“Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left.” (Victor Hugo)

May 1, 2014November 19, 2020 / madamebibilophile / 10 Comments

Today is May Day, and I was thinking about the traditions of this time: celebration, revelry, pastoral fertility. Please note I said thinking about, not participating in. Confession time, reader: even though I’m in Oxford I didn’t want to do an all-night pub crawl/ball or get up at ridiculous o’clock to go to Magdalen Bridge for May Morning. I lay in bed, and because Oxford is so quiet I could hear the choir and bells anyway, and it was beautiful. Better warm in bed than in an inebriated crowd, I told myself. Before I seem too virtuous, I should tell you that I’m really just lazy, because an hour or so later I got up for a champagne breakfast. If this post seems even more waffly and incoherent than usual, you know why.

So, the traditions of May Day, and choosing books for this post made me think about the carnivalesque in novels. Mikhail Bakhtin said that the carnivalesque (this is a shockingly rough paraphrase) is a time when social hierarchies are overthrown in energetic riot: as norms are disregarded, reversed and subverted, anything can happen. Sounds like the spirit of May Day to me. Hence, for this post I’ve picked two novels that are carnivalesque/subversive in some way.

The Battle Between Carnival and Lent – Pieter Bruegel the Elder 1599 (Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_d._%C3%84._066.jpg )

My first choice is Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter (1984, Chatto & Windus). The minute I started to think about carnivalesque, this is what sprang to mind. I thought the summary on the dust jacket was spot-on, so here it is:

“Fevvers: the toast of Europe’s capitals, courted by princes, painted by Toulouse Lautrec, the greatest aerialiste of her time. Fevvers: somersaulting lazily through the air, hovering in the moment between the nineteenth century and the twentieth, between old dreams and new beginnings, born up by the spread of wings that can’t be real! Or- can they? Fevvers: the Cockney Venus, six foot two in her stockings, the coarsely lively and lovely heroine…Obsessed with Fevvers, constantly bamboozled by the anarchist sorcery of her dresser and confidante, Lizzie, the dashing young journalist Jack Walser stumbles into a journey which takes him from London to Siberia via legendary St Petersburg and out of his male certainties, into a transforming world of danger and joy, the world of Colonel Kearney’s circus…Featuring a cast of thousands, including : the clown’s requiem, the tigers’ waltz, the educated apes, the bashful brigands, the structuralist wizard. Not forgetting Sybil, the Mystic Pig.”

Just brilliant. I’ve said before that there’s no-one like Angela Carter, and Nights at the Circus is her writing at her very best. Fevvers voice leaps of the page at you in the first paragraph:

“Lor’ love you sir!” Fevvers sang out in a voice that clanged like dustbin lids. “As to my place of birth, why, I first saw the light of day right here in smoky old London, didn’t I! Not billed the ‘Cockney Venus’ for nothing…Hatched out of a bloody great egg while Bow Bells rang, as ever is!”

If that all sounds a bit “cor-blimey-luvvaduck-rent-a-cockney”, don’t worry. With Angela Carter you are never in the land of the stereotype, but in an exuberant world of characters the like of which you will never have met before, or since. She is master of the original and evocative image (“like dustbin lids”) and while her work is carnivalesque and destabilising, it’s also great fun. The circus is Carter’s world, which means anything can happen. But beneath all the sparkle and pizzazz, she creates a world of substance. Buffo the clown reflects:

“We are the whores of mirth, for, like a whore, we know what we are; we know we are mere hirelings hard at work yet those who hire us see us as beings perpetually at play. Our work is their pleasure and so they think our work must be our pleasure, too, so there is always and abyss between their notion of our work as play, and ours, of their leisure as our labour.”

Carter uses magic realism to explore how we construct reality, and how easily it can be deconstructed. Where better to do that than the circus? She plays with notions of gender and sexuality, challenging the idea that they are fixed entities, and explores how identity can be constantly created and recreated. Jack falls in love with Fevvers, unsure of who, or what, it is he loves: if he gets behind the image of the Cockney Venus, who will be there? Is she part bird? And who will he be in response?:

“When Walser first put on his make-up, he looked in the mirror and did not recognise himself. As he contemplated the stranger peering interrogatively back at him out of the glass, he felt the beginnings of a vertiginous sense of freedom , that, during all the time he spent with the Colonel, never quite evaporated; until that last moment where they parted company and Walser’s very self, as he had known it, departed from him, he experienced the freedom that lies behind the mask, with dissimulation, the freedom to juggle with being, and, indeed, with the language which is vital to our being, that lies at the heart of burlesque.”

Angela Carter clearly had a fierce intellect and something interesting to say about how we make our worlds. But she also didn’t let that get in the way of a good story. Nights at the Circus is a fantastic read, in all the senses of the word.

Secondly, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726, full text available online). Obviously, this novel is hugely famous (even if you haven’t read it I bet you know what physical feature distinguishes a Lilliputian). Lemuel Gulliver relates fantastical tales of his travels, and in the process Swift offers a satire on travel narratives (which were hugely popular in the eighteenth century as people travelled further and wider) and on the human condition. I chose it for this theme as it is full of inversions and reversals; Gulliver travels to Lilliput, where he is a giant, then to Brobdingnag where he is minute; to Laputa which he considers crude and unenlightened, then to the Houyhnhnms who consider him a “yahoo”. Gulliver’s Travels is episodic, so I’m just going to pick out a couple of events. Firstly, one of the most famous ones: many writers at the time were obsessed by bodily functions, and Swift is no different, though thankfully not nearly as scatological as some of his contemporaries. Here is Gulliver putting his urine to good use in Lilliput:

I was alarmed at midnight with the cries of many hundred people at my door; by which, being suddenly awaked, I was in some kind of terror….her imperial majesty’s apartment was on fire, by the carelessness of a maid of honour, who fell asleep while she was reading a romance. I got up in an instant; and orders being given to clear the way before me, and it being likewise a moonshine night, I made a shift to get to the palace without trampling on any of the people. I found they had already applied ladders to the walls of the apartment, and were well provided with buckets, but the water was at some distance. These buckets were about the size of large thimbles, and the poor people supplied me with them as fast as they could: but the flame was so violent that they did little good… this magnificent palace would have infallibly been burnt down to the ground, if, by a presence of mind unusual to me, I had not suddenly thought of an expedient. I had, the evening before, drunk plentifully of a most delicious wine called glimigrim, (the Blefuscudians call it flunec, but ours is esteemed the better sort,) which is very diuretic. By the luckiest chance in the world, I had not discharged myself of any part of it. The heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate by urine; which I voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper places, that in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, preserved from destruction.

And just to finish, here is a bit of the more heavy-handed satire for you, when the king of Brobdingnag responds to a summary of British politics:

“He was perfectly astonished with the historical account gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting “it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.”

I’ll leave it to you to decide if such motivations have left politics these days…

Gulliver’s Travels is a complex book, and one that is very hard to pin down: it is funny, it is sad, it can be read to children, it is baffling to adults. It shifts meaning and genre according to who is reading it: truly carnivalesque.

I was hoping to end with a clip of Bellowhead performing One May Morning Early: apt, no? But YouTube failed me. So here they are singing about a carnival romance instead:

“I’ve met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you’re twenty minutes.” (Billy Wilder)

April 21, 2014April 21, 2014 / madamebibilophile / 19 Comments

Happy Easter! For those of you who don’t celebrate this festival, I hope you’re enjoying the long weekend (and possibly an abundance of chocolate).

(Image from: http://www.sproutcontent.com/ )

For a theme for this post I was thinking about Easter, about sacrifice and redemption, and also about Spring, the season of renewal and regeneration that it coincides with. I’ve opted for a novel with a self-sacrificing main character, and a poem that starts in April. They’re both quite odd texts: here’s to a weird Bank Holiday!

Firstly, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (1989, Black Swan). Irving is an enormously popular author and Owen Meany is one of his most-loved protagonists: a boy “with a wrecked voice” who is so tiny people can’t resist picking him up, his skin “the colour of a gravestone; the light was both absorbed and reflected by his skin, as with a pearl, so that he appeared translucent at times”. The story is narrated by his best friend Johnny Wheelwright, who is trying to come to terms with the role Owen has played in his life. When they are 11, Owen hits a foul ball that kills Johnny’s mother immediately. The boys reconcile by swopping their most treasured possessions: “He gave me his baseball cards, but he really wanted them back, and I gave him my stuffed armadillo, which I certainly hoped he’d give back to me – all because it was impossible for us to say to each other how we really felt.”

When he returns the armadillo, Owen has taken its claws, which Johnny comes to realise is Owen’s way of telling him: “GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER. MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT. GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD’S INSTRUMENT.” Owen’s speech is always in capitals to represent his bizarre voice, and as a device it really works, marking him out not only against the other characters but also in the book itself – you can flick through and find Owen immediately. So, Owen is already unusual, but is even more extraordinary than people realise. He thinks he is God’s instrument, and certainly Johnny agrees: “I now believe that Owen Meany always knew; he knew everything.” The events of their lives mean not only that “Owen Meany rescued me” and gave Johnny Christian faith, but that Owen’s absolute conviction in a greater scheme of things and his capacity for self-sacrifice are tested to the extreme. It’s so hard to say any more without giving away spoilers, but I urge you to read it. A Prayer for Owen Meany is a novel as truly original as its protagonist, funny and sad, elegiac and uplifting.

Secondly, The Waste Land by TS Eliot, a hugely famous and notoriously difficult poem. For what it’s worth, I would say don’t let the reputation it put you off. If you fancy giving it a go, read it and let the “heap of broken images” wash over you, see what it brings. You can always re-read using the footnotes (which will be copious – and Eliot’s own notes add more confusion rather than explication) to translate the Latin, Greek etc and find out about the plethora of allusions. The poem begins:

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

These lines are an allusion to the start of The Canterbury Tales:

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes…

As you can see, Eliot takes the same premise but where Chaucer sees pastoral idyll (admittedly evoked a little ironically) Eliot sees something bleaker, death amongst the renewal, cruelty amongst the desire. The Waste Land is an odd, unsettling poem; its original title was going to be He Do the Police in Different Voices (a line from Our Mutual Friend) and The Waste Land is certainly a cacophony of voices, evoking different times, places and stories. As an embittered commuter who used to cross London Bridge every day, the following passage always sticks in my mind:

Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

The Waste Land does this frequently, takes images that almost seem commonplace, like commuters walking over a bridge, and then undermines it, in this instance when you realise they are all ghosts, their movement seemingly without purpose. The Waste Land is a poem that defies easy explanation and raises far more questions than it answers. It can be a frustrating read, but also a hugely rewarding one that benefits from multiple readings.

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded

I do not know whether a man or a woman

—But who is that on the other side of you?

For a very interesting discussion on The Waste Land and how we read, head over to Necromancy Never Pays.

I feel like I should picture the books with an egg as odd and unsettling as the books themselves, a dinosaur egg or something. (Or an armadillo egg? But I’m feeling too lazy to make them, it is a Bank Holiday after all…) So here they are instead with a reassuringly chocolatey easter egg, a present from my brother:

Bonjour Tristesse – Francoise Sagan (Le Monde’s 100 Books of the Century #41)

April 16, 2014April 30, 2014 / madamebibilophile / 24 Comments

This is part of a series of occasional posts where I look at works from Le Monde’s 100 Books of the Century. Please see the separate page (link at the top) for the full list of books and an explanation of why I would do such a thing.

Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan is a short novel (108 pages in my edition, the Penguin translation by Irene Ash), published in 1954 when the author was 18. Yes, 18. Apparently she failed to pass her exams for the Sorbonne and so decided to write a novel instead. As you do. And it’s a modern classic. I’m pretty sure I hate this woman. Rest assured it’s jealousy plain and simple, not xenophobia – there’s a lot of nonsense talked about British attitudes to our neighbours across Le Manche, but despite the fact that I would be at least 5kg lighter if France wasn’t there (je t’aime fromage bleu)I for one am a true Francophile. They are a great nation that has provided the world with at least two things guaranteed to cause uncontrollable dribbling in this blogger:

Almond croissants (or croissants aux amandes if you will) (Image from www.belleepooque.co.uk)

Vincent Cassel (Image from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/277745501994347016/)

To those of you concerned that I am objectifying Mr Cassel, I would just like to reassure you that I’m objectifying the croissant so much more, believe me.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, the extraordinary talent of Francoise Sagan. While the protagonist is a precocious 17 year old, Cecile, (so far, so thinly disguised autobiography) the psychological insights into the characters are sophisticated and you don’t feel like you’re reading someone’s juvenilia. Cecile is holidaying in the south of France with her father, an entirely vacuous widower whose temperament she shares:

“I soon noticed that he lived with a woman. It took me rather longer to realise that it was a different one every six months. But gradually his charm, my new easy life, and my own disposition led me to accept it. He was a frivolous man, clever at business, always curious, quickly bored, and attractive to women. It was easy to love him, for he was kind, generous, gay, and full of affection for me. I cannot imagine a better or more amusing friend.”

And that is just the problem – he is a friend, not a parent. He treats Cecile as a co-conspirator in life, buying her inappropriate dresses and taking her to casinos, talking to her as an equal:

“He refused categorically all notions of fidelity and serious commitments. He explained that they were arbitrary and sterile…I knew in his case they did not exclude either tenderness or devotion; feelings which came all the more easily to him since he was determined they should be transient…I was not at the age where fidelity was attractive. I knew very little about love.”

Into this self-serving world comes Anne, a friend of Cecile’s dead mother. She is cool and controlled:

“I think she rather despised us for our love of diversion and frivolity, as she despised all extremes.”

Yet, despite their differences, Cecile admires Anne and her father decides to marry this woman so different from himself. The decision does not sit well with Cecile:

“I thought of the lunch I had endured with clenched teeth, tortured by a feeling of resentment for which I despised and ridiculed myself. Yes, it was for this I reproached Anne: she prevented me from liking myself. I, who was so naturally meant for happiness and gaiety, had been forced into a world of self-criticism and guilty conscience, where, unaccustomed to introspection, I was completely lost.”

I don’t want to seem ageist, but clearly I am, as this self-ironising tone was not what I expected from such a young author. Cecile is spoilt and self-focused, and decides to split up her father and Anne so that her life can continue how she wants it to. She constantly vacillates, changing her mind and feelings with each moment, but her machinations regarding Anne move inexorably forward. The consequences are dramatic and will force Cecile to leave her childhood behind forever:

“Then gradually I begin to think of something else. But I do not like to take refuge in forgetfulness and frivolity instead of facing my memories and fighting them.”

Bonjour Tristesse is a melancholic novel (the title means Hello Sadness) about the prices we pay for the things we think we want. Francoise Sagan creates a memorable protagonist in Cecile and an affecting story within remarkably few words.

To end, the poster of the film adaptation made just four years after publication:

(Image from: http://docublogger.typepad.com/seberg/page/2/ )

“Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.” (Cary Grant)

February 16, 2014April 22, 2014 / madamebibilophile / 4 Comments

Happy (belated) Valentine’s Day! In my post for Valentine’s Day last year (which was also late…) I pointed out that St Valentine is the patron saint for bee keepers, plague, epilepsy and against fainting, as well as for lovers. Last year I wrote on bee-keeping and plague but this year I’m going to be more romantic and tell you about the man in my life. He’s always been there, but these last few weeks it’s like I’m seeing him with new eyes; now I’m obsessed and we spend hours together every day. The title quote may have given it away: he’s Cary Grant.

Let me explain. For my last paper before finals (FINALS! I’ve just broken out in a cold sweat….) we were given some optional papers to choose from, and I chose Film Criticism. We’ve been looking at Hollywood Golden Age, a genre Cary Grant sits astride like a tanned, debonair, mid-Atlantic-accented colossus. Having watched soooooo many of films again (and again, and again) I have a new-found appreciation for this actor with his exquisite comic timing. It’s not that I didn’t like him before, I just took him for (ahem) granted. This is how good he is: I had to analyse a scene from a film, and I chose something from Bringing Up Baby. It was 3 minutes 39 seconds long. I spent an entire day watching and re-watching the scene. Think about how many 3 minutes and 39 seconds there are in a day. That’s how many times I watched it. At the end of the day I was still laughing at his performance. The man is a genius. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day here he is with long-term boyfriend totally-platonic-friend-who-he-just-happened-to-live-with-for-twelve-years, Randolph Scott.

(Image from http://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/2010/09/cary_grant_and.php)

What a ridiculously good looking pair. Anyway, I thought for this post I would look at two of his favourite novels. According to IMDB he was a voracious reader. Do you think I can find out what he liked to read? Google, thou hast failed me. (Probably now I’ll be told that it’s really well-known that he loved Moby Dick or something, but I couldn’t find it). So instead I’ve chosen a James Bond novel as apparently the character was partly modelled on him and he was considered for the role in Dr No, and a short story by a writer who like Archie Leach was famous under a pseudonym.

Firstly, Casino Royale by Ian Fleming (1953). I’ll be honest, I went into this novel with very low expectations. Even the most avid Fleming fan will tell you that some of the novels are absolute bilge; apparently the quality of the Bond novels varies widely. This was the first Bond novel written and the first one I’d read, and I was pleasantly surprised. OK, Fleming isn’t a grand literary genius, but I doubt he ever proclaimed himself as such. Casino Royale is a decently written spy story. It’s quite different to the film, although similarities remain. I was expecting a flashy, superficial story but it’s a bit more reflective than that. It opens:

“The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling – a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension – becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.”

Bond has been sent to Royale-le-Eaux to take down a Russian spy, Le Chiffre, by bankrupting him at gambling. This being the Cold War, of course the baddies are Russian, and there’s also the rather sinister SMERSH, a Russian covert group whose name means “death to spies” lurking in the background. That’s the very simple premise of the story. Along the way there are lingering descriptions of clothes, cars and food (Fleming was clearly something of a gourmand), but the presentation of Bond is more complex than I was expecting. I don’t think the reader is supposed to wholly like him or trust him:

“His last action was to slip his right hand under the pillow until it rested under the butt of the .38 Colt […] Then he slept, with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal and cold.”

Bond is more human than in the films (he vomits in the gory aftermath of an explosion). He’s also damaged and flawed, more in keeping with the later filmic representations. Very much of its time, however, is the misogyny:

“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.”

As well as this general sexism, there’s also a worryingly easy conflation of sex with violence:

“Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued.”

Truly obnoxious and offensive. But in Fleming’s defence I would say that he seems more emotionally intelligent than his protagonist and we’re not supposed to see Bond as a role model in this sense. There’s also a good dose of humour in the novel which encourages us not to take Bond entirely as seriously as he takes himself:

“Englishmen are so odd. They are like a nest of Chinese boxes. It takes a very long time to get to the centre of them. When one gets there the result is unrewarding, but the process is instructive and entertaining.”

So, Casino Royale was better than I expected. It’s attitudes to women and Eastern Europeans are dated and offensive but as I said, I don’t get the sense the novel fully endorsed the attitude of its protagonist. It’s a quick, light read (although the descriptions of gambling dragged a bit in places) and for me it was good introduction to the Bond novels.

Secondly, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1867) by Mark Twain. What an irresistible title. Twain was a fairly prolific short story writer, but this was only the second one he wrote. You can read the full text of it here. It really is a very short tale, and shows how much can be done in so limited a space by an accomplished writer. It opens:

In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend’s friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.

As you can see, Twain’s humour is at the forefront (if you hadn’t already guessed by the title) and the mix of the ridiculous (“Leonidas W Smiley is a myth”) and the dry (“as long and tedious as it should be useless”) makes the story hugely entertaining. It’s certainly a confident writer who tells a tale he says will be tedious, and Twain does this not once but twice: “Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph.” Simon Wheeler’s story of a gambling addict (Jim Smiley) who will bet on anything is directly reported, and he has one of the distinctive Southern voices Twain is so famed for, such as when he’s recounting how Jim trains the titular frog:

“He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal’klated to edercate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He’d give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you’d see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut see him turn one summerset, or may be a couple, if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat.”

There are some lovely touches in this story. I particularly liked the line: “Smiley said all a frog wanted was education” and the fact that the frog is endowed with the decidedly un-froggy full name of “Dan’l Webster”. A quick read that children and adults will enjoy.

To end, here is a clip from The Philadelphia Story, and just possibly the most charming 3 minutes and 46 seconds ever committed to celluloid. Apparently the bit where Cary Grant says “excuse me” was ad-libbed & that’s why he & James Stewart are trying not to laugh. Enjoy!

Feminist Sundays: The Woman Who Walked into Doors – Roddy Doyle

December 22, 2013March 31, 2014 / madamebibilophile / 5 Comments

Feminist Sundays is a meme created by Elena over at Books and Reviews. Here’s what she says about it: “Feminist Sundays is a weekly meme created at Books and Reviews. The aim is simply to have a place and a time to talk about feminism and women’s issues. This is a place of tolerance, creativity, discussion, criticism and praise. Remember to keep in mind that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, although healthy discussion is encouraged.” Do head over to Books and Reviews to read the excellent posts for this meme so far.

This week for Feminist Sundays I thought I’d put a downer on Christmas – if you’re full of festive cheer you may want to stop reading now. I love Christmas, and I’ve had a great time this week decorating my flat (OK, so I’m a bit behind), wrapping presents and icing Christmas cakes. I do this in anticipation of the day itself which for me will be fun, silly, relaxed, full of food, and getting slightly tipsy (OK, fairly drunk – when else do you drink alcohol at breakfast? Why does the birth of Jesus make early morning Bucks Fizz acceptable? Whatever – it’s a fine tradition) in the company of my lovely family. I can confidently state in advance that there will be no weird atmospheres, no aggression, no physical assaults. But this is not the case for everyone. Unfortunately, the Christmas period consistently sees a rise in domestic violence compared with the rest of the year. And although I’m looking at this topic as part of Feminist Sundays, (as the majority of domestic violence cases are male violence towards women) domestic violence can happen to anyone: any gender, any sexuality. It’s a subject Roddy Doyle explored in his 1996 novel, The Woman Who Walked into Doors.

The novel is narrated by Paula Spencer, a woman who is beaten regularly by her violent husband Charlo. Paula works as a domestic cleaner, and self-medicates with alcohol. Hers is a voice rarely heard in fiction; Doyle does a brilliant job creating the character and all that surrounds her through a narrative that intertwines the present with reminiscences of the past:

“Where I grew up – and probably everywhere else – you were a slut or a tight bitch, one or the other, if you were a girl – and usually before you were thirteen. You didn’t have to do anything to be a slut. If you were good-looking; if you grew up fast. If you had a sexy walk; if you had clean hair, if you had dirty hair. If you wore platform shoes, and if you didn’t. Anything could get you called a slut. My father called me a slut the first time I put on mascara. I had to go back up to the bathroom and take it off. My tears had ruined it anyway.”

Into this world comes Charlo Spencer, a sexy man who literally takes Paula’s breath away: “I suddenly knew that I had lungs because they were empty and collapsing.” The romance of their first meeting contains a horrible irony in the soundtrack:

“His timing was perfect. The Rubettes stopped and Frankie Valli started singing My Eyes Adored You.[…] He’d been drinking. I could smell it but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t drunk. His arms rested on my hips and he brought me round and round.

-But I never laid a hand on you-

My eyes adored you-

I put my head on his shoulder. He had me.”

This is immediately followed by a description of the aftermath of an assault:

“I knew nothing for a while, where I was, how come I was on the floor. Then I saw Charlo’s feet, then his legs, making a triangle with the floor. He seemed way up over me. […] his face was full of worry and love. He skipped my eyes. – You fell, he said.”

Charlo’s violence escalates, and Paula gradually comes to realise that he will not change, and that she is not alone in this experience. Doyle achieves the extraordinary balance of writing responsibly about a serious subject and still providing hope:

“For seventeen years. There wasn’t one minute when I wasn’t afraid, wasn’t waiting. Waiting to go, waiting for him to come. Waiting for the fist, waiting for the smile. I was brainwashed and braindead, a zombie for hours, afraid to think, afraid to stop, completely alone. I sat at home and waited. I mopped up my own blood. I lost all my friends, and most of my teeth.”

Ultimately Paula is a survivor: Doyle returned to her in the sequel Paula Spencer, ten years later. I haven’t read the sequel (one of many on my TBR pile) but I highly recommend TWWWID. Roddy Doyle is hugely talented at capturing authentic voices in his writing, and TWWWID is no exception.

If you are affected by domestic violence, please, please contact Refuge (UK) or the equivalent service in your country. They are there to help, not to judge. Here’s a powerful video make-up artist Lauren Luke made on behalf of Refuge:

“You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.” (Sherlock Holmes/Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

December 9, 2013April 22, 2014 / madamebibilophile / 10 Comments

Yesterday I was vegging out in front of the TV, when I saw something that got me very excited:

Sherlock’s back! Sherlock’s back! Sherlock’s back!

OK, now I’ve composed myself, let’s have a discussion about books. Sherlock’s back!

I’ve gone the obvious route for my first choice, one of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I chose it because I think this was the first story that made me aware of Sherlock Holmes, watching an old black and white film version starring Basil Rathbone on TV (my mother told me the books were much better and the portrayal of Watson was rubbish – how right she was). The story is not long, but it crams a great deal in, and is a fast-paced, creepily gothic read. The story is narrated by Holmes’ loyal companion Dr Watson, who remains loyal despite being on the receiving end of such back-handed compliments from Holmes as: “It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.” Charming. The two are employed by Dr Mortimer to investigate the death of Sir Charles Baskerville, and potential danger to his heir, Sir Henry Baskerville. Henry has inherited a huge pile in the middle of Dartmoor, and rumours of a supernatural, vicious hound that roams the moor abound. The eerie atmosphere is beautifully evoked, such as Watson’s first view of Baskerville Hall:

“We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip.

“Baskerville Hall,” said he.

[…]

The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenelated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke.

“Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!””

The story really is expertly crafted, and it’s understandable why Sherlock Holmes endures. Doyle succeeds in writing pacey, interesting, atmospheric tales that keep you hooked until the end. And of course, at the centre of it all is one of the most intriguing characters ever created: a brilliant mind for whom no detail is insignificant, and whose genius means he is stimulated in ways that the rest of us may not fully comprehend: “He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.”

I’ll stop right there before I give away any spoilers as to the mystery. On to my second choice, Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers (1923, my copy 2003, Hodder & Stoughton). Sayers is one of the authors identified with the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, and this novel is the first to feature Lord Peter Wimsey, an aristocratic amateur detective, who likes to “go off Sherlocking” and went on to feature in many more novels and short stories by Sayers.

I found this novel hugely enjoyable. It was well-paced (maybe flagging a little towards the end, but maybe I’m just used to Hollywood-style rapid denouements) it was witty, and didn’t take itself too seriously, with a few meta-comedy moments at the expense of detective fiction: “Sugg’s a beautiful, braying ass,” said Lord Peter. “he’s like a detective in a novel…”; “Its only in Sherlock Holmes and stories like that , that people think things out logically.”

As the meta moments suggest, Sayers is a clever novelist. But I never felt she was trying to prove how clever she was. The story, of a body found in a bathtub and a missing family friend (events Lord Peter believes are connected), remains believable and accessible. Sayers has a confident voice in her first novel, and an interesting turn of phrase: “His long, amiable face looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat, as white maggots breed from Gorgonzola.”

I have one proviso to this recommendation: I found offensive the anti-Semitic remarks made by some characters in Whose Body? . The inter-war period was obviously a time that saw a growth in fascism throughout Europe with devastating consequences, and Sayers is probably just putting in her characters’ mouths the repugnant views that were expressed at the time. According the Wikipedia page on Sayers, she was surprised at accusations of anti-Semitism in Whose Body?, stating the only characters “treated in a favourable light were the Jews!” Certainly those who express anti-Jewish views are generally portrayed as old-fashioned and/or stupid, but it still makes for uncomfortable reading in this day and age.

I don’t want to end on a negative, so for all you fellow bibliophiles out there, here is a description of Lord Peter’s favourite room:

“Lord Peter’s library was one of the most delightful bachelor rooms in London. Its scheme was black and primrose; its walls were lined with rare editions, and its chairs and Chesterfield sofa suggested the embraces of the houris. In one corner stood a black baby-grand, a wood fire leaped on a wide old-fashioned hearth, and the Sevres vases on the chimney-piece were filled with ruddy and gold chrysanthemums.”

I for one could spend hours in that room.

Normally I finish with a picture of the books, but they have disappeared, nowhere to be found. ‘Tis truly a mystery: who could I call on, that is up to the task of solving this curious case…..?

(Image from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018ttws )

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” (Variously attributed)

November 27, 2013March 31, 2014 / madamebibilophile / 2 Comments

I was thinking about how this blog is supposed to be themes that relate books to life and how there are gaping holes in what I’ve covered so far. This week I attempt to redress the balance by picking something that is a huge part of most people’s lives: music. However, as the title quote shows, I may be digging myself the most enormous hole here, as trying to capture an aural experience through words is nigh on impossible. Let’s take a breath and have some music so if nothing else this post does make some sort of melodic offering. One of my favourite bands, and one of my mother’s favourite songs, Frogs Legs and Dragon’s Teeth by Bellowhead:

That was for you Maman! Right, back to books, and two brave writers who’ve made music a big part of their novels.

Firstly The Courage Consort by Michel Faber (Canongate, 2002). I’m fan of Michel Faber’s writing – I love his sparse style and unpredictability. Anything can happen his books, there’s no “typical Faber”. The Courage Consort is a novella (121 pages in my edition) told from the point of view of Catherine, one of five members of the titular a capella group headed by her husband, Roger. Catherine is emotionally fragile (we are introduced to her trying to decide whether to jump out of the window) and her husband seemingly oblivious to her pain. They join three others to rehearse an insanely complex piece called Partitum Mutante in an eighteenth-century chateau in Belgium. The composer arrives briefly to assist them, a madman who attacked his ex with a stiletto in an airport and tells them to make their singing “more extreme, but more soft also…quiet but loud”. Working on this seemingly doomed project, the disparate personalities that make up “the seventh most-renowned serious vocal ensemble in the world” start to come into conflict, but not in an entirely predictable way.

Faber creates a believably comic situation and the characters are generally well-observed, if bordering on national stereotypes at times. The character of Catherine is sympathetic and Faber shows how music carries over into her musings about life in general:

“Other people might think it was terribly exciting when two females singing in thirds made the airwaves buzz weirdly, but Catherine was finding that her nerves were no longer up to it. Even the way a sustained A flat tended to make an auditorium’s air-conditioning hum gave her the creeps lately. It was as if her face was being rubbed in the fact that music was all soundwaves and atoms when you stripped the Baroque wrapping-paper off it. But too much sonic nakedness wasn’t good for the spirit. At least that was what she was finding lately, since she’d started coming…adrift.”

But things are not necessarily what they seem: Catherine hears screaming in the night and is told a ghost story about the forest that surrounds them. No-one else hears it, and Catherine goes on to have an experience in the forest which is not told to the reader. This lack of explication stops The Courage Consort being a straightforwardly comic novel, as an eeriness creeps around the house and its inhabitants. Things do not go as planned, but ultimately the group comes to fully comprehend just how healing the experience of music can be.

Secondly, Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty (Vintage, 1997). Grace Notes tells the story of another Catherine, this one a composer struggling to manage her art alongside the demands of her life. These demands include a new baby and ensuing post-natal depression, her father’s death, and conflict with her mother. Musicality comes naturally to her, and she has an innate understanding form an early age:

“One day, when she was only three or four, she’d slipped away from the kitchen as her mother baked and listened to the radio. On this particular day the piano lid was open. Catherine had reached up above her head and pressed the keys as softly as she could. No sound came from them. She had to press harder to make the sound come. It frightened her when it did. Dar, deep , thundery. The booming faded away and the noise of the birds outside came back. She tried further up the piano where the notes were nicer, not so frightening. She pressed a single note, again and again. It wasn’t the note which made her feel funny – it was the sound it made as it faded away. The afterwards. It made her feel lonely. “

This idea, later defined as “the notes between the notes” – grace notes – is the novel’s theme and main image: what happens in the spaces between events, what is left unsaid, what is defined and what is undefinable. Catherine gradually comes to terms with her life throughout the course of the novel and moves onwards, creating a new symphony, but the grace notes continue: “it began with a wisp of music, barely there – a whispered five-note phrase on the violins and she was right back on that beach with her baby. […] Like the artist’s hand which moves to begin a drawing but makes no mark”. Having described Catherine’s life in an interwoven way – memories that come to her interspersed with descriptions of her life in the present – MacLaverty describes her music similiarly, the literal description of the action of instruments interwoven with the images that have inspired Catherine as she writes the symphony. It’s a highly effective method, and probably the nearest I’ve read to a representation of sound, and the feeling it evokes, written down.

As the novels are about two musical women, here they are pictured with two more musical women: Dusty Springfield and Lily Allen Cooper:

“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens/Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens/Brown paper packages tied up with strings/These are a few of my favourite things” (Maria Rainer/Julie Andrews, The Sound of Music)

November 20, 2013April 22, 2014 / madamebibilophile / Leave a comment

I write to you from within a fog of lemsip and cough syrup. Yes, this week I’ve had a grotty cold. Nothing major by any means, but just enough to make me feel grim and make the days a little greyer. So I thought for this post I’d cheer myself up and be totally self-indulgent, by choosing two books that are thematically linked only in the fact that they are two of my favourites.

Firstly, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor (Bloomsbury, 2002). This was McGregor’s first novel, longlisted for the Booker, and written when he was only twenty-six. Choking down my jealousy, I am able to tell you that the accolades are highly deserved. I think this is such a beautifully written, confident debut. It tells the story of an ordinary street and its ordinary inhabitants, over the course of a day.

“The short girl with the painted toenails, next door, she says oh but did you see that guy on the balcony, he was nice, no he was special and she savours the word like a strawberry, you know she says, the one on the balcony, the one who was speeding and kept leaning right over, and they all know exactly who she means, he’s in the same place most weeks, pounding out the rhythm like a panelbeater, fists crashing down into the air, sweat splashing from his polished head.”

“In his kitchen, the old man measures out the tea-leaves, drops them into the pot, fills it with boiling water. He sets out a tray, two cups, two saucers, a small jug of milk, a small pot of sugar, two teaspoons. He breathes heavily as his hands struggle up to the high cupboards, fluttering like the wings of a caged bird.”

“She opens her front door, just a little, just enough, and she hops down her front steps, the young girl from number nineteen, glad to be out of the house and away from the noise of her brothers. The television was boring and strange anyway, it was all people talking and she didn’t understand. She taps her feet on the pavement, listening to the sound her shiny black shoes make against the stone…”

I hope these three examples give a good idea of why I love this novel so much. McGregor is so skilled at finding the poetry in ordinary lives and how the self is expressed through seemingly innocuous actions. Gradually the inhabitants of the street emerge as fully realised characters from the details of this one day. This narrative is intertwined with a first person narrative, and you begin to realise that something significant, and tragic, took place on this ordinary day. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things is a novel of startling sensitivity and lyricism.

If this has whetted your appetite for McGregor’s novels, I discuss his second novel, So Many Ways to Begin here.

Secondly, Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov trans. George Bird (1996, English translation 2001, Harvill Press). How to describe this novel? It’s frankly a bit bonkers and one of those I think I understand, but maybe it’s about something else entirely. It’s a great read though. It tells the story of Viktor, an aspiring writer who gets a job writing obituaries, and his pet penguin Misha, who he took on when Kiev zoo gave all its animals away: “he had been feeling lonely. But Misha brought his own kind of loneliness, and the result was now two complimentary lonelinesses, creating an impression more of interdependence than amity.”

The character of this depressed penguin is as vividly realised as any of the human characters, and you really start to feel for this bird who symbolises the existential crisis of his owner and others caught up in a post-Soviet world that they do not understand: “Sleeping lightly that night, Viktor heard an insomniac Misha roaming the flat, leaving doors open, occasionally stopping and heaving a deep sigh, like an old man weary of both life and himself.”

The fragile relationship between Viktor and Misha is tested to its limit by a series of surreal events. Viktor’s friend Misha-Non-Penguin leaves his daughter Sonya with Viktor, and so he drifts into a family unit with this self-contained little girl and her nanny. But meanwhile, someone is using his obituaries as a hit-list, and he is being followed by a mysterious stranger known only as the fat man…

“The Chief considered him through narrowed eyes.

“Your interest lies in not asking questions,” he said quietly. But bear in mind this: the minute you’re told what the point of your work is, you’re dead. […] He smiled a sad smile. “Still, I do, in fact, wish you well. Believe me.””

Death and the Penguin is a surreal adventure story, a post-Soviet satire, an examination of the individual spirit up against forces that seek to control. It’s funny and it’s sad, it has something to say, and it says it in a truly unique and engaging way.

Here are the novels with another of my favourite things, my psychotic cat (he looks calm in this photo, but trust me, he is hell-bent on world domination):

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” (Winston Churchill)

November 13, 2013April 22, 2014 / madamebibilophile / 4 Comments

10 November was Remembrance Sunday, and so for this post I thought I would look at two novels dealing with the theme of war.

Firstly, Regeneration by Pat Barker (Penguin, 1991). This was the first novel Barker wrote in the Regeneration trilogy, the other two being The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road. I actually think The Ghost Road is the strongest of the three, but Regeneration is still an expertly crafted novel, and although each novel in the trilogy stands alone, I think it’s preferable to start at the beginning. Regeneration tells the story of Dr WHR Rivers, a psychiatrist at Craiglockhart hospital during the First World War, and his shell-shocked soldier patients, including the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Although fiction, the novel is based on true events and Dr Rivers is a real-life character as well as the poets. Barker said she chose the character of Rivers as, not being a soldier herself, she had to find a voice with some distance from the trenches. Although this is the case, the way Barker looks at the horrors of war is unflinching. I’m about to quote something truly atrocious, brace yourselves or scan past it:

“Burns arms were goose-pimpled, though the room was not cold. The smell of vomit lingered on his breath. Rivers sat down beside him. He didn’t know what to say, and thought it better to say nothing. After a while he felt the bed begin to shake and put his arm round Burns’ shoulders. “It doesn’t get any better, does it?” […]

Burns. Rivers had become adept at finding bearable aspects to unbearable experiences, but Burns defeated him. What had happened to him was so vile, so disgusting, that Rivers could find no redeeming feature. He’d been thrown into the air by the explosion of a shell and had landed, head-first, on a German corpse, whose gas-filled belly and had ruptured on impact. Before Burns lost consciousness, he’d had time to realise that what filled his nose and mouth was decomposing human flesh. Now, whenever he tried to eat, that taste and smell recurred. Nightly he relived the experience, and from every nightmare he awoke vomiting.”

Horrors like this are almost impossible to contemplate, and even more upsetting when you realise things like this actually happened. Within this context, amongst their traumatised and screaming comrades, Sassoon and Owen try to express their disgust and anger through verse:

““What draft is this?”

“Lost count,” said Owen. “You did tell me to sweat my guts out.”

“Did I really? What an inelegant expression. “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” I see we got to the slaughterhouse in the end.” Sassoon read through the poem. When he’d finished, he didn’t immediately comment.

“It’s better isn’t it?”

“Better. It’s transformed.” […] He thought for a moment, crossed one word out, substituted another. “There you are,” he said, handing the page back, smiling. “Anthem for Doomed Youth.””

Regeneration is not a long novel, 249 pages in my edition, but Barker crams so much in and I’ve barely scratched the surface here. Alongside the issues of war, she considers themes of madness, what society expects from men, and what it expects from women. How the state can betray its citizens, and what we can give to each other in times of crisis.

Here is a clip from Gilles MacKinnon’s excellent 1995 adaptation of Regeneration (released as Behind the Lines in some countries), including some lines from one of Wilfred Owen’s greatest poems, Dulce et Decorum Est:

Secondly, further back in time to the Crimean War, Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge (Abacus, 1998). This was the novel for which Bainbridge was posthumously awarded a Booker Prize in 2011, with a special prize, the Best of Beryl. I haven’t read all of Bainbridge’s books, so I can’t vouch for whether it’s her best, but it’s certainly highly accomplished. It tells the story of George Hardy, a surgeon and photographer who, after a family tragedy, decides to leave Liverpool for the Crimea. His adoptive sister Myrtle and geologist brother-in-law Dr Potter accompany him, alongside fire-eater and sometime lover of George, Pompey Jones. These three voices narrate the story, and learning about the eponymous character from others is entirely appropriate, as George is an enigmatic and conflicted man, as obscure as one of his blackened and fading photographic images . As Myrtle observes:

“There’s a sameness about death that makes the emotions stiffen – which is for the best, else one would be uselessly crying all day long. It’s why Georgie often seems insensitive to other people’s feelings. Dealing with the dying, one must either blunt the senses or go mad.”

Amongst the filth and squalor of the Crimean battlefields, all see death more often than not. Bainbridge presents it in a determinedly low-key way; the Charge of Light Brigade happens outside the story, and Dr Potter’s pragmatic response speaks volumes about the dehumanising effects of war:

“I am in two minds as to whether I should bother to pack my tent, it being in a wretched state, perfectly sodden and much holed. It would be better for my health if I slept in the hospital tent, though that too is in a deplorable condition. I am at least better off as far as transport is concerned; three days ago over two hundred cavalry horses of the Light Brigade stampeded into camp, their riders having perished in a charge along the north valley.”

It may not be “Half a league, half a league, half a league onward…” but while Bainbridge shuns Tennyson’s pomp, her use of small detail says more than enough about the futility of the combat and the waste of human lives. Master Georgie is a haunting novel that stayed with me long after I finished it.

Here are the novels with the symbol of Remembrance Sunday, a poppy:

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language /And next year’s words await another voice.” (TS Eliot)

November 7, 2013March 31, 2014 / madamebibilophile / 12 Comments

Today marks a year since my first blog post. During the year I’ve got so much more out of blogging than I ever thought possible, and that is due in no small part to my fellow bloggers, you gorgeous bunch. So I thought it would be apt to commemorate my first year by looking at a piece of writing by another WordPress blogger.

(Image from http://www.juicyoccasions.co.uk/2012_02_01_archive.html)

Becky Mayhew blogs at Becky Says Things. Her blog is funny, insightful and truly original. Do check it out, I promise you will be better for it as Becky points and laughs at the absurdities of life, and has something interesting to say about it all too. In 2011, Becky had a collection of short stories published by the lovely Treehouse Press, Lost Souls. It is collection of three stories, “Shelves”, “Ramona” and “Roses”.

“Shelves” is told to us by a librarian, whose sexual encounters are intertwined with her job and the reading matter of her partners. So she sleeps with the “insipid, vole-like” Geoffrey when he takes on board her suggestion to abandon John Grisham for Jane Austen, and later, after Wuthering Heights:

“I think the dynamic impression of hot-blooded Heathcliff had gone to his head a little, as he had the audacity to suggest we go back to mine. I conceded, and took him round the corner along the twelve houses to my flat, almost entirely for my own personal interest in what a week of Heathcliff does to a man; as it turned out, less than I hoped.”

As the passage above shows, there’s a wry, dry humour running through the tale, and the librarian’s voice is strong and distinctive. There are some beautiful images and Becky has an original turn of phrase:

“His eyes slid like oil over titles, one black eyebrow raised; occasionally he paused to finger a book spine or to bend to a lower shelf, and then he moved on, disappearing and reappearing in and out of bookcases like a thief.”

Fellow bibliophiles, didn’t we always know that libraries are hotbeds of sexual tension?

The narrator of “Ramona” is a middle-aged teacher, struggling to assert herself in all aspects of her life. I know enough teachers to know the description of how “it is depressing trying to teach a class of idiots who are far more interested in their social and sexual status than in how Margaret Atwood develops her characters” rings true. The narrator’s interest in one of her pupils, Ramona Manson, is slightly baffling to her, as Ramona “is not charming, she is not beautiful, she is not even particularly threatening”, and yet, she goes through life with an ease the narrator cannot achieve, and with a sense of authority that continually evades the older woman. The plot of “Ramona” is a simple one, and yet through this largely unremarkable time the fracture lines in the teacher’s life become fully exposed. The story is an artfully constructed portrait of an ordinary life teetering on the edge.

I loved the first line of the final story, “Roses”: “There he is, inside a flaming scarlet halo.” It’s a perfect example of what is to come – a beautifully written, unnerving, and insidiously violent tale. Unlike the other two stories, “Roses” is told in the third person, from the point of view of Elizabeth, a florist and fantasist, for whom the flowers are people:

“The bamboo chuckles raspingly under its breath. The lilies poke out their tongues; the sunflowers nod on their aching necks, shoulders shaking with weary laughter…”

Elizabeth spends her day obsessed with a man who uses the coffee shop opposite her florists:

“Sometimes she can feel him, in the long stretches when she is alone with her flowers; she can feel a presence, a warmth about her, as though he is sitting right there beside her, breathing her perfumed air. Their worlds beautifully interlaced like the coiling infinity of an open rose.”

That last sentence is such perfectly balanced writing: an image of originality and meaning without any pretension or heavy-handedness. I don’t want to say too much more about “Roses” as it would give the plot away, but the final page of this book, containing the last four short paragraphs of this story, was breathtakingly well-written. The images are startling and evocative, and I absolutely loved this story. Becky has blogged in the past about her tendency to procrastinate. I can only hope she is more successful than me at beating this behaviour, because I want to read more of her work very soon…

On their website, Treehouse Press say “we want our books to be unique and beautiful objects, a thing you’d want to hold in your hand, and also for the writing and the artwork to engage you”. Hopefully I’ve convinced you of the engaging quality of Becky’s writing. In the book the stories are alongside the haunting images of Paul G. Vine’s photographs, certainly making it a lovely object. You can buy Lost Souls direct from the publisher at http://www.treehousepress.co.uk/products/lost-souls , so if you’d like to get Becky’s book can I enter a plea that you buy it there and not from a certain tax-avoiding multi-national company?

(Image from http://www.treehousepress.co.uk/products/lost-souls )

Thanks to everyone who’s looked at the blog/followed/commented/re-blogged etc and made the last year such a joy!

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