Tove Jansson Delights

After reading this lovely profile of Tove Jansson's granddaughter Sophie, I popped over to Amazon to buy my first Moomin's book and saw that a new book of short stories, Travelling Light, was being published this month. Wonderful! Both books have now arrived and, as with all Jansson's books are beautifully designed.

I didn't like the Moomins television cartoons when I was a child as I found them creepy but I have loved Jansson's work for adults so much, and read so much about her dedication to her hippo-like creations that I simply must give them another try.

As with all Sortof book's editions of Jansson's work, this collection is preceded by a glowing review by Ali Smith and a is emblazoned by a ringing endorsement from Philip Pullman. Jansson's writing is very quiet and subtle but it digs deep and stays with you long after the book has been closed. I look forward to reading both immensely.

I also love that translators of Jansson's works have such excellent names; Thomas Teal translated her novels and these stories have been brought to us by Silvester Mazzarella. Awesome.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

After reading the mammoth non-fiction tome Homocide, I thought that I'd stay with fiction for a while, but Zeitoun will be due back at the library soon and Dave Eggers wrote the last two films I watched so this account of one family's experience of Hurricane Katrina came next.

Abdulraham Zeitoun (known by his last name) is a Syrian Muslim who runs a successful contracting and decorating business in New Orleans with his wife Kathy. They are bright, honest, extremely hard working people who have built up a lot of goodwill in their adopted town with their hard graft and kind natures.

When reports of the incoming hurricane become more unnerving, Kathy begs her husband to evacuate with her and their four children but he refuses, determined to ride out the storm and look after their home, office and various rental properties across the town. He has sat out many a storm in this way before and Kathy ends up leaving for Baton Rouge without him.

We know what happens next.

This is non-fiction and all dates and events have been verified where possible, but Eggers does not write Zeitoun's story in an objective journalist's style. The book is very even handed and fair to all involved (Eggers even tracked down law enforcement officers who arrested Zeitoun to get their side of the story) but the tale reads like a novel with character backstory, beautiful imagery and pacy plot.

Obviously some of the events that take place are horrifying and there are glimpses of humanity at it's most base and stupid but there is also a lot of unexpected hope, beauty and faith in the essential goodness that total strangers can show each other.

My favourite section is where Zeitoun ventures out in his aluminium canoe to explore the new world that the flooding had created:

" He was conflicted about what he was seeing, a refracted version of his city, one where homes and trees were bisected and mirrored in this oddly calm body of water. The novelty of the new world brought forth the adventurer in him - he wanted to see it all, the whole city, what had become of it."

A lot of issues are covered in this compact book, the American government's reaction to Hurricane Katrina, the opacity of modern bureaucracy, Islamaphobia, the hysteria of tabloid media and the gaping holes in supposedly civilised justice systems. Although obviously dystopian in setting and full of infuriating and terrifying moments, Zeitoun is also a deeply humane book which gave my misanthropic heart a little lift.

Author proceeds of the book go to the Zeitoun Foundation.

Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon

I felt like I needed a shower after finishing this. I read about decomposing bodies, vile apartments being searched for rusty knives and guns, overweight men drowning themselves in coffee and booze and obsessive, desperate hours spent pouring over old case files just hoping to get a break in that elusive case.

Yet I loved this book. The grimness of the subject matter, (and it is grim, the violence is all completely nonsensical and often completely avoidable) is lifted by the humanity of those who seek to avenge it.

You are probably envisaging a noble group of men who kneel beside murder victims and mutter "why? why?" but they are too busy doing their job to be noble about it. Solving murders is not a calling to many of them, it is a job that they do every single day, aspects of which soon become rote, like in any job.

David Simon shadowed a shift of Baltimore homicide detectives from the 1st of January until the 31st of December 1988. He followed them to their call outs, listened into interrogations and perused all the detectives cold case files. In the epilogue, the author expresses bemusement twenty years later that he was allowed such unstinting access.

It actually feels like he did more, that Simon is omniscient throughout the book. He describes the thoughts, motivations and frustrations of his detectives. We see it all.

There is the gore, the squeamishness of even some of the veterans in the morgue and the bureaucratic insistence on keeping the statistics up to scratch even if it means neglecting to follow up cases. We see the petty office frictions, the acres of paperwork that seems to overshadow the actual 'police work' and the sheer, mindless stupidity of many Baltimore criminals.

The detectives all feel differently about their jobs. Some, like McLarney and Worden are born cops who relish the day to day work of putting cases to bed. McLarney, in particular, is wedded to the force with fond memories of "racing up Pennsylvania Avenue with that blue strobe light show on top of the car and 'Theme from Shaft' blasting from a tape player on the front seat."

Others, like Pellegrini, whose year long battle to solve the murder of an eleven year old girl almost wipes him out, are decent detectives but don't seem to derive much satisfaction from the job.

I knew that this book was the source material for the TV series Homicide: Life on the Streets, but I didn't realise just how much the show drew from this book. The characters are loosely based on the real life detectives but the cases, techniques, banter, conversations with suspects and office politics appear almost intact until at least the fifth series of the show. It's that rich.

This is why the show is great. It is real and it is how it all actually happened and truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes the producers, to please the networks, would throw in a love affair or an evil twin killer or a sniper attack on Baltimore, but the best scenes are taken from the book:

The female medical examiner is asked by a detective visiting the morgue "what's a lady like you doing in a place like this?" "Looking for Mr Right" she drawls as she sharpens a huge knife.

A dumb yet stubborn suspect is tricked into believing that a photocopier is a lie detector.

A detective is shocked out of his contempt for a filthy house full of murder suspects when a little boy who lives there tugs on the cop's sleeve and asks if he can go and get his spelling homework from his room.

An interrogator refers to himself as "a salesman selling a product that his client has no genuine use for. A life term jail sentence."

The one problem with all of this versimilitude is that everyone seems to have the same name. The real life contains far more coincidences  than a fictional author would allow himself. Nearly every other policeman is called Donald, two of the detectives in the same small squad have the same last name, two suspects for high-profile murders have the same name, murder victims share Christian names and surnames and the father of a  murder suspect is accidentally exhumed in the course of a completely unrelated case. It can get a little confusing.

The most striking thing about the book, however, is that, although these investigators of death have to numb themselves enough just to get through the job, it is the detective who can still retain his humanity and relate to people on the street who seems to be the most successful.

Pellegrini, who catches himself referring to eleven year old Latonya Wallace as "that broad" after too long reducing her brutal rape and murder to a bulging case file of photographs and reports, struggles with his case. In contrast, lone wolf Edgerton is not afraid to go out alone and talk to witnesses one on one instead of intimidating them with a trio of armed cops, and he has friendly relationships with informants, witnesses and street kids. Veteran of the department Worden, has a fatherly way of speaking to drug dealers and  the inhabitants of white trash 'billytown'. He treats suspects with calm respect. Both close cases.

Closing a case or turning a name on the white board from red to black is the main goal, regardless of whether one investigator has had a "stone whodunnit" of a drug murder and the other has had a "dunker" like a domestic dispute. The one that turns his name to black is, in the eyes of his superiors, the better cop. Numbers matter to the Captains, Majors, Commanders etc and police politics makes more of an appearance in the account than existential angst and grieving parents.

This seems wrong and is distressing. But it's the way that it happened.

Carol Ann Duffy, Yeah!

I am still reading bloody Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets which is great, but so very, very long. So today, I shall post the first poem which really blew me away; Small Female Skull by Carol Ann Duffy.


With some surprise, I balance my small female skull in my hands.
What is it like?  An ocarina?  Blow in its eye.
It cannot cry, holds its breath only as long as I exhale,
mildly alarmed now, into the hole where the nose was,
press my ear to its grin.  A vanishing sigh.



For some time, I sit on the lavatory seat with my head
in my hands, appalled.  It feels much lighter than I'd thought;
the weight of a deck of cards, a slim volume of verse,
but with something else, as though it could levitate.  Disturbing.
So why do I kiss it on the brow, my warm lips to its papery bone,


and take it to the mirror to ask for a gottle of geer?
I rinse it under the tap, watch dust run away, like sand
from a swimming cap, then dry it - firstborn - gently
with a towel.  I see the scar where I fell for sheer love
down treacherous stairs, and read that shattering day like braille.


Love, I murmur to my skull, then, louder, other grand words,
shouting the hollow nouns in a white-tiled room.
Downstairs they will think I have lost my mind.  No.  I only weep
into these two holes here, or I'm grinning back at the joke, this is
a friend of mine.  See, I hold her face in trembling, passionate hands



I was seventeen and didn't really 'get' poetry but this was intriguing and scary and mournful. I could hear sounds and see images and feel what the protagonist is touching.

I wondered if the shower cap image was meant to represent a caul and I loved the fact that the rhymes bounced about the poem instead of being parked at the end of each line "Blow in it's eye... it cannot cry... a vanishing sigh." I picked the entire thing apart and examined it's glistening components with wonder.

I was overjoyed when Carol Ann Duffy was announced as Poet Laureate and I am delighted that she has been so productive and relevant in the role.

Although this was my first Duffy poem, my favourite is Little Red-Cap from her wonderful collection The World's Wife.

... But then I was young - and it took ten years

 in the woods to tell that a mushroom 

stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds

are the uttered thoughts of trees, that a greying wolf

howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,

season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe...

What Next?

How do you decide what to read next?

A lot of bloggers out there seem to be reading through shortlists for awards, or broadening their horizons by purposefully seeking out non Western authors, for instance, or works from an author they've never tried before.

I am also amazed at the number of people who seem to have these TBR (to be read) piles which some are methodically working their way through. I have no IDEA how many books I own which haven't been read and I certainly do not know the order in which they will be read. I actually hate the idea of having read every book on my shelves as I love having the lure of many undiscovered tomes lining my living room wall. (Am I the only one who sits and gazes at my bookshelves with a happy, dreamy expression on my face? Seriously, I do this a lot.)

When I am finishing a book, I start to get a feeling of the type of book I would like to read next, an itch that will need to be scratched. For instance, if I have been reading some magical realism or gentle romance, then I become thirsty for non-fiction; if I'm coming to the end of a novel set in the Victorian age then I will suddenly feel the need to read about contemporary characters whose daily, outer lives reflect my own. The feeling is sometimes vague but at other times, it is highly specific.

I am still reading the enormous Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets, and this procedural, journalist's document filled with statistics, personal histories and grim realities has led to a yearning for something frothy and a little more superficial.

I want to read something set in New York in the mid 20th century. No earlier than the 20s and no later than the early 1980s. I have an image in my mind of a sophisticated drinks party attended by authors, playwrights and a couple of movie stars. The women are wearing cocktail dresses and the men sport ties. Glasses clink and slightly posh laughter rings in my ears. There is delightfully acerbic banter and there will probably be a couple of affairs. If there is a book which crosses Nora Ephron's New York nostalgia  with Truman Capote's social life and Elaine Dundy's razor-sharp lust for life, then it is what I wish to read next.

I want it to have descriptions of delicious food stuffs too.

Is Music The Most Affecting Art Form?

I love to read, I'd do it all day if I could; I adore a good film and watch my favourite TV box sets over and over; some pieces of visual art have actually made me feel faint with emotion, but the effect that music has upon my mood and feelings is, I think, generally more powerful.

Baba in Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls makes me seethe with rage, I always cry with great heaving sobs at the end of The Railway Children, the squadroom banter in Homocide: Life On The Streets delights me greatly and I once had to sit down whilst looking at a Howard Hodgkin painting (see above) but none of these experiences compare to the thrill of Tim Buckley's howled "ne-ver think of meeeeee" at the end of Dolphins, the poignancy of River by Joni Mitchell, the pure, ridiculous joy of dancing to Patti LaBelle's New Attitude, the first bit of Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come, the bit in Wake Me Up where Nadine sings "Dressed up and put on my make-up", the intro of Love Will Tear Us Apart, the harmonies in Eternal Flame etc. etc. ad infinitum....

I know from bitter experience that many people do not feel this way about art, a lot of people have never read a book for pleasure (or at all... I know! I've met some!) and many people are not that bothered by films but if somebody says "I don't like music" then a glass smashes to the floor, the jukebox is unplugged and the whole room stares in disbelieving silence (like in Eastenders when someone says something shocking in the Vic.). I have met people who said they didn't like music. Two people. And one of them meant that he didn't like pop music, just classical. So that is one person I have met in my entire life who did not like to listen to music, saying it was "just noise."

Why is this? why does pretty much every human being enjoy listening to, singing, humming and possibly dancing to tunes? They maybe do not obsess about music or listen to much more than the charts, but if you asked them "do you like music?", then they would look at you like they thought you were weird and say "well, yeah."

Is this universal appeal why mainstream, lowest denominator music is not as bad as its counterparts in other art forms? I do not buy or greatly esteem the music of Westlife,  The Saturdays (apart from the ludicrously catchy Work) or ballad-mode Pixie Lott but I cannot deny that there are pleasant sounds and some accomplished songwriting to be found beneath the layers of lazy production, troublingly marketed young women and/or emotionless singing.

I cannot afford the same good humoured acceptance towards misery memoirs, sequels to gross-out frat boy misogynistic comedies or that crappy 'modern art' that is sold in department stores and makes me want to put my foot through the canvas. Even Jedward are better than all those things. (I'm serious, I laughed so hard during their performance of 'Oops I Did It Again' I was worried that I'd burst a blood vessel in my eye. Joy is joy.)

Does the fact that most people have a reasonably strong opinion about music drive up the standards of pop? While you ponder this question, why not listen to old Patti singing about her attitude which is new. Point to your clothes when she sings "new dress!", frame your head with your hands when she sings "new hat!", point with your index finger at "point of view" and wiggle your arms side to side for the "ooh ooh ooh-ooh-oooohs". I can't promise you'll feel better, but I defy you to feel worse:

On Re-reading

Edward Ardizzone illustration taken from The Little Book Room byEleanor Farjeon

I was talking to someone about books once, and was stunned when they airily declared that they had never re-read a book in their lives. "What's the point?" they asked as I reeled backwards in horror, calling weakly for the smelling salts "I already know what happens in the end."

This declaration shocked me far more than friends who admit that they have never finished a book, ever. I always understood that there were people who just were not readers, for whom the concept of reading for pleasure makes no sense. I can respect this, some derive great enjoyment from playing sports or doing exercise, for instance, two healthy and undeniably popular ways of spending time but the sight of a rounders bat or a treadmill make me feel queasy and incredibly bored in equal measure.

However, I thought that those of us who are 'readers' would be similar in our enjoyment of books. I assumed that every one who has read and loved a book would eventually return at least once to spend more time  with favoured characters, re-live the thrilling highlights and examine the tale from a different perspective. Whenever one visits a book again, it is with different experiences and opinions, we are older and have read more in the interim, which will colour our view and change the reading experience.

When we love a song we play it again and again until our neighbours are crying and begging us to stop and it is not considered odd to want to look at a painting more than once even though you already "know what happens in it."

I suppose it depends on what kind of books you like to read. A beautifully wrought novel examining the inner lives of the characters may reward a re-reader more than a plot-driven detective novel but I still think that a mystery is still worth re-reading when you know the culprit, motive and weapon because you are reading the book with new knowledge which will change your attitude to characters and allow you to appreciate the cleverness of the writing.

There is of course one big fat con for re-reading and that is the massive amount of books that all voracious readers want to read, feel that we should read and yet know that we will have less time to read  if we keep wallowing in beloved tomes that we have already read several times over. It is a dilemma, I do admit. But never re-reading a book? Madness...

Multi-tasking...

I wonder how many people read three or four books at a time? I used to be constantly hopping from book to book but don't seem to have the ability anymore. Perhaps you need a young, springy brain to keep all those plots sorted out.

At the moment I have a few books on the go but, as they are all episodic in nature, it feels quite natural. I rarely read a book of short stories all in one go, as I like to give thought to each story after I've finished it and I don't want to taint the next.

I received a wonderful book at Christmas, Vanity Fair's Hollywood Tales: Rebels, Reds and Graduates and the Wild Stories Behind the Making of 13 Iconic Films. I absolutely love reading about behind the scenes on Hollywood films and I particularly like when you hear about how films were originally conceived. Quite often, the main players are the fifth or sixth actors on the directors' lists. In the case of 'All About Eve', Bette Davis' signature film, she was turned to "as a last resort".

Claudette Colbert had signed up to play the queenly stage actress Margot Channing but suffered a ruptured disc. The only actress available and capable enough to fill in the role at short notice was Davis. The last time she and producer Daryl Zanuck had met, he had screamed at her "You'll never work in Hollywood again!" She nailed the role of Margot Channing, and it is one of the classic movie performances in a film which received 14 Oscar nominations, an unbeaten record until Titanic.

Other chapters cover Rebel Without A Cause, The Graduate (which was originally to star Robert Redford), Cleopatra, The Producers and Saturday Night Fever. The book is written with the typical Vanity Fair tone, well researched, respectable reportage which is deliciously gossipy at the same time. The best bits in the 'All About Eve' chapter are when you get to hear what everyone thought of each other and how George Sanders got on flying to San Franciso with his wife Zsa Zsa Gabor on one side of him and a flirty young Marilyn Monroe on the other.

I have already told of this lovely book's unexpected arrival and it was worth it for the first story alone. I have never read any Katherine Mansfield but have heard many good things about her. Her First Ball is about country girl Leila attending her first formal dance with her four cousins. Leila's girlish excitement and the assaults upon her senses are incredibly vivid and, although there is little traditional 'plot' to this tale, its waters run deep. The story is a polished pearl, light, sparkling and precious.

"Meg's tuberoses, Jose's long loop of amber, Laura's little dark head, pushing above her white fur like a flower through snow. She would remember forever."

A couple of years ago I bought the Christmas Stories in this series and it is actually one of the few short story collections which I have read all in one go. The quality and range is magnificent and I enjoyed it so much.

Love Stories contains works by Collete, Dorothy Parker, D. H. Lawrence,Vladimir Nabokov and F. Scott Fitzgerald to name a few. Yeah the standard's pretty high! My favourite so far has been 'Blood Sea' by Italo Calvino which ostensibly takes place in a car containing four people but the real story is in the blood, under the fingertips of two lovers on the back seat.

"The underwater depths were red like the colour we see now only inside our eyelids, and the sun's rays penetrated to brighten them in flashes or else in sprays. We undulated with no sense of direction, drawn by an obscure current so light that it seemed downright impalpable and yet strong enough to drag us up in very high waves and down in their troughs. Zylphia would plunge headlong beneath me in a violet, almost black whirlpool, then soar over me rising toward the more scarlet stripes that ran beneath the luminous vault."

My new edition of Slightly Foxed arrived today! I've not started it yet, but I'm certainly not going to finish the above three books before I do. This quarterly is beautifully produced on cream paper with a new watercolour illustration on the cover each month. The publishers also make a point of mentioning that the size of the editions means that it can be slipped easily into a handbag or a coat pocket, which makes me want to hug them.

There is a Slightly Foxed book shop(selling their own editions as well as second hand books) and look at the map they provide to it, it is the perfect illustration of the feeling of this publication, sweet, whimsical and a little eccentric.

They also produce stocking fillers!

Book Anticipation

Stories to Get You Through the Night is described as an anthology of "stories that will brighten and inspire, move and delight, soothe and restore in equal measure", and includes work by Chekov, Elisabeth Gaskell, Katherine Mansfield, Haruki Murakami, John Cheever, Virginia Woolf, Richard Yates, Angela Carter....


I pre-ordered this as soon as I saw the description a few months ago and then completely forgot about it, so I was delighted to receive my dispatch email this afternoon. I just did a big amazon binge and so was trying to be good about buying books. Ha! in your face, restraint!


 It was like finding a fiver in my pocket that I thought I had spent or chocolate in the cupboard that I was sure I had eaten. 

Bodacious!

Chelle from Time Out blog has very kindly bestowed this Bodacious Blogging Book reviewer award upon me and, I'm not going to lie, I am dee-lighted. The 'pass it on to 5 others' part reminds me of scary chain letters from the 80s (thanks a lot, Swedish pen-pal) but I think it's safe... anything called 'bodacious' can never be wrong.

If you are given this award you can accept it by leaving a comment on the post you were nominated on. Then copy and paste the post and add it to your own blog. Make a list of the last 5 books you read and pass the award on to 5 other bloggers (but not to the person who nominated you).


My last five books were: A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, Tusk Tusk by Polly Stenham (do plays count?), The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple and The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield - Fisher.


My nominations are...


Lydia at The Literary Lollipop. Lydia reads faster than any other blogger out there and provides an interesting mix of  Young Adult fiction, Classic literature, Short Stories, Croatian Literature and more. She is currently ploughing her way through Middlemarch so the rest of us don't have to.


Any blog which hops from L.A. Candy by Lauren Conrad to The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf to Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is definitely worth keeping an eye on. Lila at BabyGotBooks gives everything attention and writes some great reviews.


Irish playwright Rosalind at The Vanishing Lake not only shows impeccable taste by naming her blog after a magical body of water, but she blogs about writing, reading, current affairs, dresses, all sorts. She also provides links to really interesting articles.


Number four is Desperate Reader. This Shetlander's blog is packed with gorgeous pictures and never fails to relax me when I am reading it. She also likes a dram and George Mackay Brown, like any sane person.


Claire from Kiss A Cloud's blog is also very lovely to look at. I really look forward to her beautiful, thought provoking posts. Her celebration of the film Bright Star was wonderful.

A Handful Of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

I had been meaning to read some Waugh for some time and, as this was published in 1934, I thought that it would kill two birds and contribute to Nymeth at Things Mean A Lot's mini 1930s challenge which I signed up for a wee while ago.

This book was surprisingly easy to read and for some reason this surprised me. I think that Waugh has been looming over me for a while.

Although highly readable, this novel is quite disjointed. The first chapter reminded me of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love and Love In a Cold Climate. The social setting and tone are initially very similar; waspy and witty with a wry authorial eye. Mrs Beaver (mumsy) and her son gossip about the socialites of their acquaintance and idly wait around between luncheon invitations.

" I should say it was time she began to be bored. They've been married five or six years."

"Mumsy you are wonderful. I believe you know about everyone."

"It's a great help. All a matter of paying attention when people are talking."

The characters of Brenda and Tony Last are introduced and Tony Last is described by one man as "one of the happiest men I know."

Chapter two changes the tone with the sentence "all over England people were waking up feeling queasy and despondent."

The tone becomes a lot less arch and more realistic. Brenda and Tony's relationship is described naturalistically and seems to be fond, playful and close.

By the end of the chapter, however, Brenda is preparing to embark on an affair with John Beaver almost out of boredom and with the amused and detached help of her sister.

" Oh he's pathetic all right, d'you fancy him?"

Evelyn Waugh's first wife had left him for another man, an event which apparently changed him forever, so it is not difficult to see the impetus behind this novel about a heartless woman casually tossing a devoted husband aside.

He is so very fair to Brenda though, she is shown to be a cold and careless woman but there is no vindictive twist of the knife and this is definitely not a misogynistic book. None of the women end up looking particularly good but then, neither do the men. Even Tony, who is kind and decent, is not held up as a misunderstood and badly-treated cuckold, but a bit foolish, dull and naive.

A Handful of Dust is a weary sigh of a book which shrugs its shoulders at a shallow and broken world. This weary tone is leavened by Tatler-esque gossip and farcical trips to the sea-side but there is no real redemption for any of the characters. These people may be silly and fey but Waugh does not shy away from following the consequences of their actions realistically.

This despair at modern life reminds me of another famous novel from the 30s, Brave New World. There is no mention of WW1, apart from a few sentences about a character being too young to have fought, but there is a feeling of the shock and numbness that often follows catastrophe. People are determined to enjoy themselves and yet have forgotten how.

Reading Women by Stefan Bollmann

Anyone who enjoyed the images of women with books posted by Persephone last week in honour of the publication Forbidden Fruit may also be delighted by this book which was bought on impulse a couple of years ago. It was useless to resist.

It has recently been repackaged and renamed Women Who Read Are Dangerous:

The foreword by Karen Joy Fowler begins "We women who read should take a moment, put down the book, this or any other, look around us. We are experiencing a rare period of triumph."

Fowler goes on to explain that the idea of reading silently, especially if you were a woman, was once seen as a threat. It was idle, it was secretive, independent and even unchaste. People worried about their daughters reading in the same way that modern day parents fret about hours spent on the games console.

 "She might while the book lasts, be a completely different person from the one we are seeing. She might be a man; this is all too likely. She might be a horse and at the very moment we look at her, she might despair, finding herself sold at auction, sent to the glue factory. She might be a rabbit. She might be a hobbit."

Several images follow, some spread across two pages of, yes, women reading. There are images from the Middle Ages:

Photographs: (this one is of Alice Liddell, namesake of Alice in Wonderland.)

We are shown women who are young...

...and those older:

Women indulge themselves in books leisurely and with lazy pleasure...

... but some have to sneak a few moments from a working day:

Illustrations also appear:

Paintings by Van Gogh,  Hugo Van Der Goes and the wonderful Carl Larsson are included as well as photographs of Lee Miller (she's reading the paper whilst having breakfast in bed!) and Marilyn Monroe.

This volume can be read as a book or dipped into whenever the mood dictates. Buy it, buy it, buy it.

A Box Full of Lovely Books Arrived Today...

Eh... the picture's shaky because I'm so excited about my new books and definitely not because I was too lazy to take another.

Working from the bottom up:

The Norton Anthology of English Literature


I first became aware of this when my friend had to buy it for her English Literature degree almost ten years ago. It's basically an overview of notable works in English from the middle ages to the end of the seventeenth century. It includes works by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Donne,  Swift,  Pope,  letters written by Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, excerpts from the Bible and a description of a trip to the arctic in 1576. And much, much more, hooray!

It looks to be a cornucopia of delights and I look forward to dipping into this treasury.

For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange

I ordered this as soon as I read this post at Paperback Reader and it is part of my effort to read more drama.

Little Women and Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott

A classic, that all should own. I do have a copy at my mother's house, but that's not my house and the vintage cover is so very delightful:

 Plays by Chekhov

These were read and loved at school but have never been owned. Again, the cover is by Maurice Denis, so it's great lit and great art, my favourite combination.

Tusk Tusk, Polly Stenham

I am going to read plays this year and started with This Face which was Polly Stenham's highly acclaimed debut. This is her second play. She is still only 23, which makes me sick.

Enron by Lucy Prebble


Yet another acclaimed play by a young English woman. Enron is what it sounds like, a play about the collapse of Enron, the Texan energy company. This is Lucy Prebble's second play and she is also the creator of ITV2's Secret Diary of A Call Girl.

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

I'm late to the Sarah Waters fan club but shall be sending away for my badge and password as soon as I've posted tonight.

I had heard increasing amounts about her on blogs/in papers and had heard from her in various forewords and articles on writing so when I spotted two copies of Night Watch in my local library, side by side, I picked one up, took it home and let the unwashed dishes and piles of laundry sit as I lost myself in 1940s London.

This novel is quite exhausting to read as it veers from scenes of almost unbearable tenderness to visceral, horrific blood-filled tableaux without ever missing a beat. The structure of the novel is also a three part step back through time, so that we meet the characters near the end of the decade and pick our way back through their tangled, interwoven pasts.

The main theme seem to be relationships that have run out of steam or never had any steam in the first place; relationships which are based on the premise that "we could be blown to bits tomorrow", (so let's ignore the sensible voices in our heads and the gnawing doubts.)

I finished this book wanting to read it again, and determined to read more Sarah Waters.

Alan Warner: New Book

Alan Warner's new book, The Stars In The Bright Sky, is out and the reviews I read yesterday were very enticing. Warner is the author of one of my favourite books, Morvern Caller, and this book is a sequel to another 'Port' ( town based on Oban) book, The Sopranos.

I have just done an expensive amazon binge and money is tight but there is a grim inevitability about the fact that I will be buying this book very soon. Who needs food anyway?

It is sad that the cover looks so hideous as his books are generally very attractive. 'It's what's inside that counts though', yeah yeah yeah.

Someone At A Distance by Dorothy Whipple

I had only intended to read two Persephones as part of the Persephone week run by Paperback Reader and the BFiles, but I enjoyed them so much that I picked up Someone At A Distance by Dorothy Whipple from the library.

I was wary of this writer because of Virago's vow to "never go beneath the Whipple line" but then I read a short story of hers "A Lovely Time " in the Autumn/Winter 2009/2010 Persephone biannually which broke my heart with it's unflinching honesty and vulnerable main protagonist and still makes me want to cry whenever I think of it.

I knew as soon as I started this book that I was going to enjoy it and so decided not to rush to finish it by the end of the week and instead to savour it. Impossible! The pages whirred between my hands like a flip-book.

For those who have read it (most Persephone converts), I shall not retread old ground and for those who haven't I do not want to give away too much of the plot. I actually skipped Nina Bawden's preface when I realised that she outlined the main plot points and read it last.

This is a very deeply felt, yet gentle book and is basically about the ephemeral nature of our life circumstances versus the enduring bonds of love. Some of the characters do things that are incredibly selfish, vindictive, craven even but Whipple presents each case in the same way, explaining the motives and feelings of each person in turn. She is a very moral writer, so these acts do not go unpunished, and this is perhaps why she lost her early popularity in the middle of the twentieth century.

It is perhaps also her readability, the 'easiness' of her novels, that began to make her less relevant in the era of angry young men and rebellious contraceptive-toting girls. I must admit that, although Someone At A Distance is very emotional and indeed desolating in parts, it is still a warm bath of a book with it's delightful descriptions of country gardens and quaint towns and the knowledge that all these characters with their inheritances, servants and people eager to help them out are going to be alright really.

This is a book which is a cosy 'cup of tea' read but is well-written enough to be more than just a guilty pleasure. Even the beautiful cover with a painting by Sir James Gunn is a joy. So, a perfect book really.

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The Home-Maker of this novel is first of all, domestic machine and mother of three, Evangeline (Eva) Knapp, a fierce, grafter of a woman who rules her home with a rod of iron and keeps it not only clean and tidy but stylish, respectable and completely stifling. Her husband reflects to himself that she is "like a Titan forced to tend a miniature garden ."

By the middle of the novel it is Eva's husband, Lester Knapp, who is home-maker when he is unable to continue working at the town drapers and homeware emporium.

It is not really a spoiler to say that Eva takes on her husband's position as the family breadwinner by working in said store and taking the eye for detail and relentless energy that was suffocated by housework and childcare and applying it to business with great success.

Lester, on the other hand, who has always hated his job, settles down into domestic bliss with Saturday morning cooking-bees, stories and time to get to know the children who were hitherto little strangers to him.

I expected to finish this book all fired up with feminist outrage and it is depressing how little some things have changed. I'm ashamed to say that it still surprises me to see a man out by himself with a pram (why should I feel so proud of him, he should take his baby for a walk!) and although we now know such creatures exist, how many fully fledged house husbands do we know in 2010?

I did not feel this inequality to be the central message of the book, however, more an outside event that helped to shape the plot. At the centre of the book is the idea that to be happy, you cannot fight against your nature and must be allowed to be yourself. Eva is too exacting and impatient to spend all day long with a preschooler, however much she loves her youngest son Stephen and Lester is too dreamy and uninterested in material gain to be a competent accountant and "If honestly, that was the sort of nature he had, why rebel against it?"

This idea is exemplified by the Willings who own the store and are first Lester's and then Eva's employers. Both are very happy with their lot because they are allowed to work with their natures. Mr Willing loves business ("it fitted him! It was his work!")and is perfectly happy to put in a 36 hour shift and then go home and talk to his wife about the store. Mrs Willing is a happier homemaker than Eva and was glad to stay at home with pre-school aged children, but is still eager to exercise her brain through the writing of advertising copy for the business; something which she is very good at.

This idea of being able to be yourself is continued when Canfield looks at the characters of the children. Never have I read a book in which the motivations and desires of a child have been so thoroughly examined as those of Stephen, the troublesome 5 year old. He is treated to the same analysis and respect as the adult protagonists and shown to be just as much of a prisoner of circumstance as his mother and father.

The issues that are explored in this 1924 novel are still prevalent today. Women may go out to work more frequently but there is still the shadow of unequal pay and the fact that most women, working or not are still doing the majority of the housework. This is muddied by the growing feeling that some women still enjoy domestic tasks and would be happy to stay at home and keep house. The issue is not who does what, but who, man or woman , is being forced into a life which does not suit them, purely because of their sex?

Before reading this book, I wondered if the title was a snide aside, that I would find a militant feminist scream of rage, but that is not it. The character of 'Aunt' Mattie Farnham is a home-maker; not as competent as Eva, but infinitely happier in the role. It fits her. It is Mattie who recognizes that it fits Lester too. It would not fit Mr Willing, it did not suit Eva Knapp.

What this book cries out is that we must be allowed choice in life, to find the roles that suit our temperaments and talents. Money can buy choice, like in the case of Mrs Willing who can afford servants to take the edge off the drudgery of childcare, but it is the breaking down of prejudice and "complacent unquestioned generalisation" that is the real goal.

This is a wonderful book that made me laugh, cry, think and rage. It lightly leaps from the depths of great tragedy to the sunny joys of human interaction. My only complaint is that I am not too struck on the endpapers but I can find it in my heart to forgive that very slight flaw...

Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau

Paul loves Dargelos, Gerard loves Paul, and so does Elisabeth. Elisabeth and Paul are brother and sister.

Jean Cocteau once claimed that everything he made, be it poem, book, play, drawing or film, they were all poems really. This makes sense, as this book is not a plotty, observational saga, but a dream.

The book begins during a boys' snowball fight which is taking place at dusk in a Parisian street. War has been declared and the combatants are determined to win for their chosen side. The game is referred to only as 'the battle' and as Paul, warm with love, searches the icy battleground for Dargelos, soldiers fall and missiles fly.

The reader is drawn into the boys' world which, already insular, is made further otherworldly by the snow.

'The snow had gone on falling steadily since yesterday, thereby radically altering the original design. The Cite had withdrawn in Time; the snow seemed no longer to be impartially distributed over the whole warm living earth, but to be dropping, piling only upon this one isolated spot.'

This feeling of claustrophobic isolation is carried on when Paul, hit in the heart by Dargelos' rock centred snowball is taken home by Gerard. Paul and Elisabeth's mother is ill and the siblings share a room, 'The Room', which is their own private world with treasures, stories and 'The Game'. This Game seems to be ultimate escapism, the ability to retreat into your mind and enjoy a swooning reverie which Elisabeth thinks of as 'their private legend.' (Cocteau wrote this book during a week of drug withdrawal.)

These children are utterly immune to the realities of life. When their mother dies, they are looked after by Gerard, a maid and a kind family friend. They exist in a private netherworld of barley sugars, crayfish, shoplifting, dares and dens.

It is apparent to the reader from the first few chapters, that these two innocents are not going to thrive, but it is the arrival of Agatha, a spitting image of Paul's lost love Dargelos, that precipitates the end of The Room and of The Game.

The book is illustrated by Cocteau's pen and ink drawings and these help to contribute to the dreamlike feeling that pervades the text. Simple line drawings show Paul in battle, Elisabeth as a spider caught in the web of her own making, and a group of ghostly school boys pressing their noses against a snowy window.

The translation is by Rosamund Lehmann and was said by The Times to have 'the rare merit of reading as though it were an English original.' The prose does seem fresh and uncontrived. Translations can often be stilted, but this highly specific book seems to flow straight from Cocteau's pen into English.

'The street lamps shed a feeble light upon what looked like a deserted battlefield. Frost-flayed, the ground had split, was broken up into fissured blocks, like crazy pavement. In front of every gully-hole, a stack of grimy snow stood ominous, a potential ambush; the gas-jets flickered in a villainous north-easter; and the dark holes and corners already hid their dead.'

If you enjoy pacy, plot-driven reads, then do not bother opening this book. If, however, you enjoy beautiful writing that you can dwell on, rather than be pulled along by, then this poem of a book will haunt you for ever.

Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter

Was this the kind of book that wraps me up and refuses to put me down until I have finished it? In parts. Was it one of those books that, even when I am half way through, I brandish in the faces of my friends and say 'you must read this, I'm just loving it!' ?

No. It is better than that. It was not a struggle, but neither was it an easy read. This is a good thing, by the way; this book challenged my lazy preconceptions every step of the way.

It was impossible for me to just go with the flow of this book because every time I thought I had the hang of it, ' oh it's a Gothic fairytale...', 'no, it's a feminist manifesto...'...' oh hang on it's a love story'... each and every time I tried to settle myself down into a well-worn reading groove, the narrative turned a sharp corner and turfed me out of the cart.

Fevvers, 'Cockney Venus' trapeze artist who may or may not be half woman, half avian, is one part winking, peroxide haired, busty pin-up and one part flatulent, gluttonous slattern. It is my squeamishness as a reader that always put me off Carter's books and I was duly assaulted by a very full description of every smell, stain and encrustation that could be found in the dressing room of Fevvers, chapter one.

Her underwear is compared to worms writhing around on the floor, her champagne ice stinks of fish and the description of the state of her satin robe caused me to shudder delicately. Her language is coarse and her manner rough, but she is a vivacious and hilarious host who clearly has a loving relationship with her diminutive gnome of a foster-mother Lizzy. 'Ah', I thought , 'a tart with a heart.' Not quite. Fevvers is 'the only fully feathered intacta in the world'. A virgin who grew up in a brothel.

All of this rough, bawdiness is offset by exquisitely beautiful descriptions. One page starts with Fevvers complaining about a henchman trying to 'get a good feel of my titties' and then 'shrugging the buggers off' before describing an ivied mansion where , 'above the turrets, floated a fingernail moon with a star in it's arms'. Later on, she encounters the brute again, ''e's the one groped my right tit', before explaining how her malevolent host, Mr Rosencreutz 'upends the claret into the jug of white roses, which blush.'

This is a feminist book but Lizzie's strident politics is softened by Fevvers the non-avenging angel who, although determined to remain single and in charge of her own image, is incapable of hurting another human being. The creed of this book is definitely of the post-feminist variety, with militant feeling replaced by gentle, mocking humour 'there must be something useful this young man could do for them, if only she could think of it.' Natural objects are rendered male (old father Thames) and cultural concepts are female (Mother Parliament.)

Love is the main catalyst for change in this novel as it inspires culture in an unloved orphan, drags Fevvers through an icy wasteland and destroys an all-female prison. Fevvers does fall in love, but, unusually, this does not become the main focus of the novel, merely an accepted fact, one of many.

Reading this book reminded me of reading Nabokov. Firstly, for its placing of the narrative in a highly specific yet non-authentic historical setting. I also recognized the feeling that I was getting just a small fraction of the various references and illusions but being thrilled at the thought of revisiting the book to wring out further meaning at a later date.

Sometimes the best books are the ones that you struggled with the first time you read, just as some are discarded as soon as you have gobbled them up, never to be opened again. Nights at the Circus falls firmly in the former camp. It is back on the shelf, but still in my mind.

The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

Tove Jansson was originally known in Britain for her Moomin books, but her fiction for adults has gradually been introduced by Sort Of Books, a great publishing company who produce really beautiful editions.

2003 saw the publication of The Summer Book, a story about a young girl , her grandmother and their summer together on a Finnish Island. In 2006 a collection of short stories called The Winter Tales arrived and Fair Play, a novel about two women artists and their partnership followed in 2009.

I had no idea that The True Deceiver, Jansson's last novel had been published at the end of last year, and so was delighted to unwrap it on Christmas morning.

It is very difficult to dissect a Tove Jansson novel, as her prose is so subtle and yet solid. It is no surprise that Ali Smith, the novelist who said 'I want to make a book so strong that you can hit it with a hammer and it doesn't fall apart. That's all.', is a fan.

The True Deceiver is set in a Scandanavian village which is experiencing a long, cold winter. Katri Kling wants the house and money of the local artist, Anna Aemelin, so that she can provide for her slow, younger brother, Mats.

Katri is cold, smart and uncompromising and Anna is a rabbit-faced hermit who is vague about everyday details. The two women strike up an uneasy acquaintance that is part professional, part friendly and almost familial. It is never clear who has the upper hand.

Jannson's writing is like a polished pebble, fished from the bottom of an icy river. There are no extraneous descriptions and there is so much unsaid in this novel. There is almost an entire shadow novel hidden behind the actual book. The writing is so clever and delicately wrought that it is impossible to gain a firm grip on the plot. It is a block of exquisitely carved ice, the cold burn of which is felt long after the reader had finished.

'In the morning, an invisible Katri had put a breakfast tray beside Anna's bed. Fires in the tile stoves, a bowl of periwinkles, the hem of her dressing gown mended. The right book opened to the bookmark beside Anna's plate. A lot of small things, everywhere, all day. But Katri continued to be invisible. Anna grew more and more uneasy, it was like having a spirit in the house, one of those magically enslaved and obedient pixies that frequent the castles in fairy tales, diligent creatures, ever-present but always just vanishing. You catch a glimpse of movement and turn around - but there's nothing there, a door closing silently.'

There is no neat wrapping up of loose ends at the close of this novel neither does it stop abruptly at a pivotal scene. The final chapters are so quiet, yet filled with raw emotion. It is a story that I fully expect to live with for quite some time.