dovegreyreader scribbles

Direct Red - Gabriel Weston...again

Sorry about Monday but this is what has happened since I picked up  Direct Red - A Surgeon's Story by Gabriel Watson, it's all come flooding back, I promise we'll stick to the book today.
I'd only really viewed the surgical gods from considerably lower down in the food chain, so I was interested to see what life might be like for a woman supposedly on an equal footing but working

'in a world dominated by alpha males...where a certain moral ambiguity and clinical detachment are necessary tools for survival.'

Indeed they are, but Gabriel Weston bravely and honestly challenges those pre-conceptions and her own thinking around many of the situations she finds herself in. The result is many portions of humble pie consumed and a self-effacing account of life at the cutting edge (sorry) as Gabriel Weston walks her reader through many of those staple scenarios of the TV hospital drama, but with a personal touch that debrides (sorry, I can't stop myself,  it's all begging for it) those surface layers to see what really may lie beneath in the mind of the doctor.
There's the inevitable kudos of those first days of being a medical student until the first resuscitation is required...and forget that promise because it's all reminded me of our first day in uniform.
We'd been nurses for about three days (and I discover that Gabriel Weston would have been about two years old in 1972) all standing chatting on the platform at Russell Square underground waiting for the train to take us back to our nurse's home in Belsize Park. There was a bit of a commotion and then the crowd of passengers around us parted like the Red Sea to allow us to take command of the situation and decide what to do next about the person who had jumped under the incoming train.
Whiter shade of pale doesn't come close and you know those emergency stairs at Russell Square that they tell you not to take because there are so many of them...
But in many ways this is what made this book so special for me, situations of my own that I could identify with, but it matters not whether you are medical or otherwise because so many of the central observations of Direct Red translate willingly to other life scenarios. It's a book about people and how they react to one another and what we all do to try and protect ourselves, whether being done to or doing unto others, this is humanity plain and simple.
Be ready with a strong stomach if this is not your thing because Gabriel Weston doesn't couch (sorry, that was unintentional) any of this prettily or euphemistically. There is plenty that will certainly make your eyes water, one scenario in particular an object lesson for Gabriel Weston in professional pride and quite how we may all compromise our integrity in its preservation whilst convincing ourselves and others that we are doing the right thing.
And prepare for great sadness too, expect to read what it might really be like to suffer a miscarriage for example, but any account that avoided such moments would not be truthful and nor would it have that ring of sincerity and honesty that Direct Red does which explains why it was longlisted for the Guardian First Book award last year.
Meanwhile here's an observation from Gabriel Weston and perhaps something to bear in mind if you ever find yourself in need of surgical attention.

'It is no longer enough to be technically proficient; nowadays, we need to be nice. And this presents the modern surgeon with a great challenge: how to combine a necessary degree of toughness with an equally important ability to be gentle.'

I think I'll just settle for them being stunningly brilliant and proficient at what they do, I always like to check for a steady hand too, neat needlework skills are a bonus and then I'll be thankful for such small mercies and acts of kindness that may come my way, and to be honest, I'll forgive the rest.

Endsleigh Salon update...'School' continued

 
I must bring you news of the other 'School' themed reads from our last Endsleigh Salon evening, because I'd hate you to think we'd just languished around wishing we'd been at Malory Towers, or were thankful we'd missed out on the Abbey School and the Morris dancing.
 
The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury, very 1970's bohemian with every kind of 'ism' going on which as I recall, having lived through it, must have been at least feminism and pacifism and I'm sure you can think of a few more. The book seemed to be 75% dialogue, a series of impressions and from where I was sitting the print looked tiny, but Rebecca had read it and enjoyed as I recall, though wasn't quite head over heels about it.
Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes and published in 1857 proved very disappointing and perhaps offered a good example of a novel whose imagery is more often gathered from the watching of the film rather than the reading of the book.
Who can forget that little chap being roasted by nasty Flashman.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt might have been that old favourite, a room divider...
'Oh I loved that book.
'Oh God, the worst book I've ever read.'
But if there was any doubt about that one dividing the room you should have seen the ranks take up arms over Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.
'Hated it'
'Loved it'
'Adored it'

We do actually say far more than that and there was a great debate about why we'd hated it, loved it and all those other things about both books. Linda and I were sadly united in our dislike, for style, some irritating narrative devices and characters in Never Let Me Go, whilst the village contingent (there are so many of them they could do with a bus now) were unanimous in their admiration.
It's clearly a geographical thing but I have a reread scheduled just in case my current Kazuo Ishiguro revisit can shed new light, because I had read it in the midst of a Bookerthon, often not the most propitious way for a book to endear itself to me. It may sadly however be curtains for Linda with Kazuo though I was more than persuasive about A Pale View of Hills and said nice things about The Remains of the Day too, with tempting snippets about Dartmoor and Tavistock and Creber's all getting a mention therin.
Looking to Chillaton for some moral support...no, they hadn't been as impressed with The Remains of the Day.
Sorry Kazuo, I tried but you win some you lose some.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark was on the other hand unanimously received with praise on all sides of the salon.
The Dead School by Patrick McCabe had its reader very exercised in the describing of; bleak but very funny, sort of Father Ted meets Quentin Tarantino and set against a backdrop of the early 1970s, the troubles in N.Ireland and two parallel lives which cross.The final verdict was a great read.
The Piano Teacher by Janice YK Lee proved to be nothing to do with schools at all but had been a good read however Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi was added in by its reader as the most fantastic read. All added to by her visits to Tehran and the university in the past and how it really felt to wear a burkah and, as we never stop a discussion trail leading wherever it wants to, interesting debate followed about the life and the restrictions then and the current political climate.
Thinks by David Lodge sadly had its reader surrendering at page seventy something and moving swiftly on we all agreed that Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, which was the fall back option, was a truly beautiful and clever book that could happily have lost its ending and were it possible, been even better.
Lastly The Finishing School by Muriel Spark... and we all thought oh great, what better way to end, that'll be two brilliant Muriels in one evening then, but sadly it was not to be. The Finishing School felt like a very insubstantial read to its reader, riven as it was with themes of jealousy, satire and middle-class values.
Next theme Back to the Land...

Direct Red ~ Gabriel Weston

 I've been in a wallow of gritty reminiscence since reading Direct Red - A Surgeon's Story by Gabriel Weston so it's time for this photo again to set the scene and give you a Monday morning smile....yes, yes, the hat...I know it's very odd.
It's perhaps a lesser known fact that there was a time when I thought my future nursing career rested not in a staff nurse's uniform but in the operating theatre.
Even I can hardly believe that at the age of twenty-three and that lifetime of wanting to be a nurse, all that saving lives and dedicated patient care and interaction with living (hopefully) awake and breathing people I had dreamed of, was about to be exchanged for the role of a scrub nurse. Letting my hair go frizzy as the autoclave door swung open, wearing a mask all day long, passing cutlery and needlework accoutrements to a surgeon, counting swabs and ministering to completely unconscious patients.
It was a bit of a one-way street and not what I had intended at all, though to be fair I think my nursing career and my life were both at something of a crossroads.
I'd enjoyed theatres as a student mainly because I'd done my placement in the smaller more intimate learning environment of Gt Ormond Street's branch hospital Queen Elizabeth, Hackney Road. We'd do on call and sleep in sort of flowery bower of a 1930s bedroom next to the theatre and it all felt very important and dramatic to get that 3am knock on the door to get theatre ready for Mr D to operate on an emergency.
I can still remember the cases, 4am and us all clustered around a newborn baby with intestinal obstruction which turned out to be caused by Apple Peel Syndrome when the surgeon finally got in to have a look...the intestines coiled and shaped like the complete peel off an apple.
Mr D was a real gentleman too, quite gave me a false impression about surgeons, talked to everyone as if they were a human being just like him.
Sorry... where was I...was I supposed to be talking about a book?
Anyway I loved it all so just imagine it, a few years later, qualified and looking very Holby City in my nice green scrubs and white clogs, first scrub as a staff nurse in theatres at Gt Ormond Street, bit slow off the mark and the surgeon threw some tonsils at me because my hand wasn't ready to receive. The surgeons were really higher even than the gods in the hospital heirarchy, many of them world pioneers but there still seemed no need to fling some throaty detritus at me.
Mr D would never have done such a thing.
Fielding tonsils was not to be my bag, I was over my love for theatres very quickly after that and hastily went back into starched uniform as per above, staffing on the metabolic unit for the few months I had left to work. I would be leaving to get married and moving to Devon where I had a place to train as a midwife.
That wasn't right either, didn't even make the first day because by this time I had decided I was fed up with hospitals and my future lay as a Clerical Officer in the DHSS as it was known.
That lasted a few months until I had to resuscitate someone who'd collapsed after being told they weren't entitled to benefits.
Then I realised I did like saving lives after all (yes he lived and was probably entitled to everything after I'd finished with him) but perhaps not quite this dramatically and the rest is well-documented history here, health visiting and the great outdoors it was for me.
Sorry...
I got a bit carried away and you will too if you have even a hint of any hospital experience (either side of the bedside, if you see what I mean )
I promise I'll talk about Direct Red tomorrow....no sorry it'll have to be Wednesday I must catch up with Endsleigh Salon tomorrow before the next one.

Who am I?

It's NTTVBG over at Other Stories today , but I do realise not everyone may have read the book or want to join in with that and Rocky's a little too worn out after yesterday to be much help, so I'm very grateful to Rhys who kindly e mailed this week offering to compile a literary quiz  for future use.
I was in party-planning mode so I jumped at that one and how perfect now that we are four and nearly grown up, to be doing a nice quiet quiz instead of all that raucous musical chairs and pass the parceling for a box of Maltesers, and being sick with party excitement as in previous years.

Now for obvious reasons....

****DON'T put your answers in comments****

though feel free to discuss and speculate if you want...or just to thank the quizmaster, and I'm assured that anything that may look like a typo is meant to be there.
E mail answers to me at dovegreyreader at gmail.com, I'll forward them onto Rhys who will come back to me with the name of some winners eventually, and I'm sure I can come up with a prize or two...
And if anyone else fancies some fiendish quizmaestering I'll bite their hand off too (and send you a book for your trouble) because I love a good quiz and I'm hoping Rhys will do some more too.

Who am I?
Major clue: all were born between 1700-1900                                            
....and wrote novels that are highly thought of.

 

1. I was born during the eighteenth-century and remained very close to my sister all my life. I made up a place called Hartfield and I have been criticised for not writing about Waterloo or the French Revolution and other important events.

 

2. In my novels I depict characters from a full span of social life. I am called a Romantic or a romancer, I had the unfortunate experience of becoming bankrupt – but I overcame that too.

 

3. I wrote in my novels about the most appalling poverty and brutality as well as people who are comfortably off. I have been criticised for having weak plots in my novels, but they made me rich and I became popular and successful, and in fact I became a performer.

 

4. I am a poet as well as a novelist. A lot of nonsense has been written about me and I am portrayed as a ghost-like figure walking endless moorland – this is not true.

 

5. Believe it or not I am remembered today for only one novel. I made up a character called George Osborne (no relation to the George Osborne of UK politics). My family’s literary influence went on for more than one generation: my daughter, my son in law, his daughter and his granddaughter.

 

6. I have my own ideas about things and I wrote my novels to explain them. I did believe in God devoutly once, but I have changed my mind. My life has been full of contradictions and controversy. I was shunned by society in one way and worshipped by society in another.

 

7. My novels were more highly thought of than my plays. I had a clever brother who became an eminent psychologist, but I kept my distance from him. I was closer to my clever sister but she was often ill. Friendships were very important to me and I enjoyed travelling.

 

8. I think I would call myself a Victorian. I accomplished a great deal by writing my novels, my poems, my short stories but I also truly regret aspects of my life. I wish I had had children and been kinder to my first wife. There was such a commotion when I died. I don’t understand how things could go so badly wrong.

 

9. My eyesight was always a problem to me. I was able to describe my homeland more clearly by living abroad. Did I reinvent the novel I’m not so sure I wrote what I thoughtabout.

 

10. They say I was beautiful to look at but I always thought my sister was the beauty. I suppose I would call myself a feminist but what I really saw was unfairness. The sea was always an inspiration to me and I tried to describe it over and over again.

Happy Birthday to...

Us!

Because almost 2,300 posts later, dovegreyreader scribbles is...
Four years old today.
In the absence of anything arriving from the Poet Laureate (I could barely conceal my disappointment) Bookhound settled down to compose an ode of gratitude to you all in celebration of this very auspicious day, because who in their right mind would write 2,300 posts if you didn't all stop by to read them.
I think you'll agree, Carole Anne Duffy will be hard pressed to top this...

Roses are red
Violets are blue
We're four today
And that's thanks to you.

by Bookhound.

dovegreyreading...

I was thrilled with the arrival of this one, but firstly I have to declare in interest in any book that emanates from Long Barn Books because, occupying a seat on the editorial board as I do, there's a chance I may have had a small say in the book's genesis.
So I did read the proposal for Helen Rappaport's latest book, Beautiful For Ever - Madame Rachel of Bond Street -Cosmetician, Con- Artist and Blackmailer and I added my hearty approval to the decision-making process, which all seems light years ago now.
Lured by the promise of beauty, the gullible rich came in their droves to Madame Rachel's Bond Street shop in the 1860s, face 'enamelling' at twenty guineas (£1500 today) a go a speciality, and it was all bound to end in tears, more about this one next week and I hear it has very narrowly missed out as Radio 4's Book of the Week.

The gorgeous cover designed by Emma Barnes of Snowbooks is a perfect fit for the book's themes and my copy actually nestled in this book bag...

... available to purchase from the Long Barn Books website should you covet one, and if you whisper 'dovegreyreader' in with the order there will be some discounted special offer arrangement.
As if this wasn't enough, the most exciting box of William Maxwell books arrived from Ellen in New York. 

"Beside myself " doesn't quite capture the dancing around delirium of the moment and my effusive thanks to Ellen were sent off in a trice, much more about William Maxwell soon.
Plenty more has caught my eye in this week's post too.
I've already read the first three chapters of Stella Duffy's forthcoming book Theodora for publication in June and it's a corker. I've had to drag myself away because I don't want to be premature with my thoughts on here and then find you can't get hold of it for months, so will read it nearer to its due date and be part of the big buzz that I feel sure this book will generate. The story of Theodora of Constantinople, the most powerful woman in the history of Byzantine Rome, forced into slavery as a child but determinedly in charge of her own fate and future. One for the wish list or to reserve at a library near you so then they'll have to buy it.
Another one I've been looking forward to so I was really grateful for a review copy of Dimanche and Other Stories by Irene Nemirovsky to be published by Persephone Books in April.
Then a deceptively diminutive little book with a big theme, Angels A History by David Albert Jones, published by Oxford University Press. Examining the powerful presence of angels in high art and popular culture and religion and spirituality, this one will be winging its way to a good home when I've read it. I have a very good HV colleague who, likewise fed up with clinical writing, pursued a degree in Art History, completing her MA dissertation on the representation of angels in Renaissance art. Let me tell you that used to be a welcome distraction at team meetings.
More angels but of the Barbara Pym variety, Less Than Angels in the new Virago edition and with a forward by Salley Vickers, what could be more perfect...

'Catherine Oliphant is a writer and lives with handsome Tom Mallow. Their relationship runs into trouble when he begins a romance with student Deirdre Swann, so Catherine turns her attention to the reclusive anthropologist Alaric Lydgate who has a fondness for wearing African masks...'

That sounds most un-Pym-like, I can't wait, but nor can I wait to open the latest novel from Jude Morgan, A Little Folly for which Jude Morgan has cast his eye over Regency London.
And whilst we're on the subject, I hear the paperback version of The Taste of Sorrow is now out and though I haven't seen it yet, I hear there's a comment from here in there somewhere.
So how about you, good booky week?

NTTVBG - The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

It seems light years since the  NTTVBG met over at Savidge Reads and enjoyed Simon's surprise location and the fabulous cakes. The joys of blog book groups like this become clear, we can be wherever we want to be.
This episode featured, The Girl With Glas Feet by Ali Shaw and what an incredible discussion was had by all.
The novel's location a northern archipelago named St Hauda's Land, a cold, unforgiving landscape with an inner warmth that had me thinking Orkneys or Shetland (some knitting would have been good, I don't remeber any) and an edge of mystery and intrigue which was the perfect backdrop for Ali Shaw's story of Ida who is slowly turning to glass and the efforts of local photographer Midas to prevent it.
Yes, we had much discussion about the names and could MIDAs only exist if Ida was an intrinsic part of him...then there was all that 'touch turning to gold' to explore and plenty of magical realism ensued. It's that wonderful combination of the real world, all those touchstones of reality laced with the uncanny magic. Some of it worked wonderfully for me, some of it slightly less so which I think  was more down to my lack of imagination at a time when I've been knee-deep in gritty realism in my reading lately. But how fascinating it was to talk about the book with such an enthusiastic group of readers around the world.
NTTVBG posts go live just after midnight GMT on the scheduled Sunday so Australia was quick off the mark and had the discussion rolling by the time we all arrived. Some had been swept away by it, others were more measured, and in search of some enlightenment I had listened to an interview given by Ali Shaw to a US radio station.
I wanted to get his own thoughts on The Girl With Glass Feet  because mine were a bit muddled. I had myself tied in knots looking for the fairytale analogies...was this Cinderella with the glass slippers under a different guise or something else entirely?
In fact Ali Shaw cited Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid as more of a favourite and made reference to the glass delusions of Charles VI of France, when in a fit of madness Charles believed he was made of glass and wearing the psychological padded suit lest he break. Though ultimately this book is pure fantasy from the imagination of an incredibly talented young writer and thankfully Ali Shaw also added that explanations for everything didn't feel essential to the whole, let's have some mystery and 'unexplained' happenings in life these days and enjoy some uncertainty; some times we try too hard to make sense of everything and how can you make sense of magical realism, you can't, that's the point.
I think we all agreed Ali Shaw is a writer to watch and I would certainly want to read whatever he writes next and then as the day draws to a close with an astonishing 128 exchanges in comments and we all slowly wend our way home while Simon gets out the virtual vacuum cleaner, I get that little buzz of anticipation about the next book on the pile waiting to be picked up.
I'm really looking forward to this Sunday at Kirsty's Other Stories for discussion about Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers because I've had a real Woolfian wallow in readiness and loved every minute of it...still dipping into The Waves, ten pages a day no more and I've finished the Anthony Curtis biography so I'm up to speed.
Do join us if you want to, and this time round it might not even matter if you haven't read the book, I think the Woolfian discussion will be fascinating.