Lighthousekeeping

Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A story about storytellers telling stories about stories... I found this short book unfortunately too self-conscious, too carefully academic, too much trying too hard. I wanted to lose myself in the world of Winterson, but this book felt too shallow to dive into.

I don't have any specific complaints, but nothing here evoked much feeling for me. The great number of mostly-blank pages seemed a bit of a waste, too.

Hoping my next Winterson is more lively! I still think she's absolutely amazing as an author. Suggestions?

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Short reviews

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The final three linked stories could be read as a novella. I thought these were the strongest of the bunch.

Ultimately I found these stories a bit 'samey' after a while, and now that I flip back through them quickly, I see nothing very memorable.

Lahiri is an excellent writer and there are some glimpses of brilliance and despair laced through the stories. I enjoyed reading these but now, after some time has passed, I can't quite remember why.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It was cute, but it didn't pack much of a punch.

I found the characters a bit flat and there was never really any clear motivation for any of them to act the way they did. They just seemed thrown together and told to act a part. They seemed like inexperienced actors trying out a new script.

I expected it to be more of a laugh. Instead it was only vaguely entertaining and mostly annoying. I think it would have been better with more tractors.

Foreshadowing led me to believe that SOMETHING HORRIBLE would transpire and even that turned out to be only vaguely threatening.

It was one of those books I had to force myself to finish. Luckily this wasn't too difficult.

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book made me want to run long distances barefoot in the desert. And make chia shakes.

At first glance I thought this book would be pretty cheesy -- sappy while attempting to be inspirational. Far from it. It is well written, hilarious, gripping, full of wacky characters and bizarre situations, and frankly awe-inspiring.

My only quibble is that the Tarahumara never got to 'speak' or represent themselves. Everything we see of them is through white eyes. However, there are clearly reasons for that and for not exposing the tribe too much to outsiders.

All the stuff about early humans evolving to be long distance runners was completely fascinating. I need to read more nonfiction.


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The Clan of the Cave Bear

The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There's so much to love about Ayla. This is a flawed book, but the essence of it is unforgettable.

Ayla is adopted into a Neanderthal clan as a young girl, and has to learn their ways as she grows up in their hunter-gatherer society. It's a fantastic premise! Auel recreates these early human lives with exacting detail.

There are countless skills Ayla must learn just to stay alive, including identifying plants and herbal medicines, butchering and skinning animals, making leather and baskets, and so on.

The one skill Ayla doesn't have is obedience -- it's like she has a constitutional inability to subordinate herself to the men of the clan. She's the world's first feminist. Her spirit just can't be held down. This clearly gets her into trouble, in a strongly patriarchal clan where women are expected to do the men's bidding without question.

I found this a bit far-fetched, as if Auel was saying that Neanderthals failed to survive in a changing world partly because they had such rigid gender roles, and modern humans were somehow genetically predisposed to gender equality. Ummmmmmm.

I liked Auel's more imaginative creations, such as the sign language and gestures used by the clan to communicate, and their spiritual practices centering around animal totem spirits and drug-induced psychic journeys.

This really is an unforgettable saga. Ayla is poised just on the brink of womanhood when this book ends. She has been taught to hate and fear the 'Others' (modern humans) but she must try to seek them out, despite never having met any of her own people. There is so much potential here, and there is the entire future of the human race to consider.

I was slightly appalled at the writing style (bad) and apparent lack of editing (several comma splices per page). Had no one noticed the grammatical errors even 30 years on? Are run-on sentences a fad? This was Auel's first book and I'm surprised she didn't get more editorial guidance.

Despite the book's flaws, Auel really was ahead of her time. In writing about the possibility of interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans, Auel made a conceptual leap that is only now really being accepted as fact. At the time she wrote, it would have been an extremely far-fetched theory.

Auel created such incredible momentum with this first book. Clan of the Cave Bear is a classic that deserves to be read and re-read by generations. It might not be great literature, but it's a great story.  Unfortunately, I can't extend the recommendation to include the other books in the series.

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True History of the Kelly Gang

True History Of The Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everything I know about Ned Kelly I learned from reading this book. I hadn't even heard of Ned Kelly before I picked up True History of the Kelly Gang, which I'm sure was not exactly how the author intended it.

This book relies somewhat on a common understanding of Kelly as an outlaw hero, something about him wearing a tin can on his head, and having been blamed for stealing a horse. Many people seem to have heard of him, just not me. The legend of Kelly is needed in the background - it's what Carey's narrative plays against. Without knowing the legend, my reading wasn't as powerful as it could have been. However, Kelly's voice is so vivid and raw that the reader doesn't really need to bring anything with them to get sucked into the story.

Ned Kelly coming to life and speaking to us directly as he does provides an awful counterpoint to the brutal events that are replayed here. We know that he lives - that long at least. Long enough to tell his story. Carey's Kelly is a poet but never ridiculous. He is heart-breakingly believable, and real, and worthy of being a legend, if not loved. Reading True History I was swayed by the power and intensity of someone so young who had lived so much and so bravely.

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The All New, All Purpose Joy of Cooking

The All New, All Purpose Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The bible of American cooking. And a surprisingly good read!

I started paging through this while reading The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook because I had to look up those crazy French sauces and things she kept referring to. Then I found myself reading the whole chapter on sauces and moving on to the bread chapter.

I then started having ideas about making my own bread, and stocked up on flour and yeast. Then suddenly, I got a full time job and all the bread-making plans fizzled. :(

It's dangerous to read this if you're too busy to try out the recipes. Seriously, I actually considered attempting to make my own mayonnaise at one point. I look forward to reading some more chapters of Joy of Cooking next time I'm between jobs.

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Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

No way was this going to end well. I was amazed by the depth of the Wheelers' self-delusion. And the alcoholism, the pent-up rage, the violence, the belief in their superiority over everyone, their invincibility. Amazing.

And there was a dated quality to the writing that reminded me of Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man. A sort of quaint smugness. It was the era when you could write about how it feels to drive on the freeway, and it was such a radical thing.

It was a time when pregnant women could drink to excess in a work of fiction without any authorial comment required. Shocking!

The Wheelers are a fascinating nightmare that make me even more glad than ever that I missed the whole 1950s thing.

Here's a big sigh of relief.


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The Crofter and the Laird

The Crofter and the Laird: Life on an Hebridean Island by John McPhee

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was going to re-read this for our trip to Colonsay in April. My impression after reading it was that things probably haven't changed all that much on the island since 1970.

The people are still resourceful and hold multiple jobs around the island. They are still vastly outnumbered by the ghosts of former inhabitants and by the 'nearly sixteen hundred place names' on Colonsay.

It's easy to forget about the present in a place like Colonsay and get immersed in the past -- fantastically vivid in a place with standing stones and ruined dwellings and ancient remains everywhere you look.

One of the high points of our visit was being able to buy the definitive history of Colonsay, Lonely Colonsay, from the man who is author-publisher-bookseller-bus driver-piermaster and get his autograph, while also getting a tail-wagging slobbery greeting from his very friendly dog.

We also loved seeing the tiny little bookshop/publishing house on the beach where this edition of the book was published. They were in the process of moving out of the scenic bookshop into new, more accessible premises in town, but it still had the House of Lochar sign up.



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I Capture the Castle

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I didn't want this book to end. I didn't want Cassandra and all the wonderfully eccentric Mortmains to disappear the way characters do when you turn the final page. I read extremely slowly to keep it going longer.

Oh, and now they've gone. The Cottons have vanished and Mortmain has gone back to his gatehouse and the castle is quiet... just what is Cassandra doing with herself? She won't be writing in her journal, or making a new dress or even swimming in the moat. Perhaps she's listening to the wireless and tending the vegetable patch in between writing stories.

I adore this book from start to finish, but I do wish I had found it a bit earlier. I think it would be even more wonderful to read at 18 rather than 33. But it's wonderful. Wonderful!

This is a book to inspire one to keep a journal and to try to see the romance in one's surroundings. Maybe a bit easier if one is 17 and lives in a castle, but still. Even passing clouds have their romance.

There are also a few lessons about emotional honesty here. Cassandra is a lovely narrator because she is completely honest with herself about her feelings. She keeps no secrets from her journal, which is what makes it so refreshing and lively to read.

Cassandra is remarkably poised and articulate, considering she's suffering from the feverish delusions of first love for part of the book. She never seems to say the wrong thing and she seems very mature in how she behaves with the adults around her.

So it struck me as odd how often other characters referred to her as a 'child'. I wouldn't expect a full-grown young woman of 17 to be perceived to be a child by anyone, let alone by a young man of 25 or so. That was the only bit of the book that felt 'off' to me.

I especially enjoyed Cassandra's observations of her new American friends and the way their habits differed from the English ways of doing things. It was all totally accurate, and still relevant now. I laughed at how she noticed how they used their knife and fork and how they pronounced certain words differently. I imagine Dodie Smith must have looked for some Americans to observe while writing this book.

I Capture the Castle is going straight to my 'treasured favorites' shelf, if I have such a thing.



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The Woman in White

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As one of the earliest detective novels, The Woman in White is remarkably flamboyant. Wilkie Collins seems to have stormed onto the scene with guns blazing. It's psychological, gripping, dramatic, and... hilarious!

Some of the details are just marvellous. I'd love to comment on some of the absurdities, but there are just too many. Maybe the picture of evil devouring a custard tart?

The plot has its serious notes too. Such as what happens when intelligent, trusting young ladies find themselves entirely under the legal and economic rule of their male relatives, who happen (all too often) to be greedy, heartless, land-grabbing psychopaths. Hint: no good.

I'm finding I really enjoy Victorian sensation novels. There always seems to be an invalid uncle, a large rambling estate, an insane asylum, a marriage proposal, mistaken identities, servants' gossip, some amount of creeping around after dark, and of course MANY letters being exchanged.

This is what I discovered:

- Young ladies of different class circumstances, having an uncanny resemblance to each other, are bound to have a loose grip on their sanity

- An Italian nobleman, suspiciously fond of white mice, is surprisingly light on his feet despite his gargantuan girth

- A sour-tempered English aunt can be as sweet as pie when acting the decoy

- Somebody’s parents were up to something rather illicit

- It’s fabulously interesting watching evil people lose their tempers

- Sanity and identity are very fragile things indeed

- Besides, who in their right mind would marry someone named ‘Sir Percival’?

This is my second Wilkie Collins novel, and I do think this one was better than The Moonstone. But they're both great fun. The alternating narrators format works really well for enhancing the mystery and playing with voice and character.

I only gave it four stars instead of five because it seemed to drag on a bit towards the end, and I never really felt very attached to the 'main' character telling the story. Whatever his name was... He was a bit of a cipher really.

This sticky note has been in my journal for the past year or more.

Read before reading the Summerscale:
x The Moonstone
x The Woman in White
x The Turn of the Screw
...Lady Audley's Secret

Looks like I'm nearly there! For those of you who HAVE read the Summerscale already, should I add any more 'original' detective novels to this list?


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The Snowman

The Snowman by Jo Nesbø

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I had to read The Snowman quickly as I wanted to add it to the Thanksgiving Book Exchange stack.

This wasn't a book I'd want to linger over! A bit of blood and gore, but spent most of the time with a bumbling, aging, paranoid detective on the wrong track (several times).

Got a bit annoying eventually. Are there other detective novels where the detective goes off in the wrong direction without taking the reader along? I spent at least half of this book thinking 'No, you idiot! What are you DOING?'

This is my first Jo Nesbø. But I think there must be a formula involved somewhere. I felt like I had met Harry Hole somewhere before.

Scruffy, alcoholic detective past his prime

Can't get over former love interest even though things obviously didn't work between them

Still, is a father figure for her kid(s)

Regarded with some mixture of disgust, envy and pity by colleagues

Even though tends to keep to himself

Lets himself get emotionally blackmailed on occasion

Stubborn, arrogant, driven, works far too hard

Always gets his man (why would we be reading otherwise?)

Harry Hole reminded me a lot of Kurt Wallander -- even though a friend of mine who is MUCH more qualified to speak about Scandinavian crime lit than I am swears that Harry Hole is NOTHING like 'her Kurtie'.

Having only read one each of Nesbø's and Mankell's books, my opinion doesn't count for much. However, I'm not sure I want to go on to read too much more of this stuff.

For one thing, it wastes electricity when I have to switch on all the lights if I'm home alone with a scary book.



I did get a chance to make a creepy zombie snowman while reading this! Always a plus.

Shōgun

Shogun: A Novel of Japan by James Clavell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I challenged a friend to a duel. A Shōgun haiku duel. To the death, naturally.

Here are our poems.

Me:

Irate co-worker
Where is my samurai sword?
Arg. Left it at home.

Caleb:

Lord Toranaga
sits, bird on fist, looking out
Osaka burning

Me:

Blackthorne, Mariko
Making eye contact and speaking
in Latin: hot stuff

Caleb:

with your mind composed
drink tea from an empty cup
and find blank verse rhymes

Me:

On page seven hundred
and three, something finally
happened. Don't give up.

Caleb:

Blackthorne's motto is:
Half an apple a day keeps
The scurvy at bay.

Now it's your turn. Who wins?



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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


OK, I read it. It was on a train. I was looking for a book to take my mind off the endless tedium of a 14-hour train journey, but actually it turned out that the scenery was quite nice.

I didn’t find myself quite as mind-blown as everyone had promised I would be. In fact I kept finding little typos and translation errors. Always a bad sign when you’re reading along and you think ‘Wait, that’s not right’.

So, the book. Lisbeth Salander was intriguing, yes, but I didn’t like her being so young. I’m getting older myself and I’ve started to find that people get more eccentric, complex, wise and flawed as they age. Young people are just so... formless.

In that vein, I thought the journalist was more interesting. Though I didn’t necessarily share his obsession for financial investigation. Anyway, it seemed to be a fairly standard murder mystery. Girl disappears, various family members act suspiciously, detective is invited to stay in remote village while secretly working on mystery while falling for local woman who may or may not be a suspect. While he may or may not have another lover (or two) on the side.

I assume it must be the presence of Salander that provides that extra oomph to the plot and gives this book something unique. She seems to be the book's secret weapon. That thing that gets a grip on you and won't let you go.

Is she? I'm not totally convinced.



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The Thirteenth Tale

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


What do you get when you mix dead twins, incest, crumbling mansions, child ghosts, abandoned babies, mad relatives, and literary personages of advanced age?

This book!

Naive young writer is raised in antiquarian bookshop, meets aged famous author in secluded Yorkshire estate. Mysteries unravel, including generations of madness and uncertain identity. Self-mutilation, incest, and neglect are only the beginning!

There are ghosts, shadows, giants, twins, corpses, and cake recipes.

Knitting is involved.

I enjoyed listening to the audio book (extra creepy!), but it got more and more absurd the further we got. At the end, I had to finish it to find out what happened -- but then I was glad when it was over. So, I'm not sure how much of a recommendation I can really make. Hmmmmm.


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The Moonstone

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My first Wilkie Collins! This was begun with as much anticipation as my first Sarah Waters, another blogosphere darling. And what an adventure! Ancient India to colonial wars to mid-19th-century English Society with a capital-S.

We've got rakish young men, strong-willed young ladies, all-seeing butlers, vengeful uncles, fanatic spinsters, and not least, the hatchet-faced detective, the Great Cuff himself. Oh, and a diamond.

From the jacket flap:

The Moonstone (1868), one of the first and greatest detective stories, tells of the theft of a sacred diamond and the efforts of Sergeant Cuff, the policeman investigating the crime, to solve the mystery.

The mystery progresses, in true Victorian style, in letters, diaries, and written statements from the principal characters. Most of the first half is narrated by the elderly all-seeing butler (correction: house-steward) mentioned above. It's a wonderful combination of staircase gossip, walks in the shrubbery, and the old man's bout of detective-fever.

You will doubtless contract it yourself, reading this! It's very contagious.

I was surprised at the small role played by the celebrated Sgt Cuff. He did arrive on the scene and conduct some preliminary investigations, but soon after, gave up the case and retired to the countryside to grow roses. His efforts actually contributed very little to the solving of the case. So, I'm not quite sure why he seems to get most of the credit!

Only one thing is lamentable about this wonderful book: Now I am sadly aware that I will have to live out the rest of my life without ever having occasion to shout, 'Penelope! my bath.'



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Watership Down

Watership Down by Richard Adams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I’ll admit it, I cried at the end, when Hazel... you know. Went to meet the big white rabbit in the sky.

I read this years ago (as most people probably have) but it was definitely deserving of a re-read.

What I love about this story is it’s not cute or cuddly or sentimental. When people think of rabbits they think of small, furry creatures; mild-mannered, tame, and above all, cute.

If most people recall this book as ‘that story about rabbits that we read in school’, I’m afraid they have forgotten the power of this epic tale. Watership Down was never assigned to me in high school but I gather that it is widely read in schools in Britain.

I never know whether to think this is a good thing or not. Reading a book in school seems to ruin it for a lot of people. I’ve ended up with overwhelmingly negative opinions of all the books we read in high school English classes (and this is from someone who went on to get a bachelor’s and a master’s in English). I can say for certain that I would never care to read The Scarlet Letter or Of Mice and Men ever again.

But this book has the feel of a Greek hero’s legend. The exploits of our heroes become stories that will be passed down through the generations, just like the creation myths the rabbits tell. These rabbits fight and die for their loyalties and their adventures test the limits of their physical endurance and mental agility.

Watership Down is a perfect example of how fiction can change the way we see the world and enrich our perspective. Seeing a rabbit feeding in the grass, immediately after reading Watership Down, feels just like walking into an old graveyard with crumbling headstones after finishing The Graveyard Book.

Suddenly, the world is imbued with a richer life and more active intelligence than you had ever suspected. You don’t know what exploits and heroic deeds that rabbit might have performed, or what plans it is hatching.

It might look like a cute, fluffy bunny, brainless and tame, but in Richard Adams’s world, that rabbit is as full of conscious intention as you are.

Take this book with you to the British countryside and watch the world tranform as you gain a rabbit's-eye view of hedgerows, railways, rivers, and farmyards. Nothing will look the same afterwards.



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Lark Rise to Candleford

Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lark Rise to Candleford was an intriguing journey. I had mixed feelings about it all the way and there were several times when Sparkling Squirrel and I nearly abandoned ship. But we kept going, and the reading got better the further we got. In the end, I wished the story went on longer, so I could follow Laura further into her newly independent life.

This book is hard to define – could it have pioneered the ‘fictionalised memoir’ long before it became a well known genre? It’s basically non-fiction, written in episodic, report-like sections, focusing on the village and its inhabitants. Flora Thompson changes her name to Laura in the book, but we don’t know what else is fictionalised.

What I craved was character, and I didn’t appreciate that the village (or hamlet as Thompson calls it) was actually the main character. The book starts off reading like an anthropological observation of village life, with lengthy descriptions of pig-killing, housework and fieldwork, and styles of dress.

I was struggling to place Thompson in amongst these rather dry, detached observations. She only ever mentions herself and her brother vaguely as ‘the children in the end house.’ Here are my thoughts on Thompson part-way in:

My impression of Thompson so far (100 pages in) is she's vaguely cranky, moralising, interested in criticising the present and idealising the past. People were poor, but they were happier back then. No one got sick because they lived outside and were hardy and hard-working. The men were happy with their half-pint. Everyone sang as they worked. There was a real sense of community. Blah, blah, blah.

She was writing as a mature woman; she was in her early 60s when the first book, Lark Rise, was published in 1939, and nearly 70 when the three books were reissued into the current combined volume, Lark Rise to Candleford, in 1945.

I think this backdrop of the modern world encroaching, a second world war beginning, and the author herself aging, all have an effect on the tone and presentation of the story. (For instance, the crankiness.)

It all raises the question, why is Thompson writing this book? She tells us so little about herself, I don’t think the ‘memoir’ label is quite accurate. Laura/Flora is nearly as detached as a fly on the wall, through most of the book.

But then she pops into the narrative occasionally with unexpected passion. At times, the narrative becomes almost like a personal journal, with a lovely episode when Laura and her brother walk to Candleford alone for the first time.

There were more of these personal stories later in the book, which is why I enjoyed the end more than the beginning. But this constant change in perspective makes the book have a muddled feel to it, like the purpose isn’t quite clear, even to the author herself.

For her March group-reading project, Sparkling Squirrel added several thought-provoking questions to our discussion:

1) How would the book be different if Flora Thompson chose to write it in first person rather than (a very detached) third?
2) What do you think the point is?
3) How would you turn this into a tv series?
4) Any reactions to language and tone and structure?

As to the first question, I think this book would definitely work better for me if it were in first person, and if Thompson weren't so hesitant about saying anything about herself or her family. It might be just a matter of taste, but I do think that the story and message would be more powerful if it were more direct, personal and involved.

The disjointedness and repetitive, rambling style made me suspect that the book wasn’t heavily edited. Actually, I discovered what I think is a misplaced page, perhaps a manuscript page that got out of order and made it into the published edition in the wrong place.

It’s one page (about 260 words) at the end of a chapter that just DOESN’T FIT WHATSOEVER with what’s before and after. The funny thing is, the rest of the book is so disorganised that I’d imagine most readers wouldn’t notice.

If you read it, let me know if you find the page I mean.

This is a book ripe for discussion, because it’s interestingly flawed, but also enjoyable and memorable (and has an excellent TV series to go with it).

Blankets

Blankets by Craig Thompson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Blankets sparked a fantastic family discussion when we all read this together in March. We all loved it, and we all noticed slightly different things.

Our discussion led us from Craig’s story and the beautiful artwork to our own lives we saw reflected in the book’s themes: relationships with family, religious upbringing, first love, and growing up.

My brother recommended this graphic novel for our Reading Family book list this year. He said ‘every time I read it I see some new detail’. Thompson’s artwork is amazing and beautifully conveys the complex feelings of his first love.

This is a fictionalized autobiographical novel, so we don’t know exactly what is autobiographical and what is fictional. But it doesn’t matter—it’s a moving story. Briefly, Craig meets Raina and experiences love for the first time, in a way that is holy, beautiful, sacred and eternal. But he also has to deal with his fundamentalist Christian upbringing, hard lessons in sin and guilt, and an emerging sense of his own identity.

I loved the decorative elements in the drawings, where scenes are embellished by swirls and crystals and paisleys. Thompson seems to be portraying less tangible things, including sounds, emotions, and dreams. The most emotionally intense scenes became the most stylized graphically, to where Craig and Raina are floating against a backdrop of pure emotion.

It’s this stylized quality that stuck with me when I surfaced from reading and wandered around in a kind of daze for a while. I described it as ‘wearing comic goggles.’ I find that a graphic novel like this one affects me much more visually than reading a purely textual book, and when I look up I expect to see the world appear as it does in the book.

My mom noticed the same effect when she looked up, from Craig and Raina’s world blanketed by snow, outside to her own garden where it was snowing. This is definitely a wintery book, and the snow adds some element of magical, inhuman beauty.

I found the beginning of the book bleak and sad, as Craig shrinks under constant bullying at school and faces strict parental control at home. He fights with his brother, has no friends, and even disappoints Jesus. His escape is drawing.

However, this bleak beginning makes the eventual joy and love later in the story even more redemptive. I found moments of redemption carried through the story, moments that reveal a well of love or forgiveness in the characters.

Only Craig’s parents, I thought, were never redeemed. They never seem to treat their son as a fully fledged person with a life of his own. Correspondingly, I felt that Craig never gave his parents full personalities in the narrative. They were cardboard figures who only seemed to care about their son’s Christian faith rather than his own feelings or aspirations.

There was a moment when Craig came home from visiting Raina—all at once the most hopeful, pure, loving and passionate experience of his entire life.

When he admits to his mother that he and Raina are more than just friends, his mother’s response is ‘If I’d known that, I’d never have let you stay there two weeks.’ Craig thinks to himself, ‘That’s why I didn’t tell you.’ Suddenly what was all beauty and light turns dark and secretive.

In essence, anyone who has felt the pangs of growing up, first love, uncertainty of faith, or the difficulty of finding one’s own way in life will feel moved by Craig’s beautifully drawn story.

Titus Groan

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was a fascinating book to read during the build-up to the British Royal Wedding. Whatever our opinion of the royal family, during all the wedding hullaballoo we couldn't help pondering the tradition of the monarchy and its role in British life. No one can deny it's a long and significant tradition.

In Titus Groan, we meet the inhabitants of Gormenghast on the day of the birth of the heir to the throne, Titus, who will one day become the seventy-seventh Earl of Gormenghast.

Titus's father is morose, buried in books and in the daily rituals required of him as Earl. His mother is slightly kooky and spends her days talking to birds and cats. The kingdom is crumbling and power is shifting in a most fascinating way.

Throughout the book, characters are bound by tradition and ritual, actions dictated by centuries of precedent. Actions still weighted with importance, though their meanings have long been lost. They seem meaningless, rituals for ritual's sake.

Society in Gormenghast is highly regulated, segregated and hierarchical, meant to maintain itself unchanging for perpetuity.

Of course, this will prove impossible. Forces of entropy and decay are at work, and people with feeble minds are easily manipulated by those with slightly more brain power at their disposal.

In the introduction, Anthony Burgess not to read this book as just a catalogue of eccentrics. However, it's just this quality of the writing that appealed to me. Peake's storytelling stands out because of the bizarreness of its setting and the eccentricity of its characters. The writing follows suit and allows for some very unusual descriptions.

Peake is best when describing people. Just the names are beyond belief: Prunesquallor, Sourdust, Flay, Fuchsia. Here are a few character introductions I just love:

His fish eyes swam all round his glasses before finishing at the top, where they gave him an expression of fantastic martyrdom. (59)

Their faces, identical to the point of indecency, were quite expressionless, as though they were the preliminary lay-outs for faces and were waiting for sentience to be injected. (109)

It seemed the features had been forced to stake their claims, and it appeared that they had done so in a great hurry... The nose had evidently been the first upon the scene and had spread itself down the entire length... and spreading on both sides with a ruthless disregard for the eyes and mouth which found precarious purchase. (139)

The next best thing is the place: the crumbling castle, the vast miles of rooftops, the dreary mountains. Peake has a marvelous way of saturating the landscape with human emotion, so it seems the natural world reflects the state of the people in it. In Gormenghast, that state is often a horrible sickness overlaid with the stink of decay.

Summer was on the roofs of Gormenghast. It lay inert, like a sick thing. Its limbs spread. It took the shape of what it smothered. The masonry sweated and was horribly silent. The chestnuts whitened with dust and hung their myriads of great hands with every wrist broken. (413)

I can't forget the stone sky-field that Steerpike stumbles across in his grand escape across the barren expanse of rooftops, and spends a cold night on. For the rest of the novel, I wanted him to go back there, for something to happen there. It never did.

I finished the book with a thousand questions. What are the death owls and why do they live in the Tower of Flints? What is the stone sky-field and what will happen there, as surely something must?

What will come of the suspicions that are beginning to grow in Gertrude's, Fuchsia's and the doctor's minds? Is Fuchsia smarter than she seems?

And what does this world tell us about the role of rulers, of tradition, of dusty antiquities?

Titus starts early bucking tradition. At his Earling ceremony (he's still only one year old) he refuses to hold the sacred objects and instead throws them into the lake. Perhaps this is indicative of his reign to come.

Strangely enough, the most 'normal' character in the book, Keda, Titus's wet-nurse, held no interest for me. I found nothing to keep me interested in her story and just wanted her chapters to end quickly. Fortunately, most of the chapters were very short so I could quickly return to a more intriguing corner of Gormenghast.

I look forward to the next two books in the Gormenghast series.



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Fingersmith

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Darling of bloggers everywhere. Frequent winner of the 'favorite Sarah Waters book' contest.

I'd describe it as a somewhat saucy cross between Middlemarch and Wuthering Heights.

In which we meet: Two Young Women whose lives are mysteriously linked; The Gentlemen who seek to take advantage of them in one way or another; With many curious and sordid details along the way.

Further to the story:

• A Young Lady is shut up in a crumbling mansion with a nearsighted old scholar, dedicated above all to his research, which will provide a Key to Everything
• An orphan girl meanwhile grows up in a London ghetto full of thieves and scoundrels
• People go about disguising themselves as members of a different class in order to get what they want
• Somone is locked in an insane asylum

It's all true, what they've said. It's hard to put down. It has plot twists to get your brain in knots. It has shadows, whispering, blood, dark hallways, secret riches, and the ruination of women.

All the same, and you know how much I like noting down favorite passages, I didn't particularly notice the writing in this. Waters' prose is serviceable but I wouldn't say it's a feature that stands out on its own merit. Plot is what we're here for, this time.

I suppose that sounds like a criticism, but it might be unfair to expect a book to be everything to everybody. Unless it's Middlemarch, of course.

Reading Fingersmith brought Middlemarch back to me vividly (there were a few obvious parallels between the two books). What an exquisite masterpiece, an undying classic. Eliot achieved so much more than a good story; Middlemarch is social commentary, feminist protest, and a biting critique of the very structures that underpin English society. It deserves another read.

Fingersmith is a good story but that's all it is.

It's a perfect cure for the hangover caused by reading a book with no plot, as Sparkling Squirrel noted recently.



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Three Men in a Boat...

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A lovely little jaunt into the Victorian era; an absolute gem. I'd recommend this book for (preferably seaside) summer holiday reading -- light, entertaining, and short, with witty bits to read aloud to one's companions. Full of goofy anecdotes, crazy characters, escapades, and, of course, a dog.

If you've wondered how someone could write a whole book about a week he spent on the river with two of his mates, the answer is that he doesn't really stay on topic very long. One story leads to another... creating a very humorous picture of life in general.

There's the bit about someone's uncle hanging up a picture, and another bit when one of them gets lost in a hedge maze with a bunch of strangers and has to get rescued, and another bit where one of them was seasick for most of a voyage and the strawberries and cream came back to haunt him.

Just to give you a sense of the flavor of this book:

I had just been reading a patent liver-pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order; I had them all. It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form...

I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being "a general disinclination to work of any kind."...

As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness.

A fantastic self introduction if there ever was one!

Then we have various 'travel guide' bits:

Goring is not nearly so pretty a little spot to stop at as Streatley, if you have your choice; but it is passing fair enough in its way, and is nearer the railway in case you want to slip off without paying your hotel bill.
...

From Abingdon to Nuneham Courteney is a lovely stretch. Nuneham Park is well worth a visit. It can be viewed on Tuesdays and Thursdays... The pool under Sandford lasher, just behind the lock, is a very good place to drown yourself in.
...

To those who do contemplate making Oxford their starting-place, I would say, take your own boat -- unless, of course, you can take someone else's without any possible danger of being found out.

You can see how Jerome takes the tone of a travel guide and queers it, to make it slightly absurd, or ridiculous, but somehow, you can't help but feel, winsomely candid.

The river -- with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gilding gold the grey-green beech-trunks, glinting through the dark, cool wood paths, chasing shadows o'er the shallows... brightening every tiny townlet...

In passages like this one you can see Jerome making fun of a certain kind of flowery prose that was probably quite popular at the time. He goes on for a few pages, spouting drivel really, and then suddenly interrupts himself by crashing the boat into the bank.

The friends often tell each other stories, late into the night (and often drunk).

George told us about a man he had known, who had come up the river two years ago and who had slept out in a damp boat on just such another night as that was, and it had given him rheumatic fever, and nothing was able to save him...

And that put Harris in mind of a friend of his, who had been in the Volunteers, and who had slept out under canvas one wet night... "on just such another night as this," said Harris; and he had woke up in the morning a cripple for life...

This naturally led to some pleasant chat about sciatica, fevers, chills, lung diseases, and bronchitis...

Save this little book for a day when you need cheering up; for instance when your lovely seaside holiday has been rained out. This would be PERFECT.



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