Book notes No. 47: Farewell Waltz, Milan Kundera

Farewell Waltz has, like far too many books, been languishing on my Amazon wish list for a long, long, long time. Its salvation from wish list oblivion had its seeds in the small French town of Salins-les-Bains, where I found myself curing in the famous salt waters at the end of August. 

Part-way through my session, I realised that I was surrounded by lady octogenarians, all bingo wings and flower-sculpture bonnets de bain, oo-ing and oh-la-laah-ing their way through an aquarobics session. And my sauna-high brain instantly connected to that immortal scene in the Hollywood version of Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being involving Juliette Binoche, Daniel Day-Lewis, and a number of women taking a fitness class beside a Communist-era spa-pool. Minus the flower-sculpture bonnets de bain.

That I should later finally choose to 1-click on Farewell Waltz was, then, inevitable. And that I should enjoy it so much that I stayed up very late, and in the morning shunned company over my cappuccino to finish it, was also inevitable.

Farewell Waltz is a dark comedy involving a small number of characters connected to a Communist-era spa some distance from Prague. Ruzena, a spa attendant, is pregnant, and has decided that a famous jazz trumpeter with whom she had a one-night stand, is to be named the father in preference to her adoring no-hoper boyfriend. Klima is the poor musician so accused, and he is married to the disastrously beautiful and equally disastrously jealous Kamilla. Dr Skreta is a spa gynaecologist famous for his miraculous cure for infertility. Jakub, whose past has seen him both government-sanctioned executioner and victim, is leaving the country for good, and is in town to say goodbye to his ward, Olga, the daughter of a friend he sent to his death. Then there is Bretlef, a rich American who is at once saint and Don Juan. 

Oh yes, and a little blue pill.

Kundera, as usual, beautifully tangles his characters into moral, social, political and emotional knots and still finds time for some trenchant social comment and a spot of jazz. 

But there is more. About one-third of the way through the book Kundera stopped me dead in my tracks with his elucidation of something we in Carmine have been wrestling with over the past couple of years - something I thought I could never hope to understand. In the passage in question, Jakub, the character who has suffered so much under Communist rule, but who has also made others suffer, is wrestling with the exact same question:

“The old men merged in his mind with prison guards, examining magistrates, and informers who spied on their neighbours to see if they talked politics while shopping. What drove such people to their sinister occupations? Spite? Certainly, but also the desire for order. Because the desire for order tries to transform the human world into an inorganic reign in which everything goes well, everything functions as a subject of an impersonal will. The desire for order is at the same time a desire for death, because life is a perpetual violation of order. Or, inversely, the desire for order is the virtuous pretext by which man's hatred for man justifies its crimes.”

And now I have it straight. 

Reported conversations No. 26 : When I grow up

A little 4-year old voice pipes up from the back of the car the other morning on the school run...

B.: Mama, when I grow up I'm going to be rich.

Mama: Sounds good to me. And how are you going to manage that?

B.: I'm going to put all my toys in a hankie and leave home. Can I take Trouble with me? He is my cat after all...

Mama: Yes, you can take Trouble with you [thinks: one less cat in the bed in winter].

B.: Then I'm going to get some elves to make something really good and sell it. Then with the money I can make more and sell it. Then with that money I can make more and everyone will come and buy it, even the king. Then I'll have enough to buy sausages to eat and more things to sell.

Mama: Sounds like a good plan.

B.: And you know what? If any trolls try to stop me I'll just head-butt them over the side of the bridge and into the stream.

Eyeing her very self-satisfied four-year-old in the rear-view mirror, Mama turns over ideas for the Next Big Thing in management trends, and wonders whether "A princess, a cat, some elves and a billy goat: management by fairy-tale in the 21st century" might work on the NY Times bestseller list... 

Quote of the week No. 46: On dogs and other animals

Since the arrival of Jakob! Lord of Misrule, I have probably read more dog-training handbooks than I read babycare books. The latest is by "dog whisperer" Cesar Millan, entitled Cesar's Way (recommended), and the following left me wondering:

"...in order to have a balanced dog, you must provide three things: 50% exercise, 25% discipline and 25% affection..."

What did it leave me wondering? It left me wondering whether it might work for husbands... 

Book notes No. 46 : The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon

Nine degrees this morning as I drove the children through Cannobio at 8am. After the weekend's rain, the morning was steely grey, the lake was glowing like mercury, and the sun was washing down in a silver pool from behind a dark cloud. By lunchtime there were blue skies, and a warm breeze.

I know what you're thinking. The latest read sounds like another 'crimmie'. Sounds like another detective thriller. Sounds like another charismatic sleuth discovers the hidden secret. 

And you'd be right.

And then again, you'd be wrong.

For this detective story is a detective story with a difference. For detective Christopher Boone, the first-person narrator of this detective story, is different. Detective Boone is 15. He has a photographic memory. He understands maths. He understands science. But what he can't understand are other human beings. Detective Christopher Boone has Asperger's.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was published to intense critical acclaim in 2003. I heard about it and sent a copy of it to my sister-in-law for Christmas. Why I didn't send a copy of it to myself for Christmas is beyond me. The other day  found it in a second-hand store and it being the only thing of any interest amid the forest of mottled John Gallsworthies, I plucked it up. 

I'm glad I did. It's an astonishing, heart-rending and life-affirming novel. Every 15-year-old should read it. No scratch that. Everyone who hasn't already contributed to Mr Haddon's pension fund should read it immediately. 

Book notes No. 45 : Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Amy Chua

Nine degrees at 10am. Overcast and damp, following a complete day of rain yesterday.

I first caught on to this book a few weeks ago when I heard the first few chapters serialized on Radio 4's Woman's Hour. In those few minutes, as I laboured through another pile of ironing, I was hooked on Chua's story, and her promise of parenting secrets to impart.



The daughter of Chinese immigrants to the USA, Amy Chua is a full professor of Law at Yale Law School. Her Jewish-American husband is also professor of Law at Yale. They are both not only academics but also producers of a number of best-selling books and articles. They are, one might say, high achievers.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Chua was born in the year of the Tiger) is the story of how this mother refused to allow her two daughters to settle back into the privileged world of an American university town, to throw away everything she and her immigrant parents had striven for, to achieve nothing, as many third-generation children do. 

Chua rejected the laissez-faire 'Western-style of parenting' which she characterizes as giving children choices, emphasizing creativity over hard work and enshrining the fervent belief that learning, punctuated by mandatory playdates and sleepovers, should be fun. Instead she looked to her own culture, the Chinese way of doing things which, she says, demands complete respect and obedience from children, sees parents making choices for their children, and has a child's life taken up entirely with study and home. 

Under Chua's absolutist regime, her daughters grew up "polite, interesting and helpful". They were simply not permitted to fail. Their school grades were perfect and the elder child, Sophie, was two years ahead of her contemporaries in maths. Both developed exceptional musical abilities, one on the piano, and the other on the violin. They were both bilingual in Mandarin and English at an early age.

This story is partly about the immigrant experience - an audition at Juilliard, for instance, was packed with Asian families and their hopeful prodigies, but Chua was ostracized at a dinner party by her Western friends for calling her daughter 'trash' when she came second in a maths competition. It is also about culture clash - how does one raise a child to be exceptional through sheer force of will, when that child is daily inculcated with the values of a culture that despises parental control and considers borderline criminal any parental attempts to force children to do what they think is best for them.

This was all very interesting. I really didn't like the angry, screaming, driven Amy Chua that came through. But I have to say, she has my respect. The sheer number of hours she put in struggling to keep the girls at it, learning by rote, getting it right every time, practising over and over and over and over. The sheer force of her will, which dominated her family's life for almost two decades, which brought her into conflict with her husband, her daughters, both sides of her extended family and even the dog. 

But to my disappointment, the promised parenting revelations never materialized. I would like to have read more about how she did it. I was hoping for nuts and bolts. Where did she find the time between her full-time job, writing books and articles, and keeping house, to drill the girls on their homework or their music? I suspect an unmentioned housekeeper. I suspect plenty of readies for music teachers, maths tutors and nannies. I suspect a dishwasher...

And how did the girls stay awake at school each day when their mother was drilling them past midnight on their music? And exactly what means did she use to cajole them into doing all this stuff when they would rather have been out with their friends? And how is it possible to push your child to do something against their will and still have them love you at the end? More generally, and as a mother of a daughter who will, God-willing, one day be a teenager, did this intensive parenting style help to deflect the pain of the teenage years, to divert her daughters from trashy dressing and the delights of boyz, to develop them into something more than the vapid, airhead babes that 70s feminism seems to have spawned?

It's a fast read, and for anyone with children, an eye-opener. I wonder whether any 'Western' mother, after reading this book, would adopt such a harsh regime, but I think some will be tempted to up the ante and perhaps be less prepared to tolerate sloppiness, laziness, failure and disrespect. 

I'll wind this up with a rather telling story, and the one that certainly made me think twice:

"Coco [the family dog] was afraid of going into the water - she'd never swum before - but Jed gently pulled her in to the deep center, where he let go of her. I was afraid Coco would drown, but just as Jed said she would, Coco dog-paddled safely to shore while we clapped and cheered, toweling her off and giving her big hugs when she arrived. That's one difference between a dog and a daughter, I thought to myself later. A dog can do something every dog can do - dog paddle, for example - and we applaud with pride and joy. Imagine how much easier it would be if we could do the same with daughters! But we can't; that would be negligence..."

  

Book notes No. 44 : The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman

Today in Carmine Superiore, we are promised by thems-as-know a high of 17°, and certainly the day has started out so Mediterranean that all the windows are open and there's linen and laundry tumbling from every window-sill.

Another Philip Pullman novel. In fact his latest, and definitely for adults, with its provokingly bold red jacket with gold and black lettering (in the UK, anyway). 


Oh, it's the Independent that called it "provokingly bold". The Sunday Times called it "a hand grenade made by Fabergé", and Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury (no less) told The Guardian (who else) that it was a "deliberately outrageous fable". And I think that's a compliment.


Pullman has had a great idea. Give Jesus a twin brother. Call him Christ. And then retell the New Testament as it could possibly have been. Simple? Not that simple. Who is the good man, here? And is Christ really the scoundrel? What is the difference between history and truth, and what is the writer's role in the making of fables that last, that more than last, that inspire millions to belief in the seemingly impossible? In fact, the only thing that could be called simple about this novel is the language and the episodical structure, which so perfectly imitate that of the New English Bible. (I wonder whether the Archbishop of Canterbury considers the Bible a 'deliberately outrageous fable' - you never know these days.)

Pullman's structure, the simple language and this great idea together enable him to explore a host of dualities starting from good (perhaps Jesus) and bad (perhaps Christ), touching on mind-body, death-life, rich-poor, sin and purity, and describing, from the historical standpoint of Year Zero AD a potential Church that could be perfect - the Kingdom of God on Earth - and could just as easily be diabolically corrupt. 

It's a small-ish book, but perfectly formed. It is provoking and disturbing and in many ways extraordinary. And I have a feeling it might turn out to be important...

So read it.

Book Tiramisu: a recipe

Another bright, bright sunshiney day. Fourteen degrees at 2pm. It was winter days like these that seduced me into leaving The Smoke. 


Book tiramisu is, as the name suggests, a great pick-me-up. Pick me up, pack me up, haul me up, open me up and lap me up. 

An alternative name for this recipe might be 'How to raise over 1,000 books through 100m vertical without a helicopter, a mule or an obliging Ecuadorian' (and that's another story). 

You will need:

1,000 books, miscellaneously and hurriedly boxed, and at the end of a long transcontinental journey deposited finally at the foot of the hill in that mobile storecupboard known as a car
1 large, strong rucksack, clean and empty
1 small 40-something (female) with Welsh pit-pony antecedents
10 tons of patience
1 qualified chiropractor with a sense of humour on stand-by

1. Skip down hill carrying the clean rucksack and beaming with anticipation. You may wish to fill the rucksack with empty barbera bottles or old chicken-feed sacks, for the recycling station at the car park. In which case, trudge.

2. At the car park, search for the mobile storecupboard. Who knows where the über-chef left it last?

3. Once the mobile storecupboard is located, locate the keys. Open the door. Take a deep breath. Open the nearest box. Pounce on a particularly cherished old friend, sit down on the floor cross-legged and start reading. When your butt starts to freeze, come back to your senses and carefully arrange a few of the books in the clean rucksack, filling it evenly.

4. Try to get the rucksack on. Crumple beneath the weight. Open rucksack, remove a few books, read their titles, light up with joy, then remove a few more, replacing with the first books taken out. Read the titles of the second batch of books. Spend at least 10 minutes trying to decide which titles to bring up first and which to bring up later. This is an important step in the recipe and should not be hurried. Remember that you've been apart seven long years, and that they've covered exactly 1313km to be with you today. Twenty-four more hours won't extinguish the flames of your passionate bibliophilia.

5. Look through a few more of the boxes stacked in the mobile cupboard, and grab a crippling armload of old favourites that smell of East End attic and nostalgia, and without which you simply cannot live another minute. (At this point in the process it's crucial not to let any participles dangle.) 

6. Slog the whole lot up the hill, stopping at every bench, resisting the urge to resist the urge to start reading.

This could take some time...

7. At home, carefully decant the books onto the kitchen table. Now carefully decant about 4oz of Jura crémant into a crystal glass and taste. Get a roaring fire going in the hearth and drag up a heinous green hand-me-down armchair. With a slightly damp cloth, remove any traces of chicken poop and wine dribbles from the dust jackets and slip cases. Call the chiropractor and make an appointment. Inform the children that at suppertime it's every man for himself, and, trying not to think about how many times you're going to have to schlepp up and down the hill, which will almost certainly curdle your tiramisu, enjoy the midwinter pick-me-up...

The first haul (literally):
Our Bodies Ourselves - Boston Women's Health Book Collective (ah the feminist seventies, awash with mysterious phrases like 'women's collective' and 'orgasm' and 'fondue')
Ancient Greek Literature - Dover et al (from the pre-college summer reading list, along with Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers, a revelation in thought for an 18-year-old small-town grammar-school girl)

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (thanks S.)

The Captain's Verses - Pablo Neruda (bilingual edition - passion and poetry - we were so young)
Untying the Text, A Post-Structuralist Reader - Robert Young (one day I'll make sense of post-structuralism if it kills me, and it probably will)
The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolf (book better than the movie - I can't abide Tom Hanks)
Lesbian Images - Jane Rule (blame my thesis supervisor)
English Journey - JB Priestley (must have been a free gift)
The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici - Christopher Hibbert (full of great quotes - e.g.: "He has emblazoned even the monks' privies with his balls...").
African Adventures - H. Rider Haggard (boxed set of three, tough on the shoulders)

I Know why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou (and I know why my poor knees creak).

Do not disturb.

Book notes No. 43: The Firework Maker's Daughter, Philip Pullman

The last of i giorni della merla - the blackbird days - thought to be the coldest of the winter. And while I can say quite categorically that they are not empirically the coldest, there's something about the stillness, the silence of these days, with the steady sunshine and the slow creak of bare branch on bare branch that makes you think you have come to the very heart of the season.

Winner of the Gold Smarties Prize Award, Philip Pullman's story about a young girl following her dream is charming. I bought it because I remembered the pleasure with which I read the His Dark Materials trilogy, but found that this is not a child-adult crossover. It's actually more suitable for shared reading from 8 years and lone reading from 10, I would say. 

The Guardian noted this as "A wonderfully written adventure story," and the Daily Mail called it "An outstanding achievement". I enjoyed it, certainly. And I understand the final message as inspirational, for adults as well as for older children. But perhaps I read it in the wrong frame of mind. Perhaps I had something else weighing on me, and missed the comedy, the "genius", the "confident magic". I also found a couple of the illustrations - by Peter Bailey - rather scary (at least for the under-6s).

Still, The Firework Maker's Daughter is gentle, beautifully written and a lovely story. This little book will be returned, not to the adult shelves but to the waiting-for-the-children-to-grow-up shelves, and I will heartily recommend it to my two little readers when the time comes.



   
    

Book notes No. 42 : Started Early, Took my Dog, Kate Atkinson

Cold. Colder. In fact, very much colder than recent days. The waterfalls are all proudly displaying icicles, and everywhere the soil is hard with frost.

I don't know what drew me to this book, which appeared recently out of the blue in my Amazon recommendations. I guess it must have been the title, which accurately describes what I do most days. (Perhaps Amazon have been spying on me...)

The jacket blurb explains to those idiots who haven't heard the news (idiots like me) that Kate Atkinson is a literary writer. Behind the Scenes at the Museum, her first novel won the Whitbread Book of the Year when it was first published and is therefore officially Literature. The jacket blurb goes on to explain that Ms Atkinson has turned her hand to crime fiction, that this could actually be considered a downward step, but that in fact in some way she has stooped to conquer.

And they'd be right. She has certainly conquered me with this fascinating, fast-moving crimmie, which I read in only three sittings. I regretted the late night each morning-after, but not the pleasure of the reading.

The story is told from three different perspectives: Tracy Waterhouse the plump, plain, retired policewoman; Tilly, the ageing actress in a wobbly wig; and Jackson Brodie, the gumshoe on the trail of a lost child that has brought him back to his home town of Leeds. 

With these three protagonists as reference points, Atkinson has put together a racy read full of the hairpins, cliffhangers and switchbacks that are essential to good crime writing. And amid all the comings, goings and doings, amid all the red herrings and pints of ale, amid the murders and the mystery there is some spanking good writing. The 1970s in the north of England are evoked in all their glory, and so is the north of today, bankrupt and bleak but with moments of timeless beauty. There are plenty of wry jokes, a number of scenes that wring the heart and one or two meditations that really get to the nub of things - for me at least - when it comes to talking about children and the way they are treated in our society.

A damn fine read, and well worth the mornings after.

Book notes No. 41: The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, Peter Ackroyd

Another gorgeous day here in Carmine Superiore: lava-lake sunrise, followed by blue skies and warm, healing sunshine. Winter doesn't get any better than this.

But lately, the weather has been somewhat gothic. At night the narrow, empty lanes of Carmine have been adrift with misty ghosts, and the dark corners were dank with ghastly presences. By day, the woods have been haunted by silent, foggy spectres Victorian-London-style. As I tread the ancient pathways, I couldn't help glancing over my shoulder again and again. Could it be that I am being followed? An image arises in my mind: parchment skin, lank hair streaked yellow, dead shark eyes, tortured eyebrows, black-burned lips smiling a horrid rictus from ear to ear.


You can tell, can't you, that this 2008 retelling of the Frankenstein story has in the past few days reached out with icy fingers and terrified me out of my wits! 

In Ackroyd's new version of the story, Frankenstein is introduced into the society of the young Romantic poets as a real person. His experiments in galvanism and his raising of a young man dead of consumption (significantly named Jack Keat) are set alongside a fictionalised version of events in the lives of Shelley, Byron, and Mary Godwin (Shelley's second wife, and the author of the original Frankenstein story). 

The pace is lively - this is a real thriller. We move from Oxford to London to Marlow and then onwards to Geneva and Chamonix. The landscape is vivid: the Thames and its estuary, Lake Geneva, the Oxfordshire countryside, the squalid backstreets of London's East End, the gloom and danger of Limehouse. And the intellectual landscape is equally so. We are assailed with quotations from many of the great writers of the day, either quoted direct or as ideas and phrases embroidered into the story. 

Of course, Ackroyd is well-known as a writer on London, and on this period, and for his interest in the esoteric in the award-winning Hawksmoor, for example, or the lesser-known Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem. His scholarship is widely acclaimed: London, the Biography and Thames, Sacred River being only two bestsellers on the long list of his works of non-fiction and biography. So the background - both in an historical and intellectual sense - cannot fail to be rich and deft. 

And of course, Ackroyd being Ackroyd there is a certain amount of self-irony, which is always enjoyable: "I had long suspected that the English, despite their air of business and practicality, were a wholly credulous and superstitious nation. Why else do they love the tales of horror, as they call them?" English or not, if you "love the tales of horror", have an interest in the Romantic poets, 18th-century scientific endeavour, and electrifying endings (excuse pun), you'll love this story. 

But be warned. You'll be sleeping with the light on for weeks to come...



Also recommended:



Available in the US:

Book notes No. 40 : Brother of the More Famous Jack, Barbara Trapido

As we sail, day by day, towards the new term, the weather is much, much warmer. The temperature in the bathroom has risen above freezing point. The frosting that made Carmine so pretty in the last week or so has disappeared. The bright sunshine has disappeared. In their place dull, heavy, sagging cloud. Rain, or maybe snow, on its way.

Winner of the Whitbread Special Prize for Fiction, Barbara Trapido's debut novel Brother of the More Famous Jack (1982) is a story of first love, heartbreak and high spirits. 

As the book opens, Katherine, our heroine, is but 18 and a fresher. She strikes up a friendship with her professor, enough to be invited to his chaotic home, where she meets his wife (in the act of giving birth to child number six), and his two sons, Jonathan, and his older brother Roger. Altogether, suburban Katherine has never quite seen anything like it, and she's never seen anything like Roger.

The story of Katherine and Roger's relationship, cruel break-up and its aftermath is hugely ... real. It's also very funny, very English and in places sad. But there's more. Katherine starts out by falling in love not only with Roger but with his entire family. Ten years later and Rome (where she flees to nurse a broken heart) has made its mark on her. She is wiser, more sophisticated, almost a different person and yet still owes a debt to this eccentric, opinionated family. Allowing herself to be drawn back into her past, Katherine finally discovers her future.... 


Recommended:

Book notes No. 39 : In the Company of the Courtesan, Sarah Dunant

Blue skies veiled in haze. The communal water-tap is frozen solid.

I must have read hundreds and hundreds of novels. Hundreds. I've leant my interior ear to narrators male and female. I've heard stories from school teachers, paedophiles, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, artists, murderers, criminals and innocents, from God, angels, Death and the Devil. I've been confused by rotating narrators and annoyed by first person narrators who die against the rules.

But I've never, never read a novel in which the narrator is a dwarf. And I have never, never learned so much about life as a dwarf in such a pleasurable way. 

Dunant's enthralling novel begins in 1527 with our heroine, a successful courtesan, fleeing the Sack of Rome with her friend and fixer Bucino, the dwarf in question. Together they start again from scratch with only the gems they have managed to swallow during their escape. In Venice.

Lisa Hilton of the Sunday Telegraph wrote that this is a "loving, intricate portrait of Venice - a city which [sic] magics light, glass and water into living entities - her story blends beauty and brutality into an intimate and thrilling portrait of an age". 

Yes, indeed. Yes, of course. But Bucino. Bucino's the thing. His viewpoint (at thigh height). His emotions, his pain, his vulnerabilities, his sensibilities, his strength and his tragedy. 

Come and visit La Serenissima at the height of her powers, meet Fiammetta the courtesan at the height of hers, and Bucino the dwarf testing his. You'll be glad you did.

Book notes No. 38 : A Fair Maiden, Joyce Carol Oates

Above freezing. Grey and snowing. Here in Carmine Superiore, it can't decide whether to settle or not. At lake-level it's raining.

I seem to have known the name Joyce Carol Oates forever, but I think this novel is the first of hers I've read, picked up in a delay-struck airport lounge in a 4 for 3 pile. And what a revelation. 

Katya Spivak. Fifteen. Uneducated. Working class. Desperate for attention.

Marcus Kidder. Sixty-something. Trust-fund child. Sophisticated. Searching for... ?

And that question mark forms the backbone of this suspense-filled, acutely-observed, psychologically wrenching novel. What does Marcus Kidder want from Katya Spivak? And what, for that matter, does Katya Spivak want from Marcus Kidder? 

The story is set on the New Jersey shore, an area I know particularly well, and I instantly recognised the two worlds Oates describes: the blue-collar families without jobs, without books, without any star to live by but some misguided televised idea of the American dream, which seems to consist of the freedom to not-work but get wasted instead; and the rich and elegant, hiding in their compound-gardens, behind their high hedges, giving their names to libraries, and with the leisure to indulge. 

Oates writes here of the coming-of-age of a working class girl. Ignored by her siblings. Blackmailed and lied to by her mother. Treated coldly by her terrified-to-lose-it-all nouveau-riche summer-job employers. Made to feel she is something by her new friend. But what that something is, she cannot tell. A commodity to be bought? A child to be coerced? Or a 'real' person with valid feelings, thoughts, emotions, to be heard, to be valued, even loved? 

The Daily Mail called this book "A delightfully chilling and playful novella from a literary genius", and I'd second that. But it's more. It's also a minutely accurate vision of some of the terrors and uncertainties of growing up female in working class America. 

And my question is: why hasn't anybody yet given this woman the Nobel?    

Book notes No. 37 : Parrot & Olivier in America, Peter Carey

As yesterday, a bright and beautiful morning. A layer day - 'twill be hot in the sun later.

Australian author Peter Carey has twice won the Booker Prize - for Oscar and Lucinda in 1988 and True History of the Kelly Gangin 2001. Parrot & Olivier in America, his latest novel was shortlisted this year, but as we already know lost by a whisker to Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question.Still, I have to say this book is definitely worth reading – it made the shortlist after all!

The story is based on the travels of the real-live French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville. The two main characters are Olivier, a French aristocrat and skin-of-his-teeth survivor of the Revolution of 1789, and his servant, Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer whose hopes of becoming an artist are dashed, leaving him working as something of a ‘fixer’ to a wealthy patron. Olivier is sent to the colonies, ostensibly to research the American penal system, but in reality to escape further revolutionary danger. Parrot is sent along to act as minder, secretary, translator and banker and to keep him on the right track, especially in the matter of possible undesirable liaisons of the marrying kind.

                      

The book describes a moment in time in which the aristocracy are facing their own overthrow and possible extinction, and the new middle classes are busy imagining ways in which they might fill the vacuum. Everything seems to be on the change. Talented women artists, previously restricted to working behind the scenes with their master taking the credit, are now finding ways to work – and make money – in their own right. Among the very rich of the new colonial democracy, markets are starting to be made for fine art and other objects, once the provenance of only the aristocracy (the only people refined enough to appreciate them, according to Olivier). The new élite are grabbing the prestige of the old through marriage, and that new breed, the entrepreneur, is about to be born.

We see in both Olivier and Parrot an early incomprehension of the new post-Revolutionary world. As the book progresses, though, there is learning on both sides, and eventually each reaches an accommodation with the new world order. Does that sound too serious? Well, along the way there are some extraordinary, almost Dickens-like characters, some hilarious and nail-biting episodes, and some marvellous historical vignettes.


Actually, Edmund White put it better when he wrote for the jacket of the hardback edition: "I was sick with admiration on every page of this vigorous, lyrical masterpiece. The dramatic situations are struck off with hallucinatory force, the characters coddled with tenderness and humour - and the distant past is made as present as a slap in the face." Love it.

It’s a funny and fascinating read. Along with the Booker judges, I recommend it. 

Publishing news

Hot, with a soothing breeze and lots of little clouds.


Every so often, our doughty postina lugs up the hill a copy of The Author, the esteemed Journal of the Society of Authors. When it appears lodged in the grille of a ground floor window, it is a pleasant reminder of what I did before I became an expat dirt removal executive. 

In this quarter's edition I read that Horace Bent has announced the winners of the 2009 Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year. 

The Diagram Prize was first awarded by old friend and former employer, Bruce Robertson in the 1970s. Bruce was a large-ish man with a ZZ Top beard, a bulging belly, and braces with dinosaur badges on them. He had a reputation for roaring at his staff while under the influence late in the afternoon. "Get on with it yer RABBITS," he would bellow from behind a pile of CRC in his cubby-hole of an office, "I can 'ear ya chuntering on!" As an illustrator by trade he gave us writers and editors short shrift. He always referred to text as 'the wigglies' - in fact he was the only packager I ever met in publishing who didn't really give a toss about whether the editorial was consistent and correct, as long as the diagrams worked and the labelling was straight. I always liked him. His irreverence made me laugh, and I enjoyed his dark sense of humour. 

Bruce and his Diagram colleagues thought up the prize in a bored moment (of which there are many) during the Frankfurt Book Fair, and publishing staff of all persuasions have been playing the game of finding silly titles to add to the shortlist ever since. Beats anything so tedious as doing business.

On the shortlist this year were: Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter by David Crompton, The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease by E. Scherl and M. Dubinsky, and the title that made even my German husband howl with laughter, Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich by James A. Yannes. 

I was, however, fairly disappointed in the winner, which was that rivetting bestseller (sales topped 34 in the UK and more than 580 in the US), Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Daina Taimina. Perhaps it's because I've not the foggiest idea what a hyperbolic plane is (anyone? anyone?).

I shall leave you today with a few of the winners from previous years which have had me falling off my seat since I looked them up a few minutes ago. In 1993, we had American Bottom Archaeology and, seemingly along the same lines in 2002, there was Living with Crazy Buttocks. I guess the Brits just love butt jokes. 2006 brought us The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: a guide to field identification, which followed hard on the heels of 2004's Bombproof your Horse. 

The very first award was given in 1978 to The Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, and that was swiftly followed in 1979 by The Madam as Entrepreneur: career management in house prostitution. And finally, two of my personal favourites: Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality, by Glen C. Ellenbogen, which romped home in 1986, and 1984's Highlights in the History of Cement, which I imagine must also have been the shortest book in the entire history of the awards.


But, you know, I still think Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich was the best of the lot - Mr Yannes, you was robbed! Yer RABBIT!

Book notes No. 36 : The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Yesterday afternoon, about 3pm. It's hot but not too hot. Mama is lying on the garden seat, propped on cushions, surrounded by the purple lavender, the white and pink oleander, the dense screen of camellia. The lake and the mountains shimmer in a blue haze beyond. Three children squabble over two ice lollies at her feet. In the lower part of the garden, more spritz each other with hosepipe and water pistols, screaming with laughter.

A happy scene. 

So why are the tears cascading down Mama's face? "Why?" asks the littlest of the children.

I'll tell you why. 

The last ten pages of Markus Zusak's bestselling The Book Thief.

That's why!

For a long time Amazon recommended this book, and I stayed away from it. Any novel involving books is a draw for me, but novels about Nazi Germany are a clear no-no in an Anglo-German household (in Basil Fawlty's words, we "don't [often] mention the war"...). When I asked my online correspondents to recommend a book, however, they echoed Amazon's insistence, and I finally followed their advice (thanks especially to LadyFi).

And what did I find? A magnificent, magnificent book. Innovative in form. Compassionate in feeling. Resonant with insight. You'd have thought it had all been said on this subject. And this book proves you'd have been wrong.

The story begins in 1939. It centres on Liesel, who comes to a suburb of Munich following the deportation of her parents to a concentration camp. Liesel has a passion to learn to read and write, and her charismatic foster-father helps her. As the war tightens its grip on the ordinary German, work becomes scarce, and food even scarcer, and Liesel discovers a talent for stealing : books. This is Liesel's story. And the story of the inhabitants of the ironically-named Himmel Street when the bombs start falling and death comes a-knocking. And it's the story of how words can kill, can save, can incite hatred or love, can join people together or tear them apart. 

Dark? Yes. Depressing? No. Uplifting? Yes. Life-affirming? Yes. Page-turning? Yes. Yes. Yes.

If you're not one of the half million people to have already read this book, get a copy. Steal one if you have to. But whatever you do, don't miss it, like I almost did!

Book notes No. 35 : Of Bees and Mist, Erick Setiawan

Last night a storm, with thunder rolling around the Lago Maggiore 'basin', lightning cracking open the murky skies and a heaven-sent fresh wind to clear out the cobwebs. Today, more beautifully sunny and hot weather.

In an unnamed town that could be in California, in Indonesia, in southern Spain, our heroine Meridia grows up in a family home haunted by eerie mists, yellow-eyed ghosts and overwhelming cold. 

When she falls in love at 16, she flees to her young husband's home, only to find it plagued by mysterious bees, and her life is soon blighted by her mother-in-law's sharp tongue.

Will Meridia repeat the mistakes of her mother? Or does she have the strength and the insight to strike out for a better life?

Of Bees and Mist is a masterful first novel. In parts moving, in parts sensuous, always ringing true. I was carried away by Setiawan's lyrical-magical style, the inventiveness of his plot and the depth of his characters. I read as often as I could, everywhere I could, and all too soon the story was finished. 

It's one of those books that you are sad you have finished, things are so lively, so eventful amidst its pages. And one of those books, like William Goulding's Paper Men, with a twist in the very last sentence. 

Buy it. Read it. I recommend it. But don't allow yourself to read the last page first. If you think you won't resist the temptation, cut out the last page - put it in a perfumed envelope and mail it to yourself. By the time it gets to you, it will be just in time.

Book notes No.34 : Godmother: the secret Cinderella story, Carolyn Turgeon

Twenty-four degrees at 8am, and 31° at five. Hazy. The climb home was ... sweaty.

Every morning, silver-haired Lillian opens a second-hand bookshop in Manhattan's West Village. Before the first customer opens the door, even before she has made coffee or swept out the night's dust, Lillian secretly takes out her favourite of all the ancient and precious books in her care, Cinderella. On the inside back cover, someone has written, Tous mes anciens amours vont me revenir - All my old loves shall be returned to me. Each morning, Lillian reads the inscription sketched on the onion-skin pages over and over - this is a sign to her, a message that soon she will be offered a chance to redeem herself, and return home to the world of Faerie.

Disney made of Cinderella's Fairy Godmother a plump old lady in spectacles with a grey bun and a way with squirrels. Carolyn Turgeon, in this thoroughly enjoyable retelling, has portrayed her as a fairy of such beauty that in her human manifestation she has the power to make men insane for love of her. And therein lies the beginning of a tragedy that leads to the Fairy Godmother falling to earth in disgrace.

Two stories are woven together. The retelling of the events that led to Lillian's downfall and banishment to the world of the humans, and the story of her efforts in the here and now to create a new Cinderella and get her to the ball, suitably attired, in time for the prince to fall in love with her. 

Turgeon sets out to imagine the experience of the fairy in the world of humans. How would it feel for an entity from a race not given to emotion to suddenly feel what humans feel - love, desire, hunger, pain? Turgeon tells us in beautiful, sensuous detail. How might it be to be lighter than air, to play among the leaves, to fly with no more effort than the raising of an eyebrow? All wonderfully imagined and faultlessly expressed.

And along the way there are some interesting meditations on seeing and identity ("I just remembered the way he saw me, the way he made me someone new..."), on social invisibility and on our own ability to change our lives for the better.

This is a cracking pageturner. I gobbled it down in a couple of days, snatching chapters wherever I could. And the ending - which I am not going to spoil - makes this more than just a sand-in-the-spine beach read...

Book Notes No. 34 : Fludd, Hilary Mantel

Auberon Waugh called Hilary Mantel's Fludd "A faultless comic masterpiece". But it jumped off my yet-to-read pile and into my arms not because of his illustrious recommendation, but because of what seemed to be its relevance to recent weather. I was wrong ... no Noah in sight...


In the northern mill town of Fetherhoughton, remote and backward, Father Angwin the parish priest presides over the souls of the brutish tea-swilling inhabitants. He has lost his faith and replaced it with a strong desire to be left alone, especially by the new-broom bishop. In the nearby convent, a young Irish nun yearns for freedom and a good meal, while the demonic Mother Perpetua plots her downfall.


Into this setting comes an unexpected visitor. He is wrapped somewhat unconventionally in a cloak and carries a black bag. His conversation is learned and his table manners mysterious. Fludd has come to introduce the demonic art of coffee-making, to stir up buried passions, to force confrontations. "I have come to transform you," he says. "Transformation is my business."


But who - exactly - is Fludd, and where will it all lead?


Mantel's short novel is a joy. With great skill, she brings together the mysterious and the miraculous, the commonplace and the extraordinary. The fluffy-slippered townswomen who gossip, arms crossed, on the streetside doorsteps and the bishop who likes to tear around the diocese in his big black car. The bullies in authority and the worms who eventually turn. 


Funny. Imaginative. Striking. 


And first rate.

Book notes No. 33 : The Angel's Game, Carlos Ruiz Zafón

In the gothic tower of an abandoned Barcelona mansion, David Martín eeks out a living writing trash novels for a barracuda publisher, surrounded by mystery and shadows. At the moment of his darkest despair, he receives a letter from a foreign publisher with a surprising and vaguely sinister proposition. He is to write a book. A special book. A book to win the hearts and minds of millions. Tempted by the promise of wealth, health and much more, Martín begins to write, and in doing so finds himself embroiled in mysterious events that threaten his sanity and his life.


Anyone who has read Carlos Ruiz Zafón's previous novel, The Shadow of the Wind, will recognise in this book many of the characters and characteristics that made the former so compelling. Here is an atmospheric Barcelona, tortured and twisted in the period just before the second world war. Here is the monumental and monstrous Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Here is the Sempere family, dispensing wisdom from their little bookshop. Again the book is a combination of detective thriller and horror story, which slips seamlessly into magical realism and later becomes a heartbreaking love story. 


Under the surface of this magnificently plotted and masterfully paced novel also lies a meditation on the nature of religion and its relationship to literature. In a central conversation with the mysterious and seemingly diabolical publisher, we read : 


"...a religion is really a moral code that is expressed through legends, myths or any type of literary device in order to establish a system of beliefs, values and rules with which to regulate a culture or society...Everything is a tale, Martín. What we believe, what we know, what we remember, even what we dream. Everything is a story, a narrative, a sequence of events with characters communicating an emotional content. We only accept as true what can be narrated..."


And Martín's own narrative is to lead him to the brink. 


Highly recommended.