The Silver Linings Playbook – Matthew Quick

I came to finally reading Matthew Quick’s ‘The Silver Linings Playbook’ a rather unusual way. When the book came out a few years ago and was placed on the (now defunct I believe) TV Book Club choices it just wasn’t a book I fancied reading. The title seemed a little bit saccharine and I just had the feeling it might be a real schmaltz fest that I simply wouldn’t get. However at the cinema a few weeks ago (to see Breaking Dawn Part 2, a film that was really only good for 20 minutes which turned out to be a ‘vision’ and hadn’t actually happened) I saw the trailer for new Hollywood adaptation of ‘The Silver Linings Playbook’ and took a shine to it. I thought it looked like it would have you laughing and crying the whole way through and so I decided to ignore my previous thoughts on the book and give it a whirl before I saw the movie.

Picador Books, paperback, 2010, fiction, 289 pages, kindly sent by the publisher (so sorry!)

Patrick Peoples, our narrator and protagonist, has just been released from a psychiatric hospital as ‘The Silver Linings Playbook’ opens. Many, including some of the doctors there, don’t feel that he is ready to go out into the world yet his mother, and her lawyers, have persuaded people otherwise. Patrick, or Pat, is determined to get his life back on track. He understands that he wasn’t the best husband, initially you think this is because he feels he put on weight during his marriage and is obsessed with losing it, to his wife Nikki and wants to make amends no matter how many times people clearly state to him that this will never happen. As he starts life again his friends introduce him to Tiffany, a widow who has become something of a nymphomaniac, who it seems is just as much of an emotional wreck as he is. Can this unlikely duo and their friendship help each other sort themselves out?

At first I was really quite charmed with the story that Matthew Quick was unfolding, I liked Pat’s rather direct and sometimes blunt outlook on life quite funny and found the story of his initial steps after leaving the clinic and moving home interesting. Sadly however slowly but surely the book started to fall apart for me, and I found myself picking it to pieces, before wishing it would all be over. Here is why…

First of all whilst I liked Pat he remains throughout a rather two dimensional character, I never felt (despite all we go through with him) that emotionally connected to his story. I did want to know the mystery of what happened between him and Nikki and why his father didn’t really speak to him but I never fully cared. This sounds awfully harsh I know, I think the problem was that in having the HUGE ‘what happened?’ over the whole of the book and the mystery behind it you couldn’t know him and while I was interested it was only in the mystery, not about him and what happened to him.

I actually thought that Tiffany and her story, which we get at the very end not long before one of the most saccharine and clichéd of final chapters I have read in a long time, was much more interesting and yet she wasn’t really in the book that much and when she was you might as well have had plot device tattooed on her forehead. I don’t want to give any spoilers away but as the book goes on it appears Tiffany could be a link to Pat meeting Nikki again, let’s just say it was preposterous and the twist that Quick uses was easy to spot a mile off, though maybe that was the idea? Either way it completely jarred with me and the world was broken, but to be fair to Quick I did carry on to find out what happened, I just didn’t believe in any of it.

I did overall like Quick’s writing, well its style, I found some of the set pieces quite funny but as I mentioned before I never quite had an emotional attachment. I also thought the book tried to pack too much in and didn’t know who it was aimed at, something an editor should have sorted out. One minute it had that ‘love story’ quality and the ‘man who went mad and made good’ aspect, oh and the dancing competition (I am rolling my eyes) all which seemed to state this was a book for women. Then there was the never ending (well it seemed never ending) football stuff, American football I should add – the Eagles of Philadelphia to be precise, a storyline which I think was to try and make Pat bond with his brother and father again who have completely ignored him for the years he was away. When his new therapist was also a fan and they met at the game my eyes almost rolled so much that I thought they might never stop like an arcade machine that needs fixing – and no not in a ‘jackpot’ sense. Oh, and don’t get me started on how the book  has ruined, with all its spoilers as Pat reads them, most of the American classics that I have yet to read.

It looks like I really disliked ‘The Silver Linings Playbook’ doesn’t it? I think it’s fairer to say I was just very disappointed in it, I had high hopes because the premise looked so could it just didn’t deliver for me personally. I won’t give the book the ‘debut author’ excuse that some might as a) it is patronising to the author and b) I read Emma Henderson’s ‘Grace Williams Says It Out Loud’ last year which does all of this so, so much better and is a debut too. It simply isn’t a ‘me’ book and that is really no one’s fault but mine. I should have stuck to my initial feelings and left the book alone, damn you trailer! Speaking of which I am now unsure I want to see the movie. That said though sometimes, no matter how much it pains me to say so, the films can actually be better than the books which brings us full circle to me mentioning Breaking Dawn Part 2 again ironically.

I am sure I am a part of a very small minority here though and that many people love or will love ‘The Silver Linings Playbook’? Maybe the cold weather has frozen my heart and feelings? Have you read it and if so what did you think? Have any of you seen the movie yet, thoughts?

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Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

One thing I really love and admire from a writer is when they give us a familiar scenario and manage to completely turn it on its head or take it apart analyse it and rework it into something quite unfamiliar. Deborah Levy’s ‘Swimming Home’ did this for me early in the year with an initially formulaic idea of a middle class holiday and the arrival of a stranger, now Gillian Flynn has done it with a brilliantly written thriller based on a missing spouse with ‘Gone Girl’. No surprise then that both of these books will easily be sitting high up on my list of books of the year without a shadow of a doubt.

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, hardback, 2012, fiction, 416 pages, borrowed from the library

‘Gone Girl’ opens with Nick Dunne telling us how on their fifth wedding anniversary, after a call from the neighbours, goes home to find the door wide open, the lounge smashed up and his wife Amy missing. Soon the police become involved and, as Amy was made infamous in her youth through her parents’ novels featuring the ‘Amazing Amy’, there is a county and soon nationwide interest and search into her disappearance. This is all quite familiar but the first, of many, clever tricks which Gillian Flynn throws into this book is the fact that as we get the story in the present from Nick, we alternately start to read the diary entries from Amy at the start of their relationship.

These diary entries initially start with all the joy and romance of her initial meeting with Nick, her dismay when he vanishes for a while and elation when he comes back. As their relationship goes on it really is all perfect, that is until his parents separately fall ill, Nick and Amy both get made redundant, spend most of her trust fund and wind up living in Nick’s hometown of Carthage, Missouri. This is not a place Amy wants to be and as she writes she tells of her feelings of alienation and that Nick might be buckling under the pressure, and a darker side of her husband is revealed.

The stories start to converge as Nick continues to narrate his version of events in the present and as the police and the public start to cast a suspicious eye on him. Yet as the stories start to meet nothing one spouse is saying about the other quite matches and what really happened is full of twist after twist after twist after twist.

I won’t say anymore about the plot for fear of spoiling anything, and you do want to go into ‘Gone Girl’ knowing as little as possible to be honest. I will say that I think this is one of the best books that I have read all year. I have certainly been completely bowled over by Gillian Flynn’s writing, and not just for incredible and complex plotting, which she makes seem effortless as we read, also for the way in which the world that Nick and Amy inhabit is so vivid and how real they become. I felt I followed their story from young loves dream to rather disillusioned marriage as if I was one of their acquaintances, even when the stories didn’t match which is all the more clever.

I also liked the little intricate bits of them and their marriage was wonderfully done. I thought the back story of ‘Amazing Amy’ was brilliant and how that would affect someone. The issue of cancer and Alzheimer’s which Nick’s parents raise as well as redundancy and the death of the city and the small town were both current and completely believable. The whole world of this novel worked, which is why I couldn’t just label this book as simply a thriller, it is so much more than that.

As you can probably tell I could enthuse about ‘Gone Girl’, and indeed Gillian Flynn’s writing of it, endlessly. I don’t think I have read a book that has taken me to such dark places, it’s not a graphically disturbing novel though get ready to have your mind played with and warped, and have so many twists and turns. I also don’t think I have read a book that so cleverly asks the question ‘how well do you really know your partner’ and answers it in such a shocking, brutal yet also worryingly plausible way. ‘Gone Girl’ is easily one of the best novels I have read this year, I cannot recommend it enough… well, unless you are about to get married, have just got married or have just had a bit of a row with your other half as it might give you second thoughts, or sudden ideas, good and bad.

Who else has read ‘Gone Girl’ and (without spoilers) what did you think? Have you read any of Gillian Flynn’s other novels and if so which ones should I be reading next? I have to admit though the urge to go and get them both now is very, very strong.

Qualified to Criticise a Classic or Not?

Now that I have updated you on kittens and winners, let’s get back to the serious business (so serious there is no picture in this post) of talking about books. As you may have seen, my recent reading of Anthony Trollope’s ‘The Warden’ didn’t really go too well. What I found interesting was that having finished the book and not really having enjoyed it, I didn’t mind saying exactly how I felt (though hopefully backing the up my reasons rather than lazily saying ‘I really, really disliked it’) because the author was dead and the book is a ‘classic’. AJ however, and I hope he won’t mind me sharing this with you, had the complete opposite reaction to me. He felt that because the book has been read, taught and learnt by so many academics out there he felt that regardless of whether he liked it or not, people would judge him if he slated it or not deem his opinion of worth if it wasn’t written to an academic level. These two polar reactions made me wonder if, because as bloggers and not academics in this field, are we really entitled/qualified/at liberty to critique ‘canon classics’ or indeed books in general?

I think we are. Not in an arrogant way or ‘I read so I can say what I like’ way, though there is an element of truth to that with anyone who reads no matter how little or how much because of our tastes, and not in an anti academic way either. I just believe, and my mother is an English teacher and agrees with this, that what qualifies you to have an opinion (be it at a book group, a random chat about books over a coffee, blogs posts or reviews wherever) is if you read and can compare and contrast, and most importantly back up and validate, your reasons one way or the other. An opinion is an opinion after all, I think it’s an informed critique if it is fairly backed up – be it pro or con. No?

It made me think back to the recent post I did after the whole ‘bloggers versus professional reviewers’ (though shock and horror some people do both, gasp!) and the argument that because – sweeping statement alert – bloggers appear not to be academics and haven’t trained for years and years  they don’t really know what they are talking about. Here I want to interject a recent thought I had that a lot of best selling writers didn’t go on writing courses, does that mean they can’t write? Anyway, back to the point I was making. Just because I didn’t study English Literature past GCSE (where I got an A* thank you for asking) doesn’t mean that I can’t decide if I think that Anthony Trollope is, in my eyes, a good or bad writer. I know he has sold thousands and thousands of copies, but so have Dan Brown and Fifty Shades of Grey? But this isn’t about bloggers vs. reviewers or indeed academics vs. non academics, it is more about if people really need a qualification to critics a book and in particular a ‘classic’ novel, though really I think novels overall should be included in this post, so maybe I have gone off on a tangent as usual?!?

I think I am really having a small internal argument with myself here, but one I thought I should discuss/brainstorm/therapeutically write out of my system. After all, no one has come down on me like a tonne of bricks and berated me for not liking him, which I am quite shocked at to be honest, up until now (and actually I would be interested in an academics thoughts on my thoughts – if you know what I mean) but there is still time, ha. So, as I have often skirted around this question over the past five and a bit years on and off, I thought I would ask you this…

What, if any, qualifications do you think someone has to have to critique a book be it a classic or not? I will be intrigued to hear your thoughts.

Meet Our Latest Addition Millie… and Great Expectation Winners

So I promised that a special guest would help with the draw of winners for copies of ‘Great Expectations’, the next Classically Challenged title, and while she didn’t pick them out of a hat at random quite by herself I thought it would be a nice way to introduce Millie the Kitten…

Meet Mildred the Minx

Yes, that is right The Beard and I have gone and gotten a play pal for Oscar, as with me going to Grans a lot he is spending a bit too much time on his own and we thought this would be a way of making him feel less lonely. I can’t say that he is 100% thanking us right now, there has been so much hissing and wailing, but he tolerates her at the moment and they can share a room, just not a chair or sofa… yet! That said we have warned him that he might not want to be too domineering of him now as in the long term, whilst a few months younger and rather smaller now, she will be the bigger of the two as we have been informed that, if not fully, she is definitely half Maine Coon and by the age of three years old could be almost a metre long. I shall have to sleep with one eye open!

Now she was named Millie when we got her and I desperately wanted to call her Daphne or Nancy instead but she knows her name and so we have made up our own histories of how we named her which weirdly aren’t the same. The Beard says we named her after Mildred Pierce because he loves Joan Crawford and the movie (which he didn’t know was a book) and I am saying it’s after Mildred Hubble, the worst witch, make of those stories what you will, ha.

She is utterly gorgeous and despite a slightly prickly exterior, she hissed at me for the first 24 hours and now hisses at Oscar on sight though no raised hair anymore which as she is so fluffy was hilarious, she is really friendly. She likes to sit on the reading chair, as shown in the picture, or sit on me in the reading chair or by your feet, apparently this is a Maine Coon trait, and while she can’t mieow she can ‘chirp’ which is the funniest thing every time you greet her, and really confuses Oscar! Anyway I won’t bore you too much but thought you would like to see the new recruit to the Burton-Savidge household. If any of you have Maine Coon’s I would love to hear from you about them, and if you have any tips for making cats be friends do please let me know, it’s going ok just very slowly, and I think the noise when they spat sounds worse than it is. Fingers crossed.

Now for the winners of ‘Great Expectations’ could Susan in TX, Brita Bevis and Laura Caldwell please send me your addresses and I will get Oxford University Press to send your copies out asap. Also, I haven’t answered comments for a while but it seems some people didn’t get ‘The Warden’ can you drop me an email if they still haven’t turned up and I will sort this out asap too. Oh and if you still want to win a copy then AJ is extending his competition entering times till 1900 GMT today as we got confused and posted at separate times so you can enter for another few hours there.

Right, I am off to coax the cats into friendship, or try.

The Warden – Anthony Trollope

And so to the second in the series of books AJ and myself have chosen to read by ‘canon authors’ that we have called ‘Classically Challenged’ and to a book that I feel very conflicted about writing about to be honest. Though really the good things about a book like Anthony Trollope’s ‘The Warden’, and indeed any canon classic, is that the author is dead so they can’t take offence and the book has legions of fans already. Plus can anyone’s book thoughts really do justice to books with so much fame/infamy? Interestingly AJ and I have been saying how hard these books are to write about when you think about the legions of academics who have studied and poured over the books in the past, I would never simply say a classic was’ boring rubbish’ or just ‘dead good’ but you know what I mean. Can you tell I am procrastinating actually writing about my thoughts on this book at all?

Oxford University Press, paperback, 1855 (2008 edition), fiction, 336 pages, kindly sent by the publishers

‘The Warden’ is the first in the series of the Chronicles of Barsetshire/Barchester Chronicles, tales all constructed around a fictional English Cathedral town. The novel doesn’t have a particular date in which it is set but as you read on you realise it is very much about the Victorian period in which it was written. Really ‘The Warden’ centres on Mr Harding who is the precentor of the cathedral and also the warden of Hiram’s Hospital, an almshouse supported by a previous and now deceased Diocese of Barchester which supports several men in it and also the warden themselves. It is this income that has been bequeathed that a certain John Bold, a zealous reformer, wants to look into as it seems that Mr Harding gets around £800 a year for really doing very little, is that really what the Diocese wanted and that money not benefit more people in better ways? Throw in the fact Mr Bold is in love with Mr Harding’s youngest daughter Eleanor and all becomes rather awkward.

I have to admit that I just didn’t ever really get into ‘The Warden’ for several reasons. Firstly there was the problem of utter confusion. At the time this was published everyone reading would most likely know what a precentor of a cathedral was, I had no clue and going off an d looking it up I was given a mass of contradicting definitions, some simply said a clergyman others said a man in charge of the choir. I also just got confused with how an almshouse worked; again I went off a researched and still didn’t really get it. So coming to it from that angle, no matter how much I wanted to understand it was a slight issue.

My second issue with confusion was why John Bold was making such a fuss. Not because, as I agreed, the money was extravagant at the time but what on earth it had to do with him. Here I will be as honest with a well respected classic author as I would be with a debut novelist as I like to compare books as a reader not an academic… It seemed simply do be done for the story, throw in this love for Eleanor and there we have a vague plot of a Victorian Robin Hood when actually Mr Harding isn’t really a villain. Plus if you have read the book and see the outcome this all becomes all the more unsatisfying frankly.

I also found ‘The Warden’ a bit boring, both in terms of the subject matter, no offence to anyone of the cloth but it just doesn’t interest me much though that said if I’d enjoyed the book more I would have been happy to find out more, and also the writing. The first few chapters were really tedious trying to build a picture of the town, the history of Hiram’s hospital and Mr Harding situation itself, all ultimately being very confusing. It is also a book of a lot of ‘and then he did this, and then he did that, and then he did another thing’ which some people might like but I find the writing equivalent of those colouring in books where the colour matches the numbers, eventually there’s a picture but the effort wasn’t quite worth all that colouring in.

“As soon as he had determined to take the matter in hand, he set about his work with his usual energy. He got a copy of John Hiram’s will, of the wording of which he made himself perfectly master. He ascertained the extent of the property, and as nearly as he could the value of it; and made out a schedule of what he was informed was the present distribution of its income. Armed with these particulars, he called on Mr Chadwick, having given that gentlemen notice of his visit; and asked him for a statement of the income and expenditure of the hospital for the last twenty-five years.”  

Though in the main I found it rather dull and dry I did like some of his writing. Trollope does describe the setting of the town very well, if a little long windily, at the start of the ‘The Warden’. I could also see that there was some deeper under workings about class and social morality going on, they were just to encased in the mundane, which reminded me of ‘Mary Barton’ by Elizabeth Gaskell only much shorter thankfully. It even manages to put some dampners on some wonderful names and characters Trollope creates, Mr Sentiment, Sir Abraham Haphazard etc.  Also, when there is dialogue I felt the book really came alive it is just a shame this was few and far between.

“‘Why not!’ almost screamed the archdeacon, giving so rough a pull at his nightcap as almost to bring it over his nose; ‘why not! – that pestilent, interfering upstart, John Bold – the most vulgar young person I ever met! Do you know he is meddling in your father’s affairs in a most uncalled for – most…’ And being at a loss for an epithet sufficiently injurious, he finished his expression of horror by muttering, ‘Good Heavens!’ in a manner that had been found very efficacious in clerical meetings of the diocese. He must for the moment have forgotten where he was.  
 ‘As to his vulgarity, archdeacon’ (Mrs Grantly has never assumed a more familiar term than this in addressing her husband), ‘I don’t agree with you. Not that I like Mr Bold – he is a great deal too conceited for me; but then Eleanor does, and it would be the best thing in the world for papa if they were to marry. Bold would never trouble himself about Hiram’s Hospital if he were papa’s son-in-law.’ And the lady turned herself round under the bed-clothes, in a manner to which the doctor was well accustomed, and which told him, as plainly as words, that as far as she was concerned the subject was over for the night.”

So all in all I am really rather disappointed in ‘The Warden’. Partly because I got on so well with Jane Austen so hoped I would every classic I tried and also because my Granddad Bongy, who used to make those books for me as a child and is no longer with us, loved this book and indeed the whole series was a favourite so I hoped I would love it too. I haven’t written Trollope off though, especially since discovering this was his fourth and apparently most disliked novel, so maybe I should try more?

In fact why did so many of you vote for AJ and myself to read this book as the first Trollope if it is so dire, not that I am saying AJ disliked it you will have to check his review yourselves. I am a little more panicked about read Charles Dickens and ‘Great Expectations’ next now. Speaking of which check the post below to win a copy.

So what are your thoughts on ‘The Warden’? Have I missed something? Should I ever read another Barchester Chronicle, or try something else by him instead?

Classically Challenged Giveaway #3; Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

In conjuncture with Classically Challenged  the lovely Oxford University Press are kindly giving away three copies of the third Classically Challenged choice, as voted by you, ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens on Savidge Reads and another three on AJ’s blog too. But as we discovered the international postage takes longer you only have 24 hours to do so, this means you will get them with some time to spare!

So what do you have to do to win one of these novels?  Well, now that you have asked, you need to do the same thing, but twice. So we would like you to tell us which author you have the greatest expectations of and why? AND you need to do this on both mine AND also AJ’s blogs. This actually gives you double the chance of winning and also means both me and AJ get to chat to you, as it were, which is doubly nice all round.

You have just 24 hours to enter the draw (so basically 14.3 GMT on the 26^th of November) and the winners will be chosen at random out of a hat and announced by a special guest I’m introducing you all to tomorrow. Good luck!

The World That Was Ours – Hilda Bernstein

Yesterday I mentioned that I am about to start reading all the Persephone books in order and the book that played a part in getting me thinking about doing so was ‘The World That Was Ours’ by Hilda Bernstein, which happens to be the 50^th Persephone title and the halfway mark (so I will be coming back to it in a few years). One of the things I have liked about all the Persephone’s that I have read so far is that they have all been, twee isn’t the right word, erm, ‘rather delightful’ might be better. I don’t mean that to sound like I am dumbing them down, just the select few I have read have had a slight ‘frightfully marvellous’ feeling about them be they crime, sensation novels, etc. This, as I said, I love but has also made me read them sparingly and as ‘safe’ choices. I am now thrilled that ‘The World That Was Hours’ felt like a very dark and dangerous book and a memoir that needs to be read to be believed. I am hoping my adventure into Persephone’s will lead me to more like this.

Persephone Books, paperback, 1967 (2009 edition), memoir, non-fiction, 416 pages, from my personal TBR

‘The World That Was Ours’ is a rare first account of the period in South Africa’s history in the 1960’s when the apartheid had been running for some time yet tension seemed to be building to a breaking point with the Government of the time creating bills and arresting people left, right and centre. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, small towns and villages mainly populated by black people were being destroyed and people were being severely punished, even by death, for the smallest of incidents. Hilda Bernstein and her husband, Rusty, were two of the many white people who were fighting for fairness and equality at that time and so were of course raided and often arrested, even imprisoned throughout this period. ‘The World That Was Ours’ in Bernstein’s memoir of the trying and horrific times of that period, not only for her, her family and the people she knew but also of the innocent people, be they black or white, and what the consequences of this awful time were.

I feel slightly ashamed to admit that until recently I have not had much understanding of the apartheid, though I knew who Mandela was and how important all he has done was. That said two of the books on the Green Carnation Prize longlist dealt with the subject, or its effects, fictionally and so Bernstein’s memoir has given me an equally fascinating and horrifying look into the time all the more. Through fiction I was shocked, seeing it written down as a memory has made the horror of it all the more real and mind boggling. I find it difficult to comprehend people’s behaviour or the fact they could think what they were doing was right at the time, I don’t mean the Bernstein’s here obviously, I mean the Government, police and justice system. It is one of those books that has you googling everything and learning more, it is a very important book.

“Now we knew that time was running out for us. The punishment for refusal to accept racial rule was inflated; the objective, to remove every single dissenter, either by forcing them completely out of the country, or by shutting them completely away into jail. Nothing less. Even house arrest was an interim measure; together with specific bans its objective was to make such living impossible, unable to live like a human being, the victim finally left the country. You could not stay and go on living freely.”

Not all memoirs work of course. People can have seen or been part of horrendous things but if they can’t write it can lose something along the way. Bernstein is an incredible writer, and indeed at the time was a journalist, she manages to evoke the atmosphere and tension effortlessly and not just for herself and her situation in Johannesburg but for everything going on in the country too, from both sides. At the same time she writes in a style that makes the book feel like a thriller, in part because there is the aspect of all the secret things that she and her husband were doing in the anti-apartheid movement, yet also from the way she paces it. I found it very difficult to tear myself away from the book even during trials and the explaining of the policies and bills the Government were creating every other day.

This leads to the other very important aspect of ‘The World That Was Ours’, Bernstein manages not to make the book seem like a historical document, even though that is exactly what it is essentially. She brings the message home of how awful things were and the level and scope of the atrocities going on without repeating everything. Her writing seems to say ‘why repeat the point over and over when you can hammer it home highlighting points once’. This doesn’t mean she just says ‘oh it was awful’ and finish there, she gives you an example of one of the awful incidences and then explains how it was happening everywhere and telling of another different incident. Many books would repeat themselves endlessly, Bernstein doesn’t feel the need. She shows faith in the reader’s intelligence too by not over explaining who every person is in the book, or the exact ins and outs of every bill or change to policy/the country/Government. This could have become a reference book in some ways, or a patronising explanation, yet she trusts the reader doesn’t need to be spoon fed and I think wanted readers to go away and read/find out more, which I did almost fifty years after publication.

“And finally – although this was only at the end – there were great quantities of books and pamphlets which we had put into storage fifteen years before to save them being taken in police raids; and now they were all banned, or by authors who were banned, and could not be put in the dustbin or given away, but had to be burned. So we became book-burners. Books resist burning, their pages curl and singe and the fire goes out; it is necessary to work at the burning and destroy them successfully. Perhaps that bath, packed solid with black brittle ashes of books and papers, had become the most striking symbol of the evil and destructive times to which we had come.”

‘The World That Was Ours’ shows the power of books, writing, journalism and memoir. When it was published back in 1967 it was a dangerous book to release and there were many people who would have liked to see it destroyed. Thank goodness it found a publisher back then and thank goodness Persephone have chosen it as a book to reprint for us to discover because it is just the sort of book that everyone should read. I will be re-reading this again for definite.

Persephone 100 and the Persephone Project…

I have been meaning to write about Persephone, one of the UK’s most delightful independent publishers, reaching their 100^th title for some time. However the right reason never quite presented itself. Well, that is partly true. I could simply have simply said ‘Happy 100 Books Persephone’ and then put a link to all the titles of theirs that I have read so far, only one of them I didn’t ‘get’ I think, but I wanted to do something a little bit extra and a little bit different and then fate stepped in delightfully.

To me, Persephone books are a real ‘treat’ of a book. Despite this blog I am actually not really a big buyer of new books, I have the odd binge once a year in a certain chain, a brief yearly dabble with a certain online retailer (basically when they offer me prime for free, you know who I mean) and whenever I fall into, because it is never planned *cough*, an independent bookshop I like to buy a book or two. I am much more of a borrower from the library or perusing bargain hunter in second hand and charity bookshops, I think this stems from the fact it was the way it was when I was a youth. Anyway despite having borrowed many a delightful grey copy along the way, Persephone’s I saw/see as treats and so had been slowly building up a collection of titles, some I had won from the very people who had introduced me to Persephone Books, Claire and Verity (thank you ladies, why did your bookish blogs stop?) and there Persephone Reading Weeks etc, and others I had seen in independent bookstores along the way.

Well you may have remember that in the last move I lost a special bag of books and in it, amongst some other special copies of other special books were SIX, yes six, Persephone books. ‘Someone at a Distance’ by Dorothy Whipple, ‘Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes’, ‘The Far Cry’ by Emma Smith, ‘Dimanche and Other Stories’ by Irene Nemirovsky, ‘Still Missing’ by Beth Gutcheon, ‘Miss Buncle Married’ by DE Stevenson all just somehow disappeared. I was left with ‘Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day’ by Winifred Watson because it was in my boxes of ‘already read’ books and ‘Miss Buncle’s Book’ by DE Stevenson as that was in my ‘to read very soon’ moving box. I still haven’t read it; I think it might be the trauma, maybe. Anyway the collection I was slowly building was down to two, until I spotted this in a charity shop last week…

I actually had spotted a separate Persephone Classic, ‘The World That Was Ours’ by Hilda Bernstein which I will be writing about tomorrow, on a different shelf but I didn’t think I would spot a further five of the gorgeous grey spines!! Naturally I did a double take and scooped them all up in my arms and practically ran to the till. This joy was made all the sweeter discovering that three of them still had the bookmarks when I got home and perused my finds further. It was reading all about them and seeing how different they were, and indeed starting the Bernstein when an idea popped into my head and everything clicked… I would read ALL the 100 Persephone titles and start ‘The Persephone Project’!

Initially ‘The Persephone Project’ sounds bonkers I will admit. Especially from someone who only the other day was saying I am not sure I should start any more projects (apart from Classically Challenged and 40 Before 40, the latter which I am still mulling) or challenges as I want a year of reading by whim. Yet the more I thought about it the more sense it made.

The main point is that I will not be reading these books in one big gulp. Now this will possibly sound even madder, especially seeing as I have worked this out as taking me to March 2021 (when I will be almost 39!), but I am going to read one a month in order though should I fancy reading one of the later titles earlier that’s fine as its likely to be years until I re-read it. That makes sense in my head anyway. Having spent ages going through the catalogue and making a page with all the titles and when I will read them the diversity of the list means I won’t get annoyed either. I will talk more about this tomorrow but ‘The World That Was Ours’ really opened my eyes to how different the books are it being the polar opposite of ‘The Shuttle’ by Frances Hodgson Burnett (my favourite Persephone so far) in every way apart from the fact I love it just as much.

I am also really looking forward to building a collection as one book a month fits my budget (though I have just bought the first three, but please don’t tell The Beard – actually he might not mind as he likes the books as they match the carpet) and over the next few weeks, months and years who knows what gems I might find in any bookshop I might fall into. I may have to get a special set of shelves for Persephone books alone.

So that is the plan! The first book, ‘William – an Englishman’ by Cicely Hamilton is on the way and I will be discussing it on Sunday the 16^th of December here (the Project Persephone posts will go live every third Sunday). I am hoping some of you might join in along the way (I am sure somewhere on the internet people are already doing something similar but I want to start at the start) or if you feel a bit crazy and whimsical start with me and go for the whole lot. I feel like it is going to be a real bookish adventure, and indeed by the time I get to book 100 there will have been more added to the list.

Anyway, that is quite enough from me for now. I would love to hear what your favourite Persephone books have been so far and if you have found any forgotten but now favourite-to-you authors in the mean time. Do tell, and let me know if you might join in be it for the long haul (crazy but might be great) or just dip in and out along the way…

The Lagoon – Janet Frame

Spending time with Gran is having an interesting effect on my reading. Firstly, as I mentioned yesterday, I am doing a lot less as either we are sat nattering away, there are one hundred and one jobs to do or she wants to go off gallivanting here, there and everywhere. (I didn’t think you could gallivant with a quad stick or in a wheel chair but Gran is proving me wrong.) We were talking the other day about any authors we wished we had read and haven’t as yet and the first one that popped into my head was Janet Frame. Unlike some of the more obvious authors (mainly all the classic canon ones, okay, okay already) she is one that is little known really and yet people whose opinions I trust, in this case Stella Duffy, Dovegreyreader and a lovely New Zealand friend on GoodReads, have raved about her and so I had picked her up debut collection, ‘The Lagoon’, up at the library on a recent trip. Well I have been dipping in and out of the twenty four short stories in this collection between dashing about and what a collection it is.

Bloomsbury Publishing, paperback, 1951 (1997 edition), fiction, short stories, 189 pages, borrowed from the library

With a collection of any short stories it is really difficult to write about them as a collection. With a collection like ‘The Lagoon’, where there are twenty four stories to cover and they are all pretty fantastic it is even harder. So I am going to try and cover both the moods and tones of the collection and also which of the stories really stood out for me. First of all, and this is really what links all the stories the most obviously, I just want to say that I utterly adore Janet Frame’s writing style. It is really quite unlike anything I have read before as it has this sort of dream-like, or indeed nightmare-like, quality to it. It manages to be quite spare, sparse and matter of fact whilst being rather surreal.

It is poetic but not to the point of being precious, and she has a way of repeating phrases in each story which rather than being irritating actually make the points of the tale resound again and again, highlighting what she wants to say. Sometimes this will simply be a line in a story, or indeed like in the title tale ‘The Lagoon’ the first paragraph is also the last, not word for word yet almost slightly. It’s effective and also feels like Frame is catching you out or checking you are concentrating.

“At low tide there is no lagoon. Only a stretch of dirty grey sand. I remember we used to skim thin white stones over the water and catch tiddlers in the little creek nearby and make sand castles. This is my castle, we said, you be Father I’ll be Mother and we’ll live here and catch crabs and tiddlers forever…”

The dream like and nightmare like states of this collection are really mirrored in its two main tones/moods. The whole collection has a nostalgic and melancholic feel to it but sometimes of a very happy note and others an incredibly sad one. Loss is featured throughout, be it loss of a person, loss of security, loss of self or even a loss of the mind itself. The latter linking into the fact that Janet Frame was indeed sectioned and this very collection winning an award saved her from having a lobotomy which had been booked imminently. ‘The Bedjacket’ (which made me cry), ‘Snap-Dragons’ and ‘The Park’ all highlight asylums and mental illness in such a blunt raw and eye opening, and also psychological way, they left me almost speechless. The openness of this is quite unnerving and raw, yet all the more compelling and emotional. You could tell these stories were coming from the heart.

Most of the stories are told in a child’s narrative or from written from the perspective of someone very young. I am quite picky with child narration, sometimes it can feel a little forced, took knowing or too naïve, in the case of Frame’s tales in the collection where she uses the device (which is most of them actually) she gets the voice spot on, something I think is a tricky craft in itself. She also gets the relationship between siblings as youngsters just right too.

“Myrtle came home from down south full of secret smiles and giggles. Vincent, she said. Vincent this and Vincent that. Sometimes letters came and I who was Myrtle’s confidante had the privilege of curling up on the end of the bed and saying, read us that bit over again, read us the bit you missed out last time.”

Having gone off and found out more about her, always a good sign when I do this with a new to me author, and look up her other works etc did lead me to pondering just how autobiographical some of these tales are. As I mentioned Frame spent quite some time in an asylum and this is reflected in some of the stories. I also discovered that both her elder sisters drowned, in separate incidents, and some of the tales are concerning young death and water is an element that appears throughout this collection too.

I am so glad I have read ‘The Lagoon’ and been introduced to a new author such as Janet Frame whose writing and prose has really resonated with me. She is also one of those authors I love who writes about the smallest, most miniature, of things and makes a story from it. It’s more observational than plot driven, but in the right hands and written like this almost every tale is like a small emotional epic situation unfolding. There is no question that I will most definitely be reading more of her work in the future and I would strongly urge you to dip your toes into ‘The Lagoon’ and you could find a wonderful new to you author too.

Who else out there has read Janet Frame and what did you think? I would love recommendations of the other works of hers that I should read, what would you recommend next?

A Blogging Breather; What I Was Up To…

And he is back! I didn’t intend not to blog for ages, quite the opposite, but sometimes life makes you stop and think, get some space, and then you realise you quite like having that imposed breather and so you self impose it for a little bit longer. I was at Gran’s from the start of last week and was thinking that post radiotherapy she might be quite tired and need lots of rest and reading time.  Therefore, in my head I was expecting lots of time reading together between chatting and the like, and then while she needed a rest I could blog… Erm, wrong!

It was non-stop! Gran is certainly making the most of life, as much as you can in a wheelchair, while she can and good on her. If there weren’t carers and/or physiotherapists and other health workers then there were visitors coming round. Then we had a day trip to Sheffield on a rare ‘no one is in the diary’ day, we had meant to go to see the Warhol exhibition but it was shut alas, so instead as she hadn’t had the joy for nearly five months we went and did some retail therapy, including a trip to John Lewis (or JL’s as its simply known in the Savidge family) which is one of Gran’s favourite places. Weirdly we didn’t go to any bookshops which I would have thought was a must. Gran did however treat me a lot, I felt like I was little again, with stops at a posh Museum restaurant (where I had the most amazing vegetarian fish and chips) and then a trip to Patisserie Valerie, she knows me so well.

 

We did do a lot of talking about books though. Since Gran’s prognosis she, understandably, has been having trouble concentrating on reading. She wants to re-read some favourites but alas the one she had picked, ‘The Birds Fall Down’ by Rebecca West, simply wasn’t gripping her. So we had fun going through all the books on the shelves in her dining room which is where she keeps all the books she has read as the ones she hasn’t read stay out of sight (now I know where I get that from) and seeing if any grabbed her. Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ seems to have done the trick. This lead to some interesting chats about books and authors she hasn’t read any really wants to, and which I felt that way about, plus also reading habits and the life of a reader in general. It got me thinking and talking about reading and blogging and the pros and cons of both of them and between the two of us she has sorted me out. I won’t navel gaze in front of you all, as it is never attractive, but the gist is life and reading come first, blogging second and only when I feel like it and when I feel what I am putting out there is good enough. Many of you have been telling me this on and off for ages when I have had wobbles but Gran really clarified everything for me. So thanks Gran, the blog sort of restarts now.

Anyway, when I got back from Gran’s utterly exhausted, so how she isn’t is beyond me, I carried on with my break from reading and blogging and just had a bit of a breather. The Beard and I have been getting addicted to old black and white Joan Crawford movies, though we did have a break to see Breaking Dawn Part 2 which I thought was a bit of a dud and expected more from, and also got a little bit addicted to bowling – a sport I am actually good at! The Beard was shocked at how good I was, but they don’t call me Simon ‘Strike’ Savidge for nothing… ok, so they don’t call me that.

I have also been spending lots of time playing with Oscar. It seems the Bengal side of him is really coming out now as he is suddenly growing and exploring more places than he has been able to previously. He is also higher maintenance, everything is more extreme, when he is manic he is absolutely bonkers, when he wants a cuddle he sits on your face quite literally smothering you with love.

We have made a big decision though, we are getting him a playmate, most likely a younger girl that he can have rough and tumble and cuddly times with when we aren’t home as he doesn’t like going outside alone or without a lead, and when he has he ends up freaking out and running up tall trees to everyone’s dismay. Ha! Any tips on making them get on please let me know and of course I will introduce her when she arrives. But enough of cats for now, I can bore you all to death on them so must show restraint, ha!

The break has done me good though and the reading funk I didn’t realise I was in has well and truly gone as in the last three days I have read as many books and loved them all, interestingly they were all whim reads. It’s the way forward.

So that is me all up to date with you all. You have my news and latest on Gran, Oscar and other non bookish stuff. So now I shall go and curl up with Anthony Trollope’s ‘The Warden’ in time for Classically Challenged on Sunday. What have you all been up to and what are you reading right now?

The Girl on the Stairs – Louise Welsh

If I had done the list of forty books/authors to read before I turn forty back when I turned thirty earlier in the year then Louise Welsh would have been one of the authors on that list. I know many of you would imagine that list would have some of the classic authors on, and indeed it will, but there are many modern and contemporary authors that I have been meaning to try, Welsh is one of them as so many people have recommended I read one of her novels. As it is I still haven’t made that list, though I have been mulling it over again. I have, however, finally read Louise Welsh and I don’t think that ‘The Girl on the Stairs’, her fifth and latest novel, will be the only and last time I read one of her thrillers.

John Murray Publishing, hardback, 2012, fiction, 278 pages, kindly sent by the publishers

Modern day Berlin is the setting for ‘The Girl on the Stairs’, as Jane moves from Scotland to the trendy area of Mitte to be with her high flying businesswoman girlfriend Petra. However being heavily pregnant with rather a lot of time on your hands in a new and strange to you city can feel quite isolating especially when you have neighbours you are rather uncertain about. Directly next door it is the relationship between father and daughter, Albert and Anna Mann, who Jane hears screaming at each other one night. Anna, just thirteen though looking rather inappropriately older, is then seen with bruises, could there be abuse going on next door and where is the mother? As Jane meets more her other neighbours, Karl and Heike Becker, Heike announces that Greta was killed by Albert and buried under the creepy ruined backhouse between the apartments and the local graveyard. Could the ramblings of a woman with early dementia be true and if so is Anna a young girl in a lot of danger with no one to protect her?

Louise Welsh plays a very clever game with her readers as ‘The Girl on the Stairs’ continues. Jane decides that she needs to find out more about the Mann’s and Greta in the hope of possibly saving a young girl from possible abuse. Is she doing this because she is soon to be a mother herself of with too much time on her hands, and the saying ‘the devil makes work for idle hands’ came to mind for me, is she imagining things from too much time on her own in a city she doesn’t know and with a whole lot of hormones and conflicting feelings to do with her pregnancy. Do we believe Jane or do we think she might have cabin, well swanky apartment, fever?

I have to confess that somewhere in the middle I did have a break from the book, but it was one of those breaks you aren’t sure why you needed or how it happened. You know sometimes you pick up a book its going really well and then suddenly you realise you’re reading something else? That sounds like a rather damning thing to say about any book, weirdly I think in the case of ‘The Girl on the Stairs’ it is a compliment. Welsh’s writing, the situation she creates for Jane and the clinging atmosphere of the novel all become quite headily claustrophobic. Interestingly you start to understand Jane and the predicament she is in and why she could be going a little loopy, if indeed she is. I felt I needed some space now and again to breathe and escape (something that alas Jane cannot do) and that is why I stopped in the middle of the book I think. The book stayed with me though and so I carried on and then couldn’t quite put it down again.

The atmosphere of the book is one of the things that I most enjoyed about it. ‘The Girl on the Stairs’ has a delightful mixture of the Gothic and the fairytale elements to it. We have the young girl in danger (the cover of the book makes me think of Red Riding Hood, but who is the wolf?), the old graveyard, the women of ill repute, the creepy abandoned backhouse and possible ghosts and murder.  It also has the history and atmosphere Berlin a city renowned for its past, its divide and as Jane is told “This city is full of ghosts, most of them harmless. It’s the living you have to watch out for.”

Louise Welsh also packs a huge amount into ‘The Girl on the Stairs’ as it is filled with plot, many twists and several big themes. We have homophobia, the Catholic Church, child abuse, dementia, sperm donation, sibling relationships, possible infidelity… this book is brimming. This occasionally I felt, whilst brilliant, was to the cost of some of the characters. Jane is a fascinating psychological character yet because the whole book rests on whether or not she might be bonkers there is only so much Welsh can show and tell, fair enough though with no real back story etc she is occasionally a little under written, the same with the Mann’s for they are the mystery initially and heart of the story. However it was characters like Petra and her brother, her bosses partner Jurgen etc that not only didn’t seem fully formed, I just didn’t like them – again though this could have been part of the whole darkness of the book, and to be fair when the denouement came I was still unsure what was and wasn’t real and then there were a couple of brilliant, brilliant twists. Swings and roundabouts!

Overall I enjoyed ‘The Girl on the Stairs’. I had a few hiccups with it along the way but really those were all called for, the claustrophobia and the hidden characterisations etc, because of the possibility or not of the mystery at the heart of the novel. If you want an unusual and gothic feeling thriller then I would steer you in the direction of this book. I certainly finished the book wanting to try more of Welsh’s work myself.

So who else has read ‘The Girl on the Stairs’ and what did you think? Which of Louise Welsh’s other novels have you read and what did you make of them, would you recommend any to me for future reading?

Books By The Bedside #6

I am just sorting out which books to take with me back to Matlock while I go and look after Granny Savidge for a while and thought it might be quite timely to share with you the books on my reading periphery at the moment. I have noticed that reviews are piling up at rather an alarming rate at the moment, especially now I can talk about any of the Green Carnation Prize books submitted apart from the shortlisted ones. So while you might not see my thoughts on the books below for a while here is what I am getting my reading tackle around currently…

The first was a book I ran out and bought (okay, I didn’t run I just went online and got it for a bargain) as on the Halloween special of The Readers I waffled on about a short story, about a man who moves into a house that smells of almonds, that really freaked me out but I had no idea what it was. Big thanks to Goodreads member Kristin who knew it was Roald Dahl’s ‘The Landlady’ and I have read it and been freaked out all over again and am really enjoying ‘Kiss Kiss’ as a very odd collection. More on it soon…

Second and third up are books that might seem a little morbid with all that is going on and yet I think will be proof that books can help you in difficult times. ‘Mortality’ by Christopher Hitchens is a book that AJ has raved about and then Karyn recommended I try with everything going on, as it is Hitchens’ memoirs/essays that he wrote for Vanity Fair after he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Here he shares everything he goes through from that point and I have heard that whilst I might not agree with him and his views his writing is incredible. Another book that has recently arrived is ‘The End of Your Life Book Club’ by Will Schwalbe, this is an account of the conversations he had with his mother as she was having treatment and then dying of cancer about books as something else to discuss and yet at the same time use to address what was going on. Oddly Gran and I mainly talk about books at the moment, sometimes books really can mirror your life.

The book I really want to pick up after these two is ‘Gossip from the Forest’ by Sara Maitland. I hadn’t heard of the book until I caught up with a recent episode of the BBC Book Cafe where she took one of the presenters around a wood talking about the history of forests and fairytales and where the two meet and how forests inspired the latter. This is exactly what this book is all about and as a big, big fan of both forests and fairytales this sounds like one of those rare non-fiction books I might actually ‘get’.

The final book on the bedside is one that I mentioned in my library loot vlog post. If there is one thriller that I have noticed seems to have the word of mouth buzz, rather than publisher hype, then it is ‘Gone Girl’ by Gillian Flynn which sounds like an ideal escapist thrilling read which I could do with right now. So I think I will be packing all of these for my trip to Grans where we have already agreed we will have some reading time together as she isn’t getting enough. Like I would say no to that!

So which of these titles have you read and what are you reading right now? What have you been reading and what might you read next?

Poetics – Aristotle

I have visions of my mother seeing that I have read this and fainting, I thought I would share that image with you, at the idea of me reading something by Aristotle. I think before this last week or so the only reason I knew who Aristotle was was because my mother named one of our cats after him, see she is a classicist through and through. However recently I have been reading lots of books about how to write and why people write and the mechanics of it, both for myself as a writer and indeed as a reader. In the wonderful ‘Monkeys With Typewriters’, which I am loving reading on and off at the moment, Scarlett Thomas says that everyone should read Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ as the first, and possibly ultimate, book on writing, how to write, how books work and how to read them. So I thought I would give it a whirl.

Penguin Classics, paperback, c.335BCE (1996 edition), non fiction/literary theory, introduction and notes by Malcolm Heath, 144 pages, from my personal TBR

Apparently Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ is the oldest surviving piece of dramatic theory on earth. That is quite something for a start really isn’t it? In twelve sections, which only span around 45 pages, Aristotle looks at, and indeed breaks down, how  and what creates the perfect play (and indeed these were in the days of c.335 BCE really acted books if you will) and why. He looks at genres, plots, characters, and language and its rhythm stage by stage – no pun intended.

I have to say I thought that I was going to be bored by this book. I couldn’t see how something about poetry would make me think about how I write (for work or for pleasure) or indeed how I read. I was wrong. What I didn’t understand, though have since discovered, is that ‘poetics’ actually translates as ‘making’ and so that is why many people say it is the first piece of literary theory. I can now see why, from the way he takes apart how characters function and plots work. I am sure we all think we know how these work already, and so it could be preaching to the converted, as we read ourselves (I know I was dubious) yet this gives a whole new slant and appreciation to the art of creating a story and one that has drive, plot and characters you empathise with.

Who knew a piece of theory could still be so relevant all these hundreds and hundreds of years later? Especially when he had no idea that novels or films (because the theories work on films too) would exist in the future though this is actually good in a way. You see I think there is always a slight danger with literary theory and with books like ‘Poetics’ that if you learn too much about the mechanics you don’t look at the machine, in my case books in general, in the same way again and so you might be put off reading. This isn’t the case with ‘Poetics’ though, how could Aristotle ruin something he didn’t know of? Plus I think he had the utmost respect for the Arts and a good old yarn itself, if done well admittedly.

I have to admit that some of the book did occasionally go over my head. It isn’t a book you can just read from cover to cover and I certainly advise, like with any book actually, you read the introduction and notes afterwards and then read it again – which at 45 pages is easily done. Some of his thoughts still don’t quite make sense to me, but then Aristotle was an incredible philosopher and I am… well… not. Plus I do think this is a book that I will revisit and gain more from each time I re-read it now and again, in fact I should have called this post ‘Poetics; First Impressions’ really shouldn’t I?

The Cat Who Learned To Climb Bookshelves…

I thought that I would give you a picture post today that would update those of you who are Oscar fans and would also please the non crazy-cat people who pop by this blog with the bookshelve based book porn it also provides. Plus it gives me an easy post as I am shattered at the moment, ha.

As you can see Oscar is looking happy as anything, as he loves being the highest thing in the house, with his new favourite seating/viewing/hiding position. He is also getting a properly big kitten-almost-cat now, though fortunately staying as playful and cuddly as he always has been, if an occasional attack-cat!

So what is news with all of you? What have you recently added to your bookshelves… Books, cats or otherwise?