bwl 35 - July 2006
Fiction
| Julian Barnes - Arthur & George
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| George Edjali, - solicitor son of a Scottish mother and Indian father, the local vicar in a Staffordshire village - is tried and shamefully convicted of mutilating horses following anonymous letters sent to the family. George endures a sentence of 7 years philosophically and courageously. On hearing of this scandalous miscarriage of justice, Arthur Conan Doyle, famous creator of Sherlock Holmes, determines to see justice done. Historically correct, Julian Barnes's 'novel' is a riveting account. (James Baker)
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| Susan Barrett - Fixing Shadows
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| Do not be fooled by the cover which hints at light hearted fun. This is an enjoyable first novel that has a dark tone, dealing as it does with obsession, power and relationships forged by necessity not love. The Duchess gives birth to a son - vital for her plans to ensure her power base; the baby dies - but in her lonely garret, the governess has also had a baby boy . . . The scene is set. (Ferelith Hordon)
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| A S Byatt - The Virgin in the Garden - Still Life - Babel Tower
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I've just re-visited with great pleasure these three out of the intended four novels (did she ever publish the fourth?*) tracing the career of bright, spiky Frederica and her family through the 1950s and 1960s, from the new Elizabethan Renaissance to cultural chaos and the questioning of all previously held certainties. From Yorkshire to London these inter-locking stories are rich in emblematic events and characters you come to love. What a writer!
*Editor's note: A Whistling Woman is the fourth novel in the quartet. (Annabel Bedini)
* Editor's note: A Whistling Woman is the fourth novel in the quartet. |
| Jonathan Coe - The Closed Circle
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| This is a sequel to The Rotters' Club (bwl 34). 30 years on, many of the same characters reappear, with Tony Blair's government in the background. As expected, the characters' fortunes have varied. Worth reading to see how, but I found it less amusing than the first volume. Nevertheless Coe is good at inventing memorable characters and unexpected situations as well as telling an interesting story. (Jeremy Swann)
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| Helen Dunmore - Mourning Ruby
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| A haunting, beautifully written novel involving rejection and loss, trust and friendship, the search for identity and meaning. It's a tale weaving stories within stories: an abandoned baby, a child killed in a road accident, the complexity of relationships in which the people involved might want to but do not share the same needs, perceptions and desires. A complex and rewarding read which despite its often harrowing subject matter ends on a note of optimism. (Jenny Baker)
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| Margaret Forster - Keeping the World Away
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| A painting by Gwen John. Several women needing space and time to reflect on their lives are strangely affected by this small, quiet picture depicting the corner of a room. The story, spanning a century up to the present day, cleverly connects these women who each encounter the painting in various locations, and experience a deeper understanding of themselves and the significance of a special space. Melancholic yet uplifting. (Mary Standing)
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| Abdulrazak Gurnah - Desertion
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| A stunning book, both satirical and moving, set in 1899 Kenya where English colonists, Islamic Indians and Arabs, as well as the 'muddled natives' of Africa cross paths. This tragic tale of cross-cultural love and loss takes us over three generations into the 1950s in Zanzibar. Gurnah artfully plays with the narrative point of view, which is sometimes disconcerting, but he weaves a brilliant story rather like a fugue, with the recurring motif of desertion. Definitely recommended! (Pamela Jaunin)
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| Nicole Krauss - The History of Love
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| Leo Gursky struggles to exist in modern day New York. Sixty years ago in Poland, he fell in love and wrote a book which unbeknown to him survived and now haunts the imagination of fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after his main character. His and her story unfold in tandem revealing the lies, half truths and passions of the past. Funny, moving, tantalising and entirely believable. Everything you could want from a great read. (Jenny Baker)
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| Valerio Massimo Manfredi - The Oracle
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| Dying, an old archaeologist re-hides a mysterious, sinister Greek vase - but not before it attracts unwanted attention. From then on things turn nasty . . . A superior pot-boiler in which the General's brutal, corrupt and repressive Greece of the 1970s (much of the action is based on factual accounts) collides with the mythical Greece of the Mycenaean age. Passages of strong writing and revealing scholarship of both recent and ancient history rate a 'recommended' read. (Clive Yelf)
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| Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black
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| The first third of this book is very good and promises more delights to come. However I felt it flagged after that, and was far too long for its own good. Very few of the questions posed are particularly answered, and when they are, those answers are not particularly interesting. And the characters basically bored me! Altogether, I found it rather disappointing and not at all the 'ghost story' I had thought it would be. (Julie Higgins)
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| Patrick O'Brian - Master and Commander
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| This is one of three Captain Aubrey novels I've devoured in the last month and if I had another to hand then I'd be reading it now. Not only entertaining but an education of the best possible sort, the characters nestle comfortably in their era and the story proceeds at its own pace. O'Brien is not a battles and action writer (possibly his weakest parts) but readers are soon willingly immersed in a living world. (Clive Yelf)
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| Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red
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| In Istambul in the 1600s traditional miniaturists are threatened with the arrival of new painting techniques from infidel Venice. High feelings lead to murder. But which of the surviving masters did the deed? And who will marry the beautiful Shekure? Each chapter is 'written' by the various characters - 'I will be called a murderer', 'I am your beloved Uncle' - and together they gradually build a potent, fascinating and believable atmosphere of intrigue. (Annabel Bedini)
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| Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
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| This is Sylvia Plath's only novel, and probably largely autobiographical. The narrator, Esther Greenwood, young, ambitious and intelligent, arrives in New York one hot summer to work on a women's magazine. As she tries to adjust to what she sees as the sophistication of the city she slowly slides into a nervous breakdown. I liked the controlled stark prose and the narrator's flashes of self-deprecatory humour, as well as the glimpses of 1950s New York. (Diana Davies)
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| Philip Roth - American Pastoral
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| A splendid book which presents more questions than it answers. It's about the American dream and where people fit into it, particularly in the characters of the Jewish 'hero', his disaffected daughter and his Christian wife. Their lives are split apart in one horrific incident, but . . . why is it told in the way it is? And is it the biography it ostensibly is, or not? What is Roth trying to do? Intriguing, extremely well-written and unputdownable. (Julie Higgins)
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| Rachel Seiffert - The Dark Room
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| WW II in an unfamiliar light, in effect three stories about ordinary Germans: Helmut, a young, patriotic photographer in the thirties; Lore, a twelve-year-old girl who guides her siblings across a devastated Germany after the Allies imprison her Nazi parents; and in the nineties, Misha, obsessed by what his beloved grandmother knew and what his grandfather might have done during the war. The use of the present tense gives a heart-stopping immediacy to the narrative. (Jenny Baker)
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| Anita Shreve - The Pilot's Wife
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| Kathryn is shattered when the plane piloted by her husband Jack crashes, appalled to hear rumours that he was responsible. Attempting to clear his name, she searches for clues to his last days and discovers that she hardly knew him. The plot is complex but increasingly gripping as the story gathers momentum and Kathryn learns more and more about Jack's double life. Good for a wet weekend (or a hot and sticky one). (Wendy Swann)
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Non-Fiction
| E H Gombrich - A Little History of the World
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| Written for children some seventy years ago - before the author's ground-breaking The Story of Art (bwl 13) - but published in English for the first time last year, this little book tells in an almost grandfatherly manner the history of western civilisation from the Stone Age to the age of the atom. The clarity and confidence of the writing make it a pleasure to read. Astonishingly, the author wrote it in six weeks when he was only 26. (Diana Davies)
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| Tony Hawks - Round Ireland with a Fridge
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| This amiable romp of a book manages to be both amusing and engaging without much obvious effort. Although ostensibly about completing a bet, the quest is less interesting than the characters and situations met along the way. In fact the author's unerring ability to publicise his trip on Irish radio and in the newspapers pretty much guarantees its success and ensures a steady flow of 'characters' willing to lend a hand (and an anecdote or two!). (Clive Yelf)
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| Rian Malan - My Traitor's Heart
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| South Africa at the end of apartheid seen through the eyes of renegade Afrikaner journalist who betrays his family's white-supremacy traditions to embrace the cause of the black nations. But is it that simple? The answer is "No". In the rigorously honest self-examination forced on him by events he discovers his pro-black activities may quell his own conscience but can't touch the black versus white conflict in himself and his country. Important truths here! (Annabel Bedini)
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| Walter J Ong - Orality & Literacy - The Technologizing of the Word
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| Has the development of written language changed, not only the way we record knowledge, but the way we think? Are pre-literate societies not primitive but profoundly different? This study shows that when memory is the basis of knowledge then formulas, lists, mnemonics and other mental structures engender a very human set of thought processes. When the written word introduces the notion of permanence then knowledge (and thought) is revolutionised. In a nutshell 'writing restructures consciousness'. (Clive Yelf)
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| Alexander Stille - The Future of the Past - How the Information Age Threatens to Destroy our Cultural Heritage
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| Just as we are able to use new technology to further our understanding of the past so population pressure, the black market, pollution, different cultural concepts and attitudes to history (with the western notion not always prevalent) conspire to erode and destroy the physical remains. This book comprises a series of essays that look at various aspects of our relationship to the past. Often fascinating, but some of the essays could be far more focussed. (Clive Yelf)
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| Lynne Truss - Talk to the Hand - The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life (or Six Good Reasons to stay home and bolt the door)
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| 'Talk to the hand 'cos the face ain't listening' is apparently the saying that gave this its title, though I failed to find its origin. Does any reader know? While not in the same league as the best-selling Eats, Shoots and Leaves (bwl 22), this book about manners (but don't expect knives and forks or thank-you letters) has got the Lynne Truss touch, making it both readable and funny. (Wendy Swann)
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| Sarah Walden - The Ravished Image - An Introduction to the Art of Picture Restoration & Its Risks
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| The author, who is one of the world's most experienced restorers, has worked on paintings by Old Masters such as Titian and Rembrandt. While not a manual, it contains fascinating information on the techniques and materials used as well as on the risks inherent in restoring. Based on her extensive knowledge of art history, she is insistent that any restoration should respect the original painter's intentions. Relevant writings of art historian Ernst Gombrich are included. (Jeremy Swann)
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| Bee Wilson - The Hive - The Story of the Honeybee and Us
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| Not about beekeeping but a fascinating glimpse through history, art and literature of mankind's many varied attempts to draw parallels with and inspiration for human society through studying and interpreting life in the hive. The bee while simply going about its business of making honey appears to have been all things to all men. Being christened Beatrice but always called Bee perhaps explains why the author became enamoured of her subject. An absorbing read. (Jenny Baker)
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| Feedback |
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Annabel Bedini writes:
May I add, not so much Feed-back as Feed-forward
Mental Health Warning: Avoid if it's not too late, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Apart from the horrible subject matter - cloned children for spare-part organs - the whole treatment is profoundly disturbing, dragging the reader into some kind of mushy world of Ishiguro's own strange psyche in which I was constantly asking Why? And anyway the whole story hangs on a huge plot-hole - why don't they run away? It left me feeling sick for weeks.
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Clive Yelf writes:
Thanks to the editors for providing the definitions of slobberchops from Bill Bryson's Made in America (bwl 34). However, I'm quite keen to point out that we as a family use it in the context of the second definition, that of a messy eater rather than the third, that of a lecherous old man. We have several of the former in the house but few (I hope) of the latter! Wait a few years of course and it might be a different story
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Jenny Baker writes:
In bwl 33 Feedback, there was a cri de coeur for something amusing as a change from the often serious content of many of the books we read. Well look no further than Alan Isler's The Living Proof (bwl 32). I'm reading it at the moment and it has me laughing out loud. Brilliant satirical humour which pricks the human bubble of self importance.
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