2000s

The Book Thief

StuckinaBook All , 6 Comments

Thanks for all your feedback on covers yesterday – I find this sort of thing really interesting, the thought and research which must go into cover design.

Onto the contents. I had to read The Book Thief very quickly, for my book group, but I hope that didn’t affect my enjoyment of it too much. Enjoyment perhaps a strange word for a book about Nazi Germany narrated by death (I’m going to assume everyone is familiar with the plot, as I seem to be the last person in the world to read the book, but if not then the Wikipedia article gives a brief summary).

There were lots of interesting ideas in the novel – the perspective of Death; the (adoptive) family dynamics in times of great stress; how the public could accept atrocities and how they covertly battled against them. These could all form a blog post, especially Death as a character (which I thought had moments of being very moving, as when he said he always carried the dead children up in his arms) but my favourite thing about The Book Thief was the role of books. It’s evident from the title that books are significant – throughout the novel she steals six books, I think. Just over one for every hundred pages. They form the centre of her world – she learns to read with The Gravedigger’s Handbook and this sets the tone for the fairly arbitrary nature of her spoils – but her understanding of their importance is something we can all adhere to, I’m sure.

More than anything, I love her response to seeing the mayor’s wife’s room full of books. Having only held a few in her life, she suddenly sees shelves and shelves of them:

[…]She said it out loud, the words distributed into a room that was full of cold air and books. Books everywhere! Each wall was armed with overcrowded yet immaculate shelving. It was barely possible to see the paintwork. There were all different styles and sizes of lettering on the spines of the black, the red, the grey, the every-coloured books. It was one of the most beautiful thins Liesel Meminger had ever seen.

With wonder, she smiled.

That such a room existed!

Even when she tried to wipe the smile away with her forearm, she realised instantly that it was a pointless exercise[…]

Markus Zusak (as well as being the first author beginning with ‘Z’ whom I’m read) is a talented story-teller, and The Book Thief is an impressive novel. I didn’t love it abundantly, perhaps because some of the themes weren’t fully realised and a little too much time was spent on the establishing of relationships between Liesel and her friends and family for my liking – but these qualms aside, I did like the novel very much. Anything this affectionate about books can’t be bad.

Quirky

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Thanks for your advice, I’ve done something which I haven’t done in a couple of years – given up on a book. Bye bye Kevin, you’re back on the bookshelf, for the time being at least. I know a lot of you believe books should be discarded if they’re not working for you at page 50, but I can’t adopt that policy. I feel I’ve entered into some sort of contract with the author – if they’ve put months into writing it, I can put days into reading it. So I only give up in exceptional circumstances.

And what have I read instead? Well, I actually picked it up yesterday because the computer was taking ages to load and it was the nearest book to me – but got hooked and finished it today. Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives by Richard Wiseman. It’s so modern that it was a website (quirkology.com) and a YouTube channel, and that’s more than Jane Austen ever had.

It doesn’t sound usual Stuck-in-a-Book fare, and I suppose it’s not, but one of the other books I’ve enjoyed this year was Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. That was a book detailing psychological illnesses witnessed by Dr. Sacks, and his methods of treating them, in a manner which demonstrated his empathy as well as intelligence. Quirkology is rather more silly, though still keen to point out its scientific credentials – it’s all about Wiseman’s psychological experiments and what insights he has discovered into everyday lives. The psychological equivalent of Kate Fox’s anthropological Watching the English.

Amongst Wiseman’s investigations are attempts to find the world’s funniest joke; see what sort of person takes more than 10 items in a supermarket’s express line; how to tell if someone is lying; how your surname could decide your career; the trustworthiness of beards; how pretending to be a football hooligan will actually lower your IQ. Many, many interesting facts and studies, which often make you feel grateful that you weren’t a participant (many of the studies claim to be about one thing, and trick a participant into having different behaviour analysed).

Here’s one little starter. Using your forefinger, trace a capital Q on your forehead. Go on… done it? Click here to see what it says about you.

A fun, and indeed very quirky, book.

A Book by any other name…

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The book I want to write about today isn’t one I’d necessarily recommend that you rush out and buy, but more of an interesting look at what the book can now be. A lot of people say that the book is dead, or will be in a decade or two – of course, people have been saying things like that more or less since the book was invented. Whilst I don’t believe there is any truth in that prophecy, I do believe that the range of possibilities for the book might well expand. Step forward Mistakes in the Background by Laura Dockrill, which was sent to me by Rachael, who works for Borders books, to review. See their page about it here.

The publishing information in the back of Mistakes in the Background describes it as a novel, but it’s difficult to see how it could be called that – it is basically a scrapbook. Laura Dockrill’s blurb says: ‘I draw like a left-handed baby, I can hardly spell my own name and watching me use a gluestick is a bit like watching a large bear trying to ram his own head into a pocket-sized cat flap… no, really.’ She’s not far wrong – the sketches (which appear throughout) are pretty amateur and look like they were done in haste, but with an enthusiasm and sprightliness which is what Dockrill is going for, I imagine.


There is no continuity in the book, really – a page will have a little story about ice skaters, or a cartoon of a snail, or bits and pieces stuck in with sellotape. There’s the typewritten sheets of a Rolf Harris obsessive; footprints, stickers. None of the book is typed, it’s all in the scrawl of Laura Dockrill. I must confess I found the whole book rather self-indulgent, and already feel too old for it… but I was born 70 years too late anyway.


And this is where a segment of the book market is heading – it won’t replace traditional novels, of course, but – though it might not be everyone’s cup of tea – it will bring the book form to more people. That’s got to be a good thing.

More Mapp

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There was a period earlier in the year when most of my posts seemed to be about how wonderful E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia books are. I might assume for this post that readers know everything about the series…(for those who don’t, and indeed those who do, I came across a wonderful Mapp and Lucia Glossary site today). My first foray into eulogising was this post, and every now and then I remark on the sheer brilliance and wit and innocent charm of these novels – I paused after re-reading the first four, and have two left unread…

And then a bit later I interviewed Guy Fraser-Sampson (read the interview here), and he told me all about the new Mapp and Lucia book he’d written – Major Benjy, who, as fans will recall, is the local blustery military man in Tilling, and eventual husband of Miss Mapp. Major Benjy isn’t a sequel (as Tom Holt’s additions to the Mapp and Lucia canon were) but slips into Tilling history between Miss Mapp and Mapp and Lucia – in fact, the last few pages see Lucia’s arrival at Mallards, Miss Mapp’s house. Little did we know what took place mere hours before…

I don’t want to ruin the plot, so shall skirt about that and talk about the style instead – what is obvious throughout is that Guy loves the characters, and knows them inside out. He read the books as a child and has read them many times since, and all their foibles and peculiarities are in tact. For example, this paragraph about Susan Wyse (once Susan Poppit):
It was of course their second visit to the Wyses in two days and the only change appeared to be that Susan’s M.B.E. has been inadvertently placed in an even more prominent position, this time on the hall table where it could hardly fail to be seen as people left their hats and gloves. Unfortunately Susan did not seem to notice this until after the last guest had arrived, whereupon she gave a little scream of horror and snatched it up, exclaiming “oh, what will those servants do next?” as she did so. … Miss Mapp said sweetly “dear Susan, in all the many times I have admired your medal I have never seen it looking so impressive. A pity you are not wearing your furs tonight; it would set them off so nicely.”

So the characters are all there – Miss Mapp, Major Benjy, the Wyses, Diva Plaistow, Quaint Irene… and Lucy. Like Elaine (see her lovely review here) I had only the smallest recollection of Irene’s ‘companion’ Lucy, but she is rather brought to the fore in Major Benjy – and is symptomatic of the aspect of Fraser-Sampson’s novel which I least liked. Tilling has been rather over-sexualised, sometimes quite shockingly so – yes, gentle in comparison to most novels, but still rather more than Benson’s innocent, leave-it-to-the-imagination society warranted.

This aside, the novel is a joy – the incidents don’t always have Benson’s subtle touch, but there is a little storyline concerning a cake-baking competition which would be worthy of the original series. And mostly he has got the quiet back-stabbing, social-climbing, gossipy, cheerful and insouciant style just right – I can’t see any excuse for a Mapp and Lucia fan not to own this book. If you like the series, or know anyone who likes the series, then I demand you go and get a copy – like Elaine I welcome any addition to the canon, and though not perfectly Bensonian, it’s not far off.

Humble Pie

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I mentioned briefly, in that Booking Through Thursday quiz, that I’d bought Nicola Humble’s The Feminine Middlebrow Novel 1920s to 1950s but I couldn’t just leave it at that, could I? I’ll warn you now, it’s not cheap (paperback about £28, hardback much more) so get onto your local library… because for those whose reading tastes are most aligned with mine, or at least overlap significantly, that book title must sound like manna from Heaven – and, figuratively, it is. Literally, it’s just a book title… Ahem.

I read Humble’s book when writing my thesis on the topic as an undergraduate, and got rather peeved because she’d said all sorts of things I was hoping were original to me – but don’t hold that against her. She writes about all sorts of authors close to the Stuck-in-a-Book heart: EF Benson, Elizabeth Bowen, Agatha Christie, Ivy Compton-Burnett, EM Delafield, Monica Dickens, Rachel Ferguson, Stella Gibbons, Rosamund Lehmann, Rose Macaulay, Nancy Mitford, Dodie Smith, Elizabeth Taylor, Angela Thirkell, Virginia Woolf. What a list. Even if you haven’t read all those authors (I’ll confess, there are two listed whom I’ve not read), you’ll probably still be interested in their spheres and their ethos. Do see what Danielle had to say about it on her blog.

The chapter headings are:
1. ‘Books Do Furnish A Room’: Readers and Reading
2. ‘Not Our Sort’: The Re-Formation of Middle-Class Identities
3. Imagining the Home
4. The Eccentric Family
5. A Crisis of Gender?

All such fascinating topics – and Humble writes with a style and verve which makes everything completely accessible without ‘dumbing down’. All rather middlebrow, now I come to think of it. EM Delafield would be proud to be included, and I can think of no higher, nor more apposite, praise than that.

Alva & Irva

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There were two books I bought as a result of working in the Bodleian and happening upon them – one was Yellow by Janni Visman (which I reviewed earlier in the year), and the other was Alva & Irva by Edward Carey. The former drew me by its cover; the latter by its concept and the fact that it is about twins. Tonight my book group met up to discuss Alva & Irva, as I thought I probably wouldn’t get around to reading it unless I suggested it there.

Alva & Irva is a deliciously quirky novel – it takes the form of a (fake) travel guide/history to the city Entralla (fictional city, I should say) and the autobiographical writings of Alva Dapps. She describes her upbringing and closeness to Irva – and later her longings for separation and exploration. At the same time, Irva becomes more and more withdrawn, quiet and reclusive. (I’d quote some of this to you, but I let someone else borrow my copy.) As Irva refuses to leave the house, and Alva wishes both to explore and to tempt her away, they start a joint project: Alva walks through all the streets of Entralla taking measurements, photos, drawings – from which Irva makes a plasticine model of the city.

It all sounds faintly ridiculous, I daresay, but somehow the book really works – it is a novel filled with grotesque characters (in the sense of exaggerated and strange) – the father who is obsessed with stamps, for example. The novel is actually, in many ways, about obsession – whether with objects or people or tasks. Obsession and exaggeration – the events I’ve described are amongst the more normal. Wait til you find out what Alva gets tattooed on herself.

In amongst all the glorious absurdity, I discovered a very moving narrative. Perhaps my love of twin-lit made me read a little too much into it, but I found the breaking of Alva and Irva’s close bond incredibly touching, as Alva sought others and Irva couldn’t understand why, and their responses to this.

It’s so difficult to suggest which readers might like Alva & Irva because Carey’s novel is so utterly unlike anything else I’ve read. Sometimes the black humour is a little Saki-esque, and the cover quotation claims it has similarities with Kafka, but I’ve not read any. Anyone who enjoys the quirky and unusual, and of course anyone with my love of twin-lit, would enjoy a wander into Carey’s world. It’s not a journey you’ll take anywhere else.

Tigers and Time Travelling

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I was waiting for Colin to reveal the answer to the Tiger puzzle on his blog, and he hasn’t… so I shall tell you… well, I’ll let newcomers have a look first. Can you spot the hidden tiger…..

no?

well… look at the stripes of the tiger in the foreground. Look realllly carefully. And you’ll spot the hidden tiger. Or should I say ‘The Hidden Tiger’. Now you’ve seen it, isn’t it obvious? I know!

Onto completely different territory, I’ve just finished The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, for my book group. Yes, how did I manage to fit 500+ pages into my reading schedule… I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, but thankfully Niffenegger’s novel was such addictive reading (coupled with not being able to sleep for large portions of a couple of nights) that it took a matter of days.

The Time Traveler’s Wife [oh how my British blood boils at having to use only one ‘l’ in traveller] has been on my shelves for a few years, I think I bought it a few months after it was published, but the size of the thing put me off. As did, more recently, this review on Vulpes Libris. And this, rather pithy, review on Lizzy Siddal’s blog. Two bloggers I respect hated it a lot. So why did I love it?

Ok. Best to acknowledge the faults first.
Wait. Before that, I suppose some of you won’t know the plot, though it seems more or less everyone in the world has read this before me. Henry has a disorder which sends him, involuntary, back or forth in time – usually back. He can’t change the future, but he can interact with everyone around him (oh boy can he interact), and will spend minutes or days there before popping back to his present, where any amount of time (usually minutes) will have passed. The first 100 pages or so mostly follow a chronology of Clare’s youth – Clare being the time traveller’s wife in question. Henry comes to see her through most of her life, up to 18… when she is 20, they meet again… except for him it’s the first time. “Hey, I’m your wife”. More or less. And it’s a love story between these two; the difficulties of living with the condition, and of living with a husband with this condition.

So, those faults I was talking about.
Too much sex… there is a lotttt of sex. Some of it being Henry with himself (the part in the Vulpes Libris review which *almost* made me vow never to read the book). Whenever he shifts in time, he appears naked… Some reviews find the idea of Henry meeting his 8 year old future-wife rather disturbing, but there is, thankfully, nothing sexual about those encounters.
Erm… well, apart from that… the secondary characters were all more or less unnecessary (ex-girlfriends; ex-girlfriends new lovers; friends) but Henry’s father is a welcome addition to the ensemble.

That’s it, I’m afraid I can’t think of anything more negative to say – I think Niffenegger has achieved something incredible with The Time Traveler’s Wife. Usually books or films with time travel baffle and irritate me – either there is no consistency in whether or not characters can affect the future, or no method in the time shifting, or it all just confuses me no end. In The Time Traveler’s Wife, despite there being two characters to keep track of (only one changing time, but still) it was never difficult to follow. Each segment has the date and year, and the ages of Henry and Clare in that scene, printed at the top – a very canny device. And Niffenegger uses the idea so well – plot points are hinted at early on, the idea of Clare meeting Henry when he’s never met her, and the sudden reversal of knowledge in their relationship works brilliantly. More than anything, Niffenegger writes a convincing and moving love story. The Vulpes Libris review found both characters irksome to say the least, and I don’t think I’d be Co-founder of the Henry Fan Club, but Clare is great. Artistic and expressive, she is also patient and loving whilst still feeling jealousy and anxiety and grief. She is the novel’s main strength, I think, and Niffenegger was wise to give her the title.

What else to say? Thoroughly involving, the ending is unutterably moving, the structure and plot are flawless, and… let’s just hope the film (currently in post-production) has wafted an editing pen over the frequent sex scenes.

A Year of Mornings

StuckinaBook All , 4 Comments

The book publication I’ve been most eagerly awaiting is one with almost no words. Which might not say much for Stuck-in-a-Book’s literary credentials, but perhaps you’ll understand when I tell you what the book is…

I’ve eulogised about the blog 3191 before – this post could scarcely be bettered by a teenage girl waving pom-poms and screaming ‘Oh my gawwsh, they’re so, like, awesome!’ For those who haven’t come across their blog, either pop over there and have a look, or go to my post linked above to read what they do. In brief, two people living 3191 miles apart took photos every morning and posted them alongside each other – now they do the same in the evening. Beautiful and unexpected coincidences, symmetries, contrasts would appear – both are brilliant photographers, focusing on the details of normal, domestic life.

So I first in line to Princeton Architectural Press to ask for a review copy, when I found out that A Year of Mornings was going to be published in book format. And it’s delicious. The book is out in the US at the beginning of October (though their blog suggests it’s out now, so maybe they know best) and out on Amazon.co.uk a bit later – though the date there is changing every now and then. Keep an eye out. The pictures aren’t done quite how I expected – the photos are done in pairs, as on the blog, but the sets of two aren’t all the same size, and are at odd positions over the pages. It kinda works, but sometimes means my favourite pairs are rather small (20th June is perhaps my favourite, but honourable mention must go to 11th July) – but this is a small quibble.

Mav and Steph, with Princeton Architectural Press on design, have created a truly beautiful, wonderful book of photographs which demonstrate talent without being pretentious or off-putting. This would make a lovely coffee table book, or a great gift, and I can’t thank Karen/Cornflower enough for pointing me in the direction of their blog over a year ago.

Return! A plethora of books

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I am back from a week in Northern Ireland and a weekend in Warwickshire, and hope some of you are still around – will try and pop into most of the blogs tomorrow to say hello and catch up, but too late to do that tonight. Instead, will give a round-up of three books I’ve read recently… that’s right, leave me alone for a week and I have to burst with bookish things. None of these three books would make my top ten of the year, but each was worth writing about – and that might be where the connections end. We’ll see if any more come up as I write…

Capuchin Classics kindly sent me another of their reprinted novels – Tom Stacey’s The Man Who Knew Everything, which was published as Deadline in 1988. If you’re thinking ‘Oh, wasn’t that a film with John Hurt and Imogen Stubbs?’ then I’ll stop you there – Stacey’s foreword to this slim novel makes it clear that he has no wish to be associated with that film. Despite talented actors, ‘the director and editor went to ground for three months to emerge inexplicably with an edited version, not readily intelligible, which re-shaped the story as a tragedy of love’. So, if it is not a tragedy of love, what is it? Granville Jones is an aging newspaper correspondent in the 1950s Gulf, writing occasional dispatches and mostly idling towards the end of his life, reflecting on the two women who have played significant roles therein. He is there when a coup threatens the island’s leader, also a personal friend, and must report on it – and must meet the journalistic deadline before anyone else gets there.

In some ways it’s a pity Stacey had to lose the title, as it lends the narrative an urgency which can’t always be felt by those who, like me, haven’t lived the journalist’s life. It doesn’t help that Granville isn’t a particularly likeable character (I felt more than a little sympathy for his abandoned family) but he does come into his own when in conversation with the island’s leader, the Emir. ‘We have grown old together, Jonas. You and I are too old to fear to die.’ All in all, an interesting novel with some touching moments, but requires a mind with a greater political bent than mine possesses.

Piccadilly by Laurence Oliphant was also a reprint, but my copy is a 1928 reprint of the 1870 original. Victorian literature forms too large a gap in my reading, which I decided to rectify with the shortest Victorian novel I owned. Piccadilly is described as a satire on London politics of the 1870s – well, I’m not particularly clued up on the political scene of that era, or indeed any era. No matter, I continued regardless. The hero, Frank Vanecourt, decides to launch himself on a life of selfless charity, and to write a book:

‘I shall tell of my aspirations and my failures – of my hopes and fears, of my friends and my enemies. I shall not shrink from alluding to the state of my affections; and if the still unfulfilled story of my life becomes involved with the destiny of others, and entangles itself in an inextricable manner, that is no concern of mine’.

It might not astonish you to learn that the story of his life does become involved with the destiny of others – specifically his noble (and quite lovable) friend Grandon; the woman Grandon loves, Lady Ursula; and Ursula’s mercenary mother Lady Broadhem. What unravels is a complex and often amusing plot of secrecy and blackmail and love and much introspection and expostulation from Vanecourt – presumably mocking a vogue for novels of this ilk. Some rather unsavoury, but perhaps inevitable, racism occasionally spoils what is quite a witty work, but I can’t help feel I’d appreciate Piccadilly more if I’d read any of the sort of novels which it mimicks.

Finally, a collection of short stories by Mathias B. Freese, Down to a Sunless Sea, which I was sent to review. Full marks on the title – I do like quotations in titles, as I might have mentioned before. Vulpes Libris are kicking off a week on short stories over on their blog, and very interesting I’m sure it will prove to be – whilst they’re at it, perhaps someone could answer a query. Why does the short story so often attract the macabre? I thought (and wrote!) quite a lot about the Victorian short story for a dissertation at university, but the macabre didn’t pop up nearly so often… Freese’s collection has large doses of it, and wasn’t always my cup of tea, shall we say. I did want to mention one story, though, which seemed head and shoulders above the rest – ‘Young Man’. It’s a little like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves in style, but communicates some sort of mental illness, in an atemporal confusion. If I could remember Genette’s Narrative Discourse, then all sorts of terms would be appropriate. This is part of it:

One day his daughter asked him, “What’s on TV for children tonight, Daddy?”
One day his wife said, “Someday it will be all right.”
One day he asked himself, “Is this it?”
Again his daughter asked him, “What’s on TV for children tonight, Daddy?”
“Watch me, instead,” he replied

Flying Too Close To The Sun

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The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi has been on the peripherals of my mind since someone mentioned it here – in fact, taking a quick trip down blogmory lane, I find it was Nichola aka Lost In Translation, back when I was talking about The Love Child by Edith Olivier, in my 50 Books… but that was only January, and I’m sure I’d heard of it before that. No matter. When Stephanie at Bloomsbury asked what sort of books I’d like her to send me, The Icarus Girl instantly came to mind.

Jessamy Harrison is an introverted, thoughtful and fanciful child, eight years old, with a fiery Nigerian mother and a softly spoken, slightly anxious, white English father. When she visits her mother’s family in Nigeria (Jessamy et al live in England) she also meets Titiola, or TillyTilly, a ragged girl of her own age who seems to be living secretly in the compound. TillyTilly’s friendship means a lot to Jessamy – but then TillyTilly also appears back in England, and grows more and more possessive in their friendship. What seemed to be an exciting but innocent friendship soon becomes a dangerous and terrifying one – both for Jessamy and for the reader.

I don’t think any review of this book has been written without expressing astonishment that Oyeyemi wrote The Icarus Girl whilst she was studying for her A Levels. It is pretty darn amazing, but this book would be extremely impressive whoever had written it. I love narratives which introduce an element of fantasy into an otherwise domestic setting – it’s what I hope to write a dissertation and possibly doctorate on – but Oyeyemi goes a step further than that, because the reader is constantly left uncertain. How much is real, how much is illness, how much is delusion? Jessamy is seeing a psychiatrist, but her sessions deliberately do not reveal much to the reader.

What starts as a novel about loneliness and isolation becomes infused with issues of obsession, possession, power and, most sophisticatedly, doubleness. I know ‘duplicity’ is probably the correct term, but doubleness is more to the point – even from TillyTilly’s first appearance (and her name!) when she simply repeats everything Jessamy says. It seems a little like those pieces of voice-activated-typing software, where they have to listen to your voice for a while, to register and recognise it, before the programme will work. Doubleness and identity become increasingly important through the novel, very cleverly.

Now, I like novels which don’t tell you everything – ambiguity is fine. My Cousin Rachel is an example from my recent reading. But I finished The Icarus Girl without a clue as to what was real, what the almost hallucinatory final chapter signified – but I also felt that the fault was mine. Someone who’s read it – is it clear? Should I have been able to work things out? It doesn’t alter my opinion of the novel, though – it is exceptional, and I look forward to reading more of Oyeyemi’s work.

In less happy news, for those of you who’ve read this far, the Arts & Humanities Research Council decided not to give me any money for my Masters next year… the next step is college funding, and the step after that is bankruptcy! But I’m determined to do the course, and will keep praying.