Secrets and Awkwardness

There is a nice symmetry in my reading at the moment. I have just finished Open Secrets by Alice Munro and am now about half-way through Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach and it occurs to me that both books deal with the quiet and awkward moments between people that are not often the subject of 'great' art.

Munro's short stories are wonderfully thought-provoking. She knows just when to end a story, finding the balance between some sort of resolution and still leaving the reader with something to think about. Her stories in this collection all revolve around interesting and often unconventional female characters, particularly women who are unconventional in their sex lives. She finds drama and poetry in the everyday. I loved her deceptively simple writing style and unique perspective on small town life, and I will be reading some more of her work very soon.

I still haven't made up my mind about On Chesil Beach. So far I'm enjoying McEwan's writing, as I have in his other novels. The situation is interesting- two young people on their wedding night in the early '60s, both of whom are sexually inexperienced and ignorant in a way that seems incredible today. My reservation at the moment is that he seems to be saving the lion's share of sexual dysfunction for the female character and somehow that seems unfair. I'll wait until I finish the book before I say any more, however.

Recent Reading

I've once again let my reading overtake my blogging, so I thought I might do a kind of catch up post rather than write at length about the last couple of novels that I've read. So here goes...

Some of you might have read my whinge about Bel Canto a couple of posts ago. Well, I finished it and suffice to say my opinion did not change. Ann Patchett's novel left me very cold. A part of why I didn't like it was that I though it was incredibly unrealistic, however on Friday night I watched a documentary about the hostage siege that Patchett used as inspiration and found out that she stuck surprisingly close to what actually happened in Lima, Peru. The Japanese embassy there was taken by a group who wanted to capture the President. When the President wasn't there the group got stuck with a huge group of hostages and no exit strategy. In some ways the real drama was crazier than the fictional version. In real life the hostages even went so far as to allow the press into the embassy for interviews during the siege. Amazing. Unfortunately I still don't like the novel.

After Bel Canto, Engleby by Sebastian Faulks was refreshing, if you can use that word to describe a novel about a seriously disturbed person. It was refreshing for its originality, black humour and unflinching examination of a very dark subject. It's hard to talk too much about this one without ruining it, although I think most readers would find the ending of the novel fairly unsurprising. Faulks' narrator, Mike Engleby, must be one of the most interesting and well-drawn characters in recent fiction. I felt confronted and disturbed by this book, but in a good way!

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield was much hyped on its release, in part because so many bloggers were given it for free, thus sparking a debate about the ethics of declaring or not declaring where you get your books from before you write about them. For the record, I bought my copy fair and square at a book fair last week. The Thirteenth Tale is fun Gothic mystery/ romance. It's very readable and fairly insubstantial. I had hoped for something cleverer from a book that is so concerned with reading and writing. Unfortunately I felt that Setterfield was somewhat milking an audience that she knew would be interested in a book about a young women writing the autobiography of an older, very famous author who has finally decided to 'tell her story' after a lifetime of weaving fiction.

And now I'm deeply absorbed by Alice Munro's collection of short stories, Open Secrets. I've been meaning to read something by Munro for so long and am glad to find her exactly as interesting as has been claimed by others. The stories in this collection so far offer a thoughtful perspective on ordinary lives, pointing out the extraordinary in small town, domestic life. The intricate level of observation reminds me of Annie Proulx in some ways, but the writing is more direct and less heavy with imagery. I can't wait to read the rest of this book.

Here, Bullet

Last year I heard an interesting interview by Philip Adams on Radio National with American war poet Brian Turner. Turner has served in Iraq and his poetry describes his experiences there. During the interview he read the title poem from his collection of poetry, Here, Bullet. I found it moving and confronting. To say he reminds me a little of Wilfred Owen might be going too far, but there is something of the same feeling of immediacy. You can find out more about Turner here.

Here, Bullet

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Bel Canto

I'm trying with Ann Patchett's novel, Bel Canto, I really am. I want to like it. I've heard great things about it from other people. And I'm keen to be a girly swot and get it read by Monday for my bookclub.

But I'm really struggling here.

I just find it so boring. The plot centres around a group who have been taken hostage in a mansion in an unnamed poor South American country. The group includes a famous opera singer, a wealthy Japanese CEO and his translator, and the Vice President of the country in which the events take place. These are possible the world's nicest and least competent terrorists. They have barely hurt anyone and seem utterly confused about why they are actually there. So the siege turns into a weeks-long ordeal where not much happens (at least so far). There is much description of the boredom experienced by the captives which I can totally relate to, feeling much the same myself whenever I pick up this book.

Then there is the impending romance between some of the captives, which I really don't find convincing. It's a hostage drama and... a love story? It's like Mills and Boon does An Evil Cradling.

There is no doubt that Patchett can write well. Her characterisations are interesting and initially the premise seemed promising. I'm only half-way through so maybe it will pick up. It could be me. Maybe I haven't given the book my full attention. Maybe it's my mood or the weather or something and maybe I'm being terribly unfair to Bel Canto. Perhaps I've missed the point.

I'd love to hear the thoughts of others on this one. Can I hold out hope for the second half? Have I totally missed the point? Is Bel Canto, in fact, an inspirational masterpiece? Please, I'm ready and willing to be convinced!

Vampire Cool

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld is one of the most enjoyable books I've read in ages. I raced through it in one day last weekend and then passed it straight on to my husband who had the same experience.

Scott Westerfeld has built himself a reputation as one of the most exciting writers of young adult fiction at the moment, especially with his sci-fi series, Uglies. I've only recently discovered his work but in the couple of novels that I've read, I've been impressed with his ability to take a genre like sci-fi or horror and make it his own. His novels are underpinned by well-thought out philosophies and scientific concepts. In Uglies, he focused on our society's obsession with beauty, imagining a future where everywhere has an operation to make them uniformly 'beautiful' at sixteen. In Peeps, Westerfeld considers what modern science knows about parasites and uses it to explain an outbreak of vampire-like behaviour in New York City.

Peeps centres around Cal Thompson, a young university student who becomes infected by a parasite. Luckily he is immune to some of the parasite's nastier side effects (fear of light, a violent temperament, a taste for human blood) and becomes what is known as a carrier. He does get some of the cooler side effects though, such as fantastic night vision, super strength, a very good sense of smell and the world's fastest metabolism. Unfortunately he also develops a very active sex drive as the parasite tries to spread itself. Since even kissing a girl would be enough to pass on the parasite and turn her into a crazed, flesh eating vampire, he faces considerable challenges.

Cal is contacted by a secret organisation, mostly made up of other carriers, who are given the task of containing the parasite. He must track down and capture all his past girlfriends and, eventually, find the carrier who infected him. It is during the search for the girl who gave him the virus that he meets an attractive young woman, Lace, who quickly finds out more than she should about Cal's mission. Cal finds himself in a difficult situation as he falls for Lace but knows that he can't even kiss her without passing on the parasite.

Westerfeld alternates chapters of the story with chapters about the weird and wonderful world of real parasites. It sounds like a strange technique but it works. Learning about the bizarre parasites that really exist makes Westerfeld's fictional vampiric parasite much more believable. He also writes about the science of parasites in such a funny ad entertaining way that it never feels intrusive in the story.

There is little to fault in Peeps. It is smart, funny and fast-paced. Thankfully Westerfeld avoids the kind of po-faced seriousness that seems to plague some vampire books and films. The ending is all a bit rushed but it's a small criticism. This is definitely one for older adolescents and adults who are happy to go along for the ride.

Australian Crime

Until recently I had never read any Australian crime fiction but I can now boast about having already read two examples this year. In January I read Eden by Dorothy Johnston, which is not only Australian crime fiction but is also set in Canberra, thus continuing my mission to read books set in the capital. I have also recently finished The Broken Shore by Peter Temple, which I'll write about first because I can't praise this novel too much.

Peter Temple won the 2007 Duncan Lawrie Dagger for his novel, The Broken Shore, the first time an Australian author has claimed the prestigous prize. I can see why the judges might have chosen Temple's novel as I was absolutely blown away by it. The action takes place in a small coastal town in Victoria. Temple is careful to establish a strong sense of place. I could almost feel the cold winter rain of his setting and his descriptions of rural Australia are spot on. Take this passage for example:

Farmland had once surrounded the village of Kenmare like a green sea. Long backyards had run down to paddocks with milk cows oozing dung, to potato fields dense with their pale grenades. Then the farms were subdivided. Hardiplank houses went up on three-acre blocks, big metal sheds out the back. Now the land produced nothing but garbage and children, many with red hair. The blocks were weekend parking lots for the big rigs that rumbled in from every direction on Saturday- Macks, Kenworths, Mans, Volvos, eighteen-speed transmisssion, 1800-litre tank, the owners' names in flowery script on the doors, the unshaven, unslept drivers sitting two metres off the ground, spaced out and listening to songs of lost love and loneliness.

It's certainly an unromanticised view of Australian rural life.

Temple's detective Cashin is in many ways a cliche. He is posted to the country, tired and physically damaged, after a traumatic incident with a criminal in the city. He is battling with personal demons, as well as fighting other cops within the system. And of course an intriguing murder drops right in his lap.

It is to Temple's credit that he takes these standard features of the genre and makes them fresh. I believed in his characters. They speak and act like people I know. Temple captures the complexity of small town life, weaving class and racial tension into the plot with ease. Rarely has an author so accurately depicted the relationship between white and Aboriginal communities in small towns. The Broken Shore moves steadily and inexorably towards its resolution, using the conventions of crime fiction to create something fresh and absorbing.

Eden by Dorothy Johnston is another in her series featuring Sandra Mahoney, a security consultant who develops an obsession with the death of an ACT politician in a brothel. Johnston takes some pains to capture Canberra in January, a month when the city all but shuts down while most of its inhabitants escape the hot weather and head to the coast. The dry Canberra heat radiates off the pages and even as a reader I felt relief when the action shifted to a much cooler Sydney.

Johnston's story moves along at a steady pace, but for me this novel was too dry (and not just because of the weather). Much of the exposition seems awkward and forced. The plot is interesting but Johnston is so keen to reveal information to the audience that she does little to package it in an interesting way. Conversations are often unrealistic and clues are uncovered a little too easily. Nevertheless the premise and the crime are interesting enough for me to consider giving Johnston's work another go should I get the chance.

Coming Soon

Reading plenty at the moment but not writing much. The beginning of the school term seems to mean I can do one or the other, but not really both. Anyway, I'm working on a post raving about Peter Temple's wonderful crime novel, The Broken Shore. I also want to go on about how good Scott Westerfeld is (I read his vampire novel Peeps in a day!) and, strangely, am enjoying fantasy set in Medieval Japan courtesy of Lian Hearn's novel Across the Nightingale Floor, the first in her Tales of the Otori series.

I've also joined a new book club and had much lively discussion about Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, some of which I hope to share with you.

Anyway, enough writing about what I'm going to write! Hopefully, I'll actually get a decent post done sometime soon...

Books on Film

In the last week I have seen two film versions of favourite novels of mine, The Golden Compass and Atonement. Although both were generally well done, it's a strange experience seeing a novel you love as imagined by others.

The film of The Golden Compass was probably always going to be a bit disappointing for me as I love Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy so intensely. The Hollywood version is true to the book and visually stunning but, as is common with films of books, the story is simplified and some of the harder edges are removed. The ending is considerably changed to make it much happier than the cliffhanger that concludes the book, which is understandable given that the film is aimed at children, but also a little patronising to the audience. The quite strong anti-organised religion message in the book has also been toned down by the film-makers making this a rather anaemic version of Pullman's very interesting and challenging ideas.

It also didn't help my enjoyment of the film that I have a probably quite unreasonable dislike of Nicole Kidman, who I think has a kind of anti-charisma on screen. I'm aware that not everyone shares my opinion on that though. Friends who have seen the film without reading the book loved it, so perhaps I had unrealistic expectations of this one.

On the other hand, I thought the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement was just stunning. The film-makers managed to capture the subtleties of the novel quite cleverly and the film is visually stunning. Keira Knightly is surprisingly good and looks just gorgeous in the 1930's fashions her character wears, and James McAvoy, well, let's just say I have a serious crush on the guy and could spend hours watching him on screen no matter how bad the film. In this case though, his acting is great and the film is really quite good. If you tend to cry in films though, be warned, I cried for a least half of the film. I'm pretty sure I was joined by a majority of the audience at the film's devastating end.

There are some very interesting ideas about personal responsibility and truth in McEwan's novel and these translate well to the screen. In fact, seeing the film reminded me how visual the novel is, particularly the early events that revolve around glimpsed scenes and moments that are mis-interpreted by the young child Briony. While the more post-modern aspects were a little distracting for me in the novel, they worked well on film.

I'd love to hear what anyone else thinks of either film.

On the Jellicoe Road

I read On the Jellicoe Road, a novel for young adults by Australian author Melina Marchetta, on a rainy night while staying in a caravan on holidays at the beach. Branches were brushing the roof and the wind howled and screeched, rocking the caravan. I could have been at sea, lost in the blackness of night. Perfect reading weather. Perfect for reading this un-put-downable novel until it was finished in the early hours of morning.

When it was released, lots of Melina Marchetta's fans didn't really know what to make of On the Jellicoe Road and now I can see why. Her first novel, Looking for Alibrandi, was (and still is) very popular with teenagers in Australia and was made into a popular film. While I found Looking for Alibrandi entertaining and realistic, I also thought it was a little too simple and straightforward. On the Jellicoe Road is a much more sophisticated novel and one which rewards the reader's patience as the plot lines are slowly revealed. I loved this new style but some young readers might miss the straightforwardness of Marchetta's previous books.

It feels like Marchetta has found her voice in On the Jellicoe Road. She has developed a complex, but highly engaging plot about a young girl, Taylor, who lives at a rural boarding school in western New South Wales. Taylor is trying to negotiate the annual turf war between her school, the kids in town and the local cadet unit, at the same time as she tries to solve the mystery around her friend Hannah's disappearance which is somehow connected to Taylor's abandonment by her mother when she was a young child.

The story is told through Taylor's eyes, interspersed with excerpts from a manuscript for a novel being written by Hannah. Slowly the manuscript and Taylor's story become entwined. There is a sense of menace that lingers just under the surface of the story; there is talk between the students about a serial killer who targets children and speculation about which adult might be the killer. Marchetta also vividly captures the violence and secretiveness of youth as the young teenagers wage their quite vicious wars right under the noses of the mostly ineffective and oblivious adults in the story.

Marchetta also develops a romantic storyline between Taylor and the leader of the Cadet unit, Jonah. This is one of the most successful parts of the story. It is realistically and sensitively portrayed and the tension between Taylor and Jonah really propels the story.

It is so refreshing to read books written for young adults that are challenging and complex. While not everyone will love On the Jellicoe Road I think that if this is the direction that Marchetta is taking with her writing, then I can't wait to read what she comes up with next.

Reading in the New Year

I haven't posted for ages, instead choosing to do some reading, eating, drinking and much playing of cards as the rain continues to fall at my beachside holiday location. I never seem to have much luck with holiday weather. Nevertheless it is pretty good weather for reading and I've managed to get through a couple of novels.

Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres is certainly not light summer reading. It is over 600 pages long and takes a few hundred pages to really get going. The story follows the lives of a group of people from a small village in Turkey and through these people de Bernieres essentially follows the history of Turkey in the twentieth century. I found the book similar in some ways to Captain Corelli's Mandolin, the only other novel of his that I have read, but it was less emotionally engaging, perhaps because there was just so much history to cram in, often at the expense of plot and character development. I learnt a lot though, and found the parts about Gallipoli, told from the Turkish perspective, particularly interesting. De Bernieres has a nice, readable style but I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to read anything else by him.

After reading about the horrific and violent history of Turkey I turned to Rachel Pine's novel The Twins of Tribeca for some light contrast. Pine is a former employee of Miramax and this is a 'tell-all' novel in the style of The Devil Wears Prada. The tone is light and gossipy, and there is lots interesting inside information on the way films get made (especially the bad ones). Pine never really finds a narrative arc for her story though. Lots of times it felt like something dramatic was about to happen but then... nothing. It's a fun read but fairly forgettable.

I'm still considering plans for reading in 2008. So far the only thing I've thought of is that I should read more classics. In particular I want to read Tristram Shandy this year. I've been planning to read it ever since I saw the great film version with Steve Coogan. Hopefully I will come up with some more plans before the year is half over.

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year.

Favourite Books of the Year

The end of the year is coming and I'm not reading anything too exciting right now so I think it's safe to comment on my favourite reads of 2007. None of them are particularly current as I rarely read new releases, but I loved all of the following:

The Orchid Thief (Susan Orlean): This work of non-fiction was a real revelation to me. I don't read much non-fiction and I had no interest in orchids so I was surprised at how much I loved Susan Orlean's tale of, well, just about everything to do with orchids. The book is a brilliant character study of the collector John LaRoche and a fascinating description of Florida. It's also ten times more interesting than my description of it. Just trust me on this one.

Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier): I raved about this book at the time and it has stayed with me. Just thinking about the ending has me on the verge of tears. Don't let the dodgy film version put you off. Wonderful writing and a beautiful story. An incredible first novel.

Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf): I've just written about this so I won't say much other than Woolf is a genius and this is deservedly a classic.

Special mentions also go to I Capture the Castle, the classic young adult novel by Dodie Smith, American Pastoral by Philip Roth and Disgrace by JM Coetzee.

It's a strange list of quite disparate books but probably a good reflection of what I've been reading this year. There are some big holes though, such as not reading many pre-twentieth century novels, so now I'm off to formulate my next post: reading plans for 2008...

On Finishing Mrs Dalloway

It's taken me forever but I finally finished Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway on Sunday. Actually I'm glad I took forever over this novel. It is so deliciously, wonderfully written that I think it's best savoured in little pieces. All at once might overload the system.

I think Mrs Dalloway is about as perfect as a novel gets and because I'm so attached to it, I'm a little bit nervous about really trying to review it and maybe not being able to do it justice. Perhaps instead I'll just list a few things I found interesting without trying to be in any way comprehensive.

Firstly, I'm really fascinated by the character of Clarissa Dalloway. She is so flawed- flighty, at times fickle, snobbish, even callous- but on the other hand so magnetic and charismatic. She seems simultaneously frustrated with her life and exhilarated by it, in love with Peter but also dismissive of him, class conscious but also horrified by the superficiality of the aristocracy. I think this makes her more real than many other characters in fiction, the very fact that she changes her mind from moment to moment and is not a personality composed of a fixed list of qualities.

I really enjoyed the style in which this novel is written too. Woolf captures the way the mind works so accurately that I felt I was reading the minds of the characters. The free associations and the sudden switching of topic and mood seemed so natural and realistic.

Towards the end I began to think this is a novel about aging, about looking over your life with a certain amount of experience and re-assessing the powerful moments from your youth. I liked that the aging process did not dull sensation for Clarissa. In fact, she seemed more sensitive and more insightful than she had ever been as a young woman.

Finally, nobody does descriptive writing quite like Woolf. Here is another wonderful image (of the sun setting) and it seems a good way to end this post:

I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning, I disappear, but London would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

When it first came out in 2003 everyone seemed to be reading We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. As usual, I'm a couple of years late and have only just gotten around to reading this novel on the tentative advice of a friend who didn't enjoy it much herself.

For anyone else who missed out on it as it swept the bestseller lists, We Need to Talk About Kevin is the letters of a mother, Eva Khatchadhourian, to her husband Franklin. The letters are written after their son, Kevin, has murdered 12 people in a Columbine-style school shooting, and in the letters Eva trawls back through the process of deciding to have a child, Kevin's birth and childhood and his devastating crime, referred to only as Thursday by Eva.

When I began this novel I absolutely hated it. The subject matter is sensational and it seemed that in making Eva unlikable, the author was writing a definitively anti-feminist novel. Shriver explores how far parents are responsible for shaping their children and I worried that she might unfairly blame the mother who initially is depicted as selfish, cold and certainly unenthusiastic about her new-born child.

Shriver's awkward style was also infuriating at first. If these are meant to be letters, they are so painfully and self-consciously written as to seem totally unrealistic. A typical sentence reads: 'It may have been disingenuous of me to imply at the start of my last letter that when we conferred at the end of a day, I told all.'

But somehow I could not put this book down, and I'm pleased that I didn't. Shriver's writing style is never elegant but it reflects certain aspects of her narrator's character and it becomes less jarring over time. More importantly, the philosophical terrain covered becomes more and more compelling as the novel goes on. Initially Kevin is depicted as a purely (and unbelievably) evil child but as he develops we see that there is more to him and realise that Eva is possibly manipulating us by presenting only her side of the story. Eva is not a perfect mother but nor is Franklin, the father, who is blindly optimistic about Kevin and refuses to confront the truth about his son. Shriver refuses to lay blame, avoiding simplistic conclusions about why a child from a relatively happy, privileged background might become the perpetrator of a horrific crime. This concept reminded me of Philip Roth's American Pastoral which covers similar terrain, albeit in a more sophisticated way.

Like Roth, Shriver also examines the idea of America (as opposed to the physical country). Eva rejects her homeland as crass and unsophisticated whereas her husband Franklin is the ultimate patriot, driving his SUV, watching baseball games and trying to develop a pally relationship with his son, as though life can be like a cheesy 1950's sitcom if only you try hard enough. Ultimately both parents are proved to be flawed in their attitudes to their country and in their attitudes to their son.

This is a flawed novel and in part Shriver plays on the sensational subject matter and the fears of middle class parents everywhere. On the other hand, who hasn't wondered what motivates crimes like these and it seems important that we as a society confront these issues head on. Shriver doesn't provide answers but she does begin to explore the issue in an interesting, thought-provoking way.

Passionate Minds

After recently claiming that I don't read much non-fiction I now find myself in the strange situation of reading not one, but two collections of essays at once. I'm part of the way through The Grave of Alice B. Toklas by Otto Friedrich and after I posted on his essay about Alice B. Toklas I picked up another book that has been sitting on the shelf for a while: Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World by Claudia Roth Pierpont. I originally planned to just read her essay on Gertrude Stein but I've found myself swept up in the essays and have gone on to read several more.

Pierpont declares in her introduction that she has chosen to write about 'literary women of influence (very different from women of literary influence)', hence some surprising inclusions such as Mae West who I had never thought of as a writer (it turns out she wrote several plays, film scripts and of course her autobiography). The first section, most of which I've read now, is loosely group around the issue of sex, and includes essays on Stein, Mae West, Anais Nin and Olive Schreiner. There are two other sections dealing with politics (Marina Tsvetaeva, Ayn Rand, Doris Lessing, Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy) and race (Margaret Mitchell, Zora Neale Hurston and Eudora Welty). These are interesting, diverse selections.

I had expected that the essays would be reverential in tone as sometimes is the case in these kinds of collections of writing on influential women. In fact Pierpont is quite critical of some of her subjects and does not fall into the trap of romanticising them. She acknowledges that much of Gertrude Stein's writing was incomprehensible and of Anais Nin's writing she says:

For the reader able to escape the solitary confinement of these endless pages through the mere act of closing a book- such a simple deliverance- relief is dulled only by a shuddering pity for the woman who lived all her days trapped inside.

Each essay is a kind of mini-biography and I've enjoyed learning about the lives of these women who I mostly didn't know much about. Pierpont convincingly argues that each of her subjects changed the world in some way. While Anais Nin might not be the world's best writer, her writing, and her life, showed women that it might be possible to view their own sexuality in a different way, that women should acknowledge their desires in the way that men have been able to in the past. Mae West similarly showed audiences that women could enjoy their sexuality without the burden of romantic love through her creation of the bawdy character, Diamond Lil. In Stein's case she thought that a woman could achieve as much as a man by purging herself of what is expected of women and writing 'like a man'.

The essays I've read so far concern the lives of very different women but they intersect in interesting ways. All of them struggled against societies expectations and all of them had periods of hardship and mixed fortune even after they had achieved fame. Sometimes it feels as though Pierpont has tried to squeeze too much in here- it's hard to condense these rich lives into essay form- but it still makes for interesting reading.

The Grave of Alice B. Toklas

I should be reading Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks at the moment, especially as I set it for myself as a kind of personal reading challenge for Remembrance Day. Instead I keep picking up a collection of essays by Otto Friedrich called The Grave of Alice B. Toklas & Other Reports from the Past.

This collection was published in 1991 and it's comprised of writing from throughout Friedrich's career as a writer and journalist. It's a surprisingly engaging book, especially for someone like me who tends not to read much non-fiction. Maybe I've enjoyed it so much so far because the first few essays deal with the process of writing and creating art.

The title essay describes Friedrich's youth and the years he lived in Europe fancying himself as the next great novelist. With the incredible confidence of the young, he goes about meeting many of the great living writers in a Europe that is just emerging from the devastation of World War II. His journey finally leads him to the living room of Alice B. Toklas who nurtures and encourages his writing. Friedrich's output is incredibly prolific (at 20 he has already written two novels and is planning a quadrilogy) and ambitious (his quadrilogy will 'capture' the second World War and its impact). Friedrich writes 'Somewhere Gertrude Stein had written that writers don't need literary criticism, they need praise' and this is what Toklas gives him. Their friendship lasts until Toklas' death despite Friedrich's failure to publish his early novels, or to achieve the literary greatness he had hoped for. In some ways the friendship becomes burdensome to him towards the end, a reminder of what he has failed to become, and this gives the essay a certain poignancy. Still, it is an interesting portrait of Toklas who spent so many years in the shadow of her more famous partner Gertrude Stein.

Another interesting essay is about Wagner. Friedrich uses Wagner as a way of discussing the guilt felt by many people of German ancestry, including Friedrich himself, after the holocaust and how far art can be implicated in politics. Can Wagner ever be free of association with Hitler and the Nazi party? Or can it be enjoyed as art separately from its political associations? And just how does the audience survive a four hour sitting of Parsifal with no intermission?

Now that I think about it, some of these issues are pretty appropriate for Remembrance Day so perhaps I needn't have worried about neglecting Birdsong after all.

Back to Mrs Dalloway

Shredding and slicing, dividing and subdividing, the clocks of Harley Street nibbled at the June day...

It is images like that that give me a feeling of exhilaration as I read Mrs Dalloway.

Finally I've picked this up again. My re-reading of Mrs Dalloway has been progressing painfully slowly but it's partly because the writing is so intense; a little bit goes a long way. Today I picked it up again after a hiatus of several months. The afternoon was warm and rainy and Mrs Dalloway was the perfect book to read on the balcony in between the batches of biscuits I was baking.

I'm beginning to realise what a socially aware novel this is. Woolf works important social and political changes such as the fall of the British Empire and the fall-out from the First World War into what is also an intensely psychological and internal narrative. That's probably not news to anyone else but I don't remember noticing this political aspect the first time I read the novel when I was an undergraduate.

Anyway, time now to head off to bed, listen to the rain fall on the roof and let a little more of Woolf's writing wash over me.

One year on

I have just realised that I started this blog a year ago this week. Wow, that time has flown. Part of me is surprised that I've managed to keep this thing going on a semi-regular basis for a whole year. I suppose it was always an experiment, being my first attempt at blogging. It's been reasonably easy to stick with though. I decided early on not to write if I didn't feel like it and not to set myself too tough a schedule. While I love reading other bloggers who write daily, I can't make that level of commitment myself. I know it would just turn me off the whole thing. Now I've settled into writing once or twice a week, an amount that seems realistic for me.

Writing about books has been a rewarding experience. I think more about what I read as I read it now, even sometimes taking notes or marking interesting passages. While that might sound terrible to some people, like being an undergrad again, I find that it has deepened my reading. I have to think more carefully about what I read so that I can write about it. As a result, I think the books I have read in the last year have had a more lasting impact on me.

The other part of this process that I love is the interaction with others who have the same interests. I have so loved reading other people's blogs and have gotten lots of my reading ideas from them. And I still get a bit of a thrill whenever someone comments on my posts. It's nice to know that someone is reading at least some of what I write, although I think I would probably blog regardless, as a way of recording my reading experiences.

A big part of me is still a little embarrassed about blogging. I don't tell many people in the 'real' world about this site. It's not that I think blogging itself is embarrassing, I just still feel a bit cringey about my own contribution to the blogosphere. I also feel that a degree of anonymity helps me to write more freely.

Anyway, enough about me. I've spent a year trying not to get too personal here so now is probably not the time to start. Thanks to all of you who have supported my little corner of cyberspace over the last year. With a bit of luck there'll be a few more years to come.

On caring passionately...

The last few weeks have been a little crazy and this blog has been sadly neglected. Suffice to say that you should never trust a tradesman who says they can fix your bathroom in a week.

But while I haven't been able to post anything, I have, luckily, had a bit of time to read. At the moment I am totally enthralled by The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. I love this book and it continues my recent enjoyment of non-fiction, something I don't usually read much of.

Orlean's book began as an article she wrote for the New Yorker on John Laroche, a Florida man charged with stealing orchids from the Fakahatchee Strand. It quickly becomes obvious that Laroche is a fantastic subject- fascinating, infuriating, eccentric and unpredictable- and that the world of orchid collecting is awash with such characters. Hence Orlean extended her article into this book which loosely follows the trial of Laroche with many detours into the wider world of orchid cultivation, natural history, Florida, Native American culture and, well, almost everything really.

Before I began reading this book I had no interest in orchids. I picked up the book because I had seen Adaptation, the crazy Spike Jonze/ Charlie Kaufmann attempt to film it. The film was about much more than the the book, although I'm beginning to realise it was quite true to the spirit of Orlean's writing. Orlean herself approaches her subject from the perspective of an outsider. She knows little about the orchid world but is fascinated by the passion that these plants inspire in others. She explains her desire to see the elusive and rare ghost orchid:

The reason was not that I love orchids. I don't even especially like orchids. What I wanted was to see this thing that people were drawn to in such a singular and powerful way.

It seems that The Orchid Thief is really about the nature of obsession:

I wanted to want something as much as people wanted these plants, but it isn't part of my constitution. I think people my age are embarrassed by too much enthusiasm and believe that too much passion about anything is naive. I suppose I do have one un-embarrassing passion- I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.

Orlean is so successful at conveying the passion that others feel for orchids that I have found myself going as far as checking out the orchids in my local nursery and actually considering buying one. Apparently this passion is contagious. In the meantime I'll try to hold off from being swept up in the world of orchids and instead be content with being swept up in The Orchid Thief.

On Grief

I am now most of the way through reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, her thoughtful reflection on grief written in the year after the sudden death of her husband John and the hospitalisation of her daughter. It is a very moving book, which is to be expected given the subject matter, but it also very measured and carefully written. Didion is able to capture and analyse this extremely emotional time in her life with great precision.

One of the ways in which she manages to contain her material is through many references to the science and literature of grief. She writes:

In time of trouble, I had been trained since childhood, read, learn, work it up, go to the literature.

And this is what she does, although she admits that the literature of grief is remarkably 'spare'. I guess many of us, myself included, have an instinctive aversion to the topic of mourning and grief lest we somehow bring it upon ourselves. Although I think of myself as a rational person, I find some of the superstition around death hard to shake.

Partly this might be the times we live in. Didion contrasts the formal and ritualised approaches to death in the past with our modern habit of refusing to acknowledge it, of assuming people will 'get over it' after a 'suitable period of time'. In the past death was omnipresent. It occurred 'up close, at home'. Now 'death largely occurs offstage'. As a society we find death distasteful and, by association, also those who are grieving.

In writing her book, Didion bares her own experience to the public, perhaps so that others might feel less alone. That she finds some solace in literature confirms what many of us readers already know, that literature can help us cope with the great difficulties of life. I think there is something comforting in that idea.

Book Haul

Twice a year there is a major second-hand book fair in my town. The book fair is huge and the quality of books tends to be very good, plus all proceeds go to charity so book buying can feel even more virtuous than usual!

Yesterday we headed there first thing in the morning. Once inside, the husband headed off towards the history section and I made a beeline for general fiction. We blew the budget in a major way, but this is what I ended up with:

A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
New Grub Street George Gissing
The Orchid Thief Susan Orlean
Behind the Scenes at the Museum Kate Atkinson
The Pilot's Wife Anita Shreve
Birdsong Sebastian Faulks
The Snow Leopard Peter Matthiessen
The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion
The Rise of the Gothic Novel Maggie Kilgour
Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning Julia Markus
The Grave of Alice B. Toklas Otto Friedrich

There's a bit of a mix in there. Some books that I've been meaning to read for a while (Birdsong, The Orchid Thief) and others than I've only heard of in passing (New Grub Street). I also bought a bit more non-fiction than I might normally have- I'm particularly looking forward to the book about Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. I was very pleased with my haul and came away vowing not to buy any more books for at least a few months. Not sure how likely I am to stick to that vow though...