Category: Books

Reading in October 2014

Posted on By Margot

October and the nights are drawing in. And my journey to work is getting longer – and longer. A few days ago my 45 minute commute became 2½ hours as the Heathrow area descended into gridlock. So now is to time to dig out the audio books, and perhaps the eReader again.

 This was funny in all the right places, pleasantly anarchic and boring. Somehow I had already read something like this – in the form of Jonas Jonasson’s The Hundred Year Old Man and The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden. Underpinning these two books is a liberal and tolerant view of humanity combined with a “Horrible Histories” view of modern history. These two made the books eminently enjoyable to listen too. But I have given up on the Little Old Lady. Perhaps if I had found her before I found The Hundred year Old Man I would have persevered.
Next book to be abandoned was The Kabul Beauty Shop. Set in Kabul, this is the account of Deborah Rodriguez’s life in Afghanistan as she sets up a school to train Afghan women to be hair dressers and beauticians.

It does provide a fascinating view on a woman’s life in Kabul, the cruelty, the daily privations, and how life is lived in a burqa.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Little Coffee shop of Kabul, but this book drags. Perhaps it is the difference between a story, a narrative that pulls you along and account, which becomes a catalogue.

So what am I planning to read this October:

Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Audio book – I started to listen to this and decided to get the eBook version as well as it is a little difficult to follow at times in audio book format.

Short listed: We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Fowler – audio book.

And Susan Hill’s The Small Hand as we are due to see this as a stage play in Guildford.

Lastly, the latest Robert Galbraith novel The Silkworm for light relief.

Currently reading Feb 2014

Posted on By Margot

Having seen the film, I am now reading 12 years a slave (Kindle format)

Plato’s Republic (from Kobo)

Audio book: Great Minds of the Western Tradition from Audible (http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Classics/Great-Minds-of-the-Western-Intellectual-Tradition-3rd-Edition-Audiobook/B00DMDN0AO ). This is a series of lectures, approximately 30mins each. Total listening time is 43 hours – sI think I will be listening for some time.

 

The Hundred Year Old man who climbed out of a window and disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

Posted on By Margot

Perhaps another title could be "A History of the 20th century", for the central character, Allan Karlsson, seems to have been in on some of the pivotal moments of the 20th century and indeed, met the key players of the 20th Century (at least, through Swedish eyes).

The story is well told and does end happily ever after. It is funny, often unbelievable as a group of the most unlikely characters gather around Allan on his adventures. The story tells the life of Allan born in 1905 as well as the story of what happens after Allan climbs out of the window.

 

Dropping the Habit by Marion Dante

Posted on By Margot

“Have you read…” began the conversation and a frisson of excitement briefly took form as we discussed the merits (or otherwise) of a book written by a former Salesian nun. This was our annual get together for the class of 1970 of the former St John Bosco’s Convent Grammar School, Chertsey. It was not often that our former Alma Mater makes it into a published work. Would we recognise any of the people mentioned, would we even find ourselves in the pages of the book, and would it shed light on the lives of the women who educated us? And what scandals would be unveiled along the way?

And so I acquired the book on my eReader. The beginning started well enough, with the reminisces of a young Marion Dante in Ireland. There must be a guide somewhere that authors use for recreating the thoughtscape of a young child. The simple language and the half understanding of what is happening. Which is strange, because children, when they write, do not use this language.

As the book wore on, once I had got past Marion’s stay at the Sandgates convent in Chertsey, the book began to pall. There were points of interest, the lives of the nuns and the aspirants for instance and the changes wrought by Vatican II.

Undoubtedly, Marion’s life as nun was hard. And yes, the Church does have some hang ups about sex. The Manichean Heresy is not dead, even after 1700 years. Bodies are bad and sex is even worse. Only the spiritual world is good. But we live in our bodies and in Marion’s story is the suffering that results in such a negative view of the world.

However, I lost interest. The life of Marion drones on. Marion has a difficult childhood (her mother is chronically depressed – post natal depression?), the family is poor. Marion becomes a nun (to escape?). Marion has a breakdown and eventually leaves the order. And in her state of depression she fails to see she is not alone, for she has the remarkable gift of always finding a friend or two to help her, to give shelter and advice. So I ask, is this a story about a woman maltreated by a religious order or is it a story of a woman whose life is blighted by mental illness – first her mother’s and then her own breakdown.

Lincoln – the film

Posted on By Margot

Last night we went to the film Lincoln, starring Daniel Day Lewis. This was an extremely enjoyable film and certainly made one think. The year is 1865 and Lincoln, like Barak Obama, has just been elected for a second term.

So much of the film is familiar. Congress holds the president to ransom; the forces of conservatism are pitched against the forces of “radicalism”, or liberalism. The film covers Lincoln’s last months as he stands on the threshold of history. The thirteenth amendment to the constitution was to abolish slavery in the United States. Other amendments were added later, building on this, the most radical of all amendments to the constitution. The most surprising this about this film is the fact that Lincoln was a republican and it was the Republican party that was most in favour of the abolition of slavery, the Democrats were opposed. And yet, nearly 100 years later, it is a Democrat president, John F Kennedy who finally brings full civil rights to Black Americans and finally, the first black president is also a Democrat. How things change over time.

At the crucial vote to pass the Thirteenth amendment, the speaker elects to cast his vote, for as he says, history is being made. Now, it is impossible to imagine a world where the United States had not legislated against slavery.

The film does no favours to the American political system. Then as now, the system is open the bribery and corruption – then as now the votes of Congressmen can be bought. And the film certainly does no favours to those who are on the religious right. How can anyone say that slavery is ordained by God? And yet the religious right did.

Yann Martel: Beatrice and Virgil – First thoughts

Posted on By Margot

I am really struggling with this book – normally I pick up a book and begin reading. The plot will unfold and by the third chapter I will have the map of the unknown country described by the author in my head. But here it is a different story. I was struggling so much that I have had to resort to reading reviews etc. just to be able to grasp what this book is about.

The book is an attempt to show how the holocaust can be depicted in art – or perhaps how it should be depicted in various forms of art.

Who are Beatrice and Virgil? These are the guides in Dante’s Divine Comedy. But here they are a donkey and a howler monkey, occupying the space between not alive and not dead.

The more reviews I read, the more confused I become. The main protagonist is an author called Henry who wrote an absurdly successful book and now is struggling to launch another magnum opus. And out of the blue, another Henry, this one a taxidermist, contacts Henry about a play he is trying to write. The characters are in fact stuffed animals in the taxidermist’s shop and the play is called “The 20th Century Shirt”. And the big question to be answered “How are we going to talk about what happened to us one day when it is over”? And so the allusions to the holocaust and representations in art.

This is a book that has to be read carefully and I am proceeding slowly. My problem is that this is a digital library book and expires in 3 days. Perhaps I will renew it.

Yann Martel: Beatrice and Virgil part 2

Posted on By Margot

I finished the book. It is quite short and very surreal. What is it about?

It is about Henry, an author with writer’s block who meets a taxidermist who is writing a play about two animals. The taxidermist is stuck and he approaches Henry for help. Another layer. The play is a description of the Holocaust, which is in turn an allegory for the destruction of the animal world by human beings. The holocaust as an allegory for something else?

The end of the book is disturbing and now I wish that I had just abandoned the work after I had just read 30 or 40 pages. There are some books which live with you for the rest of your life. This is one such work.

There is another twist. The story is not just about the depiction about the holocaust in art. It is also about the toxicity of human guilt. The taxidermist is a former Nazi. Was he also involved in the brutality of the holocaust? Did he also torture and brutalise? And now how does he live with himself? By using art to explain away his part in the brutality of the Nazi regime. By using art to deflect the focus, to say that the real evil that mankind has done is not the extermination of 6 million people, but rather the enslavement and destruction of the animal kingdom. The taxidermist’s conscience is assuaged. Or is it?

The Life of Pi has been made into a charming film suitable for family entertainment. This book, if it were ever to make the silver screen would be a horror movie.

The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Posted on By Margot

This is the third book of the trilogy started by Shadow of the Wind by the Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I have just finished listening to it (purchased from Audible.co.uk). The Prisoner of Heaven is taken from a book by Julian Carax, the fictional author from the Shadow of the Wind. I had enjoyed the Shadow of the Wind, so much so that the Angel’s Game (book 2 of the trilogy) was something of an anticlimax. But this book brings both books together. The narrator is Daniel Sempere who is now married to Bea and has a small son. The star of the book is Fermin (Fermin Romero de Torres), an unlikely hero. Small, slight, not good looking, most definitely not a Hollywood star, on whose body is enscribed the brutality of the Franco regime and the barbarity of the Spanish Civil War. The story centres on Fermin’s time as a prisoner in the dreaded Montjuic Castle and his friendship with david Martine, the main character from the Angel’s Game. Despite the brutality of his experiences, Fermin is a man of compassion, a man of courage, the sort of man that anyone would be proud to have as a friend.

Fermin is about to be married to Bernarda, and all is not well with the groom to be. A mysterious stranger turns up in the Sempere bookshop and this stranger is the catalyst for Fermin to tell his story to Daniel. In this story Daniel finds out more about his friend and his mother as well as finding out what was troubling the groom to be.

Zafon writes a good book, the narrative is gripping, one begun it, the book has to be finished. Zafon draws us into two eras of Barcelona’s history – the Barcelona of 1960 and the post civil war Barcelona of the 1940s. How does a city recovery from a civil war, how does a city cope with a fascist dictatorship? How can the desire for revenge accommodate the desire to live a normal live?

There is a twist in the story, the world of David Martin. This is a world where the thin veil that separates the world of reality from the world of mental illness. How do we know what is real and what is fantasy? And yet here, right at the end of the book is a twist. Just when you think that there is only the real world, that the whole story can be explained, Zafon throws in the Angel from the Angel’s Game.