Long Absence

Moving house shares some characteristics with childbirth (or what I'm told of it). It's a painful and traumatic experience at the time, but yet between moves the memory fades enough to convince us that it wasn't so bad, and so we do it all over again. Having just moved to a new city on the hottest day of the year (45 degrees Celsius), from a large house to a tiny flat up three flights of stairs (no lift), I am currently swearing that I'll never move again.

All this moaning is by way of apologising for not blogging recently. Not being able to find my computer under all the boxes is partly to blame, as is the ongoing and very ugly fight we're having with our ISP which means we still don't have the internet connected at home. Sigh. But I have been reading some interesting books which I hope to write about very soon- The Night Watch by Sarah Waters and Disgrace by JM Coetzee.

The chaos here is sure to end soon!

Library Card

Brandon refers to this cute library card generator at his site .

Gertrude and Claudius

The word that springs to mind when I think of how to describe Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike is 'adult'. Maybe this is because I have been reading a lot of YA fiction lately and have become used to teenage protagonists. Whatever the reason, it was a refreshing change to read a proper grown-up book.

Gertrude and Claudius is the story of the royal court of Denmark leading up to the events of Shakespeare's Hamlet. As the title suggests, the central characters are Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, and his uncle, Claudius, who of course famously becomes the king by poisoning Hamlet's father. In John Updike's Denmark, Hamlet is a sulky young man who is whiny and ungrateful, and his father, the king, is boorish and warlike. Gertrude is carefully drawn as a vivacious and well-loved noble women who is forced into a tactical marriage by the powerful men who surround her. By describing in detail Gertrude's unsatisfying marriage and the lack of control she has over her circumstances, Updike transforms her into a sympathetic character. When she embarks on a late-in-life affair with her husband's brother it gives her a glimpse of happiness and I, for one, was cheering her on.

Since the novel forms a kind of prequel to Hamlet, the reader knows what will eventually happen to the characters. Thus the emphasis moves back to the 'how' and not the 'what' of the plot. There is a feeling of suspense as plot unfurls and we wait for the murder that will spark the
events of Hamlet.

Updike writes in a muscular style. He is a writer who knows how to make the words do as he says. It's an interestingly masculine style in which to describe one of the most famous, most discussed and probably most disliked, women in literature. Updike gives Gertrude a life beyond the play and makes her believable. We escape Hamlet's view of the world to see how events might have been interpreted from a different perspective, one in which the dead King Hamlet is not perfect and his uncle not necessarily a total villain.

I loved Gertrude and Claudius. Updike creates a vivid picture of the windswept landscape and harsh life of medieval Denmark. He gives a fresh perspective on a familiar story and ultimately writes a great, tragic love story. A quirky aspect of the novel is that the names of the characters change three times- a reference to the different names given the characters in the various historical versions of the story. I found this slightly annoying, although I suppose it's an effective way to remind readers that the story of Hamlet is much older than Shakespeare.

I'll end with a quote about Shakespeare's Hamlet that Updike refers to in his afterword. It's from G. Wilson Knight's The Wheel of Fire: Interpretations of Shakespearean Tragedy:

Putting aside the murder being covered up, Claudius seems a capable king, Gertrude a noble queen, Ophelia a treasure of sweetness, Polonius a tedious but not evil counsellor, Laertes a generic young man. Hamlet pulls them all into death.

The New Year

Happy New Year to all! The Christmas/ New Year period has not proven to be good for either reading or blogging for me. Too much food, too much alcohol and too much racing around the country to various friends and relatives. While all of these things are wonderful in themselves, they have left little time for anything else.

Anyway, before Christmas I had begun to think, like many other bloggers, about what I would classify as my literary highlights of 2006. I tend to not keep up with current releases, since most of my books are bought second hand (my current read- Sarah Waters' The Night Watch- being a decadent exception) so my highlights wouldn't make any of the newspapers' 'best books' lists.

The absolute discovery of the year for me was Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. I've no idea why I left it so long to read this novel, but I was blown away by it. Nabokov creates a feeling of overwhelming discomfort, luring the reader into a relationship with an abhorrent but charismatic central character. I found myself on some level liking Humbert Humbert at the same time as being repulsed by his motivations and actions. Nabokov's wordplay and joy with language help to balance the confronting material and mean that Lolita is a surprisingly funny novel- certainly not something that I expected.

Other highlights of the past year would include two great female novelists: The Radiant Way by Margaret Drabble, which has made me a great fan of her work, and Kate Grenville's The Secret River. For pure 'eww' value I also have to mention Perfume by Patrick Suskind, probably one of the most disturbing and unforgettable novels I have ever read- ever wondered how to make perfume out of dead people? Patrick Suskind has and is happy to share...

Bad Santa

I find myself only one week away from Christmas and I'm hopelessly behind on my posts for Carl's G.I.F.T. Challenge. I'm not sure I'll manage four posts by next week but I couldn't let the challenge go by without mentioning my favourite Christmas film, Bad Santa.

Bad Santa is the ultimate anti-Christmas Christmas film. It stars Billy-Bob Thornton as a foul-mouthed drunken department store Santa who does a nice line in break and enter on the side. This film possibly has more swearing than any other I can think of. Okay, maybe there are some gangster movies that top it in the cursing stakes, but nobody swears with the same style as Billy-Bob. This Santa manages to offend just about every group in society and still remain endearing. For God's sake, he pisses himself while in the Santa suit and gets away with it.

And just in case you thought it was just too dark and cynical, there is a slightly soppy ending, albeit one that is totally in keeping with the spirit of the film. Watch this one with a glass of whisky, a cigar and a healthy desire to escape the usual Christmas schmaltz.

Doubles

I haven't posted in a while due to a nasty computer virus, so many apologies to those who read this blog and lots of bad vibes to whoever wiped my computer out. Anyway, I'm going to be a bit self-indulgent and make a list this post, so skip it if you don't like that sort of thing!

I'm moving to another city in January, so last weekend I thought I'd see if it is at all possible to streamline my ever-growing book collection (gasp! no!). I really couldn't stand to part with any books, however I thought that I could probably give away any that we had multiple copies of. When I met my husband, we merged our book collections and I found it fascinating to look through and see where our tastes overlapped. It was nice to see that some of my favourite books came up on the list:

1. The Shipping News E. Annie Proulx (the book I most often name as my favourite novel- anything Proulx writes is fantastic)
2. Wuthering Heights
3. The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
4. The Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolff (embarrassingly we somehow had three copies of this, I've no idea why)
5. The Monkey's Mask Dorothy Porter (an Australian novel in verse, so a fairly obscure book to have two of- I also haven't read it yet, much to my shame. Soon, soon.)
6. Oranges are not the Only Fruit Jeanette Winterson (a brilliant autobiographical novel about her childhood)
7. Oliver Twist
8. The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck (one of my favourite writers, the ending of this novel is unbearably tragic and devastates me every time)
9. Exquisite Corpse Poppy Z. Brite (two copies of this and both were my husbands, me not being big on horror)
10. Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
11. The Complete Poems of Sylvia Plath
12. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy (another book that regular makes my list of favourite novels ever)

All books were happily received by people at my work. Of course, I have since bought lots more books, so my collection is really no smaller. Oh well, I think I'll just have to buy more shelves...

It's Not All About YOU, Calma!

It's Not All About YOU, Calma! is Barry Jonsberg's follow up to his successful young adult novel, Kiffo and the Pitbull and is just as entertaining and fun. Jonsberg has a talent for getting inside the head of his young female narrator, Calma Harrison, and it is the strong narrative voice that makes both novels so good. Calma is a self-confessed 'unreliable narrator', a fantastically opinionated girl who is forced in the course of the novel to confront some of her perceptions of the people around her. Calma has grown up a bit since Kiffo and the Pitbull- she now has a love interest and a minimum wage job at the local budget supermarket. She also has her dad to contend with; he's back on the scene after abandoning Calma and her mum several years earlier.

Jonsberg creates a strong sense of place in the novel, at times I could almost feel the steamy heat of Darwin as I read. He also writes very well about school and teachers, particularly English teachers, a result of his own teaching background. I'm not a big fan of comic novels (more on that in a future post), but Jonsberg bases his humour in believable characters and situations and I actually laughed out loud once or twice while reading this. I am looking forward to the next book in the 'Calma' series...

GIFT Challenge: The Christmas Mystery

Christmas is a strange time for an atheist. Of course, it is essentially a Christian religious festival. Or a pagan mid-winter festival if that takes your fancy. But what is Christmas for me, who is neither Christian nor any other religion?

Christmas still registers as important for me, even when it is devoid of religious meaning. This is because Christmas has gone beyond being a purely religious event. I can have a tree with a star on top, sing carols about religious events, give presents and send cards without being a Christian because these practices are part of our shared culture and set of traditions. These traditions are still meaningful because they reflect our history and culture.

But why am I going on about all this? Because I have just read Jostein Gaarder's The Christmas Mystery as part of Carl's GIFT Challenge. I loved Gaarder's novel Sophie's World- it is a post-modern journey through the history of thought and philosophy which ends strongly in favour of rational thinking. Which is why I was surprised to find that The Christmas Mystery is a religious story. In the novel, a young boy in Norway discovers a mysterious Advent calender. Inside each window there is a piece of paper and written on these pieces of paper is the story of a young girl, Elisabet, who journeys through time and across continents to be present at the birth of Jesus. It's a sweet children's story, with a positive message of peace and tolerance. Gaarder includes a modern day mystery to be solved and there is some well-researched information about the spread of Christianity in Europe.

But the overtly religious content turned me off. Of course I asked myself the obvious question, 'What the hell did you expect from a book called The Christmas Mystery??' Hence my ponderings about the meaning of Christmas.

The Christmas Mystery is not for me. Read it to your kids if you want to teach them about the religious meaning of Christmas, but don't bother if, like me, Christmas for you has become about something else altogether.

The Perfect Gift

I have been part of a bookclub in our small town for the last three years. I have had a great time with this group of people, most of whom are also my workmates. Once a month we meet at someone's house. Someone else will present a book they have chosen, kickstarting discussion with some points or question- it's all pretty informal. Drinking wine and eating good food are an important part of the equation. We always have a good discussion about the book before getting off track and discussing life, the universe and everything. I have loved getting together with friends for the sole purpose of talking about books and reading- something there should be more of! The combination of people in our group has also been crucial to its success: we have both men and women and a range of age groups, and we share generally similar tastes in literary fiction.

Last night, however, was the last bookclub for me, having just found out that I am moving to another town in January. It was, as usual, a great night, and I felt my first twinges of remorse about moving (well that's not exactly true, I'll really miss friends here but the move is a very good one for lots of reasons). The other bookclub members got together and organised a really touching farewell present for me: each of them chose a well-loved book from their shelves and wrote a farewell message on the inside cover. I came home clutching my pile of books (swaying a bit, but that was the wine), filled with remorse that I won't get to be there for future heated discussions.

This morning, after the hangover wore off, I examined my gift books. I can't wait to read all of them! They are:

• Gertrude and Claudius John Updike
• The Elephant Vanishes Haruki Murakami
• Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World Claudia Roth Pierpont (ed)
• Night Letters Robert Dessaix
• Intimacy Hanif Kureishi
• Rembrandt's Whore Sylvie Matton
• The Art of Travel Alain de Botton

I haven't read any of these but they all look great. I've wanted to read more Murakami for a while now (I've only read Dance, Dance, Dance which was bizarre but fascinating) and (and I'm ashamed to admit this) I've never read any John Updike. The nice thing is, is that as I read each of these books I can think of the person who gave it to me.

Meanwhile, the search begins for a bookclub in my new town...

An Alternative History

Ever wandered what the world would be like if JFK had survived the shooting in Dallas? What would Marilyn Monroe have done with her life if she hadn't died at 36 years of age? British journalist Mark Lawson imagines a world where they are both still alive in his 1995 novel, Idlewild.

Idlewild is a great, light read. It's Lawson's first novel, and sometimes it feels like that, but he is having such fun here and the plot is clever and funny so I'm ready to forgive any slight awkwardness. Lawson switches between various plot strands throughout the novel. There is the conspiracy theorists' conference (with many discussions about the attempted assassination of JFK and how it was all a plot to get him re-elected), the police who protect JFK (one of whom is Michael Dukakis- in this version of history he sticks with policing instead of getting into politics) and the lives of the aging JFK and Monroe, amongst other story lines. Lawson considers how JFK's reputation would have suffered, had he been the president during the Vietnam War. This JFK is one who showed early promise and then disgraced himself, forever associated with an unpopular and unsuccessful military campaign. He is a washed out, disappointed character who looks back on his life with regret.

Similarly Marilyn has aged, and has never quite lived up to the popularity of her youth. She has to contend with losing her looks after a career built on her famous beauty. Her attempts at a serious acting career- a film version of The Brothers Karamazov- have been derided and now she lives a furtive life, avoiding paparazzi and using the name Jean Norman.

There are some great touches to the novel- apparently Marilyn Monroe was interested in making a film of The Brothers Karamazov in real life- and Lawson has created a believable alternative history. He keeps the tone light and amusing, while also examining more serious ideas to do with time, fate and the impact of the individual on history.

I enjoyed Idlewild as a light read, but felt that some of the characters lacked depth. I wanted to learn more about the aging Kennedy particularly, but Lawson seems to have sacrificed some detail in order to contain a complex and sometimes gimmicky plot. Still, it's an interesting concept and the novel doesn't take itself too seriously- a good summer holiday read.

Incidentally, the title is taken from the original name of what is now JFK Airport.

A Christmas Reading Challenge

No matter how hard I try to be above all the Christmas hype, it gets me every time. I still find myself getting excited about wrapping presents and baking ridiculous hot food in the middle of summer and of course, enjoying the odd alcoholic beverage or two.

So I was please to see I'm not the only one. Carl has proposed a great Christmas reading challenge over at Stainless Steel Droppings. The challenge involves posting on any four of the following:

• Christmas movies
• Christmas novels/short stories
• Christmas songs
• Christmas poems
• Christmas traditions
• Christmas memories

"The challenge comes in here: two of your 4 choices must either involve something completely new to you or something you haven’t read or watched in an inordinately long amount of time."

I realised I have a copy of Jostein Gaarder's novel The Christmas Mystery on my shelves, so I'll be reading that for the first time. I'll also read A Christmas Carol. I'm thinking I might do a post on National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation unless a better idea comes along. It's such a cheesy film but I remember laughing myself stupid as a a 12 year old. I might also post some summery southern hemisphere Christmas memories to counter all that northern hemisphere winter/ snow/ long, dark nights stuff that will going around.

Thanks for suggesting the challenge Carl! (And thanks for the excellent buttons to go with it).

Sleeping Dogs

I've been meaning to read something by Australian writer Sonya Hartnett for ages and am very glad that I finally have. In Sydney a few months ago I picked up a copy of Sleeping Dogs, a short novel of Harnett's from 1995. I chose this novel pretty much at random. I've since realised that some her more recent novels have had more attention overseas, particularly Thursday's Child which won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 2002.

Sleeping Dogs is a short and uncomfortable, but very interesting, read. Hartnett is a very literary writer. By that I mean that she seems to wear some of her influences on her sleeve. I felt echoes of Faulkner in this novel. At times the novel could be taking place in the deep south of America rather than in rural Australia and Hartnett has previously been described as writing in a kind of southern Gothic style. I felt an echo of some of the Russian writers here too, and there is explicit reference to the characters reading Crime and Punishment. This is not a criticism of her writing. Sleeping Dogs is a richer and more sophisticated novel for its allusions to other works of literature.

Sleeping Dogs examines the warped morality that has developed in the fiercely loyal and isolated Willow family. The family is dominated by their charismatic and cruel father, Griffin, who strictly controls his children, most of whom are adults now, but who are unable to leave the claustrophobic world of their family. They own a decrepit, run-down farm and have been forced to admit outsiders into their world in order to earn money by running a caravan park. Aside from their business, the family exists outside of society, inventing their own rules and moral codes. Within their decaying world, violence and incest have become acceptable. It takes an outsider in the form of an artist who stays in his caravan on the property to challenge the family and the way they live.

Hartnett's novel is classified as Young Adult fiction and, once again, I have to question why. It's not that I think the material is particularly inappropriate, although this novel is certainly disturbing and challenging and probably best for older teenagers, but that Hartnett's work stands on its own as a work of adult fiction. The central characters are hardly children (they are in their twenties) and the novel has a sophistication more usually found in adult literary fiction. I can only presume that publishers like categories and that once you are pegged as a 'children's writer' you are destined to remain in that category forever.

Sleeping Dogs is a dark and unsettling novel. It's not one that I'd want to re-read in a hurry because of this. But it is written with great skill. Hartnett creates atmosphere like few other contemporary writers can and I felt totally convinced by the world that she creates in this novel. I am definitely going to try to read some more of her work, but might need a few lighter reads in between...

The Ghost Road

After a hectic week of writing student reports and finally completing the school magazine for the year, I made it to the end of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy. I finished just in time for the end of November and Kailana's November Reading Challenge.

Overall, I really enjoyed the trilogy. However I think the first novel, Regeneration, is by far the strongest. The Eye in the Door was slightly weaker but still a powerful novel. That brings me to The Ghost Road, the last novel in the trilogy.

The Ghost Road follows the two main characters from The Eye in the Door: Rivers, a psychiatrist, and Prior, a soldier who has suffered both mental and physical breakdown. In the first two novels most of the action takes place in England, away from the war front. I had found that setting very interesting. Concentrating on the home front gives the reader a chance to experience the war through the eyes of not only soldiers but also the women, conscientious objectors, essential workers and older men who were back in England during WWI. However in The Ghost Road, Prior manages to get back to the front despite his chronic asthma and we enter more traditional war novel territory. The battle scenes are tragic and emotional, but there is a sense that we've read about this before. At the battle front, Barker switches to first person diary entries from Prior. This device is slightly awkward, particularly when she has to keep switching back to third person when it becomes obvious that Prior wouldn't write a diary entry just before or after combat.

Another awkward feature of The Ghost Road is the extended flashbacks to Rivers' time spent studying a tribe in the Pacific. I found these long diversions distracting, although I could see that Barker was using the flashbacks to illuminate some of the themes of the novel such as attitudes to death and the role of the warrior in society.

Maybe, I've been a bit harsh on The Ghost Road. It is an interesting and well written novel. My slight sense of disappointment is probably more because the first two novels were so good. I have another Pat Barker novel on my shelves, Border Crossing, and I'm going to read it as soon as I can. The Regeneration trilogy has convinced me that Barker is a writer with the ability to develop psychologically complex and believable characters and one who writes with subtlety and grace.

Wish List

After a visit to Our Nation's Capital, and to one of its finest bookstores, on Thursday I was salivating. There are so many exciting books to buy at the moment. And while lack of funds held me back from buying anything yet, I have begun composing my wishlist of current releases to be collected in the coming months:

1. Moral Disorder, Margaret Atwood. New Margaret Atwood. Enough said.
2. Mothers and Sons, Colm Toibin. I heard him interviewed about this on Radio National and have been dying to read it ever since.
3. Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby. A book about books. How could I not like it?
4. After seeing them at the National Library, I want to start reading Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series of murder mysteries. I've no idea what they're like but the covers had me hooked (shallow, I know)
5. The Inheritance of Loss Kiran Desai. It won the Booker. I feel obliged.

And lots more, but that'll do for a start. Can I also take a moment to point out that the town I live in has no bookshop (!!!)? This might help you all to understand how excited I get when I get the chance to check out books in a proper good bookshop. Ahhh, heaven.

Sexy (Joyce Carol Oates)

Sexy is the latest young adult fiction novel from the very prolific Joyce Carol Oates. I love her adult novels, although I have only read a small proportion of them. Her young adult fiction shows the same skill with character and depictions of intricate social situations as her adult novels.

Like another of her young adult novels, Big Mouth and Ugly Girl, Sexy examines the hysteria that can develop from relatively innocent events, especially in suspicious small town environments. In Big Mouth and Ugly Girl, that hysteria resulted from the (imagined) threat of a high school massacre. In Sexy, it involves accusations leveled at a gay teacher in a conservative small town high school.

Oates' talent lies with her incredible ability to create realistic characters. Here the central character is Darren Flynn, whose good looks attract attention. He cannot control his 'sexiness' and the notice that it gains him, sometimes from unwanted sources. He is crippled by his inability to forge his own character or to express himself and is terrified by the English teacher who challenges him on this.

Oates does not shy away from difficult issues in her young adult fiction. At first the novel seems to prepare the reader for some kind of sexual abuse, however what actually happens is much more complex and ambiguous than that. Without wanting to give too much away, Darren must deal with the fact that he is attractive to others, including some men. However he is also forced to take sides when his teacher becomes the victim of a hate campaign.

Oates captures the world of teenage boys with incredible accuracy. The pack behaviour, the need to actively assert their heterosexuality at any cost, is instantly recognisable to anyone who works with teenagers.

I would recommend this novel to teenagers, with some reservations. The moral terrain here is complex and requires a certain level of maturity to negotiate. To adults, I would recommend the novel unreservedly. Sometimes the distinction between 'adult' and 'young adult' fiction seems so random, sometimes it is a result of nothing more than the high school setting, as seems to be the case here. Sexy is a small novel that asks big questions of any age group.

Ere...

I'm having a bad week. The weather is oppressive; 38 degrees Celsius today, with a hot westerly wind blowing. No airconditioning at school or at home and three classes worth of reports due, well, yesterday. There has been no real time to read, let alone compose a nice coherent post.

So I thought I'd let someone else do the talking. Why not Kingsley Amis? A great book of his that I came across a couple of years ago is The King's English, a guide to English usage that takes its name from Fowler's earlier guide.

Amis is funny and witty and often totally priggish, but I love him for it. Here is a typical extract:

Ere: I mention this dead and unlamented word only to note that its ghost is sometimes raised by jocular chaps who effect phrases like 'ere long' and 'ere now'. I have two messages for such chaps: one is unprintable, the other goes, If you must write this shred of battered facetiousness, for Christ's sake get it right. The word is ere, not e'er.

November Book Challenge Update 2

As part of the November Reading Challenge, I've just finished the second part of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, The Eye in the Door.

This novel is quite different to the first one, Regeneration. Where Regeneration carefully balanced the stories of a range of different characters, in The Eye in the Door Barker focuses her attention on two main characters, Rivers and Prior, both of whom appeared in the the first novel. Rivers is a psychiatrist specialising in post-war neuroses in soldiers. Prior is an officer from a working class background who has been declared unfit for service due to severe asthma and is now working in London at the Ministry of Munitions. Prior and Rivers met in the first novel at Craiglockhart, a psychiatric institution for soldiers, where Rivers treated Prior.

The Eye in the Door lacks the restraint of Regeneration but is probably more readable because of this. The focus on two characters makes it much less demanding but in some ways also less complex. There is also more gritty detail about the characters' lives, especially Prior's very varied sexual experiences. The novel opens with an encounter between him and another officer, Manning, who is himself nervous about being embroiled in a sexual controversy.

The attitude towards homosexuality on the home front is explored, with Barker contending that as a reaction to the intense focus on the importance of bonds between men during war time, there is a more conservative and punitive attitude taken to male relationships that go beyond the platonic. Authorities must make sure that love between men is the 'right' kind of love. Nearly all of the men in the novel blur this border in their relationships with other men in some way. Rivers becomes overly close to his male patients and in some senses is 'in love' with Siegfried Sassoon, a patient of his from Craiglockhart, although he does not act on this. Prior has homosexual 'encounters' but this does not prevent the very real devotion he feels to Sarah, his girlfriend. Manning maintains a wife and family for apperances sake, at the same time as sleeping with young men.

The central image in this novel is of division. Soldiers must divide their personalities in order to cope at the front, they cleave their conscience away from their bodies so that they can cope with the horrific tasks they must complete. In Prior this division has become more concrete. He begins to suffer blackouts and comes to realise that he is 'another person' during the missing time periods, himself but a more ruthless, carnal, violent self, a character born in the trenches who now threatens to take over the 'real' Prior. Rivers also describes himself as divided. He must separate his emotional self from his scientific self in order to treat his patients. This is a microcosm of an England which is divided between supporters of the war (the majority) and those who oppose it. Barker begins to explore the treatment of these 'conchies' in The Eye in the Door.

The Eye in the Door is a fascinating and readable novel. It recreates a period in history in an enlightening and interesting way, dealing with some of the less explored aspects of the war in a sophisticated way. Despite this, it lacks some of the subtlety of Regeneration. I look forward to reading The Ghost Road to see where Barker takes the story from here.

Frankenstein

My house has been the site of a little Frankenstein festival over the last week or so. It sort of happened by accident. My Year 8 class is studying Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands and when I said, 'Oh, and of course this film is referring to the story of Frankenstein,' a lot of them looked back at me blankly. I was horrified. Surely Frankenstein is a cultural icon!

Then I realised that I hadn't read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein myself, or seen any of the classic James Whale/ Boris Karloff films. In fact the story hadn't interested me in the way that, say, vampire mythology does. Vampires have the advantage of being much sexier, darker and more complex than Frankenstein's monster. But, after watching Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and, of course, Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, I've come to love the big fella.

Firstly, I just love Boris Karloff's performance. Despite the dodgy sets and some hammy acting from other cast members, he is believable. The makeup is fantastic and Karloff portrays such a powerful sense of yearning and loneliness. I have to confess that in Bride of Frankenstein I shed a tear after the monster was hunted out of the blind man's hut and lost his only friend (Ok, I cry in everything, but I was not expecting to cry in a Frankenstein film).

Also, the whole concept is quite radical. The idea of man as God, creating new life, is fascinating. As is the role of the monster as outsider and the violent reactions of people to this 'abomination'.

James Whale's stark sets, particularly for the outdoor scenes in forests or graveyards are artworks. The black shapes of crosses and the surreal forest of denuded trees make full use of the studio location and create a powerfully eerie atmosphere.

I still haven't read Mary Shelley's novel, a terrible oversight for many reasons, not least of which is that I find her very interesting as a historical figure. I'm definitely putting Frankenstein top of my 'to read' list now. In an era of increasing violence and intolerance, as well as of scientific advances in cloning and genetic engineering, this story is probably more relevant than ever.

When to let go...

Any regular readers of this blog -and I'm making a big leap assuming that there are any ;-) - might have noticed that two books have been sitting in my 'currently reading' list for a while now. Bruce Chatwin's What Am I Doing Here is a collection of essays that I've been dipping in and out of. I'll probably get really stuck into it soon, but I'm not too worried about that one.

The other is March by Geraldine Brooks. I really want to like this novel. It won a Pulitzer Prize, its author originally comes from Australia and it's based in part on Little Women, a novel I loved as a child. March follows the story of the father from Little Women and his involvement in the Civil War.

I'm 215 pages in and I just don't know if I can be bothered going on. I don't think I've ever gotten that far in a novel and then decided to give up. But I've tried and tried and I just don't like it. Perhaps it's the fact that I've read it in bits and pieces and have been a bit distracted lately, but I've read and enjoyed a couple of other novels since starting this one. Usually if I don't like a book I drop it within the first 50 pages but I've pushed on because the elements are so right. But with a 130 pages to go, what do I do? Is life too short and are there too many other books to waste another second on this one? Or do I push on and at least feel a sense of accomplishment at getting through to the end?

I'll let the beside table decide. This book gets a week on the top of the pile. If I don't pick it up by then I'll abandon it. Maybe...

November Book Challenge Update

As some of you may know, I am participating in Kailana's November Reading Challenge. I am making slow progress but have finally finished the first in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy called, not surprisingly, Regeneration.

Regeneration is a fascinating read. There is little in the way of traditional plot, all the action here is psychological, which is appropriate given the setting in Craiglockhart, a psychiatric institution for soldiers during WWI. The novel is part fiction and part history, with familiar figures such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen featuring. Rivers, the psychiatrist who becomes the central character, is also based on a historical figure.

The novel switches between various patients, all of whom have reacted in different ways to their horrific experiences of war, and all of whom force Rivers to consider his own attitude to the war. The horrific experiences of these men are beyond belief, even though we've heard these kind of stories many times before. The patient who is unable to eat after being hurled by a bomb blast and landing face first in the bloated and rotten entrails of a fellow soldier is a nightmarish example.

The concept of duty is central to the novel. Men declared unfit for service must reconcile their relief with their guilt and sense that they have not fulfilled their duty to their country and their fellow soldiers. Rivers has a duty to help his patients but in this complex situation what constitutes help? If Rivers 'cures' his patients, they are sent back to the front and to almost certain death.

The title also suggest another major thematic concern, that of regeneration. How will these men 'regenerate' after their devastating experiences, how does anyone recover from that? The title also hints at the word 'generation' and the conflict in the novel between the older generations with their patriotism and idealism and the experiences of the young men that they so easily commit to the conflict.

This is a complex and beautifully written novel. Pat Barker exercises great restraint with the material so that the truly horrifying elements are just that, and are not overwhelmed by sentiment. An added bonus is that the novel gives a great sense of the psychological climate in which Sassoon and Owen created their war poetry. While sometimes the sheer number of characters is overwhelming (I admit to having to flick back and forth a bit, particularly early on) the different strands of the novel eventually settle into place like pieces in a puzzle. It's disturbing material which seems increasingly relevant, despite our historical distance from WWI.

I look forward to reading the next two novels!