Category: Reviews

Books that I have read

Father Brown by G K Chesterton

Posted on By Margot

I read the Fr Brown stories many, many years ago, so long ago that the details of the stories have been lost. It was a pleasant surprise to find that some of the Father Brown stories had been adapted for the small screen. Unfortunately, the BBC made two rather bizarre decisions about this series. First, a brand new series was consigned to mid afternoon viewing. What, do the BBC really not consider those of us who work? And the second was that all 10 episodes should be shown over two weeks. So even is you want to watch on iPlayer, you have very little time in which to do this.

Having said all this, the series was extremely watchable. Fr Brown has been moved from post WW1 to post WW2. Fr Brown is now a priest in a piece of England that I cannot recognise – Catholic parishes in England have an assortment of parish churches – some are Victorian, but most hail from the 1920’s onwards. Fr Brown’s parish church would not have been out of place in a series about an Anglican priest, but the Catholic Church in this country does not have pre-reformation churches in its estate. When John Henry Newman crossed the divide, he did not bring any real estate with him. And in the 1950’s, the Catholic Church was not quite as mainstream as the series portrays. But these are minor things. And of course, the careful viewer will note that the stories are “based on”. This give licence for all sorts of changes – the English Inspector Valentine is in the original, Inspector Valentin a leading French policeman who comes to England to apprehend the daring thief Flambeau.

These changes can be ignored, for what the BBC produced was an extremely nostalgic trip back to the 1950’s and an England long gone. The pleasant English village is not a safe place, rather like Midsomer and the world of Miss Marple where death comes calling with monotonous regularity. Despite that, it is a safe world where materialism has not caught hold and neighbours talk to neighbours.

I have now watched all ten episodes – but alas I had to watch them bunched together. However enjoyable the series, this was indigestible, so come on BBC – please can FR Brown be spread out a bit more. And now, I am reading the originals again.

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel (film)

Posted on By Margot

We went to see this on New Years Day at the recently revamped cinema in Walton. Gone were the traditional cinema seats, and the cramped feel that all cinemas seem to have. Instead we were treated to a 2 seater sofa, masses of leg room and small tables on which to place your drinks. Very civilised.

We chose to see the 3D version of the film, which means that you have to wear some rather unflattering glasses (which do fit over your own spectacles). So armed with a cup of coffee and the 3d specs we settled down to see the film.

And the film. The 3D effects were great. Were they essential to the film? No, not really. Like any film, it is the story which is important.

The story covers the life of a boy called by Pi growing up in India. His parents ran a zoo

Martel asks important questions in this film. In the beginning, as Pi’s early life story is told, is the question of religion and the fragmentation of religion and religion’s relationship to the belief in God. At the end, another question is asked, which story do you prefer, the fantastic fable of a boy shipwrecked, in a lifeboat with only a tiger for companionship or a more realistic story of a boy alone in the lifeboat. As Pi points out, neither story answers the question “Why did the ship sink?”. So it is easy to miss the real questions that Martel is asking, questions to do with truth. How do we know what is true and what is not true. Sometimes we confuse the question of truth with what is real, or reality. However reality, when totally deconstructed is a bunch of sun atomic particles that sometime sexist and sometimes do not, sometimes they are here and sometimes somewhere else – with lots of space in between. Reality is not what I can see and feel and touch, for the particles that I can touch today may be somewhere else tomorrow and may even be part of the system that I call me. What is truth? Pi tells the Japanese investigators at the end of the book (and film) two stories. Can they both be true? The second story is unpalatable, for it deals with the rawness of survival and shatters the picture we have of Pi, a gentle and dreaming 17 year old boy, a boy who kills so that he will survive (and not be eaten). The stark facts of the second story do not necessarily contradict the first story. Are the two not different ways of telling the story of a boy who survives the destruction of his family and is cast adrift for 227 days alone in a small boat. And despite this, Pi survives, physically, psychologically and emotionally. And so it is with God. And a question of faith. Which story of creation do you prefer? The hard bald facts, or a creation story told by the world’s great religions. Are the great religions that Pi meets in India, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism not just different stories told about the same God?

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.

Belief or Nonbelief by Carlo Martini & Unmberto Eco

Posted on By Margot

This was originally published August 2012

What are the dividing lines between Catholic Christians and secularists? Eco (author of Name of the Rose) and Cardinal Martini (in the Catholic corner) discuss four issues: abortion, why women cannot be ordained, hope and the future of mankind and the basis of ethics. Perhaps not the burning issues that many today would think need to be answered, but this book was written in the context of the impending millennium where some predicted this would bring in the end of civilisation as we know it. Today the burning issues would be child abuse, homosexuality, Darwinism or even the environment. Perhaps another age (not too long ago) would have included the just war or nuclear weapons.

The discussion is in the form of correspondence and the reader is left with the impression of two men with deeply held beliefs who are compassionate, sincere and humane. Both represent the good qualities of good men. What divides them, apart from faith in God? This question is of supreme importance, for not only does it address issues of common ground in the public arena but also a much more interesting question – what drives altruism? Why would one human being lay down his/her life for another?

The problem that Eco faces is that he was a Catholic, he grew up in a Catholic community, that he is inheritor of the great panoply of Christian thought and ethics just like most of us from the western European world (including North America and other corners of the English speaking world). We share a common set of values that includes the concept of human dignity. And what are the ultimate values, the values that one would lay down one’s life? There are surely two questions that need to be answered, what constitutes the values of the philosopher’s good life – and the second, why should I sacrifice my life for these values? Eco cannot distance himself sufficiently from his Catholic heritage to answer these questions.

For our society, as inheritors of Western European culture, the ultimate values are arrived at as a dialogue between the Christian tradition and the humanist/secularist challenge. Both challenge and refine each other. This book is one part of that dialogue.

eBook: from BooksOnBoard, publisher SkyHorse Publishing Inc.

Now reading in October

Posted on By Margot

This October I decided to go for a recently published novel – Sebastian Faulks “A Possible Life”. I bought this as an eBook from Books on Board. There is one advantage to not owning a kindle – I can shop around for books. I had intended to read J K Rowling’s A Casual Vacancy , but at £11.99 it is a little expensive, so I shall wait for the price to drop. I still have Hilary mantel’s Wolf Hall to read. I have already listened to this, so the excitement is not there to reread it. After all, the subject is a particularly brutal time in English history, when the king has become a tyrant seemingly hell-bent on bankrupting the country in pursuit of his vanity projects.

I have also acquired Kamin Mohammadi’s The Cypress Tree, a story about Iran. Should be interesting to compare this with Reading Lolita in Teheran.