentingly bleak, violent and oppressive one, only matched by the terror and barbarity of the guerilla war being waged around him. At times the book is incredibly shocking and disturbing, no more so than when Saldívar is sent to Yawarmayo, a rural outpost, to supervise the presidential elections. After a hellish seven-hour bus ride and a two-hour walk, he arrives to find slaughtered dogs hanging from the streetlights. The entire scene is described in all its gruesome, stomach-churning detail.

It's hard to fault the brooding atmosphere of this novel, which builds and builds as more mutilated corpses are discovered. But the story felt strangely distant to me, as if I couldn't quite engage with the characters, because I was too busy trying to make sense of the cruel and corrupt society in which it was set. Everything felt incredibly alien -- and terrifying.

Red April is definitely not for the faint-hearted. It's a very male book (there is little reference to females beyond their "use" as sexual objects and all the characters are macho and difficult to like) and is full of bloody violence and power struggles. There is not one ounce of hope in the narrative. I suspect those who like intelligent hard boiled crime novels will find a lot to like here, but if you've a weak stomach you might like to give this a miss.

Red April won the Alfaguara Prize, a prestigious literary award for an unpublished Spanish-language novel, in 2006.

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This book was chosen by Armen as part of our Riverside Readers book group. Here are some other posts written about the book by fellow members:

• Simon's review

• Polly's review

• Jackie's review

A picture of Mount TBR

Has anyone else got a mountain of unread books like this one?

Please note that all the books in the book shelf are also unread. What you might not realise is that they are doubled-up, so what looks like roughly 15 books in each "cubicle" is actually closer to 30.

If that's not bad enough, I have another load of books in the bedroom which would fill a similar-sized book shelf. At the moment these are stored on the top of my wardrobe, dresser and bedside table. I have a large suit-case sized wicker basket filled with hardbacks on the bedroom floor.

Is it any wonder that as soon as I finish a book, it is passed on -- to friends, family or Oxfam -- because I am running out of space to keep them.

So, now it's over to you. Are you brave enough to take a picture of your TBR (or a section of your TBR) and stick it on your blog to show others? If so, leave me a comment so I can come and check your pile out. If enough of you take up the challenge I'll do a composite post with links at a later date.

I know I cannot possibly be the only blogger with a pile like this...

Triple Choice Tuesday: Tony's Book World

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Tony from Tony's Book World whom I first "met" via the many comments he used to leave on this blog. At the time Tony did not have a blog of his own and yet he seemed incredibly knowledgeable about very many authors and had read some of my favourites, including Jennifer Johnston. 

So I was delighted when Tony finally started blogging last September, if only so I could find out a bit more about him and his love of books!

Tony is a computer programmer from the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis although he actually describes himself as "a farm boy from western Wisconsin who inexplicably became interested in fiction". 

"But before you write me off as just a country bumpkin," he tells me, "I want you to know that my wife Deborah graduated from Harvard and is a Doctor of Philosophy. Of course, that doesn’t say anything about me beyond my good taste in women."

Without further ado, here's Tony's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:


A favourite book: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Don Quixote is a knight who is lucky to have a servant and friend like Sancho Panza, who always puts the best light on even Don Quixote’s most ridiculous pretensions. He also covers for Don Quixote, no matter how badly Quixote screws up in his knightly duties and his romance with the beautiful Dulcinea.

I was immediately put in a good mood by the exploits of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, but I didn’t think there was any way this kind of humour could stand up for 900-plus pages. But as soon as I finished Book One of Don Quixote, I had to read Book Two.

The entire novel is a complete delight, surely one of the most charming, good-spirited books ever written. The translation I read was the new translation by Edith Grossman.


A book that changed my world: Who’s Who in Twentieth Century Literature by Martin Seymour-Smith

Martin Seymour-Smith was an English poet and critic. This book covers nearly everyone who has written literature in the Twentieth Century up to 1976, when it was published. In a few straightforward paragraphs for each writer, Seymour-Smith describes the body of work each author has published and his opinions on that work.

Soon after purchasing the book, I discovered that if Martin Seymour-Smith liked a book, I would probably like the book. Who's Who in Twentieth Century Literature quickly became my guide.

A few of the many writers I discovered through this book are Rosamund Lehmann, Stig Dagermann, Karin Boye, Henry Handel Richardson and Robert Musil.

Somehow in the bedlam and confusion of the early Eighties, I lost this book. Since I was still very interested in literature, I missed having my trusty guide. Then, in 1986, I found a hardcover version of the book in a used bookstore in Philadelphia, which I was able to purchase for a few dollars. I still consult Who’s Who in Twentieth Century Literature frequently. Also, I try to bring to my own writing the same qualities as Martin Seymour-Smith. Some day I want to get around to reading Seymour-Smith’s poetry.


A book that deserves a wider audience: Antonya saw the Oryx First by Maria Thomas

Although she was born in the United States in 1941, Maria Thomas spent most of her adult life in east Africa after going there as a Peace Corps volunteer. In the novel Antonya, an American doctor running a dilapidated field hospital, develops a strong emotional bond with Esther Moro, a village girl who is disfigured, first by a female circumcision ceremony and then by a drunken sailor with a broken bottle. Esther is inspired to become a doctor herself, adopting a mystical form of faith healing which causes Antonia to question her own competence. Antonya knows that now that colonialism has ended, she will have to leave Africa even though she has been there most of her life.

This novel is a strange and insightful look into the wreck of Africa that was left by the colonialists. Maria Thomas was killed at age 48 in a plane accident in Ethiopia in 1989. This novel was re-published in a paperback edition on its twentieth anniversary. She is also remembered through the Maria Thomas Fiction Award, which is presented each year to recognise, encourage and promote Peace Corps writers.

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Thanks, Tony, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Tony's choices? Have you read any of these books? I'm particularly dying to get my hands on a copy of Who’s Who in Twentieth Century Literature because it sounds like it might come in very useful...

'The Last Fine Summer' by John MacKenna

 

Fiction - paperback; Picador; 267 pages; 1999.

I read John MacKenna's The Space Between Us, a novel bought on a whim when perusing the New Island Books website, late last year. I enjoyed it so much I decided to seek out more of his work, only to find his three previous novels are now out of print. And so thanks to Amazon marketplace I managed to secure a copy of The Last Fine Summer, first published in 1997, for the princely sum of a few pence.

The Last Fine Summer is set in rural Ireland in the mid-1990s. It is narrated by Tim, a 29-year-old school teacher, who is grieving over the loss of his much younger lover, Jean, whom he addresses directly in a series of letters. This narrative is undercut with the story of Tim's previous love affair with his best friend, Kevin, ten years earlier.

From the very first page we are told that both Jean and Kevin are dead, but we do not know the circumstances of their death, only that they died before their time. This is a superb plot device, because the reader knows what's coming, but isn't exactly sure when it will arrive.

MacKenna builds on this momentum by adding forbidden love into the mix: Jean is a student at Tim's school; Kevin is gay. And if that wasn't enough, mid-way through the affair with Kevin, Tim, who is confused about his own sexuality, fixes his sights on Kevin's older sister, Hannah, so that a tricky and delicate ménage à trois results.

All this probably sounds sordid and trashy, but in MacKenna's restrained, almost limpid, writing style, it comes across as beautiful and tragic. Much of the story is about teenagers finding their feet, negotiating that "last summer" when school ends and the rest of their lives begin. And while The Last Fine Summer may revolve around sexual love, there's something deeper at its core: the relationship between fathers and sons.

Both Tim and Kevin are motherless from a young age. But where Tim forges a strong relationship with his quietly spoken dad, Kevin rails against his father, a farmer who is way too loose and heavy with his fists. It is this abuse which inspires Kevin to study hard so that he can escape the farm and go to college.

The Last Fine Summer is a powerful novel about love and loss, death and remorse. It is McGahern-like in its depiction of the passing seasons, of rural life, close-knit communities and the ways in which education can help you rise above your circumstances. I thoroughly enjoyed it and cannot understand why it is no longer in print. The bring-back-John-MacKenna's-novels-into-print campaign starts here!

'Almost There' by Nuala O'Faolain

 

Non-fiction - paperback; Riverhead Books; 288 pages; 2004.

I do love a good memoir, and after reading Nualo O'Faolian's Are You Somebody? last year (which I awarded five stars) I knew I just had to read the second part, Almost There.

Of course reading this book feels kind of spooky (and terribly sad), because O'Faolain, an Irish journalist, died of cancer four years after it was completed, and at the time of writing she would not have had the slightest inkling of what fate had in store. She writes fondly of looking forward to growing old with a new love and his young daughter, and there's a real sense of optimism about the future. Perhaps it's better that she didn't know what was just around the corner...

Almost There fills in the six years after O'Faolain's first memoir, which became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, was published in 1997. During this time she becomes a bit of a hermit, hiding away from the world in response to the breakdown of her 15-year relationship with Nell McCafferty that left her feeling emotionally raw, isolated and lonely. (Ironically, her relationship with Nell barely got mentioned in the first book, and it's much the same for the second. But O'Faolain does explains that she had not wanted to spoil a good relationship by putting it down on paper.)

The loneliness is compounded by a year living in Northern Ireland (she basically packed up her Dublin house overnight) to write a column about life north of the border for the Irish Times. It was an experiment which proved profoundly difficult for her and it was only when she moved to Manhattan, where she then pens her first novel, My Dream of You, that she begins to feel life is returning to some semblance of normality.

Most of the memoir is a kind of meandering look at how that initial publishing success changed her circumstances but didn't necessarily change her as a person: still psychologically damaged from her difficult childhood and grappling with the anger (mainly against her alcoholic mother) that this has caused; still unable to settle down with a man, but not afraid to pursue sordid love affairs.

I think the best thing about Almost There, aside from O'Faolain's beautiful writing and her unashamed pursuit of the truth, is the way in which she gives voice to so many other "late middle-aged" (she never uses the term elderly) women like her: hugely successful on the outside, with wonderful careers and enough money to live comfortably, but deeply lonely because they never married or had children. She is so honest about her hurt and her regret that it's difficult not to share the pain. However, O'Faolain doesn't wallow in self-pity and always tempers her pathos with dark-edged humour and fond memories of the good things that have happened to her. She knows when she is sounding like a spoilt child and is not afraid to admit it.

While not as wonderful as Are You Somebody? this is a moving account of one woman's search for meaning in her late middle-life. Before reading this one, I'd suggest reading her novel, My Dream of You, (if you haven't already) because she references it a lot, and you can very easily see how she mined the events of her own life for the fictional 50-year-old character she created.

'A Short Gentleman' by Jon Canter

 

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 384 pages; 2009.

Jon Canter is a comedy writer* for a slew of British comedians, including Lenny Henry, Dawn French and Griff Rhys Jones -- and it shows. This is possibly the funniest novel I've read since I first discovered the joys of Wodehouse back in the summer of 2007. It's also possibly the most English.

The story is narrated by Robert Purcell, a distinguished barrister who finds himself on the wrong side of the law. The book is essentially a confession of his downfall told in a very long-winded but brilliantly witty way. We don't know what crime it is that Robert committed, and part of the joy of reading this book is trying to figure it out as you go along. Mind you, Robert details his entire life story, from his privileged childhood growing up in Notting Hill ("giving me splendid access to all the museums and concert halls London has to offer"), all the way through to his fifties when he's set to inherit the family's country house on the Suffolk coast. This means it takes almost 300 pages to figure out how he got himself in such a dire pickle.

From the very start it is clear that Robert is quite a strange man, although he, of course, thinks he's completely normal, albeit part of an educated (and downright snobby) elite. He's very analytical and does everything by the book: he is careful never to put a foot wrong and, like all good lawyers, could argue his way out of a paper bag.

There is nothing remotely frivolous or spur-of-the-moment about him. He seems emotionally distant from everyone around him, and while his story-telling comes across as aloof and arrogant, reading between the lines you get the feeling that everyone he meets, including his friends and colleagues, thinks he's a bit of a dweeb, someone they can laugh at and treat badly because he simply won't pick up on the nuances of certain situations.

For instance, when he decides to lose his virginity he does it all with the precision of planning a military campaign. When, at age 33, he decides he should settle down and get married (six years after his last girlfriend), he chooses his bride not on the basis of love but on the basis of "something more precious, more durable, and, above all, more rational. I was in the throes of marriage at first sight". Two children, a house in the country and a promotion to QC follow. Later, without wishing to reveal any plot spoilers, things begin to fall apart...

I think the funniest thing about the book (and admittedly the first half, particularly Robert's hapless relationship with his first girlfriend, Judy Page, is more hilarious than the second half) is the way in which it pokes fun at Britain's upper-classes. Their eccentricities, the ways in which they run their households and conduct their lives all come in for more than their fair share of ribbing. How they raise their children, for instance, is summed up pretty well in this little vignette, when Robert is corralled into the bathroom by his ageing parents to discuss the unsuitability of his relationship to Judy Page:

This was extraordinary. I'd never been in a bathroom with my parents. When I was a boy, there was no 'parenting'. There were parents but it was not their job to hang around the bathroom having a 'relationship' with you, by spending 'quality' (or quantity) time. Why would they want to spend time with you? You were a child. You mother would enquire from a different floor, whether you had had a bath and brushed your teeth. Your father wouldn't ask. He was reading the paper. He took it on trust that you were having, or would be having, or had had a bath. For more than half the year, of course, you were at boarding school. He was reading the paper a hundred and fifty miles from your bath.

The book is also littered with footnotes, all very funny, which add to the enjoyment of the text. Indeed, even before the story begins we are presented with Acknowledgements, a Foreword, a Preface, an Author's Note and an Author's Further Note, and at the end there's a Dog Index (noting all the references to dogs -- Britain's favourite pet -- in the text) and a postscript by one of Robert's so-called friends. You get the idea.

All in all, this might not be everyone's idea of a great book, but I found A Short Gentleman completely in tune with my own dry sense of humour, the perfect light-hearted read for whenever you need a good laugh.
 

* He's also a Jeremy Clarkson lookalike.

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A Short Gentleman was the seventh novel up for discussion in the Not The TV Book Group. (Can you tell I am very behind in my book reviewing?) Hosted by Kirsty from Other Stories, the discussion remains open, so do pop by to read the comments and add your thoughts if you've read the book.

Spot the error

I know Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote magic realism, but this is pushing it a bit far, isn't it?

Maybe Penguin has stopped employing proof readers? Mind you, it is from an el-cheapo collection published on behalf of The Book People (£10 for ten books), but even so, an error on the spine is pretty much unforgivable -- at any price.

What's the worst error you've found in a book?

'Ghost Light' by Joseph O'Connor

 

Fiction - hardcover; Harvill Secker; 256 pages; 2010.

I'm not one for making predictions, or backing horses, but if Joseph O'Connor's Ghost Light doesn't make the longlist for this year's Booker Prize, I'll eat my hat. This is an accomplished novel that should firmly cement O'Connor in the cannon of contemporary Irish literary fiction. Of course, he's already achieved extraordinary success with Star of the Sea and its follow-up Redemption Falls, but Ghost Light, released earlier this month, feels as if he's "arrived" in the sense that he can now take his rightful place alongside the likes of fellow countrymen Colm Toibin, John Banville, Sebastian Barry and the late (great) John McGahern.  

Ghost Light charts the rise and fall of real life Irish Catholic actress Maire O'Neill (1885-1952), who performed under the stage name Molly Allgood. She was engaged to playwright John Millington Synge, a Protestant 14 years her senior, at the time of his death to Hodgkin's disease in 1909. Their relationship was frowned upon by pretty much everyone, including their families and Synge's great friend William Butler Yeats, with whom he co-founded Dublin's Abbey Theatre.

O'Connor takes pains in his "Acknowledgements and Caveat" to point out that while his novel features characters from real life, the story is a work of fiction. "The experiences and personalities of Molly and Synge differed from those of my characters in unaccountable ways," he writes. "Most of the events in this book never happened at all. Certain biographers will want to beat me with a turf-shovel."

Does it really matter that O'Connor has taken liberties with the truth? I think not. He has crafted an amazing story, from basic facts, and given life to a woman that history has sadly neglected.

We first meet Molly in London in 1952, where she resides in a lodging house, and as she makes her way across town towards an afternoon appointment at a BBC recording studio, we learn about her previous life in Dublin in 1908 when she was the star of the Abbey Theatre. By jumping backwards and forwards in time in tune with Molly's memory, we discover how she met Synge, became his lover and spent much of their relationship waiting for him to commit himself to her (it's no spoiler to say he merely kept her hanging on for what appears to be no good reason) and we come to realise the direness of her present circumstances, so close to destitution that she is prepared to sell her most precious possession -- a love letter from Synge -- in exchange for a bottle of booze.

What I loved most about this book is Molly's inner voice, which swings between pity and self-loathing, to a terribly wicked potty-mouthed sense of humour ripe with Dublin vernacular. Take this interior monologue as she looks at paintings in the National Portrait Gallery:

Heavens to Betsy, what an ugly old trout. Face like a bag of rusted spanners. Imagine, someone paid good money for that glower to be painted. More beauty in the door of a jakes, that's the God's honest truth. My Jesus Almighty, but there's hope for us all, Molls. 'The Duchess of Blandford'. Looks like Mussolini in a wig. Il Duce with udders. God help us.

But it's her desperation, her poverty and her dependence on alcohol that makes her story such an incredibly moving one. (In an exchange on Twitter, O'Connor's agent, Carole Blake, told me that "Joe says he fell in love with her".) I came to the end of this book feeling as if I knew Molly personally, that I had witnessed her pain and her shame, her glorious success and her confusion at being passed over by lovers and theatre-goers alike. I wanted to put the book down and have a good old howl. And almost 10 days after finishing the novel I have spent my days thinking about Molly and her tragic life, always a good sign that I've read something meaningful and brilliant.

Finally, I'd like to add a caveat of my own: the story is told in the second person, which can take some getting used to, and O'Connor experiments with the novel's form by including an entire chapter written as if it's an act in a Synge play (which, in my view, is quite hilarious, seeing as it is a bit of a piss-take on Synge's own tendency toward "Oirishness"). But the book is so bursting with character that I think even those readers who favour traditional, straightforward narratives will find Ghost Light an entertaining and accessible read. Let's just hope this year's Booker judges feel the same way.

Triple Choice Tuesday: RobAroundBooks

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is the ever-prolific Rob from RobAroundBooks, whose professional-looking website is one of my favourite ports of call when I scoot around the internet.

Rob, who is based in Scotland, describes himself as a "book-sniffing weirdo that loves to be surrounded by dead trees". He says he's always had a penchant for reading copious amounts of non-fiction, but in the summer of 2008 he decided to expand his reading horizons and got stuck into a "50 novels in one year" reading challenge. He's never looked back. More recently he's decided to concentrate specifically on translated fiction.

Without further ado, here's Rob's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

A favourite book: Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

To those who know me it probably comes as no surprise that I would pick a John Steinbeck novel as my favourite book. But what may come as a shock is the rather less obvious choice I’ve gone for. Such is my love for the writer that I could have chosen almost any of Steinbeck’s creations as my favourite, but in the end I went for his 1945 novel, Cannery Row, because it’s the one Steinbeck novel that has made my heart glow warmer than any other.

I know what you’re thinking now. How can a writer renowned for bleak and depressing possibly bring to the reader a novel which warms the heart? Well, with Cannery Row I think John Steinbeck does just that by using the simple exploration of friendship. Based in a dilapidated cannery area on the seafront in Monterey during the Depression, the setting for Cannery Row is about as bleak as it gets. But it is the incredible array of characters with which Steinbeck fills this setting that really makes this novel so incredibly warming. Once you meet characters such as Doc, Mac and the boys and Lee Chong they enter your heart quickly, and there they seem to dwell forever.

I’m not saying that Cannery Row isn’t without its moments of bleakness and desolation. But one comes away from this novel in a more upbeat mood, knowing that what matters most in life isn’t material gain, but rather friendship, love and an appreciation for the more simple pleasures.


A book that changed my world: The Plague by Albert Camus

Picking one book in particular as being ‘life changing’ is a heck of a difficult thing to do (thanks Kim), and not surprisingly I’ve had to think long and hard about it. I mean, do I go back to my childhood and pick one of the books which first set me off on my lifelong passion for books? (If I did then that would undoubtedly be one of Richmal Crompton’s Just William books). Do I pick Herodotus and his sprawling The Histories, the book solely responsible for sending me back to university to study Ancient History (I ended up switching to Medieval History but that’s another story)? Or do I perhaps focus on more recent times and select a book which is in many ways ‘life changing’ to me right now?

In the end I decided to go with the latter option, choosing a novel which has definitely changed my life (in relation to my reading life at least) -- The Plague by French novelist Albert Camus. Published in 1947, The Plague follows the story of the inhabitants of Oran -- a small coastal town in Algeria -- who fall victim to the sudden and unexpected arrival of the plague. The town quickly comes under quarantine, its residents become isolated, and the reader bears witness to the abhorrent events which unfold in Oran as the plague tightens its grip.

Read on one level as a straightforward fight for survival against pestilence, and on another as an allegory for German Occupation in World World Two (Camus’ real motivation behind the novel), The Plague brings with it such an overbearing sense of isolation and hopelessness that I’ve never been able to shake off my memory of reading it. The characters are incredible, their plight is sorrowful, and such is the power of this novel that it showed me just how much potency and wonder can lie in the world of translated fiction. Today foreign fiction is my primary reading preference. And the credit for that goes solely to this wonderfully powerful novel and its equally wonderful author.


A book that deserves a wider audience: Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell

And so I come to the book which I think deserves a much wider audience. And had Teresa not chosen to include Shusaku Endo’s Silence in her Triple Choice selection last week then I definitely would have chosen that one. However, there are plenty more books out there that deserve a wider audience and none more so in my opinion than Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell.

Put together by Joseph Mitchell himself in 1992 (four years before his death), Up in the Old Hotel contains those pieces of reportage which Mitchell considered to be among the finest that he ever penned during his career with The New Yorker magazine. And after the sublime reading experience I got from this book (and continue to do so whenever I reread it), I’m not going to argue with such a claim.

A reporter by trade, Mitchell could never have been considered a straightforward hack. He possessed an incredible talent for being able to bring people alive on the page -- ordinary people with exceptional character -- and he did so not only with humility and unpretentiousness, but with remarkable clarity and colour. Quite simply Mitchell was a master of character profile, and if John Steinbeck could considered the master painter of characters in the fictional world, then Mitchell could easily stand as his non-fictional counterpart.

I’m sure many of you have heard of the term ‘literary nonfiction’ (a form which as its name suggests presents nonfiction in a more literary and creative way), and it is Joseph Mitchell with his character-driven narrative who, in my mind, is the person most responsible for bringing the form to fruition during the Twentieth Century. What better way to sample literary nonfiction in its finest form then, than to read through a collection which Mitchell himself proclaimed, in his usual unassuming and humble way, to be his finest?

If you care anything for characters in your reading then you really cannot afford to overlook Up in the Old Hotel. If you think that real-life characters can’t be as fascinating and as engaging as wholly invented ones, then you’ve obviously not read anything from Joseph Mitchell yet. I urge you with every cell in my body to go and do so.

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Thanks, Rob, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Rob's choices? Have you read any of these books? I've read several Steinbeck, but not Cannery Row, so I'll be adding that one to the wishlist. The Plague is already on there, thanks to Whispering Gum's nomination last month. And I'm ashamed to admit I've never heard of Mitchell despite studying literary nonfiction during my Master of Journalism course. I must order myself a copy pronto!

'Valley of Grace' by Marion Halligan

 

Fiction - paperback; Allen & Unwin; 248 pages; 2009.

Valley of Grace, the latest novel by Australian author Marion Halligan, is one of the most exquisitely designed books I've had the pleasure of reading -- and holding -- in a long, long time. It's slightly wider than your normal literary novel (15.2cm, as opposed to the more regular 12.8cm), has fold-in covers and is typeset in a beautiful font, PastonchiMT.

The cover image of a Parisian streetscape, complemented by a gold border, is from Getty Images and the cover design is by Sandy Cull. It recently won the Best Designed Literary Fiction Book at the 58th Annual Book Design Awards announced in Sydney. A well deserved award, in my humble opinion, because for me, the look and feel of this book only enhanced my reading experience of it. I can't help but think that with the advance of digital books, this kind of experience -- taking joy in the beauty of an object -- will be lost forever.

But does that all matter, when it's the content upon which we should judge a book? Fortunately, Valley of Grace delivers on the inside as much as it delivers on the outside. Indeed, it's a gorgeous story, written in the most exquisite (am I using that word too much?) prose that makes for an entirely effortless read.

The book is marketed as a novel, but like many books I've been reading lately, it's actually a series of interwoven short stories featuring characters that knock and rub against one another throughout the narrative. The framework which ties them all together is modern day Paris, which comes alive in Halligan's pitch-perfect descriptions of buildings and streetscapes, little cafes and chocolate shops. (She also takes pains to describe food in such a way that if you're not hungry when reading, you'll be ravenous afterwards.)

But the real "theme" of this novel, if that is the right word to use, is babies: Halligan's small cast of characters -- all well-to-do, well-heeled Parisians -- either hankers after them, cannot have them or does not know what to do with them. There is Fanny Picart, who works in an Antiquarian bookshop (the descriptions of the shop and the books are gorgeous), who marries the man of her dreams but fails to fall pregnant; there is Sabine, who turns a blind eye to her academic husband's affairs, but is then expected to arrange the termination of any resulting unwanted pregnancies; and there is Luc, the owner of the bookshop, who is in a committed gay relationship but is asked to father a child for a pair of lesbian friends. 

Each of these characters has battles of conscience to overcome, as they reconcile their reality with their dreams. For instance, when Fanny, who is so desperate to become a mother, finally realises her ambition (and not in the way she quite planned), she has to come to terms with the fact that having a child does not necessarily result in happiness. And even Sabine, who initially comes across as slightly cold, aloof and foolish (why on earth is she assisting her husband's libertarian lifestyle when it so clearly makes her unhappy?) has her views turned upside down, when she becomes a kind of secret, substitute mother for one of his "bastard" children.

On the surface, much of this book reads like a beautiful, modern-day fairy tale, but just like the best of Charles Perrault's fairy tales there are hidden meanings and moral messages if you dig a little deeper. This is a lovely, gentle, easy-to-read book, rich with symbolism, and I thank Sue from Whispering Gums for bringing it to my attention. I urge you to read Sue's review for another take on the same book.

News and linky stuff

• A couple of weeks ago Reading Matters was named on Cision's Top 10 UK Literature Blogs. (I'll stop the trumpet blowing now). I have *no idea* how they came up with the list, but I was delighted to see John Self's Asylum in the number one slot. To even be compared in the same league as John is an honour and I couldn't think of a blogger more deserving of the accolade. (Following the news, Cision interviewed John here.)

• Luxury chain Sofitel has launched a new initiative called "Literary Escapes by Sofitel" in which a guest writer visits one of the group’s hotels and then writes a piece of literature about the destination, local culture and atmosphere of the hotel. Cushy job if you can get it, right? I was supposed to go to the first UK event at Sofitel London St James last week, but couldn't make it owing to an ongoing shoulder problem (thankfully, now sorted). You can read the resultant stories and find out more about the programme via the official website.

• I'm currently reading Joseph O'Connor's new book Ghost Light and trying to draw it out as long as possible, because I really don't want it to end. In the meantime, it seems Joe is everywhere. He was interviewed by The Scotsman on Sunday, did a very funny Q & A about his health with the Irish Times on Tuesday and hit the number one spot on the Irish bestseller list, also on Tuesday. Oh, and he wrote this lovely, touching tribute to his dad, published in the Guardian, last week.

• Congratulations to American author Barbara Kingsolver who won this year's Orange Prize for her novel The Lacuna. I've had this book in the TBR for almost a year, but haven't been able to bring myself to read such a brick of a book. I might have to rethink that decision now!

• I was saddened by the news of Australian author Randolph Stow's death on May 29, aged 74 (via ANZ Litlovers). Stow, who emigrated to the UK in 1966 where he lived in relative obscurity, was a bit of a prodigy in his day, winning the Miles Franklin Award for his novel To The Islands in 1958, when he was just 22 (I read the book last week and found it astonishingly mature -- watch out for a review coming soon), and the Patrick White Award in 1979. His most famous book is probably The Merry-go-round in the Sea, recently republished by Penguin Modern Classics, which I read twice last year I loved it that much.  This tribute (and comments), along with this obituary, both published in The Australian, show the fond regard in which he was held.

• Fans of independent London-based publisher Persephone might like to know it is now running an online discussion forum. It actually looks a bit like a blog, complete with its own RSS feed. Basically, one book a month will be discussed in the order in which the books have been published. First up? William – an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton.

Triple Choice Tuesday: Teresa from Shelf Love

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Teresa from Shelf Love.

Teresa, an associate editor for a nonprofit education association magazine, lives in Virginia, just outside Washington DC. She's been blogging for two-and-a-half years and share's her blog with Jenny, an old college friend with whom she's swapped book recommendations for years.

Teresa loves theatre and volunteers as an usher at two of DC's local theatres and attend plays at other theatres whenever she can. And if that's not enough she's also studying part-time for a masters degree in theological studies. "My studies are mostly for personal interest, but I figured I may as well get a degree from it," she tells me. "At this point, it's an expensive and time-consuming hobby!"

Without further ado, here's Teresa's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

  

A favourite book: Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy is a can’t-miss author for me. I’ve read six of his novels, most of them multiple times, and I look forward to reading the rest. His stories are dark and devastatingly sad, but that doesn’t bother me. The beautiful prose and the sense of yearning draw me into his books every time. Any of his novels could be listed here, but I chose Tess because it’s the one that tears into me the most deeply.

One of the things I most admire about Hardy is his ability to tell the stories of people who are not necessarily likable but who I end up caring about anyway. Tess is almost too pathetic to be believed, Angel is a priggish hypocrite, and Alec is, well, despicable in every way. I wouldn’t want to spend time with any of these people, but I want to know what happens to them. I care. These are people for whom the rules of society don’t work, and I think that’s something most of us can relate to in one way or another.

A book that changed my world: Silence by Shusaku Endo

Endo’s novel about Jesuit missionaries from Portugal in 17th century Japan transformed my understanding of so many things. When faced with persecution and worldviews different from his own, the main character, Fr. Rodrigues, must confront his beliefs about what it means to be a believer and servant of God, and as a reader, I found had to confront my own views right along with him.

Endo, a Japanese Catholic, is sensitive to the beliefs of his missionary characters and of the Japanese people they have come to teach and minister to. This book shook up a lot of my long-held beliefs about what it means to be faithful in the midst of suffering. Like Fr. Rodrigues, I entered the world of this novel with one way of thinking and left hearing the voice of God in an entirely new and unexpected way.

A book that deserves a wider audience: Before the Fact by Francis Iles

Iles (a pen name for Anthony Berkeley Cox) opens his 1932 novel with the line “Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them, and some marry them. Lina Aysgarth had lived with her husband for nearly eight years before she realized that she was married to a murderer.”

How could anyone not read on after an opening like that?

After this stunning first paragraph, Iles takes the reader through the courtship and marriage of Lina and Johnnie Aysgarth. The gradual revelation of Johnnie’s character is interesting enough, but the real meat of the novel is in Lina’s choice to marry and stay with him. It’s compelling and profoundly disturbing. The book is probably best known as the basis for the Hitchcock film Suspicion, but the book and film have some crucial differences. Both are excellent, in my opinion, but it’s a shame the film is now the only widely available version of the story.

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Thanks, Teresa, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Teresa's choices? Have you read any of these books? I read Tess for my final year at secondary school and loved it. In fact, I've read a few of Hardy's books, which is a big thing for me given I rarely read classics. And Teresa's definitely piqued my interest with Silence and Before the Act (I do like a good crime novel...)

'The Imperfectionists' by Tom Rachman

 

Fiction - hardcover; Quercus; 336 pages; 2010.

In recent years I've read several short story collections masquerading as novels. For example, both Alaa As Aswany's The Yacoubian Building and Nicholas Rinaldi's Between Two Rivers told the individual and interconnected stories of residents living in the same building, the former in Cairo, the latter in Manhattan.

Colum McCann did something similar in last year's prize-winning novel Let The Great World Spin, using Philippe Petit's daring high-wire act between the Twin Towers in New York City on August 7, 1974 as a kind of bridging link to tell the stories of a diverse range of characters living in the city at that time. Even Christos Tsiolkas has got in on the act: his Commonwealth Prize-winning novel, The Slap, looks at the lives and loves of various residents in the Melbourne suburbs, using a controversial slap at a family barbecue as the particular incident that links all the short stories together.

Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists uses this structure too, but this time the link is a busy newspaper office in downtown Rome where each of the characters is employed. The unnamed paper is an English-language publication with a global readership and is largely staffed by expat Americans. There are 11 characters all told, so that means there are 11 short stories, each of which are roughly 25 pages in length. That's plenty of space to flesh out their eccentricities and foibles, and to develop them into fully-rounded human beings. But not enough that you get more than a brief snap shot of their present day lives circa 2007.

In between each chapter (short story) Rachman provides a brief update on the newspaper's progress, moving from its establishment in 1960 at a time "when nobody's making real money out of something like this", through to its peak in the early 1980s when circulation hit 25,000 and journalistic standards were high, and then charting its slow decline as circulations and revenues got hit, first by television then the internet, until the present day in which circulation is down, the paper lacks a website and closure looks imminent. It's a fascinating potted history of the newspaper game, some of which cuts very close to the bone for this particular reader!

The newspaper theme is borne out by the chapter headings, which are all headlines -- "Global warming good for ice creams", "Markets crash over fears of China slowdown", "Bush slumps to new low in polls" -- under which the relevant job title of the particular character is also listed  -- everyone from corrections editor, to news editor, editor-in-chief to publisher are represented.

And while much of the content is tongue-in-cheek satire of journalism (think Evelyn Waugh's delightfully funny Scoop and Michael Frayn's Towards the End of the Morning), there's an undercurrent of despair running through it, too: the highly experienced Paris correspondent, who has been replaced by "freelancers selling jaw-dropping stuff", is so desperate to earn a commission he fabricates a lead story; the 30-something business editor who works long, hard hours is so lonely and starved of companionship she becomes involved with the dodgy Irish chap who burgles her flat; the obituary writer has been so sidelined in his career it takes the death of someone close to him to spur him on to achieve better things.

But, typically, the chapter I most enjoyed -- "The sex lives of Islamic extremists" -- was the stand-out funny one. It tells the story of Winston Cheung, a hapless graduate, who moves to Egypt in order to apply for the job of Cairo stringer despite the fact he doesn't have a clue about journalism ("Every day in Cairo news events take place. But where? At what time?"). He is led astray by a highly experienced foreign correspondent, Rich Snyder, who is competing for the same job. Rich wears combat trousers, never stops boasting about his scoops and awards ("It's so dumb - I hate getting awards. And journalism is not a competition. It's not about that, you know. But, whatever.") and is an expert freeloader. When he runs off with Winston's house key and laptop, it looks like Winston's chance at getting the job is over...

As a novel, I'm not sure this is a great one, but it's definitely an entertaining one and provides a humorous and realistic look at the rise and fall of the newspaper business. I have KevinfromCanada to thank for tipping me off about The Imperfectionists and would urge you to read his review for another take on the same book.

Alternatively, you can wait for the film: apparently Brad Pitt's production company has snapped up the rights to it.

A little bit of a book splurge

I don't buy any books for weeks and weeks. I wander into bookstores and walk out again empty-handed. Nothing on the shelves seems to inspire me. And then I visit Daunt Books on Bank Holiday Monday and spend £40 without even thinking about it. And then, shameless book addict that I am, I visit Waterstone's flagship store on Piccadilly after work on Friday night and do it all over again!

Here's what's in the pile above:

Toby Litt's King Death
I've read a few of Toby Litt's novels before, including Ghost Story and deadkidsongs, but I was particularly attracted to this one because it just sounds dead weird (it's a detective story) set in places I know well (Borough, in south London) and the edges of the paper are black, so it has a spooky kind of look and feel.

Harold Evans' My Paper Chase
This is the autobiography of a journalistic hero of mine, Harold Evans, whose Essential English: For Journalists, Editors and Writers is highly recommended for anyone who wants to improve their writing. (I've been toting my copy around with me for about 10 years.) Evans worked in Fleet Street for decades, was the editor of The Times and Sunday Times, and was knighted in 2004.

Nina Bawden's Family Money
I discovered Bawden last year when I read her 1967 novel A Woman of My Age (which I granted a five-star review). I have since read The Birds on the Trees and am on a mission to read her entire back catalogue (although finding her titles on the shelves of your average book store is no mean feat). This one, first published in 1991, is about an elderly woman who is hospitalised and then encouraged by her children to sell her house and move to a smaller property, thereby releasing some "family money". I do like a good squabble over an inheritance, don't you?

Anna Funder's Stasiland
This book won the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2004. It's written by an Australian journalist and lawyer, who investigates what it was like to live in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I have only ever heard good things about it - the book that is, not the GDR!

Isaac Bashevis Singer's Shadows on the Hudson
I was introduced to Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer at school (we read The Slave) but I never seem to see his work in bookstores. Which is why I snapped this one up. Apparently the book was published after his death, even though it was first written 40 years earlier. It's about a group of Jewish refugees living in New York and Miami in the late 1940s and has been described as an "epic novel that explores both the nature of faith and the nature of love in the aftermath of the Holocaust".

William Maxwell's The Chateau
Everyone seems to rave about Maxwell, the fiction editor of the New Yorker for some 40 years, so I've been keen to try his work. This novel, published in 1961, is about a young American couple who arrive in France for a four-month holiday. But their trip doesn't live up to expectations: it's 1945 and the French are war-weary and unwelcoming.

Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore
This book won the Booker Prize in 1979. It's about a cast of eccentric characters who live on houseboats at Battersea Reach on the River Thames.

John Williams' Stoner
This is yet another classic book I keep seeing on other blogs. It was first published in 1965 and tells the life story of a farmer's son who, in 1910, goes to university to study agriculture only to be seduced by the world of English literature. He never returns to the family farm but becomes an academic instead. I love that John McGahern has written the foreword to this one!

Matt Haig's The Radleys
This is a freebie that arrived in the post this morning courtesy of Canongate. I was chuffed to get this one, because I've been eyeing it up for awhile: it's about a family of vampires living in a typical suburban English town.

Joseph O'Connor's Ghost Light
I've been hanging out for the publication of this novel. It's set in Dublin 1907 and tells the story of a young actress, Molly Allgood, who falls in love with the writer John Synge (the chap who wrote this) and begins a rather volatile relationship with him. I've got a ticket to see O'Connor speak about this book at the London Literature Festival next month, so I'm really looking forward to reading the book...and may partly explain why I splurged on the hardcover instead of waiting 12 months for the paperback!

Anyone read any of these books? Thoughts on where to start?

'Love Begins In Winter' by Simon Van Booy

 

Fiction - paperback; Beautiful Books; 352 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Anyone who claims that they don't enjoy short stories, hasn't read this collection by Simon Van Booy. Love Begins in Winter, which won the Frank O'Connor Award for Short Fiction last year, comprises five stories about love, loss and longing in prose that is both elegant and engaging.

"From the opening line he grabs the reader's attention and maintains focus," said one of the judges of the Frank O'Connor Award. "His language is lyrical and sings off the page. His stories are full of the most exquisite insights, aphoristic without ever seeming like mere conveyances for ideas."

I couldn't put it better myself. Indeed, I also concur with Publishers Weekly, which claims "each of these stories has moments of sheer loveliness".

As well as the real international flavour of the settings -- Canada, USA, Wales, Ireland and Sweden -- and the diverse range of lives presented -- musicians, doctors, diplomats, gondoliers -- there's an almost magical quality to Van Booy's writing. And his use of language is divine, painting gorgeous pictures in just a sentence or two.

Here's an example from the title story, about a French cello player who falls in love with a Welsh woman still traumatised by the death of her brother in childhood:

Watching my father lift the caravan onto the hitch of our family sedan was like watching Atlas take up the world on his back. Then, on the motorway, my brother and I nesting in the back as my mother's hand appeared behind the seat with a smile of orange for each of us, my father quietly navigating our fortress to a field on a hillside at a distance from our Welsh village unfathomable to us.

And this, from The Coming and Going of Strangers about a Romany Irish boy who falls in love with a Canadian orphan:

The landscape stretched before Walter like in a painting -- lines of dark green hedgerows, a cluster of bare trees, an ancient gate hung during harvest, dots of hill sheep and then the fabric of the sea.

There's an aching quality to his writing too (on more than one occasion I was reminded of Vikram Seth's An Equal Music), a kind of gentle longing and a tenderness that makes the stories emotional without being saccharine. Van Booy was widowed in his early 30s (the book is dedicated to his late wife, Lorilee -- "If you are not here, then why are you everywhere?") and is now raising his young daughter alone, which might explain his penchant for characters on the brink who find renewed reasons for living when they least expect it. Above all it is a hopeful, optimistic book, full of wisdom, humanity and nostalgia.

These are the kinds of stories that wrap themselves around you in their intensity, and yet there's something strangely calming about reading them. I found them the perfect antidote to the stresses of my working day -- and the perfect length (roughly 30 to 40 pages) to devour in a lunch hour.

'Fledgling' by Octavia E. Butler

 

  Fiction - paperback; Grand Central Publishing; 310 pages; 2005.

While I've studiously avoided the current Twilight craze, I'll admit that I'm not averse to reading novels about vampires. I loved Anne Rice's early work (which I read in my 20s), very much enjoyed Bram Stoker's Dracula and Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian and thought John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let The Right One In was a surprisingly intelligent horror story.

But Fledgling, which presents a new twist on the vampire legend, lacks the spine-tingling horror I've come to expect from the genre. Instead, this is a book, deeply rooted in science fiction, which examines issues of race and identity, sex and sexuality, biology and genetic engineering. There's even some law and politics thrown in for good measure.

In this novel Butler portrays vampires as a much-maligned race called Ina. The central character, Shori, looks like a little black girl but she is really a 53-year-old vampire who has been genetically modified so that she has extra melanin in her skin to allow her to walk in sunlight. This is supposed to be a step forward for the Ina, but there are some who think that Shori poses a threat to the purity of the Ina race, and will stop at nothing to destroy her.

When the book begins we find that Shori is recovering from one of those plots to kill her: she awakens in a dark cave, burnt from head to toe, and with no memory of what has happened to her. Indeed she has no knowledge or awareness that she is a vampire. It is only when she is picked up by a young man, as she walks along a deserted road, that her desire to feed off him reminds her that she is an Ina, not a human being.

Much of the book revolves around Shori and her symbionts (the humans she feeds off in a kind of mutually dependent relationship) going on the run from those who want her dead. There's a lot of gun-slinging before the story morphs into a kind of courtroom drama in which those responsible are held to account for their crimes.

I have to be honest and say that this book didn't exactly grab me by the throat (pun fully intended). The prose felt a bit pedestrian and the dialogue awfully contrived. There were elements that just made me go ewwww and there were times I wasn't sure I really wanted to continue. But... there was something about the narrative that sucked me in (another pun, I'm sorry) and I did want to keep reading if only to find out who was after Shori and how she would go about saving herself and those like her.

Octavia E. Butler was a highly regarded prize-winning author of science fiction. Fledgling, published in 2005, was her last book before she died, aged 58, in 2006.

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Fledgling was the eighth and final novel up for discussion in the Not The TV Book Group. The book was actually nominated by myself for no other reason than I thought it might be interesting to read a different take on the vampire novel given popular culture's current obsession with all things vampire. The discussion remains open, so do feel free to peruse the comments and add your thoughts if you've read the book.

C is for contrafibularity

I was watching a documentary about Blackadder on the Bank Holiday weekend, which reminded me how much I used to love the show. Series 3, starring Hugh Laurie as the daffy Prince Regent, was always my favourite series, and this episode, in which Dr Johnson arrives at the palace, having completed his life's work, is my favourite scene. As you'll no doubt know, Dr Johnson compiled the first ever dictionary containing every single known word in the English language -- except the rather dubious ones uttered by Blackadder! Enjoy!