tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66000225293559326462024-03-16T01:09:08.115+00:00Bibliofreak.net - A Book BlogMatthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.comBlogger364125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-8625601768532594262021-09-24T13:58:00.001+01:002021-09-24T13:58:27.671+01:00Review: My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style><div class="embed-container"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JU-CkXZWd-w"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">In 1967, a young Ethiopian woman who was studying in England gave birth to a baby. Not long after, she returned to her native country alone. </span></p><p></p><p><a href="https://amzn.to/3tUB4xu" target="_blank">Lemn Sissay</a> – renamed Norman by his assigned social worker – was placed with a white, Baptist couple in Ashton-in-Makerfield. His birth mother would not sign any adoption papers. <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3lJkuNk" target="_blank">My Name is Why</a></i> (2019) charts Sissay’s passage through the care system in Wigan via a combination of his own recollections and reports from the Authority, only recently made available to him after a 34-year campaign. It is a harrowing insight into the early life of a man many will know through his poetry or other writing. </p><a href="https://amzn.to/3hQNVMf" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1334" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyI2y_1DUR8yV0v4SOn2WU6d-wB-GrFab2BTyV5diYtgUcQn9-wT39gLvp3v231YZhSpgCHLk87-MHqKarEIOikaq7lY-bjxWXmro9-auDOJxMvii_cVQXnEtzSXGokxRL5xmOMbUr/w333-h512/My-Name-is-Why_Lemn-Sissay_Book-Cover.jpg" width="333" /></a><p style="text-align: left;">The Greenwoods welcomed Sissay into their strict Christian household, with its love of <a href="https://amzn.to/2ZjmJzD" target="_blank">C.S. Lewis</a>, hymns, and prayer. Outside the family home stood a laburnum tree, “with its beauteous blooms and poisonous seeds” – a motif that comes to represent Sissay’s experience at Osborne Road. The Greenwood family swells in the years following Sissay’s arrival, with a brother and two sisters born to his foster parents. Despite what must have been a disorienting state of affairs, Sissay appears to be a happy boy and he reflects that he enjoyed Ashton, “the Market, the Flower Park, the Big Park. The church. My friends” and that he had developed a sweet tooth, which was put to good use on “Curly Wurlys, R Whites Lemonade, a quarter of Bon Bons”, and more. There was sibling rivalry with his brother who is close in age to him, and although he experienced casual racism in school and among his peers, his teacher reported that he was “[v]ery popular and extremely sociable … a ray of sunshine”. The Authority did not agree.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-family: courier;">Discussed Norman with Miss Jones, who has quite a pathetic attitude towards the child, purely based on his colour – see recent school report where she refers to him as a Ray of Sunshine – she sees his colour as his cross to bear – hopefully the staff attitude in his new school will be more realistic.</span></span></p><span><p style="font-family: courier;"></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">As Sissay tumbled towards adolescence things appeared to deteriorate. He had been conditioned to feel that his birth mother had rejected him (something that is provably incorrect) and it seemed his foster parents were building themselves up to do the same, much to his bafflement. For Sissay’s reminiscences are of a normal enough childhood – the small misdemeanours, familial arguments – and yet in the eyes of the Authority and of Mrs Greenwood his actions were viewed in quite a different light:</span></p><p style="font-family: courier; text-align: left;">Home visit. Mrs. Greenwood was just returning from work. She told me that they had been to a parents evening at school last night, and that there had been very unfavourable reports about Norman.</p><p style="font-family: courier; text-align: left;">She says Norman is a naughty boy, and that she sometimes thinks he is ‘amoral’. She told me that he smokes, swears, steals, and he seems to harbour a grudge about being black. </p></span><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: courier;">She said she was at the end of her tether with Norman and felt she and her husband had given him so much, which Norman just seemed to resent. She said she had given him all she could and could do no more, and he would have to be taken somewhere where they could get to the bottom of his ‘anti’- feelings.</span></p><p>By contrast, here is Norman’s school report from the same year:</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>Child’s general progress:</b> Good progress within his form.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>Conduct: </b>Well-behaved in lessons.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>Character and temperament:</b> Pleasant.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>Relationships with staff and other children:</b> Always keen to please and has many friends.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>Participation in school activities: </b>Always willing to participate.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>Cleanliness and tidiness:</b> Very good.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>General progress: </b>Good progress. Norman has settled down well in his first year at this school.</span></p><p>Even at this distance, it is difficult to ascertain exactly what was happening within the Greenwood household. What is clear, is that Sissay was unsettling his parents with his vigorous exploration of life, which pushed the boundaries of their staid religiosity. Inevitably, it would be Sissay that lost out: </p><p></p><blockquote>A foster child will expose the cracks in the familial veneer. Insomuch as the foster child is a cipher to the dysfunction of a family and also a seer. But the responsibility is too great for a child and so he finds himself manipulated and blamed for what he exposes by the simple virtue of innocence. The wrath this innocence incurs is deep and dark.</blockquote><p></p><p>So it was that at the age of 12, Sissay found himself removed from the Greenwood home and shunted around care facilities where staff were disinterested in their charges. During this time his behaviour became erratic as he struggled to consolidate his self-image in the face of indifference from some quarters and outright hostility from others. One gets the heavy sense of a soul adrift without any of the grounding that family and shared history can offer. As Sissay observes:</p><p></p><blockquote>Memories in care are slippery because there’s no one to recall them with as the years pass… How could it matter if no one recalls it? Given that staff don’t take photographs it was impossible to take something away as a memory. This is how you become invisible. It isn’t the lack of photographs that erodes the memory. It is the underlying unkindnesses, which make you feel as though you don’t matter enough. This is how to quietly deplete the sense of self-worth deep inside a child’s psyche. This is how a child becomes hidden in plain sight.</blockquote><p></p><p><i>My Name is Why</i> is, itself, strong evidence of an individual who does not own their personal history. If one discounts the reports included in the book, Sissay’s narrative feels threadbare and perplexing – his internal monologue not tallying with the external world he experiences. That these reports have only recently been released to Sissay should emphasise how impossible a task it was for a young man to reconcile his interior and exterior life when he was given none of the insight the adults around him purported to have (until 16, he didn’t even know that Norman Greenwood was not his real name!).</p><a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/p/advertising.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Advertise with Bibliofreak.net" border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY5_9Ucn-_zxUhyphenhyphenwf2FwqkqRLQeW39qppPcFElPeXZ1O92ln_7nXjSRkGkzfbGi3PMvAlKhQ4GrkQNIyDdsGETz-eT9zFUPKJSObtra47-uGwf6Tvxrgtte4wEGVtibdOUTeii71tl/s1600/Sponsor+this+post.png" style="padding-right: 10px;" /></a><p>The final stop on his tour of care facilities – Wood End assessment centre – was more akin to a detention centre than a home, and the children who were placed there were subjected to appalling abuse at the hands of the staff (Sissay includes correspondence from others who experienced Wood End exactly as he did). It is no surprise that Sissay petitioned the Authority to move into his own flat before the age of 18. When he was finally allowed to leave, he writes, “I felt the files closing behind me,” and then, “File is an anagram of life.”</p><p>By this point, Sissay had begun to find a place in the world that fitted him. Through trips to Manchester and connections with others who shared parts of his experience, he was able to nurture his own poetic spirit (and a love of Bob Marley). It is hard to leave such a difficult memoir with any sense of hope, but with the burgeoning signs of the man Sissay would become visible at its close, <i>My Name is Why</i> manages to find the slightest of hope in a patchwork of despair. </p><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Like the sound of this book? Find it at the following places:</i><br /><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://amzn.to/2ZjmyUZ" target="_blank"><img alt="Find book at Amazon UK" border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRd_5ylAM0LmovUcRGxhlEO9xAaUAQ3XmP72If7lkSP8M9rXnUZiN8zIJ4TQYIQw0xLP8hs-3i3k29pe1j4H_MC1wJj3rLdhBJGw_OEeihbEWv_pF8fb31LOfNvayKZEe95RrMMDrY/s1600/Amazon+UK+button.png" /></a><a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=8095&awinaffid=311269&clickref=&p=%5B%5Bhttps://www.audible.co.uk/pd/My-Name-Is-Why-Audiobook/1786893355" target="_blank"><img alt="Find book at Audible" border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="103" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhru8qopW3ePPqWITseddhdql5glsrwmu7_8BfjFUUGQsDjK4BvqeTGjd1pIbv68AbC9Uejl1OC2mMewyYO8le19sakzuRgIuW39K0sGvSvnQZTlAjejiIGUpvlWcsghpsrbukosEsl/s1600/Audible+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a><a href="https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=4nzTRC2dTbg&offerid=329812.14463797726&type=2&murl=https://www.alibris.co.uk/My-Name-Is-Why-Lemn-Sissay/book/42228579" target="_blank"><img alt="Find book at Alibris UK" border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnZ8CmJ4qKISXN4vozeYvWLi-nceKzgVrFL2cPtygkSn3AosDnLvmflYeri4rBgqphbpXvRQEWcJwcIB1gdo_jZZe_rc0jVCupmWelcyFpqRVt6jNApscO4f6K2EsPhDyyTl9w8mWm/s1600/Alibris+UK+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a><a href="https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=4nzTRC2dTbg&offerid=189673.14463796832&type=2&murl=https://www.alibris.com/My-Name-Is-Why-Lemn-Sissay/book/42228579" target="_blank"><img alt="Find book at Alibris US" border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcYbC6XE-8XKMncvD5yil8wHmNfev6lLvz4IfWPVnRzqYKtFfDmwR2ZYOw5iAvOPKoyoUcNmVEGZdY4g1MIAoZleJ_230WoZfprqoKHRLhG3PQigHim2kgaUCsGPZKqDtcCl5ozDm5/s1600/Alibris+US+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a></div>Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-58609543071080764062021-09-05T13:32:00.000+01:002021-09-05T13:32:31.485+01:00Review: Outline by Rachel Cusk<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style><div class='embed-container'><iframe src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/CtmQyfnALMs' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>It was as if I had lost some special capacity to filter my own perceptions, one that I had only become aware of once it was no longer there … I was beginning to see my own fears and desires manifested outside myself, was beginning to see in other people’s lives a commentary on my own.</blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">Following a divorce, Faye turns inward and becomes absent from her exterior life – it hurts less than being present. An English writer, her narrative picks up as she embarks on a journey to Greece, where she will teach a short writing course. Along the way, she encounters many others with stories to tell – stories which are remarkably like her own. Through their words, the outline of Faye’s self becomes more distinct, even as she recedes from the story.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><i><a href="https://amzn.to/2VeyzZV" target="_blank">Outline</a></i> (2014) is a remarkable example of autofiction in which <a href="https://amzn.to/3jHHpZJ" target="_blank">Rachel Cusk</a> creates a story where both she and her narrator are seemingly absent while at the same time constantly present. Cusk has experienced the consequences of writing straight, unflinching autobiography in the past [<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/120931/rachel-cusk-outline-review-can-british-novelist-redeem-herself" target="_blank">1</a>] – autofiction feels like a smart response, an opportunity to defy and deflect at once. Faye’s passivity may be a reflection of society’s desire that women go about their lives quietly without upsetting the apple cart, but neither Faye nor Cusk are truly taking a backseat here.</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><a href="https://amzn.to/3n34xnF" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;" target="_blank"><img alt="Outline by Rachel Cusk book cover" border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="300" height="541" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVxAghdEVebtMHc6eOxHgtph9GegXAOQjluOQDqKcOBe9_7-VeIESGodHIjjJ_e_iFohoSxGdn3DxvOocAZDxqMZ5GlA8moNdKmG0K68ZYx2pDsCh-mhSnp_h7DksT7F__VnPXdkZx/w343-h541/Outline_Rachel-Cusk_Book-Cover.jpg" width="343" /></a>Some may read <i>Outline</i> as a series of conversations that mimic the rhythm of life. I disagree. The rhythm of the book is entirely Faye’s, as she stitches together different stories, bringing out the elements that stick with her. These conversations may have ‘happened’ but their curation and emphasis is all Faye. In this way, <i>Outline</i> is a depiction of the Writer’s mind but also the Individual’s. <p></p><p style="text-align: left;">If the conversations relayed are not as ‘natural’ as they may first appear, what does the reader take from the recurring themes each centres on – the failed bids for freedom, illusions being shattered, and the desire for a sense of belonging that no longer exists? Undoubtedly, here is a psychic picture of a person going through a watershed trauma, a divorce from a person and a past that has left them shattered by the experience.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Faye’s most frequent conversational partner is a man she meets on her flight to Athens. She refers to him throughout as ‘my neighbour’ alluding back to their adjacent seats on the plane journey. Her neighbour is an older Greek man (although he has spent much time in England) who has been married and divorced three times. Yet, unlike Faye he is not broken by the experience of separation, not irreparably disenchanted by life. Faye’s response to divorce is to recede from the life of hope:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>There was a great difference, I said, between the things I wanted and the things that I could apparently have, and until I had finally and forever made my peace with that fact, I had decided to want nothing at all.</blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">His is blindly optimistic:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>He has been disillusioned more times than he could count in his relationships with women. Yet part of that feeling—the feeling of excitement that is also a rebirth of identity—has attended all his experiences of falling in love; and in the end, despite everything that has happened, these have been the most compelling moments of his life.</blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">His hope that love, recaptured or fresh, can return him to a blissful state of contentment is Gatsby-esque in its persistence but it is clear that he has not learned from his past failures and thus is doomed to repeat them. </p><p style="text-align: left;">While in Athens, her neighbour takes Faye out on his boat a number of times. On one of these trips, Faye sees a young family on a boat nearby:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>When I looked at the family on the boat, I saw a vision of what I no longer had: I saw something, in other words, that wasn’t there. Those people were living in their moment, and though I could see it I could no more return to that moment than I could walk across the water that separated us.</blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">For Faye, the family – and what they represent – is outside of her existence. She cannot interact with them just as she cannot return to their state of complete, oblivious investment in life. Instead, she is sidelined, an observer.</p><p style="text-align: left;">While on first view her neighbour appears stronger and more resilient than Faye, it becomes clear that blind optimism - a failure to face the truth of things - makes him the weaker person, and one who will increase the sum of suffering in the world as he chases unreachable fantasies of contentment. When Faye rejects his groaningly ham-fisted advances late in the novel, she asserts that she is different from him: she will not go on, trapped in a cycle of repetition.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Faye is at a moment in her life when she is breaking from her past and determining that she must live for herself, whatever that means. Yet, at the same time she undermines the idea of identity and indicates that she does not buy into the idea of an Authentic self:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>I thought the whole idea of a ‘real’ self might be illusory: you might feel, in other words, as though there were some separate, autonomous self within you, but perhaps that self didn’t actually exist.</blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">At the same time Faye, ironically given the way her story is told, suggests that identity cannot be formed through the lens of other people, that many of the crutches she had used in the past no longer seem viable: </p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>As it happened, I was no longer interested in literature as a form of snobbery or even self-definition. I had no desire to prove that one book was better than another; in fact, if I read something I admired, I found myself increasingly disinclined to mention it at all. What I knew personally to be true had come to seem unrelated to the process of persuading others. I did not, any longer, want to persuade anyone of anything.</blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">However, Faye feels exposed as a woman moving into middle-age, who cannot fall back on the identity of mother and wife in the way that many of her peers can. As one of the other characters at the end of <i>Outline</i> emphasises, a divorced woman is subject to the gaze of many people, who suddenly see her afresh. </p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>For most of the people she knew, people in their forties, this was a time of softening and expanding, of expectations growing blurred, of running a little to seed or to fat after the exhaustion of the chase: she saw them beginning to relax and make themselves comfortable in their lives. But for her, coming back out into the world again, the lines were still sharp, the expectations undimmed: sometimes she felt as if she’d arrived at a party just as everyone else was leaving, leaving to go home together and sleep.</blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>Outline</i>’s themes are not only reflected in the characters that populate the novel, but the places too. That Faye’s trip is to Greece is significant. Greece, with its great history but which is now “on its knees and dying a slow and agonizing death.” Like Faye – and many of the other characters – Greece as a country is shown to have taken its good days for granted and complacently drifted towards the jolt that has awoken it. </p><a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/p/advertising.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Advertise with Bibliofreak.net" border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY5_9Ucn-_zxUhyphenhyphenwf2FwqkqRLQeW39qppPcFElPeXZ1O92ln_7nXjSRkGkzfbGi3PMvAlKhQ4GrkQNIyDdsGETz-eT9zFUPKJSObtra47-uGwf6Tvxrgtte4wEGVtibdOUTeii71tl/s1600/Sponsor+this+post.png" style="padding-right: 10px;" /></a><p style="text-align: left;">Greece is not only relevant for its place in the modern world, but for its rich cultural history. Like <a href="https://amzn.to/3kVZ9Qh" target="_blank">Homer</a>’s '<a href="https://amzn.to/2WMY3y2" target="_blank">Odyssey</a>', Faye’s odyssey makes the idea of homecoming central, but in <i>Outline</i> there is no hope of return for Faye. Thus, <i>Outline</i> is very sharply severed from the literary tradition.</p><p style="text-align: left;">It is not simply the traditions of classical literature that <i>Outline</i> separates itself from, but the idea of the novel – a far more recent invention – too. For there is no plot in <i>Outline</i>, no story arc, and no conflict between characters. It would be easy to label <i>Outline</i> a work of negation, but instead I prefer to call it an experiential piece. Stories do not need to have a beginning, middle, and end to qualify as stories, despite what the neatly packaged tales Faye relays may have you believe. In fact, Faye’s way of narrativising the stories of other characters is an amusing paradox to how her own story is relayed. Cusk is teasing the reader, asking if they will suspend their credulity as one character after another, purportedly, relays a story that encapsulates the essence of their self. It is a knowing wink to the writers and readers of fiction. </p><p style="text-align: left;">For the most part, Cusk’s style is tight, her prose economical. But occasionally there is a joke that may be superfluous but really hits the spot. Having been asked to write a short story that includes an animal, one of the class that Faye teaches reports the following:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>He had got up early to write his story, he said, though he had found it hard to introduce an animal into his chosen subject-matter, which was the hypocrisy of our religious leaders and the failure of public commentators to subject them to the proper scrutiny.</blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">This will tickle anyone who has studied Creative Writing. And that is maybe a statement that applies to <i>Outline</i> more generally. It is a book that requires the reader to work and which will, I suspect, prove more fruitful for those not interested only in the consumption of fiction but the creation of it too. By the novel’s end, Faye remains an “outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank.” For the reader who does not wish to do the filling in, I suggest they give <i>Outline</i> a wide berth; for everyone else, this is a book worth grappling with.</p></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Like the sound of this book? Find it at the following places:</i><br /><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://amzn.to/3mXUXSW" target="_blank"><img alt="Find book at Amazon UK" border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRd_5ylAM0LmovUcRGxhlEO9xAaUAQ3XmP72If7lkSP8M9rXnUZiN8zIJ4TQYIQw0xLP8hs-3i3k29pe1j4H_MC1wJj3rLdhBJGw_OEeihbEWv_pF8fb31LOfNvayKZEe95RrMMDrY/s1600/Amazon+UK+button.png" /></a><a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=8095&awinaffid=311269&clickref=&p=%5B%5Bhttps://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Outline-Audiobook/0571367534" target="_blank"><img alt="Find book at Audible" border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="103" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhru8qopW3ePPqWITseddhdql5glsrwmu7_8BfjFUUGQsDjK4BvqeTGjd1pIbv68AbC9Uejl1OC2mMewyYO8le19sakzuRgIuW39K0sGvSvnQZTlAjejiIGUpvlWcsghpsrbukosEsl/s1600/Audible+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a><a href="https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=4nzTRC2dTbg&offerid=329812.14463797726&type=2&murl=https://alibris.co.uk/Outline-A-Novel-Rachel-Cusk/book/28004853" target="_blank"><img alt="Find book at Alibris UK" border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnZ8CmJ4qKISXN4vozeYvWLi-nceKzgVrFL2cPtygkSn3AosDnLvmflYeri4rBgqphbpXvRQEWcJwcIB1gdo_jZZe_rc0jVCupmWelcyFpqRVt6jNApscO4f6K2EsPhDyyTl9w8mWm/s1600/Alibris+UK+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a><a href="https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=4nzTRC2dTbg&offerid=189673.14463796832&type=2&murl=https://www.alibris.com/Outline-A-Novel-Rachel-Cusk/book/28004853" target="_blank"><img alt="Find book at Alibris US" border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcYbC6XE-8XKMncvD5yil8wHmNfev6lLvz4IfWPVnRzqYKtFfDmwR2ZYOw5iAvOPKoyoUcNmVEGZdY4g1MIAoZleJ_230WoZfprqoKHRLhG3PQigHim2kgaUCsGPZKqDtcCl5ozDm5/s1600/Alibris+US+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a></div></div>Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-46420897532247445862021-08-15T15:12:00.000+01:002021-08-15T15:12:01.410+01:00Review: Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack by Richard Ovenden<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style><div class='embed-container'><iframe src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/uL89x4UNINs' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<p style="text-align: left;">In <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Kazuo%20Ishiguro" target="_blank">Kazuo Ishiguro</a>’s fantasy novel <i><a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/2015/04/review-buried-giant-by-kazuo-ishiguro.html" target="_blank">The Buried Giant</a></i>, a great mist erases the collective memory, leaving the story’s characters “unable to access the past and with it to move forward into the future” [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2020.100879" target="_blank">1</a>]. The idea of collective forgetting is almost impossible to imagine in our own world, with the unfathomable amount of information available on the web. And yet to bastardise a Cecil Null line, humans have forgotten more than the web will ever know. Reflecting on this is no bad thing; doing something about it is even better.</p><p style="text-align: left;">In the Google-age, knowledge is increasingly privatised, and unfortunately, knowledge appears to have a shelf-life. Yahoo proved this when it deleted over 35 million pages of Geocities in 2009. Ten years later, Flickr decided to limit its free hosting and, in the process, trashed an eye-watering number of its users’ photos permanently. If only there were institutions with long-established histories of protecting knowledge and making it as accessible to the world as possible… Wait a minute, I have an idea!</p><a href="https://amzn.to/37F13Pc" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="blank"><img alt="Burning the Books by Richard Ovenden book cover" border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="329" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaebCLHw_5bVbSMEdwhcYcO7TrL4NZpgLuNF5V7FBipiaWUa7Sgl2cxUBBfM0j1n8yAwmPjtPzjzr8UXYvWjAKqVVhSRz6S9kqBaftzDi4YcjzS0cu-WEJJJy_ztJB45zKU-oYppOl/s320/Burning-the-Books_Richard-Ovenden_Book-Cover.jpg" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="262" /></a><p style="text-align: left;">Ok, I am a librarian so my answer to almost any problem is ‘the library?’ but in this case, I might be right. Of course, libraries themselves haven’t always been able to ensure knowledge’s safe passage from one generation to the next. In <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3jTM1L4" target="_blank">Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack</a></i> (2020), <a href="https://amzn.to/2Xr8HLd" target="_blank">Richard Ovenden</a> highlights historical examples of knowledge being destroyed in a number of ways. Bodley’s Librarian (the senior Executive position of the Bodleian Libraries), there are few people better placed to discuss the preservation of knowledge than Ovenden.</p><p style="text-align: left;">From the great library of Alexandria to the Nazi book burnings via Louvain and the personal papers of literary heroes, <i>Burning the Books</i> is a whistle stop tour of selected crimes against knowledge. Ovenden is at pains to emphasise that it is not simply a case of knowledge being wilfully erased by acts of violence (although it often is) but also by individuals choosing to have their personal histories remain private, or societies letting the institutions that guard knowledge go to waste through disinterest and lack of funding. The heartfelt efforts of Bosnian library staff who risked their lives in an attempt to guard their stock from Serbian military bombardments provokes visceral emotions, but so too does the thought of literary figures like <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Franz%20Kafka?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Kafka</a>, Byron, and Larkin trying to destroy their personal papers, or of the many libraries that have been lost during the recent age of Austerity. Because the truth is, once lost, knowledge is no longer knowledge – failure to care for what we learn as a species is no better than never pursuing knowledge in the first place.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Each chapter of <i>Burning the Books</i> looks at a different instance of knowledge under attack. Yes, there are many historical examples not touched on here, but what is covered builds the case for libraries and archives, and allows Ovenden to work towards the coda he provides in the final pages of the book. So while not exhaustive, <i>Burning the Books</i> explores the different ways that knowledge may be lost and allows stories of individuals to come to the fore. Each scenario is explained in a comforting level of detail but I recognise that for some readers, less handholding and a broader range of examples may be preferable. I am not one of those, though. For me, Ovenden has produced a compelling account of repeated failures to value knowledge by some and heroic efforts to protect it by others.</p><p style="text-align: left;">To understand many of the attacks on knowledge, one has to understand the context in which they took place. In Sarajevo, the Serbian military were engaged in the erasure of Bosnian Muslims – culture, people, even gravestones. Kenan Slinic, Sarajevo fire chief, summed up the attack on Bosnia’s National Library thus: “I was born here and they are burning a part of me.” In Nazi Germany, many books by Jewish authors or on un-German topics were burned. As the saying goes, “Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.” Of course, Heinrich Heine wrote this phrase more than a century before the book burnings of 1933. The attack on knowledge - on memory - is not a new phenomenon, then. Just as there was a desire to leave no evidence that Bosnian Muslims had ever been a part of the country in 1992, in Tudor England, Henry VIII waged war on the monasteries and their collections, wishing to excise all traces of Roman influence in England.</p><a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/p/advertising.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Advertise with Bibliofreak.net" border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY5_9Ucn-_zxUhyphenhyphenwf2FwqkqRLQeW39qppPcFElPeXZ1O92ln_7nXjSRkGkzfbGi3PMvAlKhQ4GrkQNIyDdsGETz-eT9zFUPKJSObtra47-uGwf6Tvxrgtte4wEGVtibdOUTeii71tl/s1600/Sponsor+this+post.png" style="padding-right: 10px;" /></a><p style="text-align: left;">For all that the thought of books burning creates a strong emotional response, it seems to me, the greatest challenge set out by <i>Burning the Books</i> doesn’t relate to books at all but to the mass of information generated in the digital world. For keeping historical papers safe is one thing but attempting to archive and make retrievable the world wide web is a daunting task, even to the most optimistic librarian. After all, so long as one knows the language, the written word – whether it be on cuneiform tablets, papyrus, parchment, or in book form – remains intelligible to anyone who wishes to read it. Whether anyone will be able to access a Wordpress blog in 200 hundred years’ time to read the work of tomorrow’s Great Authors is quite a different question. And that is before one even begins to tackle the issue of so much of the web’s content being owned / hosted by private companies.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Whatever the challenge, throughout the book Ovenden’s message is clear: the preservation of knowledge matters and thus libraries and archives matter. Looking back at the most referenced story of a library’s destruction, Ovenden reframes the common conception that Alexandria was destroyed through a blazing fire and instead labels its demise as a “cautionary tale of the danger of creeping decline, through the underfunding, low prioritisation and general disregard for the institutions that preserve and share knowledge”. There is very little doubt that this sentiment also applies to libraries and archives across the UK today. We might not be able to change the history of how knowledge has been preserved, but those of us around today can change the future. After all, it is our collective memory that is at stake.</p>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions.</blockquote>
It is 1945 and the end of war is in sight. Britain’s young people are having to refocus their aims for a world no longer at war. For the girls at The May of Teck Club (an establishment "for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years" in Kensington, London), the end of war will effect no significance change: they will go on, each seeking their own personal goals, be they a job in publishing, an inch off one’s waist, or – most popular a goal – a nice young man who could be considered marriage material. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Muriel%20Spark?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Muriel Spark</a>’s <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2JeUdo6" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Girls of Slender Means</a></i> (1963) is a patchwork tale of the girls who live at The May of Teck Club as their independent stories stitch together to form a shared narrative of the Young Single Lady. We have Jane, who works in publishing and eats heavily to fuel her “brain work”, Joanna with her religious assuredness, Selina who collects men, and many more besides. The narrative circles around the small quarrels that are unavoidable when so many people are thrown together, the stories the girls tell one another and the small cruelties that are inevitable, but also the collegiate spirit, the Schiaparelli dress that is shared between them for special occasions, the bartering of small rationed luxuries for necessities and vice versa. But while the narrative circles around the small issues of daily life, one cannot help but feel disaster looming for the girls given the backdrop of (albeit fading) war and the rather slender opportunities for young ladies.<br />
<a href="https://amzn.to/2Yx6MAx" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="blank"><img alt="The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark book cover" border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="329" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy8e0Rw5g7oLRMKNag75D9SbbFliWM85KEKoz-ami2hNjJ9F_z-0Id_aXsOMclRPN9Mg8VDuMgqmDV2AHowP-88gv-JM8_F-J3pT2McPk1UHWZCxQ9xkT4IyGMZfyyMizeLWSdWvXg/s400/Cover_The-Girls-of-Slender-Means.png" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="262" /></a><br />
<a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Muriel%20Spark?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Spark</a> captures the essence of shared living - of small concerns over weight, what one might wear on an important date, how to negotiate rationing to continue with daily beauty routines, and the like – and demonstrates the essential skill of a novelist of foregrounding the mundane while cranking up the stakes in the background. It is a trick that <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Jane%20Austen?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Austen</a> pulled off in all her novels, where the heroine’s opportunity for happiness and security through a good marriage ticked away in the background. <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Muriel%20Spark?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Spark</a> achieves a similar balance here.<br />
<br />
Her characters may be concerned with whether they can barter some soap or how they can lose an inch from their waist, but they are all looking for a future, all preparing for the day when they must decide upon their raison d'être. <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Muriel%20Spark?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Spark</a>’s women may have more options available to them than <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Jane%20Austen?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Austen</a>’s did more than a century earlier, but they are not so spoilt for choices that they can afford to be profligate with their time.<br />
<br />
It would be easy to miss the weightiness of subject in such a slim volume where the focus seems to be on the bickering of young ladies who are at a loose end, but that is <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Muriel%20Spark?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Spark</a>’s brilliance. She has created a narrative that has that rare thing in fiction – the ring of quiet but absolute truth. Written in short scenes that are arranged not in a linear chronology but jumping about, the narrative never lacks a sense of rootedness. Even <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Muriel%20Spark?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Spark</a>’s comedy is wry and straight-faced, and interweaves with (rather than jutting out from) necessary exposition. Take this description of one of the characters: <br />
<br />
"We come now to Nicholas Farringdon in his thirty-third year. He was said to be an anarchist. No one at the May of Teck Club took this seriously as he looked quite normal: that is to say, he looked slightly dissipated, like the disappointing son of a good English family that he was."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Muriel%20Spark?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Spark</a> is wonderful at clipped but effective prose and in <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2JeUdo6" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Girls of Slender Means</a></i> she avoids having the story carry her into extremes. This is a brilliantly simple but deceptively effective look at life in all its smallness at the end of the war. It is a perfectly formed nugget from (in my opinion) an undervalued writer.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/p/advertising.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY5_9Ucn-_zxUhyphenhyphenwf2FwqkqRLQeW39qppPcFElPeXZ1O92ln_7nXjSRkGkzfbGi3PMvAlKhQ4GrkQNIyDdsGETz-eT9zFUPKJSObtra47-uGwf6Tvxrgtte4wEGVtibdOUTeii71tl/s1600/Sponsor+this+post.png" style="padding-right: 10px;" /></a>As much as this is Paul’s story, it is It would be easy to miss the weightiness of subject in such a slim volume where the focus seems to be on the bickering of young ladies who are at a loose end, but that is <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Muriel%20Spark?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Spark</a>’s brilliance. She has created a narrative that has that rare thing in fiction – the ring of quiet but absolute truth. Written in short scenes that are arranged not in a linear chronology but jumping about, the narrative never lacks a sense of rootedness. Even <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Muriel%20Spark?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Spark</a>’s comedy is wry and straight-faced, and interweaves with (rather than jutting out from) necessary exposition. Take this description of one of the characters: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We come now to Nicholas Farringdon in his thirty-third year. He was said to be an anarchist. No one at the May of Teck Club took this seriously as he looked quite normal: that is to say, he looked slightly dissipated, like the disappointing son of a good English family that he was.</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Muriel%20Spark?&max-results=6" target="_blank">Spark</a> is wonderful at clipped but effective prose and in <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2JeUdo6" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Girls of Slender Means</a></i> she avoids having the story carry her into extremes. This is a brilliantly simple but deceptively effective look at life in all its smallness at the end of the war. It is a perfectly formed nugget from (in my opinion) an undervalued writer.<br />
<br />
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Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-36948050908415567392019-06-25T17:14:00.018+01:002021-08-14T09:10:05.848+01:00Review: The Only Story by Julian Barnes<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="408" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-5XX78dD_vs" width="750"></iframe><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.” </blockquote>Everyone has at least one story to tell: the story of their first love. This is Paul Casey’s. At the green age of nineteen, Paul finds himself at a loose end during a summer break from university. Back at his parents in a leafy Surrey suburb, he decides to join the local tennis club for a little distraction. Boy does he get it. Stumbling into a mixed doubles pairing with a Susan Macleod, there are more hormones than tennis balls flying about on court. Susan is intriguing. She is also 48 years old, married, and mother to girls older than Paul.<br />
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Trapped in a loveless marriage with a throwback to the days of British Empire, Susan is tame (read dull) by cougar standards but to Paul she is a life-shaping story waiting to happen. Carrying on such an affair must have its downfalls but ringing disapproval from the locals and expulsion from the tennis club do nothing to dampen the romance. Indeed, for Paul, a little adversity only makes for a better tale to tell his chums. As he confesses, “I seemed to have landed on exactly the relationship of which my parents would most disapprove.” <br />
<a href="https://amzn.to/2ZO215U" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="blank"><img alt="The Only Story by Julian Barnes cover" border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1018" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5YmlraaXnYNO-UWMYE0UDWSwh2U4B0NWYxpcUk6cXqO6BfSnX2N9dzXTUMTlG_NMJXoAojeODqVFvWT1h3mwa8f1JvKKYSOpwrDUMsrGaAI4abK2KlNrnqlQ1K6Tw5mVYEUZMSWfb/s400/81lyDFHG3OL.jpg" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="252" /></a><br />
Despite Susan’s entreaties to find himself a young lady to go steady with, Paul refuses to leave his Mrs. Robinson. Sticking out the suburban adversities they face is admirable but when the older Paul (who narrates the story) begins to describe the uncomfortable domestic setup the lovers try to create as Paul reaches his twenties, catastrophe lurks. Susan, it turns out, is a drinker. Having split her family apart to be together, she is a lot for a young man to take on as Paul will learn. <br />
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Almost forty years on from the publication of <i><a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/2013/08/review-metroland-by-julian-barnes.html" target="_blank">Metroland</a></i>, <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Julian%20Barnes" target="_blank">Julian Barnes</a> finds himself back in the suburbs for more growing pains. <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2XvYo6Y" target="_blank">The Only Story</a></i> (2018), however, comes from a more mature writer and there are traces of the melancholy of the old looking back on their youth that was so brilliantly done in <i><a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/2012/05/review-sense-of-ending-by-julian-barnes.html" target="_blank">The Sense of an Ending</a></i>. Where that novel was awarded the Booker Prize in 2011, <i>The Only Story</i> has received a more luke warm reception from the critics. Indeed, “luke warm” is a pretty accurate two-word review of the book. <br />
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It is always unfair to judge a book against its authors back catalogue, but it is also inevitable. Here we have an older Paul looking back across formative periods of his life; in <i>The Sense of an Ending</i> we had Tony Webster appraising his younger self. But where Tony’s story – despite his resistance to experience - managed to evoke a great deal of suffering and self-deception that amounted to a beautiful rumination on the power of memory to deceive and the melancholy pains of a life viewed from its end, Paul’s feels lifeless by comparison no matter how wildly he attempts to break from his parent’s ‘boring’ generation. <br />
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Paul’s telling of his only story is different to Tony’s. Barnes allows his latest creation to slip into indulgences and asides, bringing him closer to the reality of one’s own self-narrative. As he discusses his own storytelling technique, Paul observes that, “there are things I can’t be bothered to tell you.” But there are things he certainly <i>does</i> bother to tell us that are not required for the story’s progression – whole characters, in fact, crop up who serve very little purpose in moving the plot forward. With details sprinkled somewhat haphazardly and characters evolving out of the reader’s sight, there is something very affecting about a story viewed from a narrator who cares only partly about the art of fiction. <br />
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Some readers will find this style too dry to be enjoyable, however. For myself, I had forgotten within a few weeks of finishing the book that I had ever read it. I can also recall more lines and details from Barnes’s previous three or four novels than this one, despite having read them some time ago (and my memory being appalling). I am not sure this is a condemnation of <i>The Only Story</i> but I think it does mark it out as a very particular type of fiction. For those that embrace psychological realism, this will be a book to excavate with psychoanalytical detail; for others who prefer a little more artifice in their fiction (and I think I may fall into this camp), <i>The Only Story</i> will be less exhilarating. <br />
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Given that the narrative is told in a strongly realist style, the content of the story is groaning with fictional conceit. A young man seducing (and seduced by) an older woman who will offer him a way out of childhood but later cause him no end of questions and regrets, is the sort of plot that could be pulled from countless French novels – <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/2012/05/review-sense-of-ending-by-julian-barnes.html" target="_blank">Flaubert</a>, one of Barnes’s acknowledged pleasures, would have happily settled on such a plot. Paul would deny it - “You might think: French novels, older woman teaching ‘the arts of love’ to younger man, ohh la la. But there was nothing French about our relationship, or about us. We were English, and so had only those morally laden English words to deal with: words like scarlet woman, and adulteress.” - but it does not have the ring of reality. Or, perhaps it is fairer to say, it smacks of being an exceptional story. By telling the story in such a realistic manner, Barnes creates a problem for himself: the content of the story must be out of the ordinary to keep the reader’s attention but by doing this, the overall tone of psychological realism is compromised. <br />
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Despite that, Barnes is at his normal level of technical excellence. His prose is crisp and unobtrusive, even if there are fewer sparkling sentences to admire in this than in some of his recent efforts. Paul’s story is told from the first-person perspective at the novel’s start, but this gives way to second-person, and finally third- as Paul grows more distant from his youthful, vital self. This works nicely and by the end, Paul is detached not just from himself but from the idea of love, which he treats more as a philosophical question than an emotion to be experienced. Love still affects him, however, even if it is observed rather than experienced. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">“He was at ease with the world, watching other people’s lives develop. No, that was too grand a way of putting it: he was observing the young get cheerfully drunk and turn their minds to sex, romance, and something more. But though he was indulgent — even sentimental — about the young, and protective of their hopes, there was one scene he was superstitious about, and preferred not to witness: the moment when they flung away their lives because it just felt so right—when, for instance, a smiling waiter delivered a mound of mango sorbet with an engagement ring glittering in its domed apex, and a bright-eyed proposer fell to bended knee in the sand […] The fear of such a scene would often lead him to an early night.”</blockquote><a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/p/advertising.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY5_9Ucn-_zxUhyphenhyphenwf2FwqkqRLQeW39qppPcFElPeXZ1O92ln_7nXjSRkGkzfbGi3PMvAlKhQ4GrkQNIyDdsGETz-eT9zFUPKJSObtra47-uGwf6Tvxrgtte4wEGVtibdOUTeii71tl/s1600/Sponsor+this+post.png" style="padding-right: 10px;" /></a>As much as this is Paul’s story, it is Susan’s too. Indeed, without Susan – with her shy, suburban frustration – there would be no story. She bridges the gap between the “played out” wartime generation and the new, freer youth coming through. There is no happiness with her alcoholic husband but her escape with her young lover proves barely more successful. Her wry witticisms give way to drink-induced slurs, and Paul becomes as useful as her past husband, neither of whom truly understand her.<br />
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The fact that Paul is unable to pull Susan from her depression and alcoholism having taken her away from her family, causes him to search his soul. That he is still doing this 50 years after the affair gives the title an ironic bent: is first love the <i>only</i> story, or is it <i>Paul’s</i> only story having allowed it to clip his life beyond opportunity for any further stories of note. Just as he clung to Susan for longer than was sensible in his youth, Paul is guilty of holding onto (and being defined by) his only story for longer than is healthy. <br />
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<i>The Only Story</i> is a funny sort of novel. The premise has been so heavily done in fiction as has its period (Paul is a young man who experienced the 1960’s sexual awakening) that its bare bones sound rather trite. But Barnes’s ability to permeate to the foundations of his characters and wrench every last drop of pain from their story lifts the novel. It is an interesting comparison piece to <i>The Sense of an Ending</i> – one protagonist running from youthful love, the other embracing it – but <i>The Only Story</i> never really erupts into anything spectacular and I strongly suspect it will not go down as one of Barnes’s ‘must-read’ efforts.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><i><i>Like the sound of this book? Find it at the following places:</i></i><br />
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</div>Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-856975496610881382019-06-18T07:50:00.001+01:002019-06-18T07:50:21.083+01:00Interview: Ann Morgan<div style="text-align: right;">
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Ann Morgan is a writer and editor based in London. Her writing has been published in the <i>Guardian</i>, <i>Literary Review</i>, and <i>BBC Music Magazine</i>. She is author of three books and has given a TED Talk on the year she spent reading a book from every country on Earth.<br />
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Her latest novel, <i>Crossing Over</i>, is an Audible exclusive and details the unexpected coming together of a migrant from Malawi and an ageing British woman with dementia.<br />
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You can read my review here: <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/2019/06/review-crossing-over-by-ann-morgan.html" target="_blank"><span id="goog_1166016322"></span>Crossing Over by Ann Morgan</a><br />
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<b>In <i>Crossing Over</i>, we have two big issues at play: dementia and illegal immigration. What interested you about these topics and what made you bring them together? </b><br />
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I’m fascinated by representing altered mental states in narrative and how mental illness affects storytelling (something I explored with bipolar disorder in my first novel, <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2XiDpo4" target="_blank">Beside Myself</a></i>). Many therapies are built on the theory that telling a story can help a person move past a traumatic event – so what are the implications for people who are unable to articulate what has happened to them coherently? It struck me that bringing together two characters whose storytelling is compromised – one through linguistic limitations and PTSD and the other through dementia – might provide an interesting way to explore this. <br />
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<a href="https://amzn.to/2XSxGm3" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Crossing Over by Ann Morgan book cover" border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwubSYZEoYtNPmdQsJnMGd5pTPvSyDwIa8etAG5bXcwmQ_H-afb1KhiOy9DRM-Pw26ABi96imLvUffL8X_-akVkybHE-_2hM1ubJALLFyoY2n5Yllh57y4poSb5Jv-3kB8kjPzAS1n/s320/Crossing-Over.jpg" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="320" /></a></div>
<b>Inhabiting the mind of an older person with dementia and a young man crossing into a new country must have proved challenging. What sort of research did you have to do, and are you happy with the result? </b><br />
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The research process for <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2RnSe3d" target="_blank">Crossing Over</a></i> involved a lot of reading, thinking and talking to experts, as well as drawing on personal encounters and experiences (for example, with several relatives who have gone through dementia). A number of books were helpful, in particular <a href="https://amzn.to/2WOAQFY" target="_blank">John Bayley</a>'s touching memoir of his wife, <a href="https://amzn.to/2XThnFw" target="_blank">Iris Murdoch</a>'s illness, <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2XrjvYh" target="_blank">Iris</a></i> and groundbreaking works on PTSD such as <a href="https://amzn.to/2KVtxKh" target="_blank">Judith Herman</a>'s <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2XiEpbD" target="_blank">Trauma and Recovery</a></i> and <a href="https://amzn.to/2XSiaGB" target="_blank">David J. Morris</a>'s <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2XgNZfb" target="_blank">The Evil Hours</a></i>. <br />
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The work on PTSD among migrants is still relatively new – most of our understanding of this syndrome is based on studies of war veterans. However, recent powerful pieces of reporting and documentaries such as the BBC's Exodus series (which gave cameras to a number of people trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe) have shed light on the traumatic experiences attached to many such journeys and the emotional toll this can take. <br />
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That said, as mental health is viewed rather differently in Malawi, I think it's important to note that Jonah would not necessarily describe himself as having PTSD – the diagnosis itself is a Western construction. Just as his English is different to the language he encounters in Britain, so his view of his own experience may be rather different to the way we might categorise it. <br />
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I’m happy that I explored the topic as I wanted to, which is all you can ever really hope for as a writer. <br />
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<b>Jonah travels to Britain from Malawi following a terrible famine – do you have any connection with Malawi? </b><br />
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I visited Malawi in 2008 and know several people living and working there who were very helpful with my research. I also follow the work of a charity called the <a href="http://www.nenomacadamiatrust.co.uk/home.html" target="_blank">Neno Macadamia Trust</a>, which does great things to support smallholders and combat deforestation there.<br />
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<b>Whose story is <i>Crossing Over</i>, Jonah’s or Edie’s? </b><br />
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Readers or listeners may have different views, but I would say it starts off as Edie’s and becomes Jonah’s. <br />
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<b>With two distinct voices in the story, how did you approach the writing? Did you write both characters in parallel, separate them out, etc.? </b><br />
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I wrote them chronologically, pretty much in the order the sections appear in the book. <br />
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<b><i>Crossing Over</i> is currently available as an audiobook only – was this always going to be the case, or did you write with the intention of the story being consumed as a book? </b><br />
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I wrote it envisaging that it would be a print book. I hope it will be one day. <br />
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<b>How much input did you have into the audiobook? </b><br />
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Quite a bit. Audible asked for my opinion on their choice of narrator and the cover design. I also got to go and hear the fabulous <a href="https://amzn.to/2KWIE6i" target="_blank">Adjoa Andoh</a> recording some of the early chapters, which was a real treat. <br />
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<b>Having written journalism, travelled the world, and read books from every corner of the Earth, you have a broad range of experience to draw on. <i>Crossing Over</i> is nevertheless very much of the Western European literary tradition stylistically - I wonder, did you experiment with other ways of telling the story, particularly Jonah’s side? </b><br />
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I’d like to think it does play with a few conventions. But you also have to write with your readership in mind. Writing is very often a balancing act, finding the sweet spot where you can challenge readers without making them want to hurl your book at the wall in exasperation. <br />
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<b>Away from <i>Crossing Over</i>, which authors / books do you enjoy reading? </b><br />
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A huge number. Too many to single particular names out. I feature one book a month on my blog (<a href="http://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/">ayearofreadingtheworld.com</a>), which continues to be a nice record of my reading. <br />
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<b>Do you approach writing fiction differently to journalism/blogs? Is your process similar, do you follow the same steps, do you write in longer bursts? </b><br />
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They’re very different beasts. Both need a sense of flow and story but achieving that uses entirely different parts of my brain, at least at the first draft stage. <br />
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<b>Favourite word, and why? </b><br />
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I’m afraid I’m not much of a one for favourites. The more words the merrier! </div>
Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-71103186233713982302019-06-18T07:47:00.000+01:002019-07-04T15:27:07.522+01:00Review: Crossing Over by Ann Morgan<iframe width="750" height="408" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I0AAdpg-3eY" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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For many, crossing a border barely registers as an experience; for others, it can be a matter of life and death. Jonah falls into the latter category. A young man from Malawi who is driven from his homeland by a savage famine, Jonah comes to England on the promise of a better life. But before he has set foot on British soil, the rest of his party have lost their deadly gamble and he is left alone to finish his journey. <br />
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For many, one’s memories are the bedrock of identity; for others, they are a troubling puzzle to be solved. Edie falls into the latter category. Frustrated by all that lies beyond her grasp, she is struggling to hide her troubles from the ‘meddling’ WI women in town but struggling just as much to cope alone.<br />
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<a href="https://amzn.to/2XSxGm3" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Crossing Over by Ann Morgan book cover" border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwubSYZEoYtNPmdQsJnMGd5pTPvSyDwIa8etAG5bXcwmQ_H-afb1KhiOy9DRM-Pw26ABi96imLvUffL8X_-akVkybHE-_2hM1ubJALLFyoY2n5Yllh57y4poSb5Jv-3kB8kjPzAS1n/s320/Crossing-Over.jpg" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="320" /></a><i><a href="https://amzn.to/2Ilo4ux" target="_blank">Crossing Over</a></i> (2019) is the story of these two very different lives intersecting. Arriving in England alone, Jonah takes refuge in an empty barn – <i>Edie's</i> empty barn – but little does he know, this is not the first time the barn has been used to harbour someone avoiding the authorities. When Jonah is eventually discovered by Edie and pulled into her life as an unofficial carer, it becomes clear that during the second world war a young deserter had also hidden out in the barn. Back then, a pubescent Edie had fallen into a lopsided romance with the soldier; now, her new stowaway sparks memories long forgotten. Can Jonah help Edie navigate her deepening dementia, and can he get himself to London and the life he was promised in England among these strange Mzungu people? <br />
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From the story’s blurb, it is fairly clear how the story will unfold – we have two lives that will be brought together, and an unusual but mutually beneficial connection will be formed. However, with the volume of media stories about (failed) crossings of the English channel by desperate asylum seekers, it is no bad thing to have a story that begins to humanise the experience of the desperate folks who make such a perilous journey. Equally, those who suffer with dementia often do so out of sight. <br />
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The parallels between Jonah’s and Edie’s current predicament are well drawn out without being heavy handed. Both have felt the links to their past ruptured almost to the point of failure. Jonah struggles to contact his friends and family back home in Malawi and when he does, he finds that it is not just his new geography that separates him from his previous life. Conversely, Edie is rooted in the same spot she has spent her past 70+ years, but her mind allows her only confused glimpses of her past. Whether spatial or temporal, the distance from the main characters’ pasts aches throughout their shared narrative. <br />
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With two central characters experiencing such distinctive crises, it is a challenge for an author who won’t have first-hand experience of either circumstance to write their characters sensitively. <a href="https://amzn.to/2IHjqWE" target="_blank">Ann Morgan</a> does this. For those who aren’t familiar with Morgan, a few years back she set herself the unenviable task of reading a book from every country on Earth (details of which can be found on her blog: <a href="https://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/">ayearofreadingtheworld.com</a>). Couple this with a good deal of travel, and an author is about as prepared as they can be to approach characters whose experience is so vastly different from their own. <br />
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<a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/p/advertising.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY5_9Ucn-_zxUhyphenhyphenwf2FwqkqRLQeW39qppPcFElPeXZ1O92ln_7nXjSRkGkzfbGi3PMvAlKhQ4GrkQNIyDdsGETz-eT9zFUPKJSObtra47-uGwf6Tvxrgtte4wEGVtibdOUTeii71tl/s1600/Sponsor+this+post.png" style="padding-right: 10px;" /></a>Let’s unpack this a little bit. Jonah is travelling from Malawi (a place Morgan has spent some time) and is fascinated by many British customs. It is amusing and tender to find him perplexed by so many of these and one can’t help but smile when he mishears Edie’s name and refers to her as ET for most of the story (the significance of ET as an allusion should be clear). But while one smiles at instances like this, Morgan does hit a few discordant notes. These tend to come not in the dialogue of her characters but when she makes use of free indirect discourse. Here we find prose that squeezes odd words (like gelatinous, for example) or colloquial phrases into Jonah’s voice. For a character that is often baffled by the nuances of the English language, this feels awkward. However, <i>Crossing Over</i> is only available as an audiobook currently, which makes it a little harder to determine what comes from the page and what comes from the actor’s interpretation in terms of whose pattern of speech the narration is mimicking. <br />
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By contrast, Edie is roundly a success: her defiance, her jumping self-identity that frequently skips back to her as a young woman, her swings of mood, are all handled well. When she (internally) ferociously chastises her friends of many decades for small mistakes, it is amusing and evidence of both her current and previous selves. As one learns more about Edie and her past romance with the stowaway soldier, the ticks of her personality become clearer and more understandable. She is vulnerable and spiky – a combination that feels apt for her situation. <br />
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<i>Crossing Over</i> has the feel of a pleasantly predictable dive into two worlds, neither of which are comfortable. As a reader, one has very little fear about where things are going but instead invests in empathising with the main characters. For me, this felt a little safe – the type of book I could comfortably recommend to anyone’s mum without fearing they would be confused or disturbed by it – and I wanted to be challenged more. This is all me in terms of expectations, however. If this was a nice, nine o’clock drama on the BBC (as it could easily be), the <i>Radio Times</i> would give it two thumbs up, but I would skip it. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><i><i>Like the sound of this book? Find it at the following places:</i></i><br />
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</i></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"></i> <a href="https://amzn.to/2RjzjGM" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRd_5ylAM0LmovUcRGxhlEO9xAaUAQ3XmP72If7lkSP8M9rXnUZiN8zIJ4TQYIQw0xLP8hs-3i3k29pe1j4H_MC1wJj3rLdhBJGw_OEeihbEWv_pF8fb31LOfNvayKZEe95RrMMDrY/s1600/Amazon+UK+button.png" /></a><a href="https://amzn.to/2MQ7cjP" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="103" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKDidc2X-pXXBrkc7rWxDPiA2GyJ15dUDBmxVG8W20yqOgX-kqqVioVdNz5Wg6llztObhq7FHIAjRDhDTz-TH69qpxoSK-Jny-UVlb2AqvAHRumMP0FwACftskrVnS1bNI4xLlK5P1/s1600/Amazon+US+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a><a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=8095&awinaffid=311269&clickref=&p=%5B%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.audible.co.uk%2Fpd%2FCrossing-Over-Audiobook%2FB07P149YK9%5D%5D" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="103" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtZB7A7pSkBYUY8i2Yw9ZFe_pZvCpVHCM5-uCqbARgQeLgDQy6TaBnBifWolVX9y_4bFIF5lskWVRp984Nv6LXqilEKyCenmUO1tzUfDoPAju2NOzt_2DfiFbBLUcgayzd7llfPVa3/s1600/Audible+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a></div>Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-78867000312318947992019-06-04T08:54:00.000+01:002019-07-04T15:28:39.727+01:00Review: The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler<iframe width="750" height="408" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-VD_qAa13mM" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">“People could, in fact, be used up -- could use each other up, could be of no further help to each other”</blockquote>Macon and Sarah Leary are failing. After years of marriage, the death of their son in a hold-up a year back has given them each a fresh view on the world. A fresh view on each other. Macon enjoys himself in moderation: routine and stability give him a way to negotiate life. Sarah (outwardly) feels more. Sarah also wants a divorce. <br />
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Nothing typifies Macon Leary better than his job. Macon writes guidebooks for businessmen who have to travel but prefer not to. His series (entitled The Accidental Tourist) guides these unwilling travellers through the pitfalls of unknown experience and details exactly how they can make any trip a home-away-from-home: "Other travellers hoped to discover distinctive local wines; Macon's readers searched for pasteurized and homogenized milk." <br />
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<a href="https://amzn.to/2WdU3AL" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="blank"><img alt="The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler cover" border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="313" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ6n1OfLg3lm9pcQdKOqqFo4KZ5D6JsgS6Lt1PFegKpfNCh1wZRp6z1TLewNgudIG5pOpp47SVxRbft_cWzudmZ6IrbMhgMbzDpQ4_Zc8UXQstxqd2ti3Pk8qH3tMI-x1YEUwgNLXa/s400/60792.jpg" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="262" /></a>By comparison, Sarah is – according to Macon – sloppy and disorganised. An English teacher who expresses herself very differently from her husband, she no longer finds amusement in Macon’s strict routines. After their son Ethan’s murder, Macon and Sarah grew apart: there were "months when everything either of them said was wrong." <br />
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Grief is a very personal thing: there is no right or wrong way to negotiate it. Shared grief is a more complex situation. Where Sarah needs hope and support, Macon retreats into his routines and his pessimistic view of life. When Sarah admits, “Now that Ethan's dead I sometimes wonder if there's any point to life," Macon responds, “It never seemed to me there was all that much point to begin with.” With such markedly different coping strategies, the Learys are headed for separation. <br />
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Ethan gone and Sarah moved out of the family home, Macon’s life of order is plunged into relative chaos. Where previously he had retreated into his work to ward off a sense of danger, left alone he falls into a depression that sees him failing to care for his home or himself. He pops corn in the bedroom and cocoons himself in a set of sewn up bedding. When Sarah told Macon, “there's something so muffled about the way you experience things ... You're encased. You're like something in a capsule. You're a dried up kernel of a man that nothing real penetrates,” she was right but after her departure he drifts into an ever more extreme isolation from the outside world. <br />
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Two things help move Macon’s story forwards. Firstly, he breaks his leg and goes to live with his siblings where he is cared for by his sister Rose, who also plays maid to Macon’s brothers, Porter and Charles. Secondly, he encounters Muriel Pritchett. A single mother who does all sorts of jobs to make ends meet, Muriel trains Macon’s dog after it turns nasty on a few people. She is a scrappy younger woman from the other side of Baltimore who brings Macon out of himself (where have we seen a plot like this before?) and dried up Macon Leary finds a surrogate for his wife in Muriel and for Ethan in her son. <br />
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Ironically, it is Macon’s apathy following his wife’s departure that allows the plucky Muriel to move in on him. Like Meursault in <i><a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/2012/02/review-outsider-by-albert-camus.html" target="_blank">The Outsider</a></i>, he is swept along by life. Muriel will eventually change that. She gives him a chance to connect with his grief, to make decisions for himself, and to care about the world again until he finds "a pleasant kind of sorrow sweeping through him. Oh, his life had regained all its old perils. He was forced to worry once again about nuclear war and the future of the planet." The question is, in causing this transformation in Macon, has Muriel offered all she has to give – will Macon return to Sarah a refreshed man, or is it his marriage that is used up? <br />
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While the themes of <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2KpaHeh" target="_blank">The Accidental Tourist</a></i> are heavy – incoherent violence, isolation, grief – Tyler wrings a great deal of humour from her story too. Macon’s fastidious following of rules he sets himself creates a series of small domestic farces that are as laughable as they are melancholy. Being able to laugh at Macon’s flaws while also recognising them as acutely human, gives the reader a way into the book. Tyler does this brilliantly. However, <i>The Accidental Tourist</i> does not rely solely on its humour to bring readers in. Open any page and one finds not the long, dense passages or experimental grammar of literary fiction, but punchy paragraphs and plenty of dialogue. This is a book for any reader. <br />
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Perhaps the greatest achievement of <i>The Accidental Tourist</i> is how brilliantly Tyler inhabits the male psyche. Her portrayal of Macon and the inner workings of his mind shows a deep understanding of a reality of which Tyler does not have first-hand experience. Fundamentally, this is the key skill of any novelist and for an aspiring writer, <i>The Accidental Tourist</i> is a case study in adopting a foreign viewpoint. In fact, Tyler has the edge over many male novelists, who allow their middle-aged male characters to run into fantasy. Macon is burdened with no contrived virility or masculine posturing: he is a man without glamour, without stimulating flaws. <br />
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<a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/p/advertising.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY5_9Ucn-_zxUhyphenhyphenwf2FwqkqRLQeW39qppPcFElPeXZ1O92ln_7nXjSRkGkzfbGi3PMvAlKhQ4GrkQNIyDdsGETz-eT9zFUPKJSObtra47-uGwf6Tvxrgtte4wEGVtibdOUTeii71tl/s1600/Sponsor+this+post.png" style="padding-right: 10px;" /></a>Macon does, however, embody a paradox played out in most of the characters here: the nostalgia for home but also an aversion to its reality. When Macon breaks his leg and goes to stay with his siblings, the reader sees this played out over several different lives. All the Leary children oscillate between marriages and returning to the family home for a different kind of domesticity. The sibling relationship is important and it appears that none of the Learys are able to find a partner who can recreate what they have when they are with their siblings. The relationship between brothers and sisters is underrepresented in fiction given how formative it is. There are no sexual undertones here, no sense that there is anything odd about the Leary troupe. They are simply a group of siblings who have found a way to co-habit and are constantly looking to replicate that in wider relationships. The card game they invented and play regularly but which none of their partners can understand, is symptomatic of this. <br />
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<i>The Accidental Tourist</i> is the sort of book aspiring writers should read. It is brilliant without showing off, and full of lessons to be learnt. Like all of Tyler’s fiction (and most fiction worth reading), it is chiefly concerned with how people affect one another, how one person can bring out certain qualities in another. As Macon reflects towards the end of the novel: “[M]aybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.” The order of his life needs the chaos of another’s to bring it balance. <br />
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I do have one problem with the novel and that is the ending. With the rest of the story lacking in sentimentality, the finale seems to hurl the reader into a quite different story where ends must be tied up neatly. To that point, however, the book is so well executed that I can forgive it a slightly soggy ending. I’d recommend this to anyone who is interested in life in fiction (as opposed to glamour and escapism). <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><i><i><i>Like the sound of this book? Find it at the following places:</i></i></i><br />
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</i></i></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://amzn.to/2QM36YC" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRd_5ylAM0LmovUcRGxhlEO9xAaUAQ3XmP72If7lkSP8M9rXnUZiN8zIJ4TQYIQw0xLP8hs-3i3k29pe1j4H_MC1wJj3rLdhBJGw_OEeihbEWv_pF8fb31LOfNvayKZEe95RrMMDrY/s1600/Amazon+UK+button.png" /></a><a href="https://amzn.to/2WmPbhr" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="103" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKDidc2X-pXXBrkc7rWxDPiA2GyJ15dUDBmxVG8W20yqOgX-kqqVioVdNz5Wg6llztObhq7FHIAjRDhDTz-TH69qpxoSK-Jny-UVlb2AqvAHRumMP0FwACftskrVnS1bNI4xLlK5P1/s1600/Amazon+US+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a><a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=8095&awinaffid=311269&clickref=&p=%5B%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.audible.co.uk%2Fpd%2FThe-Accidental-Tourist-Audiobook%2FB00KB7KGE2%5D%5D" imageanchor="1" target="blank"><img alt="Find book at Audible" border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="103" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhru8qopW3ePPqWITseddhdql5glsrwmu7_8BfjFUUGQsDjK4BvqeTGjd1pIbv68AbC9Uejl1OC2mMewyYO8le19sakzuRgIuW39K0sGvSvnQZTlAjejiIGUpvlWcsghpsrbukosEsl/s1600/Audible+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a><br />
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</div>Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-27070042781091753382019-04-21T10:16:00.000+01:002019-07-07T19:00:58.590+01:00Review: Milkman by Anna Burns<iframe width="750" height="408" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UpKTpCI_szg" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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In a city of proclamations and whispers, being interesting is taking a risk. Walking the streets with your head always in a nineteenth century book is viewed as reckless then. And yet, that is what middle sister does. At eighteen years old, she is not enacting a small rebellion, she is simply doing as pleases her. Aside from flagrant reading of Dostoevsky and Dickens, middle sister is a normal teenager: she sees her partly-secret maybe-boyfriend several times a week, bats off questions of marriage from her mother who knows nothing of her love life, and helps take care of little sisters with her father dead and gone. She is navigating her sectarian-divided community numbed to violence as well as many, until, that is, Milkman appears on the scene. An older man, rumoured to be a renouncer, and Milkman by name but not, seemingly, by profession. <br />
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Middle sister may not give Milkman any encouragement, but rumours start that this young girl has taken up with a married man, more than twenty years her senior. And a renouncer at that. Gossip foreshadows violence in the close-knit society and so it is that middle sister must disprove an unprovable while neither becoming too ‘interesting’ or being considered ‘beyond the pale’ and ostracised from her community. <br />
<a href="https://amzn.to/2Ve30NP" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1047" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioJ6sbW6LXc2EkDoYlESjcjOR-91x9nr88CzQSeqVT-TbMcZPsfdy3hrbopKZKWSMvzDLdPSr6dUlrkiTspspkbzkTbasieRB1JzsovtwlPvrfSLU3nRst3rcVpdAOpaABkBJScFY9/s400/Milkman+cover.png" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="261" /></a><br />
Although it is never explicitly stated, <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2UwSHjA" target="_blank">Milkman</a></i> (2018) appears to be set in 1970’s Belfast (where Anna Burns grew up) and with talk of those ‘over the water’ and people of ‘the other religion’, it is impossible to situate it anywhere else more clearly in one’s mind. However, by shying away from specifics, Burns has made this a story that transposes itself to any of the many besieged communities around the world. It is a universal depiction of tribalism, of a society seeming to knit itself together in opposition to an external force but in so doing, managing to cause fractures through itself. <br />
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With this scope, it is unsurprising <i>Milkman</i> won the Booker Prize for 2018. It has the feel of heft the moment one opens its pages and discovers dense blocks of text with sentences that run on and on, like the book’s characters, difficult to separate from one another. The sense of interconnectedness is hugely important to the claustrophobia of middle sister’s story. Almost all the characters are referred to not by their names but by their relation to other people in the community. It seems impossible to have an identity of one’s own. <br />
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With middle sister primed to leave her teenage years, the forming of one’s identity is an important issue for her: she does not want to marry immediately – to become one of the housewives whose gossip keeps the menfolk in check – but nor is she allowed to carry on her quiet life of running and reading without question. It is as if her community cannot accept that anyone can be apolitical. Reading books from a century past, refusing to accede to a renouncer’s advances but equally refusing to join the small (and much-ridiculed) feminist group that springs up, middle sister refuses – whether she thinks of it this way or not – to join the binary options presented her. Instead, she prefers to live outside of them – not ignoring them but not engaging them either – and this is something that her community struggles with. <br />
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Perhaps it is for this reason that gossip about middle sister is inevitable. If she will not declare herself a problem nor assimilate into the community then fabricated deeds or misdeeds are required so that the community may make an assessment of middle sister: is she in or out? Milkman’s advances (to put it accurately, his harassment) offer her a recognised path: to attach herself to one of those reckless renouncers who end up dead or flipped by the police. Were she to take up Milkman’s offer, middle sister would tread a previously-explored path. The community would treat her with quiet reverence while she lived under the protection – by association – of Milkman, and turn against her when he was out of the picture. Rebuffing his advances barely seems to make a difference. Whispers tell the story that middle sister’s society can cope with and paint her as another daft girl chasing after those dangerous men who challenge the state. <br />
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Her pursuit by Milkman and his associates is an excellent evocation of women’s lack of control in this society: “I’d been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man. Also by the community, by the very mental atmosphere, that minutiae of invasion.” Middle sister has long been taught, as all girls have, that unless it comes to physical violence or lurid insult, then nothing has happened. And so, she is forced into silence.<br />
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While she is experiencing the power of widely told half-truths, middle sister’s maybe-boyfriend is experiencing his own version of societal law. An avid fan of automobiles, maybe boyfriend’s house is cluttered with car parts. However, this seemingly innocuous fact puts him in a great deal of danger when one of the local men decides to take issue with a part that belongs to a car made ‘over the water’. Maybe boyfriend is no more allowed than middle sister to exist outside of politics and he is faced with accusations of treachery for harbouring a car part that represents, apparently, the detestable ‘other’ from over the water. Drawing apolitical pleasure from the object is not even countenanced as an explanation in a society where there is “the right butter. The wrong butter. The tea of allegiance. The tea of betrayal. There were ‘our shops’ and ‘their shops’.” <br />
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<a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/p/advertising.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY5_9Ucn-_zxUhyphenhyphenwf2FwqkqRLQeW39qppPcFElPeXZ1O92ln_7nXjSRkGkzfbGi3PMvAlKhQ4GrkQNIyDdsGETz-eT9zFUPKJSObtra47-uGwf6Tvxrgtte4wEGVtibdOUTeii71tl/s1600/Sponsor+this+post.png" style="padding-right: 10px;" /></a>It is near impossible to exist in this “psycho-political atmosphere, with its rules of allegiance, of tribal identification”. Middle sister and maybe boyfriend consider taking up in a house on an infamous street together, refusing to marry but bringing their two lives together to offer one another some stability. However, in a strict Catholic society, anything so liberal as living in sin is still viewed with deep suspicion. For middle sister, marrying a nice boy of the right religion and temperament (that is, not an active renouncer) and starting a family seems to be about the only option open to her that will not immediately scandalise society. Oh, to be young and have life so full of possibilities. <br />
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Burns is brilliant at conjuring up a world so tightly controlled by whispers that everyone lives in fear of doing – or being seen to do – the wrong thing. The lack of geographical certainty about where the story takes places only helps to focus the reader’s mind on the mental and emotional geography of the main characters. Very little is allowed to be exact and the rambling sentences that make up the narrative create the giddy patchwork of a story that is far from middle sister’s control. Getting this right is a difficult feat for a writer – exactness is often pressed as something to strive for in the written word – but Burns gets inexactness exactly right. Middle sister keeps the reader at a distance but among the dense paragraphs, there are some superb sentences that are reminiscent of Joyce’s parallel use of language to convey ideas. For Burns, these are not the norm, but occasionally a turn of phrase leaps from the page. <br />
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I am nowhere near having read all the books longlisted for last year’s Booker, but it is not difficult to see why <i>Milkman</i> won the prize. Stylistically it is poised and elegantly done; thematically, it touches on issues big and small. For middle sister, growing pains take all this in: “The truth was dawning on me of how terrifying it was not to be numb, but to be aware, to have facts, retain facts, be present, be adult.” One of the Booker judges suggested <i>Milkman</i> is a book that, despite being worth it, is difficult to read, but <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2UwSHjA" target="_blank">A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing</a></i> this is not. Certainly, the lack of names and the meaty paragraphs may put some readers off, but this is not a book that requires extreme scrutiny to be understood: it is powerful without being obtuse. It is a book that can be recommended without hesitation. And I do. <br />
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</div>Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-87926021222543404392019-04-10T08:52:00.005+01:002021-07-11T10:51:38.307+01:00Review: This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style><div class="embed-container"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SpwwSfkEzyc"></iframe></div>
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In 2015-2016, junior doctors were entrenched in a war of words with the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, leading to an unprecedented series of strikes. It is not unusual for NHS workers to decry the performance of the Health Secretary but it is rare to see the Government – followed by some of the media – push back as hard. Step up Adam Kay. A former doctor, Kay had been recounting his experiences of the NHS (based on his personal diaries) for laughs at the Edinburgh Fringe as part of his new career as a comedian, when, seeing the pasting former colleagues were taking in the press, he decided to turn his show into a memoir of life as a junior doctor. <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2IcnGzD" target="_blank">This is Going to Hurt</a></i> (2017) was born. <br />
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If the campaign to paint junior doctors as money-hungry elites who were selfishly striking while patients needed them had gained any traction at all, Kay’s inside scoop on life in the NHS dispelled a few myths. Not least when, calculating his own wage, he discovered that, taking into account the additional hours he worked daily, he was earning less per hour than a McDonalds shift supervisor, and certainly less than the hospital parking meter. What a money-grabbing upstart.<br />
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But while <i>This is Going to Hurt</i> might have been born of a political struggle, Kay manages to make it a very human memoir that doesn’t overburden the reader with the message that, you know, the NHS is being propped up by the good will of its staff and any Health Secretary is ill-advised to disregard this fact. Instead, Kay’s narrative is a cheeky – arguably cocky – look at the pressures and the pleasures of being a junior doctor and some of the small absurdities of working in the NHS ("In gynae clinic, I go online to look up some management guidelines for a patient. The trust's IT department has blocked the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology website and classified it as 'pornography'."). Stories of missed social appointments, sleeping in hospital car parks, and being undermined by consultants are interspersed with amusing anecdotes of patients that presented to Kay in his various roles, but also bruising moments where the outcomes were not what doctor or patient desired. In so doing, Kay sidesteps the archetype of the doctor as a noble saviour and instead demonstrates that doctors are just as prone to stupidity, vanity, and inanity as the rest of us. And probably twice as likely to use the f-word, judging by the expletives found here.<br />
<br />The fallible and sweary picture of young medics that Kay paints won’t be for everyone. Each time a colleague or a patient – all anonymised, of course – are the punchline to one of his jokes, you can feel the illusion of this young doctor being thought of as a ‘nice young man’ by your nan slowly dying. Some of this bravado is, doubtless, part of Kay’s comedy shtick so it is best not to take it too seriously. We all have our coping mechanisms, after all.<br />
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Following Kay through his early years onto his chosen specialism of obstetrics and gynaecology ("brats and twats” as it is, according to Kay, affectionately known), the anecdotes come thick and fast. One minute, Kay is attending a patient who has managed to unsheathe his member by drunkenly sliding down an abrasive pole; the next, he is delivering a stillborn baby. He jumps rapidly from professional to personal, uplifting to devastating, and the book’s roots as a one-man comedy show are evident. At times it would be nice to linger on certain scenes he sets, but the junior doctor has no time to dwell on a moment, so why should the reader? This is the hectic and eclectic representation of a career where there is rarely time to breath out. <br />
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Through the patchwork of rapid-fire anecdotes and the smartly delivered quips, Kay’s humanity is exposed. He emphasises that picking a career in one’s mid-teens is always likely to lead to a higher than desirable attrition rate as young people simultaneously discover the reality of working in the NHS, and their personalities as burgeoning adults (because yes, even into their twenties, taking responsibility for others’ lives is still a lot to ask of someone who has probably learnt to save a patient’s life before they have learned how to take care of themselves).<br />
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To emphasise the absurdity of this, Kay writes: “Every doctor makes their career choice aged sixteen, two years before they’re legally allowed to text a photo of their own genitals... When you sit down and pick your A levels, you’re set off on a trajectory that continues until you either retire or die.”<br />
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It isn’t a great surprise, then, when a particularly difficult day proves the tipping point for Dr. Kay. Unable to overcome an especially traumatic case, he is forced to evaluate his career choice and finds himself growing away from the profession to become another member of the ex-NHS fraternity. Few of those will have gone onto a career as a comedian but each one’s absence is keenly felt by colleagues and by a service held together by its people.<br />
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<i>This is Going to Hurt</i> declares its intention for both reader and author from the title itself. It is an amusing book but it is painful too. It tells of a life being crushed by the weight of serving in the NHS, of a service failing its staff and showing stress fractures all over the place – between staff that leave and those that remain, between public and private sector health services, doctors and politicians, life and death, and, most importantly, between people, among those that serve but also between those that love someone who gives everything they have to a service and the impenetrable profession that asks so much. <br />
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One of the most cutting observations comes when Kay witnesses a young house officer returning to work after attempting suicide. He writes, “[t]he only surprise is that it doesn’t happen more often – you’re given huge responsibility, minimal supervision and absolutely no pastoral support. You work yourself to exhaustion, pushing yourself beyond what could be reasonably expected of you, and end up constantly feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing.” When he hit his own brick wall, Kay didn’t receive, or ask, for any help either: “there’s a mutual code of silence that keeps help from those who need it most.”<br />
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</i></div>Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-19514550927587221492019-03-28T08:47:00.003+00:002021-08-04T14:01:16.531+01:00Review: The Binding by Bridget Collins<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style><div class="embed-container"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/24mijWipBaE"></iframe></div>
<p style="text-align: left;">If there is anything to capture the imagination of the reading public, it is a book about books. Throw in a little magic and you have a very good chance of enchanting the many not the few. Bridget Collins is onto a good thing with her first novel aimed, ostensibly, at adults, then. <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2JL6QJW" target="_blank">The Binding</a></i>’s high concept is pretty simple: what if one could have unpleasant or painful experiences expunged from one’s memory by visiting a binder, who would, for a small fee, bind a book containing the chosen episode and thus eradicate it from one’s own memory? Think <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2JL6QJW" target="_blank">Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</a></i> but set in old-time England.</p>
<a href="https://amzn.to/2Ww4foJ" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="blank"><img alt="The Binding by Bridget Collins book cover" border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="329" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHzqHjMLZUXE7fOIlLcD4FZlYBsuc9sQCgStSszl0B7UwCVuHczfGVTJ_whyMpVzqFRpU9qm_YqtmOCmeGEPLsLDyxN7fjud4U0NqXN1BDzU_hyphenhyphenyIgg-DQJZCsOAKuz08qY379_Nzr/s400/Cover+-+The+Binding.png" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="262" /></a><p style="text-align: left;">
Emmett Farmer, like most young people in Collins’s world, has long been warned off books. The bindings that do the rounds are looked at with fear as some strange and unknowable magic, each one representing a dark secret excised from a stranger’s life. And yet, even as he works on his father’s farm, Emmett has a strange fascination with books. In time, he will discover that he has a gift for binding, and will be taken in as apprentice to elderly binder Seredith, who is viewed with suspicion by the community. Seredith upholds the noble art of binding and will not cheapen her profession by selling books on the black market or producing forgeries (known as ‘novels’) to titillate less scrupulous members of society.</p>
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Not all binders are as conscientious as Seredith, as Emmett will discover. When he moves to a new bindery, he finds an operation that assists wealthy clients in wiping the memory of servants and other lowly characters who they have wronged, allowing them to repeat their crimes afresh. He realises, too, that there is a lot of money to be made from selling books to said wealthy clients that they might vicariously enjoy the misdemeanours of others as well as their own.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
Emmett is still in his infancy as a binder when he meets the son of one of the wealthy clients who regularly sends servants to be bound. Lucian Darnay is an effete, foppish young man who appears to take an instant and inexplicable dislike to Emmett. However, in a world where memory cannot be relied upon to tell one’s story, there is no knowing whether Emmett and Lucian have a history. Indeed, we quite quickly learn that Lucian was once engaged to Emmett’s younger sister, Alta, and so, it appears, there <i>is</i> something to be told.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
Unlike <i>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</i>, <i>The Binding</i> doesn’t dwell on whether, if one could, it would be right erase displeasurable memories from one’s mind. The majority of bindings in the story are either forced upon people by others who wish them to forget, or by those unfortunates who sell their stories for a few pennies to make ends meet. Instead, the focus here is on the consequence of bindings for those who have undergone them and the very personal story of Emmett and, later, Lucian. Indeed, the deeper into the book one gets, the less the art of binding matters beyond being a dramatic device. High concept novels work best when they weave in a believable, powerful personal story but I am not wholly convinced here that Collins has done as much as she might have with her premise. I had expected some tussle for the future of the profession, something akin to the wonderful <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2HNQTkm" target="_blank">Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell</a></i>, where magic was the art for which different folks (each with different viewpoints) were fighting. Personally, it was the idea of binding that made me pick up this book and consequently, I came away a little disappointed on that side of things.</p>
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But if <i>The Binding</i> isn’t all about, well, binding, what of the story it does tell? The further into the book one gets, the further it transforms into a YA-level romance. There is some sweetness to this but there is a lot of clangingly sentimental or cringe-inducing dialogue too. Fictional relationships that lack the complexity of real-life are not really my cup of tea but I rolled along with this one as the twists and turns of youthful lust unfurled. Its execution was fairly convincing but I can’t say I was at any point truly engaged by the key relationships of the story.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
The romance does give an opportunity for Collins to bring in some commentary on class issues (and the rural-urban dichotomy) - the Darnays (father and son) both exhibit some rather distasteful behaviour towards those considered ‘beneath them’. When Nick Carraway writes of Tom and Daisy Buchanan in <i><a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/2015/07/review-great-gatsby-by-f-scott.html" target="_blank">The Great Gatsby</a></i>, “they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money and vast carelessness,” he could easily have been observing Lucian and his father. Unsurprisingly, in a novel set several centuries back and where class is important, women fair badly. Whether they are being demonised as binders, abused as staff, or thwarted in affairs of the heart, being a female in Collins’s world isn’t easy. Still, they can always have their memories wiped, ready for fresh mistreatment (lucky things). And so the act of forgetting – or looking the other way – is even easier: not only does no one want to listen, there is nothing left to tell.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
A great deal of mining the premise does seem to be down to the reader so even the interesting elements of knowing/forgetting are left underdeveloped. On the positive side, there are some nice descriptions of nature and the first section has glimpses of the magical story this could have been. To me, <i>The Binding</i> has the feel of a fairly pedestrian YA-romance infused with one excellent idea, which is never fully capitalised upon. For all the promise of the premise and the beautiful design of the book, this cannot but be a disappointment: a pleasant enough diversion but ultimately unsatisfying. </p>
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<br />
<a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Sally%Rooney" target="_blank">Sally Rooney</a> appears to be the darling of the literary world. Her most recent novel, <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2GM7Mey" target="_blank">Normal People</a> </i>(2018) followed close on the heels of <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2SrGNq2" target="_blank">Conversations with Friends</a></i> (2017). Both received fulsome praise in all the right places and awards/nominations to bolster the young Irish writer’s growing reputation. The question with such breakout stars is, always, are they actually that good? To sate curiosity immediately, my answer is: Yes, Rooney is good. But of course, there is plenty to unpack in that statement and in <i>Normal People</i>.<br />
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Growing up ‘normal’ isn’t easy, especially when you are stuck in the unfashionable town of Sligo on Ireland’s west coast. Connell is a working-class lad who plays on the school football team but harbours a secret interest in literature. Marianne is the odd one out at school: introspective and anxious, she is known as the girl whose father died, and who lives in the “white mansion with a driveway” where Connell’s (single) mother cleans to make ends meet. Both parties are damaged (we learn) and inevitably fall into a non-relationship where they create a small bubble in which to exist together, privately. The novel tracks this relationship from its inception during high school, through university, and beyond as the pair oscillate in and out of each other’s lives.<br />
<a href="https://amzn.to/2Sry1IP" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="295" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXL8JPT5egCehLoOgd60QeysGuZ7q1RyWm_uKf3OnUIDLp8dfpv2uzMBbf5_x0ytdqkiUfgr1s8DTRcpJcbtz2JUqbg3vKFF-7eMsQVySX69GUretRHMPfcnk5woHmJJqUWishSt-Z/s400/Cover+-+Normal+People.jpg" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="247" /></a><br />
So far, so unremarkable. And here’s the rub: that’s all there is to this novel. It is the story of two damaged youngsters hurting each other through unspoken words, miscommunication, and misdirected feelings with very little of the world or other characters’ lives infringing on it. That is it. And yet, that is everything in the microcosm of young life. Marianne, ridiculed at school, reinvents herself at university as a cool, aloof intellectual from an untrendy background. She is a masochist and an enigma, an unknowable riddle that fellow students want to solve. Connell – who follows Marianne to University College Dublin – has no abuse story in his past, no flashbulb event that shapes him, he is simply an awkward young man who drifts in and out of depressions, and who, like Marianne, seems to exist in a place both inside and outside of social groups. <br />
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Marianne and Connell’s story is told episodically, each chapter announcing itself as happening ‘three months later’, etc. but then doubling back on itself to revisit previous events and reconfigure their meaning, to fill in blanks that the reader has missed. It is reminiscent of <i><a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/2015/07/review-good-soldier-by-ford-madox-ford.html" target="_blank">The Good Soldier</a></i> in this beautifully chronological yet circular structure, although, I should say, far less sophisticated in its execution than that novel (which is, by my reckoning, one of the most beautifully formed novels I have read, so to not meet that standard is no criticism at all). Rooney’s use of these vignettes that capture snatches of lives in pockets of times (sometimes months apart, sometimes minutes) is very effective and allows the reader to drift with Connell and Marianne, in and out of one another’s story, as minor players (boyfriends/girlfriends) come and go.<br />
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If we take the plot as unremarkable, indulgent even, we must dig deeper to understand what is going on beneath the surface in this novel that has caused it to be so highly acclaimed from so many quarters. The natural place to start is with Marianne, who is, for me, the centre point of the story. Marianne outshines Connell as a character and gives Rooney the space to explore the themes that are important in <i>Normal People</i>. While Marianne is from a well-to-do family, it is not necessarily this that sets her apart at school. Rather, she ostracises herself. Her cold, logical response to all enquiries from her peers strikes a discordant note, and her head is clearly ringing with concerns (Art, Syria, etc.) that most of her schoolmates know or care little about. We later learn that Marianne’s family abused her and her closed, mature demeanour makes a lot more sense with that knowledge. Despite carrying all this, at no point does Marianne explode; rather, she carries a tight-lipped masochism with her as she bounces from one relationship to another with men – boys – who take from her. She is detached, emotionally and physically, and there is a sense that only her relationship with Connell has the potential to reconcile the different aspects of herself. Unfortunately, for most of the novel, Connell himself fits into the mould of men who seem to practice romance unlovingly with Marianne.<br />
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If Marianne’s character is awkward, restrained, and beautifully wrought, Connell’s is a little less convincing. He appears to exist mainly in relation to Marianne (hence my assertion that she is the centre of the novel) and offers a way into her story, which she cannot tell alone. Connell is seen as a popular enough guy at school, playing football and socialising with girls. When he takes up with Marianne, he encourages her to keep the relationship (although it is never labelled as such) secret from everyone for fear of losing face at school. This marks an important strand of Connell’s character: his inability to own his emotions and the problem this causes in his relationships. Rooney’s exploration of masculinity and the struggle to manage new emotions is one of the most successful aspects of Connell as a character.<br />
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As a foil for Marianne, Connell is perfectly serviceable. Where he starts to fray around the edges as a character is when we dig deeper into him. He, it seems, loves literature (he is top in the school) and cares for the imagined romances of characters he finds in the pages of books as much, if not more, than he appears to care for those in his real life. He recognises that literature is not a well-paying career choice but nevertheless, rather than repress the instinct, takes it up at university, trying to impress Marianne, perhaps, or prove his worth to himself. My sense is that this aspect of Connell is too much of a stretch in what is otherwise a novel without sentiment. You would have to walk through a lot of university literature classrooms to find a decent pool of stolid young men who could be described as working class and affectedly literary beyond their natural inclinations. It is not an impossible scenario but it is one that should be marked out as unusual and, for me, artificial. Then there is Connell’s depression, which drifts in and out of the novel and becomes more concrete only towards its latter stages. Largely this is done well but I cannot help but feel Connell is an amalgamation of parts needed to further Marianne’s story and sympathetic/sentimental parts that gives his character less sharpness than Marianne’s.<br />
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As I say, Connell is perfectly serviceable as a foil for Marianne and the miscommunications between the two are brilliantly put together by Rooney. We might be very far from Regency England, but the machinations of young people change very little and we could be reading <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Jane%20Austen" target="_blank">Jane Austen</a>, transported 200 years, wryly running an eye over the interpersonal politics of the day. Rooney doesn’t write with the comedic touch of Austen – she has a steadier style, closer to 1950’s social realism – but she understands, as Austen did, the nuances of communications, particularly those relating to the heart. How Rooney wrings ambiguity and drama from messages exchanged between Connell and Marianne is brilliant, finding the right balance between situating conversations in the modern day and the everlasting conversation between lovers that stretches back further than words.<br />
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Connell is not Marianne’s only romancer, and as she grows into herself during university and beyond, she captures the attention of many boys, including the son of a wealthy banker who (at her request) beats her during sex, and an amateur photographer who captures her body with his camera as he directs her actions. Bubbling beneath the narrative throughout are body politics and Marianne’s struggle to claim ownership of her own body. Her early childhood obviously shapes her relation to sex but her experiences speak to a wider concern of all women, whose bodies have, and continue to be, co-opted by men, artlessly and selfishly.<br />
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<a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/p/advertising.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 2em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpnKcKMf6TBi7JLbqhT7wIMp7GrsctwPQDXjQ8UGALOIKYTkSWaVaboDjyZZ5Ck-AceKplzg4Ddb0rVKlGKJSv7zwxJy0c42md99H0WzPaHeITu2TeoAZw_ZIHihS1DhKbpPwHHkHy/s1600/Sponsor+this+post.png" /></a>Rooney’s style is that of the short story writer – essentially we have a series of short stories here, masquerading as a novel – and the majority of what is important happens beneath the surface. Style and subject meld perfectly in that sense and there is an expectation that readers look beyond the words to fully appreciate all that is going on with the characters and the novel. It is a style that I have struggled with in the past (I am not a big short story reader) but as I grow older, I appreciate it more. There is a lot to unpick in this bald novel and I have no doubt that it will, like just about anything by <a href="https://amzn.to/2EyDMRq" target="_blank">Ali Smith</a>, be a wet dream for teachers of creative writing all over the country. That is not intended as a criticism but merely an observation that <i>Normal People</i> is the embodiment of the Creative Writing Text.<br />
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In fact, following on from that point is a small one about Rooney’s style. She has chosen not to enclose dialogue within quotation marks, which a lot of people will find pretentious and exactly the sort of thing a Creative Writer does. It irks me as it seems to place making a point above the comfort of the reader, but didn’t have any great impact on my reading of the novel. In fact, I barely noticed the lack of quotation marks after a while but had more problems with the occasional sentence that didn’t quite hit the right note. Take this one for example:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Their secret weighed inside her body pleasurably, pressing down on her pelvic bone when she moved.</blockquote>This is personal taste, but sentences like this – normally around sex in some way – are the linguistic equivalent of someone running their nails down a chalkboard to me - and wouldn't be out of place in a Barbara Cartland novel. There were also sentences that seemed a bit clumsy to me. Take the following statement as Connell and Marianne pull into the latter’s drive:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Her mother's car wasn't in the drive. Her mother wasn't home.</blockquote>To me, the second sentence is an assumption based on the first – it is not definitively known by the characters and is an assumption the reader could make without direction. Similar with this pair of sentences:
<blockquote class="tr_bq">“She'd lost more weight in Sweden. She was thinner now.”</blockquote>
These are hardly crimes against literature but did occasionally take me out of the story and only stand out because of how crisp and economical Rooney’s prose is elsewhere. If this is the worst to be found in a novel, the author is probably doing something right. And Sally Rooney is. I cannot see <i>Normal People</i> going down as a book affectionately remembered by the reading public as a whole, but I do believe it will find its place among the shelves of campus professors and in the hands of aspiring writers. More importantly, it is evidence of a very fine talent and one that will grow and grow. While the style and the subject matter of this book may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I strongly suspect that Rooney – who has not even reached her thirtieth birthday yet – will find plenty more vehicles for her undeniable talent.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i><i>Like the sound of this book? Find it at the following places:</i></i></div><br />
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<p style="text-align: left;">Shady capitalists, corrupt politicians, and 12-foot lizards. They’re all out there, and they’re running our world. At least, that is the contention of many folks on the fringes of society (and, let’s be honest, quite a few not on the fringes too). Going back around 20 years, “humorous journalist” <a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Jon%20Ronson?&amp;max-results=6" target="_blank">Jon Ronson</a> spent several years tagging along with assorted extremists from a diverse range of backgrounds. What did they all have in common? A belief that our world was run by a hidden elite.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
Ronson – Jewish liberal and Guardian journalist – may seem an unlikely man to ingratiate himself with Islamic fundamentalists, Ku Klux Klansmen, and neo-Nazis, but as the misadventures detailed in <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2S01DN2" target="_blank">Them</a></i> (2001) show, being an extremist is no fun if there isn’t an audience. And so Jon finds himself infiltrating owl-burning ceremonies alongside some of the world’s most powerful men, driving Osama bin Laden’s “man in England”, and on the road with Ian Paisley in Africa. All in an attempt to uncover the New World Order, who, apparently, run this world from a secret room.</p>
<a href="https://amzn.to/2E5UEhX" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1058" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5yBz5a9f2mYQMxtRscUrtYmpAYbIhpQuAHQzeanlPNCtwf0U8DW7nToAHY7en2J0SSFqcrizHTxNuvIvMrCtqtKfKq0IjVmT68aEkwIq0PbgC4Y6KnHNq1eXqsMIkw3Xe73lnrxE_/s400/Them+Jon+Ronson+book+cover.png" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="263" /></a><p style="text-align: left;">Locating and exposing this secret room is a mighty ambition for a picaresque with some of society’s marginalised characters and Ronson chooses to focus his efforts on exposing the shady Bilderberg Group, which seems to be the only tangible lead he has to follow. 20 years on from the events in this book, and the Bilderberg Group – a secretive annual meeting of top politicians, business people, and interested parties – is probably more widely known due to the proliferation of the internet (the group is a well-discussed subject among conspiracy theorists in chat rooms). So much so, in fact, that it seems unlikely to be the all-powerful cabal of puppeteers who run the world. After all, wouldn’t a secret group with all the resources at their disposal be a bit more, you know, secret?</p><p style="text-align: left;">
What Bilderberg is, however, is a good story. The further into the book one gets, the more apparent it becomes that all the disparate people Ronson talks to feel the need to live their lives in opposition to some shadowy “them” who stand between the ordinary man and a much better society. It is no great insight to say living in opposition is not confined to the extreme edges of society. When you break into the narrative of almost any group of people, you discover that the lines are all the same, it is just the focus that changes. Today’s Remainers lament incompetent government and the lies and lethargy that are carrying the UK out of Europe; Brexiteers despise the World Government the EU is becoming and the liberals too blinded by their Cause to see this. Domestic politics is dominated by discussions of how the working man is being screwed over by immigrants, Etonian MPs, economic naivety, or callous capitalism, depending on who you talk to. Atheists decry the pressure exerted on governments by religious institutions and the religious view themselves as ostracised by an increasingly secular world. Football fans wax indignantly about the governing bodies who corruptly favour the biggest teams, who have allowed the working man’s game to become overrun by foreign billionaires and pampered players – of course, each team’s supporters define themselves as better than their most bitter rivals based on their style of play / quality of fans / financial dealings / success / glorious failures / ethos / place in the community, etc. It seems we, whoever ‘we’ are, struggle to go about our personal existence without having a ‘them’ who somehow fail to see the world as we do, who are duped by the system and are sleepwalking into the apocalypse. One thing humans will never be short of is conspiracies.</p>
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Don’t get me wrong, we cannot dismiss every act of opposition with one swipe. Ronson, with his Jewish background, is all too conscious that anti-semitism has often placed the Jewish people at the heart of conspiracy theories, stretching back to <i>The Protocols of the Elders of Zion</i> and beyond. As he meets one caricatured extremist after another, he is very clear to examine his own biases and also to listen with a fine ear for any codewords that might have replaced ‘Jew’ in the modern narrative of the New World Order (in his time with David Icke, Ronson reports the fallout from various groups decrying Icke as anti-semitic and of using ‘12-foot lizards’ as a codeword for ‘Jews’). The book isn’t weighed down with this self-awareness, however. If anything, it takes itself and its characters more lightly than you’d expect. Had it been published after 11 September 2001, I’m not sure Ronson would have been allowed to keep the tone quite as light but really, lightness is what is needed here. Ronson is great at puncturing the extreme views held by his subjects and of the media who demonise these extremists themselves. I particularly enjoyed the chapters with Omar Bakri Mohammed (a “semi-detached Ayatollah”), who seems to be the Del-boy of Islamic Fundamentalism in London. These chapters feel more like farce than anything but there is a more serious issue at play when Ronson examines the disparity between the media’s portrayal of these fringe members of society and their reality. The siege at Ruby Ridge in 1992, which saw two members of a family gunned down by US federal marshals, is a perfect example of what can happen if the rhetoric around groups who choose to live on the fringes of society is inflammatory. The Weaver family were seen as white supremacists (and all that goes with that label) by the mainstream and so when the state staked out their home in the hope of bringing Randy Weaver – the father – in on a firearms charge (or more specifically, failing to show at trial for said charge), using deadly force was, presumably, not seen as disproportionate. The incident is a founding moment in the American militia movement. My own ignorance doesn’t allow me to go into this in detail but suffice it to say that when it is considered acceptable for a (assumed law-abiding) mother and her son to be killed by federal snipers, the stories we tell (and their dehumanising effect) about groups in our society should be reviewed. Most people do not solely marginalise themselves.<br /><p style="text-align: left;">
For all that, there is a dark mist hanging about many of the characters in this book. Regardless of how heavily Ronson editorialises and caricatures the people he spends time with, the truth is, death and disharmony surrounds them. While <i>Them</i> is an entertaining and, in some ways, enlightening book, it is hard to feel one is getting anything more than a flippant look at very real issues. There is a talent and a humanity in this approach to storytelling but there is something quite unsettling in it too.</p>
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<p style="text-align: left;"><i><a href="https://amzn.to/2UiJH1W" target="_blank">La Belle Sauvage</a></i> (2017) is set some 10 years before Lyra began hopping from one universe to another like a bee skipping between spring flowers, drunk on the possibilities. Indeed, in <i>La Belle Sauvage</i>, Lyra is not hopping anywhere. A baby at the mercy of others, the feisty upstart who we first met in <i><a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/2011/11/review-northern-lights-by-philip.html" target="_blank">Northern Lights</a></i> here has her agency reduced to the sporadic filling of her nappy. Enter Pullman’s new hero, Malcolm Polstead. A quieter, less boisterous lead, Malcolm – with the help of his daemon Asta – works at his parents’ inn and spends time at the local nunnery, helping the sisters with small tasks and visiting the infant Lyra who has been entrusted to the nuns’ care.</p>
<a href="https://amzn.to/3eQjODn" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="blank"><img alt="La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman book cover" border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="329" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVQL2TmIcv0Yi4eQQsxNfz-uGfWAR1syDftgL4_2jiGMhJoS0krxYttm7osY1JmnvipNNCYc2MzfX9euDg8hEB5LGDGGlRwGrzSwoA5o1Ey8_CEhwL1Zt1SywTelZlY2OHdaH5JeYu/s400/La+Belle+Sauvage+book+cover.jpg" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="262" /></a><p style="text-align: left;">While there is a cosy sense of familiarity for the reader in returning to Pullman’s and Lyra’s very English Oxford, it is a place where teachers are bullied by religious fanatics and their recruits, free libraries do not exist, and an “unhappy air of suspicion and fear” hangs over the place. It is impossible for the reader to miss the commentary on the current state of the world and Pullman here extends beyond religious and intellectual narrow-mindedness, and revolts against climate change denial, financial inequality, and the oppressive atmosphere created by despotic government. In Malcolm’s Oxford, the Consistorial Court of Discipline (CCD) and its minions are doing their best to create a totalitarian state where thought crime is punished and <i>1984</i> is not a dystopian nightmare but a manual for the perfect society.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
There are those who resist in the form of a mysterious group known as ‘Oakley Street’. Malcolm brushes up against these rebels, but his Oxford is a world defined more by what cannot be said or done than by what can. In this staid environment where knowledge is power and therefore not easily obtained, Malcolm goes about his business unassumingly until he witnesses a spy drop going wrong. From that point, things rather unravel for Malcolm and when a biblical flood submerges Oxford, he takes it upon himself – along with his companion Alice, a teenage kitchenmaid – to protect Lyra.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
With his beloved boat (the eponymous La Belle Sauvage), the three children negotiate the perilous waters pursued by the CCD and a paedophilic dust-chaser named Bonneville who wishes to claim Lyra as his own and, seemingly, defile both Malcolm and Alice in the process. It is a lot for two young children to take on but Pullman wouldn’t have it any other way. And that is without considering the power struggle between Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter, which is already in full swing and into which Malcolm and Alice stumble. Whether the young heroes can negotiate the harsh adult world and deliver Lyra safe to her father or to Jordan College is but one of the questions <i>La Belle Sauvage</i> poses as its 600-odd pages tick by.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
In Pullman’s <i>His Dark Materials</i> trilogy, Lyra’s stubborn, impetuous drive was given a foil in the form of Will, a serious, practical boy who accompanied her through much of her journey. Here Malcolm inherits more of Will’s qualities than Lyra’s and provides the calm centre of a book swirling with outlandish characters. He is Oliver Twist to Fagan; or, dare I say it, Harry Potter to Voldemort. This opens up possibilities for Pullman and there is something charming about following a pre-adolescent boy as he learns to care for a baby - the minor emergencies of a full nappy or an empty stomach that are just as pressing as the murderous villains at the children’s backs and just as full of dramatic potential. Of course, there is Malcolm’s relationship with Alice too, a slightly older girl with whom he had exchanged no words before the flood. With the waters obscuring the familiar terrain of home (spot the symbolism) and parents left behind, the pair have to negotiate their friendship in the new world as they learn to take responsibility for themselves and one another.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
In terms of murderous villains, we have - as with <i>His Dark Materials</i> - the controlling religious faction who pursues our heroes, but here we also have Bonneville, a lone ranger who chases the children, his frightful hyena daemon in tow. Bonneville is a thing of nightmares: unable to be subdued, he is as persistent and unshakeable as the Terminator in his pursuit of the children but with intentions far darker than death for them. Before the full enormity of his sickness as a predatory paedophile (for yes, that is, explicitly, what he is) is revealed, the reader knows there is something hideous about Bonneville. His hyena daemon laughs a wretched laugh and pisses in the path of anyone it dislikes. As a manifestation of the man’s soul, this does not bode well. Worse still, we learn that Bonneville beats his daemon – sickening outward evidence of the inner contradictions of his dark soul.</p>
<a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/p/advertising.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Advertise with Bibliofreak.net" border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY5_9Ucn-_zxUhyphenhyphenwf2FwqkqRLQeW39qppPcFElPeXZ1O92ln_7nXjSRkGkzfbGi3PMvAlKhQ4GrkQNIyDdsGETz-eT9zFUPKJSObtra47-uGwf6Tvxrgtte4wEGVtibdOUTeii71tl/s1600/Sponsor+this+post.png" style="padding-right: 10px;" /></a><p style="text-align: left;">The scene is set, then. The forces of good lined up against those of evil. On one side, Malcolm and Alice, Oakley Street, and a supporting cast of honest, practical people who help them on their way, including Gyptians and, shock horror, nuns (who, it turns out, are not all awful servants of a malevolent overlord); on the other side, the controlling CCD, Bonneville, and various opponents who appear from nowhere.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
Despite everything one might expect, in a sense, this is a realist novel. But with daemons and witches. The way in which Pullman charts La Belle Sauvage’s journey along the Thames with cartographic exactness and shows Malcolm caring for Lyra or reading <i>A Brief History of Time</i> is thrown into sharp contrast by the ethereal encounters with characters, fantastical and exaggerated, who bleed into a world not unlike our own, creating a swirling mix of myth and reality. The fact that Pullman carries the reader with him as he blends these very different aesthetics is testament to his skill as a writer.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
A similar balancing act is struck between literary allusions and accessibility of story – Pullman, after all, describes himself as a storyteller above all else. Where <i>His Dark Materials</i> used Milton as a regular reference point, here allusions to Spenser’s 'The Faerie Queene' are the order of the day. Equally, it is no coincidence that Malcolm’s companion shares the name of Lewis Carroll’s most famous creation who also rode the Thames in her fictional adventures. Most younger readers won’t appreciate all the literary references in Pullman’s metaphysical allegory (nor, for that matter, will most adults, myself included) but this doesn’t impact the pleasure in watching the story unfold. In fact, if anything is likely to intrude on the pleasure of the read, it is the moments of church-bashing that are just a touch too close to the surface and incongruous to the novel’s voice in the opening chapters, or the coarse language that erupts from one of the characters every so often.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
Overall, there is not much to complain about here. <i>La Belle Sauvage</i> is smaller in scale than <i>His Dark Materials</i>, contained as it is within not just one world but one country. Malcolm is a smaller character than Lyra too, and the narrative is very much in keeping. This shouldn’t be seen as a criticism, just a difference. I can’t imagine many readers will come to <i>La Belle Sauvage</i> without having read <i>His Dark Materials</i> but there is enough background information to get the uninitiated started. If anything, it is the long-term fans who may struggle with the lack of extra information about dust and its properties. For we learn very little that has not been covered about dust elsewhere. It seems Pullman is lining everything up for the later books in the series and I have no doubt we will learn more then: there are worse ways to start a series than by leaving the reader’s curiosity unsated.</p>
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<div style="text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">If you are a book buyer of any description, it cannot have escaped your notice that <a href="http://amzn.to/2tAPNRw" target="_blank">Sarah Perry</a>’s <a href="http://amzn.to/2tDMyZk" target="_blank"><i>The</i> <i>Essex Serpent</i></a> (2016) is currently toast of the town and being pushed extremely hard by its publisher (or at least, it was when I started this review!). It is hardly possible to walk into a Waterstones without tripping over several tables laden with this beautifully designed volume. Of course, prominence is less an indicator of merit and more of financial backing these days. So what of the story that lies inside Peter Dyer’s gorgeously designed cover?</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">It is the 1890s and London is alive with talk of scientific discover, particularly fossils and their excavation; children dream of digging up ancient remains and over dinner polite society discusses the latest developments that contemporary science unearths. Cora Seaborne has a lively, ‘masculine’ mind and has just escaped the oppression of a difficult marriage following the death of her husband. She does not mourn his passing but instead removes herself from London and relocates to Aldwinter on the Essex coast with her autistic son and his nanny, where she hopes to indulge her interest in fossils. Among the mist that descends upon her new landscape there is talk of a great serpent who swims in the local waters, and is said to have brought death to the community. Cora hopes to discover the Essex Serpent and treat it as a living sample, making her name by discovering some great ichthyosaur.</p></div>
<a href="http://amzn.to/2thNnEC" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="blank"><img alt="The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry book cover" border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="995" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvppO4rwcxUWy1-l8kB4b2DCJMO1UGl9HINe0XpFqnAbj17ARXAaxmw2YoFcpePBJnmjwnSGxee47kWHv3aRnMxdy2RedpRcQu29lAgYKq6gzhZp_xwEeIXC2I6XuD_BbAWG_E9edK/s400/Cover_Original+-+The+Essex+Serpent.JPG" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="248" /></a>
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Given the age and surroundings in which she lives, Cora’s quest cannot be straightforward but, as she is frustrated by the superstitions of the locals, she finds unexpected solace in friendship with the local vicar, William Ransome. Despite holding quite different views on Science and Religion, the pair strike up a fractious but genuine friendship which forces both to engage with intellectual questions that challenge their own beliefs. Were the vicar not married to a kind, attractive if frail woman, there might even be something more than friendship between them, but alas, it does not look likely.</p>
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Back in London, surgeon Luke Garrett, who attended Cora’s dying husband, harbours a quiet lust for the absent Cora while he goes about his experimental practice. Just as she seeks to make her name with a tremendous discovery, so Luke wishes to be the first man to successfully operate on the heart of a patient and see them live. All is in place, then, for a meeting of hearts and minds, in the suitably Gothic world that Sarah Perry creates.</p>
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There is very little to disguise the fact that this is a novel in which ideas must collide, be they religious, superstitious, or scientific. Ideas, metaphors, motives, none are buried too deeply beneath the surface and thus we have an intriguing mix of mythology, religion, and the modern intellectual movements of the late Victorian period.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">
Cora’s story is clearly one of female freedom in a society which affords little autonomy to women but there are other issues at stake, raised by the ensemble of supporting characters, whether it be housing and disreputable landlords, scientific discovery, socialism, or any number of concerns that are slipped quietly into the story. As with any good novel which transports the reader to another time, the issues can all be read into modern concerns too, and Perry finds plenty of opportunity to make us consider the state of our contemporary world.</p>
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The central divisions are explored through the main characters. Each represents a position and are played off against one another, whether they be the man of religion, the lady of science, the socialist, the philanthropist, etc. The keenest division is between Will with his Christian faith and Cora with her strident atheism.</p>
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The strange blending of twenty-first century speech and, at times, thinking, with the atmospheric Victorian setting creates an odd and discordant – but not unpleasantly so – sense of disconnection from reality. If this is a historical novel, then it is not of a history which we can quite believe to be our own. Instead, it is an odd meshing of realities, a modern day Victorian playground in which Perry tells her tale. This does allow the author to, on occasion, disregard historical accuracy, and I suspect this will not sit well with all readers. For myself, every novel is a project of world building and there are truths greater than facts that matter to me.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">
One of those truths is the depth of the characters who carry the story, their intrinsic believability. It took me a while to decide how strongly I believed in the most important characters. For a long period they felt like slightly stale stereotypes of the kind which a modern novelist is apt to insert into a Victorian novel of ideas. This was exacerbated by the plot, which is fairly simplistic and throws characters together to have ideological discussions but doesn’t always make their interactions believable on the human level. However, the further I got through the book, the more I found in the characters. I did want deeper complications in their personalities but managed to dispel my most serious doubts.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">
If I had reservations about the characterisation, the descriptions warranted no such concern. Perry’s background in Creative Writing as an academic discipline is clear and her beautifully formed descriptions of the Essex coast and the atmosphere of Cora’s world are wonderfully done. At 400-plus pages it is important that these details are done well and Perry excels at the sentence level.</p>
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This is certainly a novel that suggests a Creative Writing background beyond these strong sentences. Perry plays with the epistolary form, leads with the heavily symbolic serpent, and generally seems to enjoy stretching her wings within the crucible she has created. I didn’t know what to expect going into the novel and I think fans of Victorian-pastiche will enjoy this. It’s fun, not always as outstanding as the press around it might suggest but worth giving a chance.</p>
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Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-19584756516884538682017-03-31T00:01:00.000+01:002019-01-02T20:05:33.125+00:00Reading Plan: April 2017<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I have been a right lazy toerag this March. I can’t remember the last time I put up exactly 0 posts in a month. I’m afraid I’ve been distracted working on my novel and catching Pokemon in this lovely weather (probably more the latter, to be honest). And so my list of books to review mounts ever higher and the likelihood of me making a dent in the list gets ever less likely. Still, the sun is shining and everything is beautiful (and nothing hurts?). You know, apart from Article 50 being triggered and the impending collapse of Western civilisation (melodramatic enough?).</div>
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Happily, the world of books plods on very much as it always has. Most of the titles on my bookshelves far predate current concerns and I will happily cocoon myself away for a few hours a day, living safely in the past and the foreign lands that lie between the pages. I did, however, receive a couple of titles by the Syrian author <a href="http://amzn.to/2nKPHl7" target="_blank">Khaled Khalifa</a> from a publisher recently so I may not entirely burrow myself away from reality in the next month or so.</div>
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I’ve also been reading quite a few books that are taught on Creative Writing courses (<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2oMSaL3" target="_blank">Wonder Boys</a>, <a href="http://amzn.to/2n0OaKf" target="_blank">The Accidental Tourist</a>, <a href="http://amzn.to/2oMVbuI" target="_blank">Pnin</a></i>, etc.) so you might want to prepare yourself for some ramblings about books with middle-aged protagonists whose mid-life crises are wrapped up in clever literary forms. (Yes, I would probably be yawning at that too.)</div>
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I don’t honestly know if I will write any reviews this month however. I have gotten into editing on my next novel and I am feeling inspired to slim it down before adding some more content in. Then maybe jump onto my next project. I find writing comes in waves, either creative or critical. It is lovely but not always useful. I don’t know if others find this too?</div>
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Anyway, have a lovely April – enjoy the Spring sun!</div>
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Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-46239657354697265832017-02-27T00:02:00.000+00:002019-01-02T20:06:23.992+00:00Interview: Susanna Beard<div style="text-align: right;">
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<a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Susanna%20Beard" target="_blank">Susanna Beard</a> is a newly-published novelist who originally trained as a linguist and worked in PR for some years. After taking several writing courses, she embarked on her first project, <i>Dare to Remember</i>, which was published by Legend Press this month.<br />
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<i>Dare to Remember </i>is the story of a young woman's recovery and struggle to reclaim her own memories following a traumatic attack that left her best friend dead.<br />
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You can read my review here: <a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/2017/02/review-dare-to-remember-susanna-beard.html"><span id="goog_1166016322"></span>Dare to Remember by Susanna Beard<span id="goog_1166016323"></span></a><br />
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</b> <b>In <i>Dare to Remember</i> we meet Lisa some months after she and her best friend have been attacked. What interested you about this aspect of a victim’s story?</b></div>
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The premise for the story came from the idea of walking, and specifically walking dogs, as therapy. Clearly if Lisa is walking her dog as therapy, something needs to have happened to her - and that’s where the idea came from. I’m much more interested in people’s behaviour and their reactions to what happens to them than I am in the actual events.</div>
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<b>It’s a fairly harrowing subject matter, what prompted you to address this period of a person’s life and did you find it d<span id="goog_1166016328"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1166016329"></span>ifficult to go to hard places with Lisa?</b></div>
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I think everyone has to go through some difficulties in life and I wanted to look at how events, large or small, can change the course of a person’s life – not necessarily in a bad way. It wasn’t difficult to imagine how Lisa might feel, but I worked hard to ensure her reactions are authentic – I really put myself in her shoes.</div>
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<b>From the sessions Lisa has with her psychotherapist and the overall picture of her mental health it seems you have a good understanding of the area. Do you have any personal experience with this or did you have to do a lot of research for the book?</b></div>
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I did some research – particularly into PTSD and psychotherapy. I have had therapy at various points in my life, though not for PTSD or depression. At the same time, depression has had an effect on my family so I read – and learn - a lot about it on a daily basis.</div>
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<b>Like Lisa, who chooses to isolate herself while she seeks a safe place to recover, your narrative deals with Lisa’s trauma almost in isolation to the rest of her life (past and, to an extent, present). What made you choose this way of exploring her story?</b></div>
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I wanted to look particularly at how a person’s life can change dramatically, how that change can consume them until they decide to move on, and the process of recovery and what it entails. This trauma could define Lisa for the rest of her life, but she chooses not to let it, and acts upon that decision. </div>
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<b>Lisa finds friendship in a local woman who is in the middle of a turbulent marriage. How important do you see friendship as in the healing process for Lisa/anyone and how much did you want Dare to Remember to be a novel of (female) friendships?</b></div>
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I didn’t start out with that idea, but I did want to emphasise the benefit of friendship in supporting people who are having difficulties. It’s hugely important to Lisa, after she loses her best friend, to find another - and to have the confidence to confide in her. The danger for Lisa is that in hiding herself away from people to protect herself, she could end up isolated and unable to get back into society.</div>
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<b>Riley, the dog that Lisa adopts, is also a major part of her recovery. Dogs are a big part of your life too. Can you tell me how valuable you think a dog can be to well-being?</b></div>
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I think a dog can be hugely valuable to both individuals and families. I’ve met many people in the park who live on their own, and the connections – and friends - they make through dog-walking are vital to their well-being. Dogs are being used now to help autistic and other isolated people to cope with the world, so the benefit is well recognised. They offer exercise, responsibility, unconditional love, affection, a social life – I could go on!</div>
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<b>I’ve seen a few different ways of the describing the genre Dare to Remember fits into. For yourself, where would you place it?</b></div>
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I call it a psychological drama. There are elements of thriller and crime too. </div>
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<b>What books / authors did you think of while you were writing the book?</b></div>
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Ha! I read widely, even while I’m writing, so there weren’t specific books or authors associated with <i>Dare to Remember</i>. I’m a huge fan of <a href="http://amzn.to/2lqhRzA" target="_blank">Donna Tartt</a>, <a href="http://amzn.to/2lqgXDq" target="_blank">Elena Ferrante</a>, <a href="http://amzn.to/2lqk1PQ" target="_blank">Isabel Allende</a>, <a href="http://amzn.to/2lM2KmP" target="_blank">Margaret Attwood</a>, <a href="http://amzn.to/2lqiwRy" target="_blank">Hannah Kent</a>, <a href="http://amzn.to/2lLJoyf" target="_blank">Sarah Winman</a>, <a href="http://amzn.to/2l2FjXG" target="_blank">Anthony Doerr</a> and many others…though I wouldn’t ‘dare’ to put myself in the same category!</div>
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<b>Writing a first book is hard. Was this your first attempt (complete or otherwise) and how did you find the process? </b></div>
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It was my first attempt and I loved the process. I also studied novel writing through courses (Faber Academy) and reading about creative writing. The entire process took probably 18-22 months (bearing in mind I also have a day job, which thankfully is flexible). </div>
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<b>Have you started working on a second novel – if so, can you tell me anything about it? </b></div>
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I have indeed – it’s in the editing stages. It’s called <i>The Truth Dares</i> and it’s partly set in Lithuania. Again, there is a crime, around which my character’s story is developed, and it’s more about the people than the events. </div>
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<b>Which authors / books do you enjoy reading?</b></div>
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See the above names. I also like Scandinavian novels and Victorian writers – but I read entirely eclectically. Over time, though, I’ve given up trying to finish a book I felt wasn’t well written. There are too many good ones to spend time on a bad one!</div>
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<b>Favourite word, and why?</b></div>
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Word for today: Plummet. It’s just delicious!<br />
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Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-10538955730762281042017-02-27T00:01:00.003+00:002021-08-23T16:07:47.718+01:00Review: Dare to Remember by Susanna Beard<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style><div class="embed-container"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fNUgUYhXbtU"></iframe></div>
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Violent crime is only the start of the story for most victims and it is the recovery from trauma that <a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Susanna%20Beard" target="_blank">Susanna Beard</a>’s debut novel <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3mu4ocq" target="_blank">Dare to Remember</a></i> (2017) focuses on. Several months ago, Lisa and her best friend Ali were attacked in their own flat. While Lisa escaped with significant wounds and a serious case of PTSD, Ali was not so lucky. Now, Lisa has moved to a small village to find a safe space in which to recover from the horror of losing a friend and the knowledge that the man responsible will serve only a handful of years in prison. There, despite her intentions, she bonds with the elderly man next door, John, and his dog Riley (who she will later adopt when John becomes too frail to care for him). Lisa finds friendship, too, in a local woman, Jessica, who is in the middle of a turbulent marriage. Unable to work and fearful to stray too far from her new routine, these few connections are all there is for Lisa, besides the weekly meeting with her therapist. She wants to recover but she is stuck, unable to remember everything that happened that night and blaming herself for Ali’s death. Can she drag the memories back to the surface and is she strong enough to face everything that is hidden within her subconscious?</p>
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The template for the novel is set out pretty clearly. The facts that Lisa seeks will be released slowly to the reader, forcing them to turn pages at an ever increasing pace until they reach that final, satisfying pay-off when all is revealed. It is a fairly straight forward and timelessly effective technique and one that relies, ultimately, on the final pay-off being worth the time the reader has invested in reaching that point. <i>Dare to Remember</i> fails on this count. There are two significant facts that Lisa rediscovers by the end of the narrative and neither are as shocking as the characters make out. The revelations are foreshadowed sufficiently for the reader to know roughly what’s coming and there is no twist to defy expectations and give the book the sting in the tail it needs.</p>
<a href="http://amzn.to/2l0zKsJ" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="blank"><img alt="Dare to Remember by Susanna Beard cover" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEcoUuvBifZzZBl23R-ZIkG4J3MH0vwDcwKJIsQb_XH_flpGdNH-zJRRfUboJUsk24NGBQsOsG_2Yg7ykw_Q96dzS6pQgya-e-3g7Zlw7xdD6O8U8gLsUCaj6i0VPIO1XP7s8yiG0v/s400/Cover_original+-+Dare+to+Remember.jpg" width="260" /></a>
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If we set the recovered memory plotline and the drive it gives the plot aside, difficult as this is to do, what remains is the story of a young woman struggling to cope in the wake of an event so traumatic it threatens to overwhelm her. After opening with a description of the bare details of the crime, the narrative shifts from past tense to present, delineating the crime and Lisa’s current life. It is this current life that we get to know. Lisa keeps everyone, including the reader, at a distance and the first few chapters are but the sketch of a life disrupted with no deep connection sought between character and reader. While this is understandable for a period, it never really changes and there is no shape to Lisa’s character prior to the crime and nor are there any small touches that represent her life outside of the events necessary to move the single plotline forward. She is a husk – empty of everything that makes a personality aside from the event. It is blinkered PTSD in the extreme and consequently Lisa remains completely flat on the page. There is some sense to this, given the circumstances, but while the character may be removed from life, it doesn’t mean the reader has to be too.</p>
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Lisa is not the only character who suffers from this flatness. There is nothing of Ali, hugely important to the story despite her absence, and so the reader has no sense of her as a person or of her dynamic with Lisa. The same, really, goes for all the characters who are rolled out at different points to move the story forward. This is a problem. It is all connected to the focusing in on the one storyline so heavily. This is not good fiction. Every character should, as every person does, have a lot of things going on for them at any one time, from the life-changing to the incidental. This sense of complexity is never really developed in any of the characters. The texture of stories is built on these details and, often, the best way of telling a story is not through hitting directly at the bare events that move it forward but by weaving them into the more mundane aspects of life. <i>Dare to Remember</i> is well structured, but its structure is too close to the surface and the skeletal outline needs to be built upon with the details that would give it depth.</p>
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I wish I could say that on the sentence level the novel works better. It doesn’t. The prose is bald and functional at best and there are too many mistakes – grammar, sentence structure, typos/formatting – that irritate (the odd one here and there is fine but I stopped counting at a dozen). The constant contractions felt uncomfortable, too, and led to sloppy sentences like “John’s home,” to mean John is home rather than the implied possessive. Then there is the dialogue, which is wooden in places. Dialogue is one of the hardest things for a novelist to get right and too often Beard ends up getting the desired information across in dialogue without weaving in the humanity of the character. She would not be the only author to do this but it is something that ought to be shaken out during the editing process as much as possible.</p>
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There are a few other elements of the story that I struggled with, mainly to do with their believability and the failure to capitalise on dramatic potential too often, but these are really side issues. Those that I’ve mentioned above are far more important. Yet I don’t like picking these things up on a debut novel. <i>Dare to Remember</i> reads to me like a good first draft from a new novelist. It needs some heavy work but there is a good structure in place. Were that developed and the style fleshed out a bit, along with a better resolution to the promised reveal at the end, this could have been a strong book that kept the attention. As it is, the first hundred pages or so are slow moving and it is really only the promise of some insight to come that drags the reader to the end of the book. One to pass over.</p>
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<i>Like the sound of this book? Find it at the following places:</i></div>
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Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-73511558268678975592017-01-31T00:01:00.000+00:002019-01-02T20:09:39.017+00:00Reading Plan: February 2017<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I hope the image of our beloved leader <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2017/jan/27/trump-may-hold-hands-white-house-video" target="_blank">Theresa May hand in hand with the newly-inaugurated president Donald J. Trump</a> was enough to warm the cockles of your heart and confirm that 2017 is going to be a year in which love wins. That’s the message I took from it at least. *Quietly bangs face against wall until the world makes sense again* </div>
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In these parts I have been busy during January. Admittedly, I haven’t attempted to claim ownership of anyone’s reproductive rights or banned any Muslim nations from my vicinity but we can’t all be go-getters like the Donald. I have, though, overseen a bit of a revamp of my <a href="https://www.facebook.com/bibliofreak.net/" target="_blank">Facebook page</a> and finally (yes, really) completed changes to the blog’s layout. I have also discovered that vlogging is a lot harder than flicking a camera on in your bedroom and talking into it for 15 minutes. I am therefore re-evaluating my plans to be a YouTube millionaire by March and pushing them back a month or two. I wouldn’t know what to do with the riches until I could waste them in the 2p arcade machines in summer anyway. Not only that but, for the first time ever, I went entirely vegetarian for January, which means that I am two things: (1) better than you, and (2) hungry.</div>
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February won’t be any quieter either. For starters, I will be taking part in my first blog tour for I don’t know how long. I figured tours are all part of being in the book blogging community so I have kicked my curmudgeonly ass into gear. The lucky tourist who I will be hosting is <a href="http://amzn.to/2jqE2J1" target="_blank">Susanna Beard</a>, who will join me for an interview on 27th February to talk about her debut novel <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2kLpgK0" target="_blank">Dare to Remember</a></i>. I will also be reviewing this psychological thriller at the end of the month.</div>
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I should also be writing about one of the most talked about books of 2016 this coming month: <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2jyIMaB" target="_blank">The Essex Serpent</a></i>. If you are a frequenter of chain bookshops this book cannot have escaped your notice as it has been front and centre of displays for what feels like months. Behind its beautiful cover supposedly lies a story of Victorian monsters and fragile relationships to rival <a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Charles%20Dickens" target="_blank">Dickens</a>. I will look forward to judging this for myself.<br />
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Another book I am rather late to is <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2kmGeB9" target="_blank">The Cuckoo’s Calling</a></i>. In honesty, after <a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/J.%20K.%20Rowling" target="_blank">J. K. Rowling</a>’s turgid <i><a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/2012/11/review-casual-vacancy-by-j-k-rowling.html" target="_blank">Casual Vacancy</a></i>, I was planning to give her post-Potter work a wide berth but I am assured by a friend that her detective stories, famously written under the pen name <a href="http://amzn.to/2jqswxp" target="_blank">Robert Galbraith</a>, are actually worth dipping into. Although Rowling is not the greatest writer in the world, she does construct plots very well and the Harry Potter series succeeds as a set of mysteries as much as anything else so I hold out some hope.<br />
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Other than that, I shall fish out my thoughts on books that are now fading into distant memories and write something up so long as I find time. <br />
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I wish you all a lovely 28 days – keep in touch! <br />
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Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-48924439735093064022017-01-09T12:29:00.005+00:002021-09-20T12:57:50.213+01:00Review: Casino Royale by Ian Fleming<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style><div class='embed-container'><iframe src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/K-j7Z8W8NPY' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.</blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">
To my knowledge, I have seen every James Bond film ever made in the English language. It might surprise you, then, to know that I have only read one of <a href="http://amzn.to/2iVeGBG" target="_blank">Ian Fleming</a>’s Bond books previously, despite my father having a complete collection of both hardbacks and paperbacks. This being the case, I thought it might be a bit of a lark to have a go at experiencing Bond in my own preferred format. And what better place to start than with <a href="http://amzn.to/2i9UEm9" target="_blank"><i>Casino Royale</i></a> (1953), the novel in which 007 made his debut?</p><p style="text-align: left;">
While I have seen both film versions of <i>Casino Royale</i>, my previous experience with a Bond book told me not to expect book and film plots to marry up too closely. Boy was I wrong on that. The Daniel Craig reboot of Bond sticks pretty closely to the shape of the book and I could picture most of the key scenes effortlessly as a consequence. Long-time viewers of the Bond films will know that <i>Casino Royale</i>, while retaining some familiar features like Felix Leiter and the classic car chase, marked a paring back of the classic Bond tropes – no Moneypenny, silly gadgetry or Q, and a harder edge to the man and the story. The book is just the same.</p>
<a href="http://amzn.to/2i8oRih" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="blank"><img alt="Casino Royale by Ian Fleming book cover" border="0" height="490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhitg9K4yeO1P0Xn72Y1SMS-cgB_AaSlzh9pOdUu9T_Y0a7pVt96d_58QXfbeSw-bU3Vq4HXIxL9ItUswMKQ7rH3JsIF6WqDGbskqxiar5jnUdbt6KY4AI2PTcmLIicG53-K3Sxodc3/w340-h490/Cover_original+-+Casino+Royale.png" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="340" /></a><p style="text-align: left;">The plot revolves around a high stakes game of Baccarat at a glamourous casino (Texas Hold ‘Em Poker in the film, I am reliably informed). Bond, being the best card player in the service, is sent by MI6 to defeat a known enemy at the baccarat table and thus bankrupt him. Le Chiffre is in bed with the USSR and the ominous SMERSH and, having lost monies not belonging to him, his only chance to save his own neck is to raise a profit of at least fifty million francs through high-end gambling. The scene is set, then, for a weekend of big-money betting, Bond backed by the Treasury, Le Chiffre by what remains of his ill-gotten funds.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
Beside the game runs the entanglement between Bond and Vesper Lynd, a beautiful but cold woman also in the employ of MI6. Unsurprisingly, an attachment between the two develops and this new connection is pushed to the limit when Lynd is captured by Le Chiffre late in the piece and Bond is forced to sacrifice himself in the pursuit of her release.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
The plot may sound fairly simplistic but this is a slim book that doesn’t attempt to be anything other than a piece of escapism for a British audience who were living in the rather dour atmosphere of post-war austerity. By comparison, the excitement and colour of the world described must have been infinitely seductive for those who dreamed of adventure in faraway lands. And what better world to engage people than that of espionage, so relevant in Cold War Europe? In the past, boys had dreamed of shipping off to an adventure with pirates in Treasure Island or to one of the colonies to meet with other civilisations, but in the 1950s what could be more thrilling than saving Queen and country while strutting around exotic locations, killing bad guys / suspicious foreigners, and sleeping with beautiful women? It is not difficult to see how James Bond became the great success he is today.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
But being an icon of masculinity comes with a few downsides. It will not shock anybody for me to suggest that Bond’s attitude to women is not entirely chivalrous by modern standards. I had therefore expected passages like the following - in fact would just consider this part of Bond’s character, not a problem from the writer’s point of view per se:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men.</blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">
But even with that foreknowledge I was a bit taken aback when I ran across the following sentence, describing Bond’s tryst with Lynd:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>And now he knew that she was profoundly, excitingly sensual, but that the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would each time have the sweet tang of rape.</blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">
You are all excused while you go and vomit into a handy receptacle. Yes, this was a different time but I very much suspect not everyone back then would have considered ‘the sweet tang of rape’ to be an acceptable way of talking about intimate relations with a loved one.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
Bond is, undeniably, a dinosaur. I do not think you can read Fleming’s books without viewing him thus (unless, of course, you somewhat agree with his attitudes). As I read the book and started to catalogue Bond’s characteristics – a snobbish obsession with brands, a borderline criminal attitude to the “use” of women, a need to explain the finer points of his accoutrements, and a queasy enthusiasm for describing genitals being mutilated (okay, we can put this one on Fleming) – I was put in mind of a more modern character who is slightly less idolised: Patrick Bateman. Quite honestly, Bond felt like the sort of slick prick that could have become <i>American Psycho</i>’s monster had he been born thirty years later and transported to the heady atmosphere of 1980’s Wall Street. The annoying thing for all of that, is that I didn’t hate him. Even as I recognised his flaws as a supposedly likeable character, I went along with him on the absurd and intoxicating trip into the glamourous world of super spies who drop millions of Francs at the baccarat table of an evening. What a bastard I must be.</p><a href="https://www.bibliofreak.net/p/advertising.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Advertise with Bibliofreak.net" border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY5_9Ucn-_zxUhyphenhyphenwf2FwqkqRLQeW39qppPcFElPeXZ1O92ln_7nXjSRkGkzfbGi3PMvAlKhQ4GrkQNIyDdsGETz-eT9zFUPKJSObtra47-uGwf6Tvxrgtte4wEGVtibdOUTeii71tl/s1600/Sponsor+this+post.png" style="padding-right: 10px;" /></a>
<p style="text-align: left;">Yet I suspect (and hope) that I would not be alone in this. Fleming’s writing is exhilarating, brash, and entirely draws you along with it. There is something powerfully seductive about a narrative that shamelessly carries itself to reckless extravagances and extremes of ignorant chauvinism (just look at the modern political landscape). Fleming doesn’t write with huge flourishes – his prose is bald and plain – but what he does do is place the reader right at the centre of the action. The tiny details that Bond relays about the luxury which surrounds him – how he takes his drink, how he reads a game of cards – draw the reader into his thrall, comfortable to be guided through their escapist fantasy by this confident, bold protagonist. The only time the mask slips is late in the novel when Bond is recovering from his injuries suffered at the hands of Le Chiffre and he begins to question the purpose of intelligence services and chest-thumping patriotism in a fairly basic passage of pseudo-philosophy. Were we not to know that he would still be going strong sixty years later, it would be easy to see Bond wandering off into the sunset, the scales fallen from his eyes, and into a life that would be far from the spy game.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
In all, Bond seems fairly indifferent to his lot and to the idea of good and bad. Discussing his double-o status, he appears blasé about its significance: “It’s not difficult to get a double-o number if you’re prepared to kill people. That’s all the meaning it has. It’s nothing to be particularly proud of.” This strange apathy extends to Bond’s own agency as he finds himself acted upon more often than forcing his will on the situation. Indeed, baccarat, a game of luck more than skill, seems appropriate for this Bond who feels no divine right to come out the hero.</p><p style="text-align: left;">
So, <i>Casino Royale</i>’s Bond smokes seventy cigarettes a day, has a scar running down the right side of his face, experiences an existential crisis of sorts, and enjoys the “sweet tang of rape.” Not quite the super spy from the big screen but not entirely removed from him either. I prefer Bond when he slows down – on screen or on the page – and we get set pieces like the baccarat game, just as we do here. Arguably Fleming’s bolt is shot too early when the card game concludes and the plot begins to meander but there is enough to pull the reader through. And, despite noticing Bond’s shortcomings, I cannot pretend I was outraged enough to cast <i>Casino Royale</i> off and leave it unfinished (appalled though I was), rather I found a murmuring of the exhilaration fans of Bond have experienced for years somewhere in me which got me through the book not unwillingly but rapidly, pulled on by Fleming’s crisp prose and Bond’s story.</p>
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Like the sound of this book? Find it at the following places:</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://amzn.to/2SBsWhZ" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRd_5ylAM0LmovUcRGxhlEO9xAaUAQ3XmP72If7lkSP8M9rXnUZiN8zIJ4TQYIQw0xLP8hs-3i3k29pe1j4H_MC1wJj3rLdhBJGw_OEeihbEWv_pF8fb31LOfNvayKZEe95RrMMDrY/s1600/Amazon+UK+button.png" /></a><a href="https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Casino-Royale-Audiobook/B00THFZL5S" target="_blank"><img alt="Find book at Audible" border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="103" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhru8qopW3ePPqWITseddhdql5glsrwmu7_8BfjFUUGQsDjK4BvqeTGjd1pIbv68AbC9Uejl1OC2mMewyYO8le19sakzuRgIuW39K0sGvSvnQZTlAjejiIGUpvlWcsghpsrbukosEsl/s1600/Audible+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a><a href="https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=4nzTRC2dTbg&offerid=329812.14463797726&type=2&murl=https://www.alibris.co.uk/Casino-Royale-Ian-Fleming/book/951003" target="_blank"><img alt="Find book at Alibris UK" border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnZ8CmJ4qKISXN4vozeYvWLi-nceKzgVrFL2cPtygkSn3AosDnLvmflYeri4rBgqphbpXvRQEWcJwcIB1gdo_jZZe_rc0jVCupmWelcyFpqRVt6jNApscO4f6K2EsPhDyyTl9w8mWm/s1600/Alibris+UK+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a><a href="https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=4nzTRC2dTbg&offerid=189673.14463796832&type=2&murl=https://www.alibris.com/Casino-Royale-Ian-Fleming/book/951003" target="_blank"><img alt="Find book at Alibris US" border="0" data-original-height="46" data-original-width="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcYbC6XE-8XKMncvD5yil8wHmNfev6lLvz4IfWPVnRzqYKtFfDmwR2ZYOw5iAvOPKoyoUcNmVEGZdY4g1MIAoZleJ_230WoZfprqoKHRLhG3PQigHim2kgaUCsGPZKqDtcCl5ozDm5/s1600/Alibris+US+button.png" style="padding-left: 5px;" /></a></div>Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-5106239003574323302017-01-04T16:28:00.001+00:002019-01-02T20:10:29.350+00:002017 Reads<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What will I be reading in 2017? A bloody good question, thanks for asking. Over the year, whenever someone recommends a book to me that I think I'd enjoy or when I come across something I'd like to read, I'll add it to the page here. This will help me keep track of my teetering TBR pile and who doesn't like a good list? No bibliofreak I know. As I review books, I'll add links to the review on here too. I'd love to have your recommendations - comment below or hit me up on Twitter (@thebibliofreak). (If you would like me to read your own book, check out my review policy here: <a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/p/review-policy.html">http://www.bibliofreak.net/p/review-policy.html</a>)<br />
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Here is my 2017 reading list so far:<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2iPxm37" target="_blank">Blindness by Jose Saramago</a> (recommended by <a href="https://twitter.com/frankiesaxx" target="_blank">@frankiesaxxx</a>)<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2hRbBDw" target="_blank">Stone Junction by Jim Dodge</a> (recommended by <a href="https://twitter.com/muninnherself" target="_blank">@muninnherself</a>)<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2iAxUwe" target="_blank">Beijing Coma by Ma Jian</a> (recommended by <a href="https://twitter.com/frankiesaxx" target="_blank">@frankiesaxxx</a>)<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2hQHsz4" target="_blank">Orlando by Virginia Woolf</a> (recommended by <a href="https://twitter.com/jmc_hughy" target="_blank">@jmc_hughy</a>)<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2hQHkQk" target="_blank">The Age of Earthquakes by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland, Hans Ulrich</a> (recommended by <a href="https://twitter.com/jmc_hughy" target="_blank">@jmc_hughy</a>)<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2iiyImw" target="_blank">The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith</a> (recommended by Bernadette)<br />
<a href="http://amzn.to/2iXv4iz" target="_blank"><br />
</a> <a href="http://amzn.to/2iXv4iz" target="_blank">Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald</a> (recommended by <a href="https://twitter.com/MissP_Psych" target="_blank">@MissP_Psych</a>)<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2hX3tkT" target="_blank">A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens</a> (recommended by <a href="https://twitter.com/MissP_Psych" target="_blank">@MissP_Psych</a>)<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2hXAXuw" target="_blank">Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys</a> (recommended by <a href="https://twitter.com/MissP_Psych" target="_blank">@MissP_Psych</a>)<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2hXdxKo" target="_blank">Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman</a> (recommended by <a href="http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Di</a>)<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2jvrY8V" target="_blank">Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges</a> (recommended by <complete id="goog_1790764765"><a href="https://twitter.com/archie_bw" target="_blank">@archie_bw</a>)</complete> <br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2iPxEHz" target="_blank">Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger</a><br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2iPvd7P" target="_blank">Portrait of a Lady by Henry James</a><br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2iaHnHD" target="_blank">The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus</a><br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2hSDaKV" target="_blank">Persuasion by Jane Austen</a><br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2hRjjxm" target="_blank">Heartof Darkness by Joseph Conrad</a><br />
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<strike><a href="http://amzn.to/2hSJQsg" target="_blank">Casino Royale by Ian Fleming</a></strike> <b>READ</b> <a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/2017/01/review-casino-royale-by-ian-fleming.html">Read my review</a><br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2iaGFtS" target="_blank">Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf</a><br />
<a href="http://amzn.to/2lomYQN" target="_blank"></a><br />
<a href="http://amzn.to/2lomYQN" target="_blank"><strike>Dare to Read by Susanna Beard</strike></a> <b>READ</b> <a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/2017/02/review-dare-to-remember-susanna-beard.html">Read my review</a><br />
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<strike><a href="http://amzn.to/2thGeUN" target="_blank">The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry</a></strike> <b>READ</b> <a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/2017/07/review-essex-serpent-by-sarah-perry.html">Read my review</a> Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-81014896301804646872016-12-31T00:01:00.000+00:002019-01-02T20:10:43.521+00:00Reading Plan: January 2017<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Like Hillary Clinton’s political career, 2016 is now a dim and distant memory; all hail 2017, destined to be marginally less shit than its predecessor. We hope. Aside from having escaped a year that seemed, at times, determined to off all our most treasured icons, I’m pretty excited for 2017 for its own sake. Even if everything else goes to hell, at least I will be able to say that I am making my vlogging debut. Doubtless this will be a great comfort to the people of Aleppo, god knows they need something to look forward to in 2017.</div>
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Entirely tasteless jokes aside, I am excited about what I have planned in 2017. It is difficult sometimes to feel enthused about these small things in the face of some pretty dark and troubling times but we must take comfort where we can and still find pleasure in life even as we fear horribly for what tomorrow may bring, in lands far off or on our own doorstep. So let me tell you a little about my joining the vlog lyf and becoming a #booktuber for want of a better explicatory hashtag.</div>
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As some of you will have the misfortune to know, I have been writing my blog here since 2011 and have yet to make the leap into videos. In truth, as a writer, it makes sense to me that my medium would be the written word but the more I peek into the world of Book Tube, the more I see it as a complement to a written blog. And so I am taking the leap this year (probably, assuming I’m not utterly shit at it). </div>
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<script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script><a href="http://amzn.to/2bExq0Z" target="_blank"><i><br />
</i></a> <a href="http://amzn.to/2bExq0Z" target="_blank"><i><ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2230389427103838" data-ad-slot="8674922765" style="display: inline-block; height: 250px; width: 300px;"></ins></i></a><a href="http://amzn.to/2bExq0Z" target="_blank"><i><br />
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Going forward, I hope to be able to film videos with different people, talking about books that matter to them and topics that might be of interest. Of course, we’ll see where I end up with my Bibliofreak Viddycasts (as I am calling them in honour of Anthony Burgess’s language in <i>A Clockwork Orange</i>). I hope some of you will join me and enjoy watching me ramble rather than just reading the ramblings of my muddle-brain.</div>
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Fear not, my foray into vlogging will not impact how often I get round to writing here, however. In fact, my intention is to up my reading and writing in 2017. Unlike previous years, I have cleared my schedule out a bit to hopefully allow for this and I am looking forward to my most literary year yet. As part of this, I have started to compile a list of books that I want to read this year and you can find this here: <a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/2017/01/2017-reads.html">2017 Reads</a>. This is only a starter list and I’d be really happy to have more books recommended to me.</div>
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I’d love to hear what you’ll be reading in 2017 too – let me know in the comments below and have a lovely January! <br />
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Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-65537512583700235492016-12-23T15:38:00.000+00:002019-01-02T20:10:57.743+00:00Covers #007: UK Bestsellers 2016<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Below are some of the biggest selling books of 2016 (based on UK sales), but can you work out which they are from the small snippet of cover? Not all of these books were released this year but all of them have been flying off the shelves.<br />
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There are few images shown below, click on them to reveal each answer and let me know how many you get right in the comments below - good luck!<br />
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Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-69930582283120504602016-12-21T15:28:00.000+00:002019-01-05T10:58:09.533+00:00Review: The Sellout by Paul Beatty<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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“Being black ain't what it used to be.” <br />
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Winning the Booker Prize isn’t always a sign of a book’s quality but it always ensures a dramatic spike in sales. <a href="http://amzn.to/2iax4qE" target="_blank">Paul Beatty</a>’s brilliant satire of Blackness in a small Los Angeles suburb would probably have passed most British readers by had it not been given the prestigious award recently. And what a pity that would have been because <a href="http://amzn.to/2iax4qE" target="_blank"><i>The Sellout</i></a> is one of the funniest books, one of the most sophisticated and satisfying comedies, I have read in a very long time. <br />
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The novel’s narrator, Bonbon Me (aka The Sellout), is a black farmer from a small town south of Los Angeles called Dickens. The story opens with Bonbon sitting in front of the Supreme Court, defending himself in the aptly named case <i>Me v The United States of America</i>: “This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I’ve never stolen anything. Never cheated on my taxes or at cards. Never snuck into the movies or failed to give back the extra change to a drugstore cashier indifferent to the ways of mercantilism and minimum-wage expectations…”<br />
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What, the reader wonders, could a weed-smoking, black manual worker from one of the roughest neighbourhoods in the US have done to wind up in front of the Supreme Court? Those tempted to follow the stereotypes will be disappointed to find that Bonbon is not standing on a drug charge, or a murder, or even petty gangland violence. No, his crime is more novel than that: owning an elderly slave and attempting to reinstate good ol’ Jim Crow-style segregation in parts of Dickens.<br />
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From that starting point, the novel unravels the set of circumstances that brought Bonbon to his date with the Supreme Court through a series of highly amusing vignettes that show snippets of his life and that of the community that surrounds him, and explores, in part, the<span style="color: #0000ee;"> </span>"cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent."<br />
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A farmer who grows perfect watermelons, is bad in bed, can’t tell a funny joke, and rolls into town on a horse rather than a tricked-out Cadillac, Bonbon is an anti-stereotype of the Black Male in popular culture. Raised by his academic father to eschew both Whiteness and stereotypical Blackness, as a child Bonbon was often subjected to reworkings of famous psychological studies at the hands of his father, which will have anyone who has studied psychology laughing hard enough to drop a lung. <br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/2hTogCI" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="blank"><img alt="The Sellout by Paul Beatty book cover" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK_YAmOy8C_wWEAPVuNBIoZIYOW95KpNGm3JaamhM8Uq8fP6aYAduLeMc9Iz1jAYVYMN-EzI2DK1WW0VYY_YfoPI8333cshGB3ePeD8lk4si9NLmhFeJYA3wdzIqe6gnq0H1XExJGj/s400/Cover_original+-+The+Sellout.jpg" style="padding-left: 10px;" width="266" /></a>“When I was seven months,” he tells us, “Pops placed objects like toy police cars, cold cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Richard Nixon campaign buttons, and a copy of The Economist in my bassinet, but instead of conditioning me with a deafening clang, I learned to be afraid of the presented stimuli because they were accompanied by him taking out the family .38 Special and firing several window-rattling rounds into the ceiling, while shouting, ‘Nigger, go back to Africa!’ loud enough to make himself heard over the quadraphonic console stereo blasting ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ in the living room.”<br />
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Later in life, Bonbon adopts ageing actor and ever-present in the Dickens community, Hominy, who was one of TV’s original Little Rascals and appears to have a complex that causes him to wish subjugation upon himself. Bonbon indulges him, taking the grateful Hominy on as a slave to work his farm and sending him off for beatings at the hands of a local dominatrix every few weeks. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, and Hominy revels in the regressive treatment. Bonbon also sees Marpessa, a former girlfriend turned occasional unsatisfied lover. Marpessa drives the local bus and takes as little crap from Bonbon as she does from the customers who ride her bus. Between these scant attachments, growing his delectable fruit, and occasionally attending the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals (a black group who meet at the local doughnut shop), Bonbon’s life sounds like the fairly mundane running out of time by a man who knows he is going nowhere ("eventually, like all lower-middle-class Californians, I’d die in the same bedroom I’d grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that’ve been there since the ’68 quake.") but when, one day, Dickens drops off the map completely, becoming a non-state, Bonbon is spurred into action. Launching a campaign to reclaim his community, he paints a line around the border where Dickens used to begin and end and finds that segregation, in many forms, has a lot of positive effects. Perhaps Hominy is not the only one in Dickens who craves a bit of good ol’ fashioned racism.<br />
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For those who noted that the winner of this year’s Booker was a work on racism in modern America, the brief outline of the book above may well have punctured a few illusions; <a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/2016/03/review-to-kill-mockingbird-by-harper-lee.html" target="_blank"><i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i></a> this ain’t (and all the better for it, too). Rather than the rigid and patronising morality of that classic, <i>The Sellout</i> is challenging beyond comparison, and made all the more complex for being a satire where nothing can be taken at face value. As a young white British reader, I suspect that more than a handful of allusion<i>s</i> or jokes passed me by, but even in my ignorance I gorged on the prose all the same. However, it’s possible this book was not intended for me – the white liberal – at all. The final scene that Bonbon’s narrative relates is of a black comedian ejecting a white couple from a local comedy gig after they had broken the black monopoly of the audience. The comedian’s words as he sends the white couple on their way should ring in the reader’s ears as they close the final page of the book: “Get out,” he tells the white couple. “This is our thing.” <br />
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What is blackness, what is ‘our thing’, and what do I have to do with any of it – does my 1/16 African-American heritage give me the right to laugh at 1/16 of the jokes?<br />
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Pontificating liberal angst aside, literature is for anyone who happens to connect with it and so I won’t cut short my review but will strive on at the risk of talking about something that is not ‘my thing’. Incidentally, that phrase ‘our thing’ reminded me immediately of <i>The Sopranos</i> and other mafia stories, where Italian-American mobsters claim to one another that the police and the rest of society are not part of ‘our thing’. The sense of a minority community wanting to exclude and segregate for its own sake certainly struck a chord and I imagine the inward-lookingness of this sentiment is common to many marginalised groups (not just marginalised races, but genders, sexualities, etc. too). <br />
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By considering exactly what it means to be Black, one gets to the heart of <i>The Sellout</i>. For this is a novel without any great plot but which weaves a deeply comedic story of a community full of people who have failed to outgrow their parents’ aspirations for them and have responded to the immovability of Blackness in different ways. Hominy desires the subjugation he knew as a younger man, Marpessa goes about her business of surviving quietly, and Bonbon defies just about every stereotype of the Young Black Male. Then there is Foy Cheshire, local writer and member of the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals. He is on a mission to rewrite the White canon for a black audience (The Great Blacksby), gives presentations on Empowerpoint (PowerPoint for the Black gent), and is not a fan of Bonbon (who he considers a sellout). He is also, besides being a bit of an arse, a hilarious parody of the Black Intellectual, whose heart may be in the right place but whose actions are not always of the most practical use. “If he was an autodidact he had the world's shittiest teacher,” Bonbon tells us. “Foy wasn't a tree of knowledge; he was more a bush of opinion.”<br />
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This might be the funniest book I’ve read since <i><a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/2011/05/review-money-by-martin-amis.html" target="_blank">Money</a> </i>by <a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/search/label/Martin%20Amis" target="_blank">Martin Amis</a>, and I cannot think of another modern novel that can compare to its Swiftian satire, which is so challenging while still amusing (incidentally, I heard Beatty speak recently and he is keen to disagree with the label ‘satire’ for his novel, reasoning that this suggests something of more transient interest). For all that it is funny, however, <i>The Sellout</i> is a book that works beautifully at the sentence level. (Arguably, it works better in snippets.) Beatty’s prose flows as smooth as warm honey and you can open the book on any page and enjoy the writing. There are two caveats to this: first, there is plenty of swearing; second, there are sections that meander a bit and end up as blocks of text that are a little dense. <br />
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When dealing with systematic racism, it says a lot that Beatty can keep the reader laughing. Indeed, the book’s conclusion that America and racism are inextricably linked and that it has always been so, is a profoundly bleak sentiment that somehow doesn’t drag the comedy down but that turns the satire into a more complex and, ultimately, satisfying affair. For, how can the reader pass through the pages of <i>The Sellout</i>, laughing at the cartoonish racism, without being forced to acknowledge everything that makes the book possible? Its brilliant, abrasive subversion of racism is electrifying yet appalling at the same time. This is the kind of humour that makes you realise how slim and superficial most modern satire is. Certainly there are throwaway lines but so much of Beatty’s writing resonates with a deep intelligence and powerful humour that draws from the deep well of human experience.<br />
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It is not often that I make bold statements about a novel’s enduring appeal, but I firmly believe <i>The Sellout</i> is a timely book – an absolute tonic to the idiocy and simplicity of Trump logic – and will prove one of the most remembered books of our times. Its ceaselessly smart prose, tremendous volume of allusions, and bluntness in confronting racism make this such a brilliant novel, and on such an important topic, that <i>The Sellout</i> cannot but go down as a book to be remembered and a bright point in a year that has not always been kind. A word of warning, however, to the cosy liberal (me) who sits snickering at the intellectual twists and turns of Beatty’s sublime book: wars are not won with brilliant metaphors or from armchairs far from the battlefield. This is a tremendous book but enjoying it is not the same as acting on its commentary. <br />
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Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600022529355932646.post-11175341634262645932016-12-06T15:22:00.000+00:002019-01-02T20:12:13.214+00:00Review: A History of Britain in 21 Women by Jenni Murray<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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“The history of the world is but the biography of great men,” claimed <a href="http://amzn.to/2h2HEit" target="_blank">Thomas Carlyle</a>. <a href="http://amzn.to/2gYUYBE" target="_blank">Jenni Murray</a> would care to disagree. The stalwart broadcaster and journalist who has headed up BBC Radio 4’s <i>Woman’s Hour</i> since 1987 has written a personal refutation of Carlyle’s claim in <a href="http://amzn.to/2hcpEyE" target="_blank"><i>A History of Britain in 21 Women</i></a> (2016), a bright and breezy series of vignettes which paint brief biographies of some of the women who have helped shape Britain. <br />
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Murray makes it clear as she introduces the book that the 21 women featured are a personal selection rather than an attempt to objectively select the 21 most significant and objectively important women to Britain’s history. This notion is carried through as Murray weaves her own biography with the history of the women she discusses, which creates something more than a historico-educational tone and saves the book from becoming a rather dry exercise.<br />
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The women to make the 21 are a varied selection, from the supremely well-known in the guise of Elizabeth I and Jane Austen, to lesser known figures who excelled in their personal fields, like Gwen John (art) and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (medicine). There are, inevitably, a number of inclusions from politics, whether they be Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Emmeline Pankhurst who were central to the Suffragist and Suffragette movements respectively, or more modern figures like Nicola Sturgeon and, grudgingly, Margaret Thatcher for whom Murray has only back-handed praise. Overall, a good spread of disciplines are represented and the list is well balanced with no fields dominating (as Murray suggests, she could have filled the book with authors she admires alone but restricts herself).<br />
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Each woman gets her own chapter and Murray gives each room to breathe and come to life through the anecdotes that the author blends with facts and small asides about her own personal connection with the woman in question. At times, as in the case of a vividly and grotesquely described mastectomy carried out without anaesthetic on <a href="http://amzn.to/2gzeqV5" target="_blank">Frances Burney</a>, which Murray discusses in relation to her own experience of cancer, the connection can be painfully clear and deeply wrought. At other times, there is a greater lightness as in her discussion of Mary Quant’s miniskirt revolution but always Murray has one eye on the impact these women have had on her own life and the other on what they represent for women on a far wider scale. A word must be given to Peter Locke’s illustrations, too, which are a lovely complement to the short biographies. <br />
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Murray’s informal and endlessly warm prose puts one at ease immediately and, although not a listener of Radio 4 let alone <i>Woman’s Hour</i> myself, it is very easy to imagine her calm style of broadcasting if she talks as she writes (which I suspect is the case). Yet the biting edge of her commentary whenever she engages with male criticism of her chosen women or the agendas they represent, is notably sharper and breaks the comfortable rhythm. Were one to imagine this were but a happy and safe romp through women’s history, one would be mistaken. That said, I rather suspect there are feminist historians (particularly interested in marginalised races and sexualities) who would have put forward a more radical line-up or commentary, that may not have felt quite so comfortable for Middle England (who, one assumes, are the intended audience for this book).<i> </i>Not to mention those interested in women before Elizabeth I, who are barely represented.<br />
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What I can say is that <i>A History of Britain in 21 Women</i> is a nice, gentle introduction to some of the most important figures in the country’s history. There will be a number that most readers will already be familiar with, but just as many who are only on the outskirts of one’s consciousness at best. As such, this is a good primer to these women and a starting point that may lead one on to discovering more of the rich history that often goes unreported. In truth, I may not have needed 700 words to sum this book up as both the best and worst thing I can say about Murray’s book is that it delivers exactly what one would expect. And that, perhaps, is all one needs to know. Matthew Selwynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.com0