dovegreyreader scribbles

Eat the Document

I've been doing a few reviews for Mark at The Book Depository (and ReadySteadyBook and BritLitBlogs....does he sleep?) of late and getting some unusual books as a result. Mystery parcels arrive which shoot me right out of my comfort zone and I love that.It's so easy to get stuck in a reading rut and nothing like something challenging and different to jolt the reading senses.
I may never have picked up Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta, didn't even tick it off as one to watch out for in the Macmillan catalogue, and that would have been a crying shame because it's been a quietly powerful read that has really made me think hard.Had I had this edition I'd probably have thought even harder because this is a great cover that signposts the book perfectly.
One reviewer suggests this "Eat the Document brilliantly contrasts nascent and mature postmodernity through the lens of culture/counterculture". Well I expect that's exactly right but I thought it was a book about protest.
Set between the 1970's, when you know that Mary and Bobby have turned protest into action that has gone horribly wrong, and the 1990's when you eventually find out how.The consequences for both are a life on the run and the book seamlessly moves between the culture and issues of the 70's and the 90's cleverly connecting the two eras.
The bridge is Mary's son who is besotted with the music of his mother's generation, mostly The Beach Boys with a bit of Dylan and even Kris Kristofferson gets a mention.
What on earth was that film he was in with dear old Babs? We all loved him to bits, Evergreen? What was it about more to the point?
There are some great contrasts between the vehemence of activism then when the Vietnam war protests were at their height and the seeming vacuity of the protest of the 1990's when among the best groups on offer is the Barcode Remixers (everything would ring up at five or ten cents and perhaps Scott Pack should write a book about it?).There's a delicious cynicism about what passes for protest these days with "conceptual direct action groups" that actually never do anything beyond discuss what they might do.
I'm not making Eat the Document sound that interesting but I don't want to give anything away, trust me, it's one of those books that just makes you think and it's well worth the read.

'It was a splendid morning too.Like the pulse of a perfect heart'

'I love walking in London' said Mrs Dalloway.'Really it's better than walking in the country'
and I felt like Clarissa Dalloway too as I scurried around London on a beautiful day on Friday and revelled in my recent re-read of what may be my favourite Virginia Woolf book.
I also did something I've always wanted to do.
I hailed a taxi and said "The Savoy please"

Prior to this I'd had another Mrs Dalloway moment as the bells chimed midday, the leaden circles did indeed dissolve in the air, enough to make me stop and listen, check for the sign-writing aeroplane and then panic realizing I'd spent far too long in Daunt's Bookshop in Marylebone and was going to be late.
I was even later because "the world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames" and then did just that. Oxford Street closed and the traffic gridlocked because the New Look store had undergone a new look to the tune of a million pounds after a fire.
I was at The Savoy for the Awards lunch for the Romantic Novelist of the Year and meeting up with the Transita authors.Dame Tanni Grey Thompson was the chairman of judges and gave a very funny and entertaining speech.The lunch was splendid and I sat and chatted to Mary Cavanagh, Stella Sykes and Danuta Kean in that sumptuous Art Deco haven that is The Savoy.I had a bit of a spot-the-art-deco prowl around afterwards but my furtive pics came out predictably furtively blurry.
Next I hoofed into Trafalgar Square and the National Portrait Gallery where I wanted to see the exhibition of Women Writers.

I never did find Room 31 and that exhibition because I got distracted by everything else and time was ticking on so I walked up to catch the tube from Covent Garden thus taking in another favourite venue.
More ambling as I listened to the quartet playing there and a young man on the flute who was ever so slightly more accomplished than me.
It was late night opening at the Victoria & Albert Museum and I was on a mission to seek out some textiles, specifically following up some I'd seen in the Penlee Museum in Penzance, hand blocked in St Ives in the 1930's by Crysede and designed by Alec Walker.Never heard of and wanted to find out more but also what a great place to test the "museum" setting on my new camera (silent, no flash...discreet, should have used in Savoy)
Invoking the ancient Law of Sod, textiles was one of the galleries not open late.
In a way closing half of the museum solved my problem because it's vast and easy to waste half a day deciding what to look at first, I had two hours and the shop and a pot of tea to do.
Somehow I ended up in Ecclesiastical.

However I'm never so happy as when I'm gazing at a pot of Earl Grey tea and I suspect the V&A takes the biscuit for nice cafe setting.

By this time I've been on the go for 14 hours so I'm even happier when I arrive here

and put my feet up (sorry, yes that is my shoes resting on the First Great Western soft furnishings) homeward bound for Exeter St Davids for the next 3 hours or so and a peruse of my purchases.
The books to carry me home, Extracts from the Red Notebooks by Matthew Engel,excellent reading.
A new book (to me anyway), The Daphne Du Maurier Companion edited by Helen Taylor and some interesting new writing about an author who is due for a revisit from me.
Finally At the Sign of the Rainbow a book about the 1930's designer Margaret Calkin James who set up The Rainbow Workshops carrying on the ideals of the Omega Workshops and who produced some memorable posters, fabrics, wallpapers and book jackets.An old Woman's Hour piece can be heard here.
On the top there a supply of Moleskine Cahiers which I've decided will be my new Commonplace books.

Yet again I remind myself I must read the instructions for my iPod Shuffle because I had a right old mix and match of Jonie, Annie, Rod, Seth, The Sixteen and a few others I didn't recognize.
But London, I do love you, if only for a day.

Sylvia's borage

I'm very aware that to the green-fingered among you this may look like a very poor early specimen of borage and to others it may look like a weed, but let me tell you this is no ordinary borage.

Several years ago we spent a pleasant week meandering around the Yorkshire Dales and included a day in and around Haworth, home of the Brontes.Freezing cold even in July.

From there it's just a short hop across to Hebden Bridge, birthplace of Ted Hughes and from there it's a very steep climb if you walk, and a first gear drive otherwise, up the narrow winding hill to the village of Heptonstall and the grave of Sylvia Plath.
We had a fair old job hacking our way through the wilderness to find Sylvia's resting place and in the end we gave up and furtively followed a Platholyte who was on a mission and carrying a large bunch of flowers.Once she'd paid homage it was my turn.

Then I noticed that the grave had been very appropriately planted with borage, some in flower, some gone to seed.

So you see, that's not any old borage in my garden.

House-Bound

Own up, I bet you've all been wondering how long it would be before I posted about a Persephone book because yes, I do have virtually all of them and have been gathering them since the year dot.Here's an old picture because you do one of two things with a collection like this;separate shelves creating feature or  merge.
I've since gone for merge and this cabinet now the home of Penelope Fitzgerald, Anita Brookner, Bernice Rubens et al.
I'm an occasional Persephone reader now, just one maybe two every so often because I've realised I'm a danger to myself with books like this.
You must know me by now, I can buy into nostalgia at the merest hint of afternoon tea and scones especially if served by a housemaid but the trouble is then I get stuck in a time warp and before you know it I'm off to count the linen and worrying about whether nanny has the children ready to take for a walk before nursery tea.
It's far too easy to do when you live in a country cottage setting.
Too many Persephone reads in succession and I'm in trouble and having difficulty sorting out which world I live in. An undeniable hankering after embroidered tablecloths, knitted teacosies and spoons in the jam quickly follows.As the Gamekeeper (son of dgr) wanders in and slaps a dead rabbit (paunched not skinned) on the table right next to the triple-tiered cake stand I'll have hysterics and scream "take it to cook this minute" followed by an attack of the vapours.
So rationing is for my own good and the well-being of others chez dgr who do not appreciate the nuances and gentility of a fine lace doily.
Robert Hewison would argue that I'm sensible to do that; although he would suggest that preserving the past is part of the impulse to preserve the self (that justifies the contents of our loft then) too much nostalgia also has its dangers and he elaborates very thought-provokingly in his book The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline which is quite a revealing expose of the growth,manufacture and marketing of heritage.

"Nostalgic memory should not be confused with true recall. For the individual, nostalgia filters out unpleasant aspects of the past and our former selves, creating a self-esteem that helps us to rise above the anxieties of the present.Collectively, nostalgia supplies the deep links that identify a particular generation; nationally it is the source of binding social myths".

Clearly I need saving from myself.
However, along comes House-Bound by Winifred Peck with an afterword by Penelope Fitzgerald and I think, oh hang it all, just a quick fix won't harm, let me ring the bell for the tea trolley.
Winifred Peck was of the Knox family, sister to the brothers written about so knowingly by Penelope Fitzgerald in her biography The Knox Brothers because one of them, Edmund (known as Evoe), was Penelope's father.By all accounts they were a truly remarkable family so it's easy to see what a rich source of talent there was for Penelope Fitzgerald to inherit.Yet in many ways all this highlights Winifred's invisibility in the family line up because I've had the book on my shelves for years (treasured signed first edition) and I had never noticed that there were two seemingly silent unnamed daughters in amongst the well-labelled sons.That's Winifred in the back row.
First published in 1942 by Faber, House-Bound is ostensibly a book about the maelstrom of war for a well-to-do family in Castleburgh (a fictional Edinburgh) but within that Rose battles her own war with her house as the enemy.It bullies and cajoles her as she is overwhelmed with the duties she must perfom in the absence of any maids.
While "Empires might rock and kingdoms fall" Rose meets "her Waterloo with a tin of Vim" and husband Stuart steadfastly remains "a great, idle, hulking fellow" congenitally incapable of even polishing his own shoes.His worst nightmare realized as he declares to Rose in abject horror "I can't have you opening the door to tradespeople".
As the new world order emerges so does a new way of thinking and Penelope Fitzgerald in her excellent afterword sums it up as only she could and perhaps she was thinking along the same lines as Robert Hewison
"There is nostalgia here, Winnie would never have denied that.But there is also the confidence to leave the past where it belongs and to make a reasonable job of the future"

 

What Diantha Did

I seem to have gone mildly domestic on theme this week so it's time to wheel on  What Diantha Did by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.Less well-known than The Yellow Wallpaper perhaps but equally radical and unsual for its content.
Here's an extract from the introduction.
"First published serially in Gilman's magazine the Forerunner in 1909-10,the novel tells the story of Diantha Bell, a young woman who leaves her home and her fiancé to start a housecleaning business. A resourceful heroine, Diantha quickly expands her business into an enterprise that includes a maid service, cooked food delivery service, restaurant, and hotel. By assigning a cash value to women's "invisible" work, providing a means for the well-being and moral uplift of working girls, and releasing middle- and leisure-class women from the burden of conventional domestic chores, Diantha proves to her family and community the benefits of professionalized housekeeping".

You can still get this book free and in serial form delivered by e mail to your inbox from the excellent  Mousehold Words.
What a radical book this must have been in the U.S. in 1910.The vexing question of servants was troubling many households, it was becoming increasingly difficult to hire and retain competent servants and many women were struggling with the burden of running their own homes.
Gilman delineates one such woman Isabel Porne, (this name will only just scrape through my list of banned words on here in an effort to avoid some recent spamming) who prior to her marriage had been a successful architect and since marriage and the birth of their first child was trying to run her business from home.
As the pressure mounts Isabel finds herself lying in bed worrying obsessively.

"she was thinking persistently of dust...two days dust at least...dust in the dining room gathered since yesterday - the dust in the kitchen - the dust of eight days in her great, light workroom. Eight days since she had found time to go up there"

Even worse I'm sure we'd all agree

" she turned to the parlour - no the piano keys were gritty, one had to clean them twice a day to keep that room as she liked it"

I suspect Isabel was just a few steps removed from the plight of the nameless woman in The Yellow Wallpaper. The frustrations of her balancing act are evident as Isabel's anger overflows

"I'm glad to be a mother to his child! I'm glad I married him! But - this is not what he offered! And it's not what I undertook! He hasn't had to change his business!"

Her cynicism rages

" 'Do you love me?' They ask, and 'I will make you happy!' they say; and you get married- and after that it's housework."

However salvation is on hand as Diantha Bell knocks on her door.
As Charlotte Rice argues in the wonderful introduction to this edition, Diantha is Gilman's mouthpiece in the book and through her she presents many of her ideas for the reformation of the whole 'servant question'.
They are to be employees, with rights and contracts, they will be educated and trained to work efficiently, and quite radically Gilman proposes a co-operative approach to the work including what must be one of the earliest 'meals-on wheels' and homecare services for the disabled ever portrayed in fiction.
There is also much to admire in the detail.Gilman presents an impressive monetary account of the cost of a daughter's work within her family, (with apologies to Offspringette, this might just work in reverse nowadays) work done for no money and balanced against the cost of raising her and the daughter emerges in credit, leaving her father speechless one suspects with admiration as much as anything. It is this financial acumen Diantha takes into her business.
Thought provoking reading within the context of its times and a book that deserves to be better known, and good companion reads?
Well The Homemaker by Dorothy Canfield for one but next up House-Bound by Winifred Peck which might as well round off my unexpected week of virtual but not actual domesticity tomorrow.

Things to Make and Mend

When the word comes in from Adele to "read this" you know there's no point in wasting time thinking about it, just order the book and be done with it.
I think I may have just set a record with this one, recommended, ordered, arrived and read within less than a week.
Things To Make and Mend by Ruth Thomas and published by Faber is an absolute must read for anyone who went to a girl's school in the 1960's and 70's, you will recognise every last thread of this book from the Domestic Science classes to the sadly outcast pregnant school friend.
We had one or two of those back in the late 60's including one poor girl whose waters broke in the middle of the O Level English exam; that was a first and caused a bit of a stir.
Schools like mine (old style girl's grammar) were still largely staffed by middle-aged spinsters with a smattering of the young and sprightly newly-weds who soon left us to the mercy of the "old school" to go and start their families.Of no relevance but amongst the "old school" a Physics teacher at least 6ft tall who played the double bass in the school orchestra and who we very unkindly nicknamed The GPO Tower.
But back to Things To Make and Mend, Sally and Rowena are best friends until a devastating set of circumstances destroys the friendship and they go their separate ways.
Sally, after enduring more of Miss Button's Needlework lessons than can be good for anyone's health, surprisingly finds that this is her metier and makes a living and then a small amount of fame out of her embroidery skills.Rowena's path ventures much further afield but it is inevitable that it will cross with Sally's again eventually.
For me the greatest strength of this well written book was the nostalgia factor and with it a return to the Domestic Science room and tortuous lessons that turned what should have been a pleasurable occupation into a science.
I suspect we were the generation of pupils in the mid to late 1960's living on the cusp of change and among the first batch not being solely educated for a life of domesticity. We were expected to set our sights at university but still had to be able to stitch a buttonhole.No one quite had the courage to dispense with or re-vamp the subject, attempts were being made to create a serious and examinable form of needlework and cookery out of something that had previously been purely practical.
On reflection my books didn't look a great deal different to my mum's.
Here's her needlework book from St Edmund's College Liverpool, started in September 1938 when she was 12 so this entry March 1939. I think it's to my mum's credit that she managed to instill a love of sewing in me where school failed, a sewing machine of my own, the latest Butterick pattern and I was away with the bobbins.

School needlework a la 1960's was like well thought out torture because you knew exactly what you'd like to knock up, perhaps a mini skirt or heaven forfend some hotpants, thus a whole term spent smocking a piece of gingham and then making it into an apron was a bit of a disappointment.
Strangely though we were all wildly into knitting during break times (that and playing cards and swapping Jean Plaidy books), a very long scarf and mini-jumpers from a Paton's pattern modelled by Twiggy that took exactly 8ozs of Fiona wool were compulsory.At 2s 6d per oz.your jumper cost you £1.
Ruth Thomas has distilled and bottled the essence of it all perfectly in this book.
A really enjoyable read, thanks Ruth and thanks YET AGAIN to Adele for pointing me to A Dress A Day which almost makes me want to go and find those Buttericks.
Do you remember buying those? Ladies with their specs on chains delving into those deep oblong drawers, big fuss about finding the right number and size and even bigger fuss about stamping it and telling you it couldn't be returned.

The Commonplace Book

Pick of the Press this weekend, Ben Macintyre in The Times writing about The Commonplace Book.
I had seen but not really paid too much attention to a book out at the moment, Extracts from the Red Notebooks by Matthew Engel.The cover is a repro of those Silvine red exercise books that have been around forever, with your maths tables and avoirdupois weights and measures on the back cover in the olden days.
Matthew Engel began to write down one-liners and conversation snippets from TV programmes, newspapers, books etc, things that caught his attention over the years.His son Laurie unwittingly made many contributons as he grew up and until he sadly died at the age of 13 from a rare form of cancer in 2005.
Now published and raising money for a cancer charity laurieengelfund.org and a website that will break your heart but you'll hear the message loud and clear.
Ben Macintyre ponders the whole genre of the Commonplace Book tracing its existence back to 5BC and of course to here in Devon had he but known. I realise I’ve been keeping such things on and off since childhood (which was a bit later than 5BC)
My earliest efforts are scrapbooks full of cuttings, tickets, souvenirs, programmes, birthday cards and all applied to the page with generous helpings of Gloy.
Gloy was a revolting essence of rendered cow in a bottle with a red angled tip with a slit through which the glue was supposed to be evenly distributed. It was child-defying and Gloy never worked like this for me.Once you'd overcome the dried-up nozzle applying an inordinate amount of unyielding presssure, Gloy would suddenly be delivered by the gallon.I still have my scrapbook of the Tokyo Olympics and as I recall that great picture of Lynn Davis in aerial mid-flight winning the long jump gold, but enhanced with a very indelicately placed blob of Gloy. I think the same thing happened to David Hemery in my Mexico Olympics scrapbook.I have these collections in all shapes and sizes, one an old stamp album that I commandeered for a year or so.
I’ve never really lost the art of this odd accumulating of memories and was still doing it, though on a smaller scale, for my reading journals using Chatwin-esque Moleskine notebooks until the blog came along, so I was delighted to find that Ben Macintyre views the art of the blog as a sort of Commonplace Book with some reservations.

“Every blog after all is a sort of commonplace book, with items culled from elsewhere, reassembled and subjected to vigorous commentary along the way.
Today literature is usually a commodity to be consumed and forgotten, not a resource to be combed, gathered and preserved. But the act of writing out a treasured nugget is different from cutting and pasting an electronic lump.The commonplace book fixes time and memory. Write down something that strikes you, and there is a chance that you will remember why and when it struck:it is a diary at one remove”

I think I have almost established a commonplace blog and certainly all my book reviews now go on here instead of in my journal but I must find the time to revive a handwritten commonplace book, it is an irreplaceable and necessary bit of me.

Meanwhile a little quote from one of mine and this found carved onto a memorial seat in Cambridge during a visit in 2003 and what a perfect way for the friends of  Lesley Mary Tomlinson 1973-2000 to remember her

"She stepped softly, firmly and passionately and left many a lasting imprint"

Long Barn parcel

The joys of being part of the Long Barn Books editorial board are manifold.
Not least, the chance to hang up my wellies and go on regular trips to London, meeting up with a delightful group of people and seeing how this world of publishing works behind the scenes.
That's been a real revelation because past experiences led me to believe there was a bit of a dog eat dog and spit you out mentality to it all, and perhaps that may be so elsewhere, but nothing could be further from the truth at Long Barn Books.
The only thing that gets eaten at Long Barn meetings is Sticky Toffee Pudding by you- know- who- with- a- big- mouth because we have lunch too, which means I don't have to eat for about a week afterwards.As if all that wasn't reward enough I get copies of the books as they are published.
So here are the contents of my latest parcel and I was very grateful for Freddy Long Ears by Harry Erne because at 2am when I was on wide-awake full national red alert after reading the first half of the Illustrated 9/11 Commission Report I needed something soothing and in complete contrast.This one, beautifully illustrated by Raoul Millais and a delight from start to finish, did the trick.No 9/11 nightmares for me.
Mrs Kettle and her seven children, the lighthouse keeper husband and the charming talking donkey. Children love repetition in stories and there is plenty in here that will create those wonderful moments over and over again when you all recite the list.We used to do it with The Hungry Caterpiller and The Tiger Who Came to Tea as I recall.
We all know Stanley Wells as the SP Shakespeare Professor from Susan Hill's blog and of course he is just that, so a bit of an authority on all things Bardish, in which case Is It True What They Say About Shakespeare must have been a really pleasurable write.It's informative and entertaining and I'll blog more about it soon.
Wonder if he got nagged to finish it, or told to rewrite or perhaps he was let off emptying the dishwasher and doing the ironing for 6 months to write it?
And as the SP's verdict on "He was born on St George's Day, 23 April" is "No one knows for certain, but it is perfectly possible" I fully expect the celebrations are in full swing Chez Wells-Hill today, bet Susan's baked a cake and everything.
But the shining special star for me was to finally see and hold a copy of Chris Ewan's book The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam. I'd only read it in manuscript form when we judged it to be a worthy winner of the Long Barn Book First Novel Prize last year ,so to see it in all its glory with that stunning book jacket and then, big surprise, to turn to the acknowledgements and find I'm mentioned in dispatches, well that's really too much excitement.
Thanks Chris and I love the website . I'll be doing a fuller review soon but meanwhile put it on your wish lists everyone.

Vote now.

I'm always grateful to blog readers who alert me to anything interesting happening out there in the big wide book world so many thanks to Paul for tipping me the wink about this

"My professional body CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) is celebrating the 70^th anniversary of the Carnegie medal awarded to the best older children's novels each year and the Kate Greenaway medal for the best picture book. The public are able to vote for their favourites from a selection from previous medal winners until 14 June. There are some great books here in both categories"

I've just been over to vote here and had to dig out a book I'd forgotten about from years ago, our very dog-eared copy of Dogger by Shirley Hughes which has seen much active service.That one's had my vote for the Best of the Kate Greenaway's and for the Carnegie it was The Borrowers by Mary Norton so that was my childhood remembered in a flash.
I've talked about it before but another of the going-home stories that stayed with me was the ultra-serious and scary Miss Butteriss (Miss Butterdish to us of course) reading The Borrowers to Blue Class at Sherwood County Primary in that moment before prayers, chairs up on the table, dash to the pegs to grab coats and fly like a rocket all the way down Sherwood Park Road in Mitcham to catch the 118 bus home.
Just to prove what a stickler Miss Butterdish was, here's my 1961 Blue Class school report citing that I had "conquered my tendency to carelessness" and my work was "neatly performed".
I'm also pleased to see that in my Attitude to School Life I was "quite reliable" leading to an overall plaudit of "most satisfied".
Clearly Miss B felt there was a glimmer of hope for me at the age of seven.

Sunday Confessions

What a shocker of a week for book arrivals, nothing for days and days and then all these arrived together. There was another parcel too but that deserves a blog of its own.
I can lay the blame for many of these at the feet of others.
Frankly Scott Pack has quite a lot to answer for because he did such a great write up of The Illustrated 9/11 Commission Report by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon that I was compelled to buy it. Reproduced as a graphic and therefore comic-book style account of actual events on that day, with background and all the results of the inquiry and there is no doubt this one is stunning.A brilliant example of just how powerful this medium can be for conveying deadly serious messages.
Gatty's Tale by Kevin Crossley-Holland was an inevitable purchase and I lay the blame for that squarely with Ann over on Patternings.At least I haven't had to wait ages for this one having only just discovered the Arthur trilogy that everyone else started on about six years ago.
Anthills and Stars by Kevin Duffy arrived from Kevin Duffy himself via Scott's blog. Kevin has set up Bluemoose Books, an Indie publisher based in Hebden Bridge which is of course the birth place of Ted Hughes.That bit's irrelevant but the two are synonymous in my mind so have to be mentioned.
Self Help by Edward Docx arrived for a preview read before publication thanks to Macmillan and this one looks very exciting,everyone has high hopes for it this year so I can't wait to start it.
A couple of books from Persephone, House-Bound by Winifred Peck who was the sister of the famous Knox brothers and therefore aunt to Penelope Fitzgerald.The late and much admired Penelope wrote the afterword to this book in the year before her death and, as I have to have everyhting she ever wrote, here it is.
I've also been hankering after the Journal of Katherine Mansfield for some time.
Adele Geras is another one who I can blame for sending me dashing off to order books.I just find those messages from Adele that start "You absolutely must read..." completely irresistible.So when the call came in for Things To Make and Mend by Ruth Thomas I was onto the Book Depository fairy in a flash and the book was here in half a flash.It's got bling all over it, sequins on the cover and I only meant to read 10 pages or so but...
Then, topping out my construction, three more Andrea Camilleri's. I have discovered that these make perfect lunchtime reading, well-written but light and funny enough to distract without requiring too much brain power.That'll probably have Mr Camilleri taking out a hit on me but I don't mean it to be derogatory, I love these books and all the characters but I don't have to think too hard so I can stroll back into work with a smile on my face and enough kilowatts of brain left to get me through until 5pm.
More about that special parcel tomorrow.

Share your drawers.

Look at this, Me and My Big Mouth and Bookhound share the same drawers, how unusual is that? Anyone else got a set?

A day in Cornwall

A day spent down in Cornwall is never wasted to my mind especially at this time of year and with such glorious weather.The very welcome Easter tourists have departed and we have the place to ourselves for just a few months before the summer gridlock season begins. The tourist trade is essential to the economy of the South West so we don't knock it, but once you all arrive we tend to chicken out of any travel beyond Launceston so the rest of you can enjoy it you understand.
Purpose of the day was to end up at Hall for Cornwall in Truro wearing our 1970's bling, tank tops and old folkie sandals, for a concert with that old troubadour himself Ralph McTell in the evening, but Bookhound is a great one for doing at least four things on the way to anywhere.So it was a toss up between The Eden Project, Lanhydrock House, The Lost Gardens of Heligan or...in fact we're spoilt for choice right on the doorstep these days.
However it's a while since we've done any artgallery-ing and we were long overdue a dose of plein-air Newlyn school so off we went in search of some Lamorna Birch, Walter Langley perhaps some Stanhope Forbes and certainly plenty of Dame Laura Knight.
The best book that I have found for readability on the subject,and without losing me along the way with uber-florid prose about artists in smocks, mixing cerulean blue pigment on their paint spattered pallets as the fisherman hauled in pilchards at their feet, is The Shining Sands Artists in Newlyn and St Ives 1880-1930 by Tom Cross.I learnt all I felt I wanted to know from this one book and it has informed my love of this art ever since.More about all that another day.
Don't think for one minute either that the paintings can only be found in galleries here; they are scattered across the country so you'll find classics in Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham even New South Wales but some treasures also to be found in the Penlee House Gallery in Penzance.We had a lovely browse and then strolled into town.
Penzance can only be described as odd.
Its location should make it something special but with very few niche local shops it isn't. Just row upon row of the big chains which gives the main street quite a depressing air, Dorothy Perkins, McKays, Smiths, Boots, Superdrug and Charity Shops by the dozen but thankfully also Jessops the camera shop.
The empty camera gasped "memory full" and died just as I had a prize winning shot of Mount's Bay and St Michaels Mount in my sights and you would have loved it.The nice man in Jessops, who could have sent us packing, took an age trying to revive it. As heads were bent over it I wandered around the shop and the thought came upon me that perhaps I had been sharing a camera for much too long.
A camera of my own was most certainly required and as luck would have it here were plenty.
So by the time they'd resuscitated the derelict one and performed a memory card transplant I'd already transferred my affections and bonded with a neat little Olympus 6 mega-pixel, bright capture, all weather darling of a little thing and made it mine.It sings and dances and everything, bells, whistles and nobs on.
Meanwhile the old camera gasped into life long enough to capture a typical Cornish tin mine, this one on the cliffs at Gurnards Head and a striped Cornish steer the like of which we've never seen before.
Like a saddle back pig...except it's a cow was Bookhound's diagnosis.

Swiftswallowhousemartin update

As we expect the swiftswallowhousemartins to arrive any day I thought I'd show you the holiday home they return to every year.
Firstly here's a picture of the open front door, you can just see Bookhound's piano on the left. Now imagine standing on the step, I'll allow you a little standing-staring time because we do that a great deal.

Now just turn your head to the left and look directly upwards behind you into the corner of the verandah.You can see that last year's visitors added an extension and they all fitted in very snugly so it's all ready and waiting for them.

About a foot away is the other holiday accommodation but here's the problem.Through the winter a family of wrens have seized squatter's rights, moved in and built their own individual designer dwelling inside.
We're not sure what happens next.
Eviction notices? Bailiffs? Unintentional homelessness? Re-housing?

The Seeing Stone

So here's my first foray into Arthurian anything for a very long time indeed.
The Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland and its sequels have had me transported right back to childhood holidays in Tintagel in Cornwall before it had gift shops.If you've been there in recent times you'll find it hard to believe it was ever like that but the place used to be empty back in the early 1960's.
A ruined castle, one shop called Camelot Crafts, a pseudo round table exhibition and a stony beach called Merlin's Cove reached by Land Rover and that was it.But myth and legend have a huge impact when you are 10 years old and it was all memorable.
I wasn't prepared to be quite as "spellbound" as Philip Pullman with The Seeing Stone because blurb hyperbole is starting to draw my attention lately and the book also had the pre-requisite word "Guardian" on the front cover.
The Seeing Stone is actually set in the Welsh Marches in 1199 so you are instantly aware that we're not really talking about that Arthur because everyone knows he was supposed to have been born in the 5th century (thanks Wikipedia) I was completely clueless beyond the stock knowledge of myth and legend about Merlin, swords in stones, ladies in lakes, Camelot, Guinevere and Avalon.
Young Arthur de Caldicot discovers his namesake the boy King Arthur in his obsidian seeing stone given to him by Merlin.
Merlin? I learn so much writing this blog because I do try and check facts so now I know all there is to know about Wizard Number One.
Thus the stage is set for Kevin (sorry first name terms...getting fed up typing all that) to weave in the old legends with life in a community in the Middle Ages and like Philip I was spellbound.
Young Arthur's life mirrors the life of Arthur-in-the Stone's in a bit of a doppelganger sort of way and he finds himself living in two worlds.The end result is an intricately woven seamless whole of 100 chapters creating an atmosphere and a world you can't bear to leave.
Pure evocative escapism.
So involved was I that had we been having roast swan for tea instead of pizza I would have been briefly delighted. I'm already well into the next in the trilogy, have the third lined up and also the recent sequel Gatty's Tale.
Meanwhile, as you might predict, the family holiday photo albums yield treasures galore and on the back of this picture of parents of dgr at Tintagel, the Tinker (father of dgr) has written,
"King Arthur's Castle Tintagel 1963, King Arthur and Guinevere in foreground".

In the footsteps of Penelope Fitzgerald

Still sharing my love of all things Penelope Fitzgerald I can't go an inch further without mentioning A House of Air: Selected Writings , which I keep downstairs near my desk, and the US version The Afterlife which I keep upstairs by the bed.There's no particular reason for that beyond the fact that I read the upstairs one more often and it has stayed in one piece; sadly my £20 hardback U.K. Flamingo edition must have been glued with a Pritt stick because it's falling apart.
Contained in both editions though a fine piece entitled The Moors in which Penelope Fitzgerald cites our nearest village, Milton Abbot, as her "favourite place".
When a writer describes a place you think you know well you realize that actually you don't know it that well at all. Writers have an unerring eye and they use it for our benefit, I dash up there to the post office and ashamedly take little notice.
So it was on a chill but sunny evening that I wandered across there with my camera and a copy of The Moors to walk in the footsteps of someone who had looked with that observant, knowledgeable and understanding eye and spotted everything I have missed or taken for granted over the years.
A good example, I had never but never noticed the rooks.I even wondered whether I'd be able to find the rookery, where on earth was it? As I parked the car and got out it was very obvious from the noise that it was right above my head and always has been.

"It is a village built on a slope...and sheltering round a noble fifteenth-century church, St Constantine's"

"This church is built of the beautiful local Hurdwick stone, green in colour - 'underwater green' it has been called"

"At the end of the churchyard there is a steep drop with a flight of stone steps, down to the Green"

"The village has been lucky enough to keep all its English elms, and the rookery with them"

"To the west, beyond the elms, the view opens towards the Cornish moors, scattered with rocks"

"If you look around the village you will see at once how Lutyens's favoured hipped roofs are exactly suited to the plunging sweep of the Green while the square chimney stacks - reasonably low for an Arts and Crafts man - stand out against the open sky like a modest echo of the church tower itself"

Ice Trap

If you're in Waterstone's and stuck for that third book to make up your 3 for 2 purchase add in Ice Trap by Kitty Sewell and you won't be disappointed.
Crimeficreader made me pick it up, honest, and I was frozen solid to it first page to last.First fifty pages gone in a flash and brilliantly set up to keep me in a state of suspended breath-holding tension until the end.
Consultant surgeon Dr Dafydd Woodruff (so I guess we must call him Mr not Dr) finds himself embroiled in paternity allegations (twins no less) all stemming from a locum he did as a young doctor in Moose Creek way out in the backwoods of Canada.It all comes as a bit of shock to him and his wife Isabel, especially as they are trying with little success to start a family.Dafydd returns to the scene of the "crime" to try and fathom out exactly how he has fathered twins when he has no recollection of doing so.
The menace descends inexorably right from the start as the permo-frost deepens and I love oodles of ice and snow so I was bound to enjoy this one.It's a real fast flowing page turner of a book and one of those that leaves you with that great feeling at the end of a cleverly plotted story, well told and well written.
I love Kitty Sewell's style and the diversity of her personal experience is well reflected in this book.I thought I was quite a busy person but you can only marvel at someone who having been born in Sweden and lived in Spain, Canada, England and Wales also ran an estate agency in the frozen north of Canada.Training as a psychotherapist was probably helpful in the scheme of things, training as a sculptor also came in handy and now owning and running a fruit plantation must make for a nice change.
I spotted one or two chinks in the scheme of things, in fact I think I found one flaw that any midwife might well pick up on. I'll leave all of you to find it, but that's just the pernickity old Nurse Prudence in me, nothing in this book to disappoint, just a wonderfully atmospheric and keep-you-guessing read.

The Law of Bound Hearts

A little bird called Adele pointed me in the direction of Anne LeClaire, a U.S.based writer who also has the distinction of being related to Emily Dickinson. I hold my hands up, I'd never heard of her (Anne not Emily) so I just plumped for the first and easiest book to get hold of and so The Law of Bound Hearts it was.
I say it time and again, why are US paperbacks so much nicer to have and to hold than ours here in the UK? They are soft and floppy and forgiving, the pages drape across your hands and lie flat as you hold the book, the matte covers don't go sweaty. None of this stiff, upright spine-cracking stuff with disobedient and intransigent pages that we have to battle with.
I'm sure I'll be told.
Any book that has its epigraph as a quote from a poem by Anna Akhmatova has my immediate attention.
"So much to do today:
kill memory, kill pain,
turn heart into stone,
and yet..."
The book has cleverly already been invested with depth for me and in fact doesn't disappoint.
It's almost a complete conglomeration of so many other themes that have unwittingly permeated my reading lately.
Reaching a crossroads in life when you can longer take your health for granted and the huge losses that mount up when Libby finds herself in renal failure and on the dialysis/ transplant trail.
Even the loss of food,

"Food was no longer about pleasure or nourishment, celebration or diversion, or even denial.Now it was about chemistry. A precise monitoring of sodium and potassium, of phosphorous and protein."

Anne LeClaire goes for the broadest of canvases painting in families, childhood, sisters, infidelity, illness, loss of trust, reconciliation and some of the thornier issues of renal transplantation and organ donation all with huge sensitivity and surprising ease.
It should make for the sort of book that has you depressively thinking "no thank you" at first glance, but not so.This was a thoroughly enjoyable read and I emerged the other end not only having read a good book but having done a lot of thinking along the way.The characters are real and believable, flawed and utterly human and I warmed to them all.
Keeping up with the trend for author interviews at the end of the book which I enjoy and also a List of Questions for Reading Groups which for some reason I don't, it was useful to find out more about this author. As a child Anne LeClaire's imagination was so enormous she spent her time not only making up stories but blurring those boundaries and "telling huge and involved lies".
That set me thinking that in a way that's what fiction is, one great big lie.You had all probably realised that light years ago but I'd never thought of it quite so intently.
It was but a small step to attempting to figure out what's the truth then? Because I often enjoy a book for its believability and thereby what I see as its truth and honesty.
That all made my head hurt because for my next trick I was going to have to figure out the meaning of life, so it was clearly time to return to earth and go and wash the kitchen floor, because, no word of a lie, it was a disgrace.
Good read, the buzz of a new find for me and so I shall be on the lookout for more Anne LeClaire.

Bernice Rubens

Mention of Bernice Rubens over on the Mostly Books blog (from that bookshop to die for in lucky old Abingdon) reminds me that I may not have mentioned her recently on here and that is most remiss of me.
I was fortunate enough to book in for a Reader's Day at the Ways With Words LitFest a few years ago and ended up in a small group with Bernice Rubens to discuss her then most recent book Nine Lives.
We had a very lively session, she was shrewd, fiesty, clear-thinking, did not mince her words and I was completely taken with her.She shared so much of her life philosophy, very unassuming, none of the prima donna about her that I could detect, but by crikey did she call a spade a spade.
If you've read Nine Lives you will know the book is about the serial murder of a succession of psychotherapists.One of us asked the obvious question "do you have a problem with them?" and she proceeded to elaborate on that in no uncertain terms. Clearly she had used the book to convey her own concerns and that starts you thinking what a therapy that must be in itself for any writer. Forget hidden ideology about which the author is completely unware, Bernice Rubens knew exactly the fate she wished on all psychotherapists and declared it loud and clear from every page of this book.
On asking her which of her own books she was most proud of she replied without a moment's hesitation "Brothers, if you only ever read one of mine please make it that one". I did read it and with a profound sense of understanding.
Sadly Bernice Rubens died two months later so this may well have been one of her last literary events.It was a memorable, never to be forgotten day and every time I pick up one of her books I feel as if I know her.
Mark over at Mostly Books expresses the concern that these books may end up going out of print which would be tragic, fortunately I have a good stock as I've been accumulating Bernice Rubens for quite some time, so I'm OK. I do hope the rest of you are because these really are treasures and like Mark, I think it would be very sad if she was somehow forgotten.

The Bodmin Kitten

I have to report news of forthcoming battles, blood will be spilt. The war cries will ring out across the valley, there will be a cleaving of the natural and peaceful order...too much Kevin Crossley-Holland for me I think.
Living in the middle of nowhere it's only about once every five years or so that a stray cat wanders into our garden.Normally a feral but today's looked like a well groomed black house cat and would probably answer to Sooty.Perhaps it was a baby wild cat of Bodmin Moor, who knows?
As we watched it stroll nonchalently across the grass we held our breath because someone will be very very displeased.This is an invader and they usually stay around for a while.
Sir Rocky appeared stealthily out of nowhere and he stalked.
I'd like to report that he lay low and invisible to the eye, stomach to the ground poised and ready to pounce, but of course his stomach almost touches the ground on a normal day so he looked just the same.
He's not a great one for that element of the surprise attack so it was clear he was procrastinating under the guise of tactical planning.
Spare a thought as he enters into the valley of the shadow of the black cat. As the knight in shining armour to his three lady cats, territorial defence and the pride of the House of Rocky will be down to him.He will have to call on inner resources of courage and bravery, we will need to take out a mortgage at the vets.
It will be a constant vigil and it will be noisy, mostly at 3am.
This also means he adopts a very annoying habit of jousting and tilting at the cat flap very loudly about ten times before he will venture out, just to warn the enemy that he's on his way of course.

Sunday Confessions

An odd mix this week but great delight at the arrival of Kevin Crossley-Holland's Arthurian trilogy.First up The Seeing Stone and already it's clear of course that Ann over on Patternings was right.I know I'm going to love these, I'm deeply involved in plot, place, time and character after finishing this one.
Everything else has come via publishers.
Cutting Confidential True Confessions and trade secrets of a celebrity hairdresser by...wait for it...Shaun Lockes! This is an anonymous expose written by a crimper & snipper to the stars, "a celebrity hairdresser who runs his own salon and hair product empire in London".
So I dash off to Boots to pay more attention to the names of hair products and am narrowing it down.I suspect it's a toss up between Pan Tene, Pal Molive or Alberto VO5.
I think I may already have identified the anonymous royal and the rest of the book is going to be like this. A sort of Hello magazine with all the names blacked out so I'm going to love this.I also now know why male hairdressers prefer to wear leather trousers but I couldn't possibly tell you.
Well I might later on, keep reading.
Another book I'm keen to read is Janey Lee Grace's Imperfectly Natural Baby and Toddler How to be a green parent in today's busy world. Janey's had loads of babies, put them in towelling nappies and breast fed them all and so have I, plus we also have our laundry balls in common.
I'll just whisper the bit we don't have in common about me being a health visitor because we don't get much of a mention in this book and are probably considered public enemy number one in the scheme of things.Oh yes and I haven't been a backing singer for George Michael (not publicly anyway) or had a top ten hit either.
In these days of evidence-based research we can rain a monsoon of facts on any party, rent-a-prophet-of- doom.com is us and you have no choice as a professional but to convey that information as it stands.Tricky territory and clearly Janey finds it so too, there seem to be caveats aplenty to all her advice which shows you what a litigious minefield it has all become.
I firmly believe it's all about informed decisions but also a question of balance and common sense.Health professionals can seize far too much of this territory and end up disempowering parents at a time when instinct should be their greatest friend.
Janey is certainly adding plenty more information to help anyone who wants to pursue green parenting.
I certainly think I've been a green parent but in the days when it meant something else entirely.
Loads of great websites to explore and I'll shut up now before I'm hauled up and flogged on the Steve Wright radio prog (Janey's the "green guru co-host on there)
Now Mr Darcy's Diary by Amanda Grange.I sense a sharp intake of breath out there.
A fictional imagining of Pride and Prejudice from the hero's point of view.These get a terrible press from the die-hard Austenites but I'm not one of those. I'm a bit take or leave it with Jane to be honest and I don't go into raptures over her which is terribly unfashionable at the moment I know.This is another book that is going to get a fair and impartial read from me and I'll let you know how I fare.
Yes, yes, of course I'll tell you about the wet shirt incident and whether he caught a chill or not,as if I'd keep that to myself.
Oh and the male crimpers and the leather trousers?
Well that's so they can brush the hairs off easily of course; fine wool Prada's let your hair snippings right through into their boxers where they cause havoc apparently.

Give me that coloured coat

I'm doing my bit to help Andrew Lloyd-Webber choose our next Joseph and quite enjoying Any Dream Will Do but I'm wondering how Leo Sayer (or is it Mick Hucknall) Engelbert Humperdinck,  David Tennant and that doctor from Casualty have found their way in?

A Day with Kevin and Arthur

It's been a gloriously warm sunny day, not too hot and the swiftswallowhousemartins have yet to return to their summer quarters so I had the verandah to myself. Once they move back into their nests in the eaves forget all hope of a lazy read, they get very protective and will just dive-bomb anyone who dares to come close.
Add in the comfort of a very large bean bag and I have spent the day quietly but completely entranced by the first title in Kevin Crossley-Holland's Arthurian trilogy, The Seeing Stone.
Philip Pullman was "spellbound", Anne Fine was "so so jealous" and I was just mesmerised, start to finish. I would normally rest a book after 50 pages or so and pick up something else, then come back to it (sorry it's odd I know but it's the way I often read) but I could not be prised away from this one.
I can barely drag myself away long enough to come and tell you all, and then nip over to Ann at Patternings and give her the good news.Ann did a great review of Gatty's Tale, the latest in the sequence, and thus the flood gates have opened.
I'll post my thoughts on The Seeing Stone once they've floated to the surface, but looking at me right now At the Crossing Places, second in the trilogy, so forgive me, must dash.

Aga blessings

As the weather starts to warm up attention starts to focus on the Aga and the battle of the switch off will commence. Bookhound, ever vigilant over his diminishing gas tank and pence per litre price increases, will be pressing for that moment soon, I shall hold out at least until the end of May if I can.
I'll moan and wimp and shiver pitifully, it usually works.The evenings are still cold and besides an Aga, as you all know,does far more than just provide warmth.
It does a fine job of drying and airing clothes which is a year round blessing in damp Devonshire but what about the ironing?
I can just about manage my own essential ironing to ensure I'm crumple-free in the workplace but beyond that it's every bit of clothing for itself around here which is why Bookhound has an entire wardrobe of iron-free Craghoppers a la Michael Palin Around the World in 80 days style.
So here's a sight that will be sorely missed through the summer because you fold and load 'em high and heavy overnight and come down to a self-pressed stack of laundry permeated through with warmth the next morning.
You might recognise the house on the Bookhound-designed tiled panel (and painted for us by the lovely artists at Country Tile Designs)and for the record the open window picture at the top of the blog is always taken from the window on the left.
If you look very carefully you will spot Offspringette (with the cats ) the Kayaker (kicking a football around in his Man Utd kit) and the Gamekeeper (watching the buzzards through his binoculars) as children immortalized forever playing in the garden.
Quite soon I'll be taking you up to what we fondly term the Mushroom Woods (top right, well they do look like one) because there is no finer secret display of forest glade bluebells to be found anywhere.

In Praise of Fishing

Bookhound returned from the travels of a fisherman to an anonymous package addressed “To Bookhound” so we deduce it must have been sent by a reader of dovegreyreader scribbles and he wants to say a very big thank you to whoever sent him this little book In Praise of Fishing : An Anthology for Addicts. He has just about every book on fishing ever published but not this one.I wanted to add a gem of a quote from it about "bottom fishing", which has always struck me as an amusing pastime, but I wasn't allowed. He says he has a much better one to add as a comment to this post

I don’t often talk about fishing on here because I hear enough about it to know it’s, well…er…a bit boring.

Don’t tell him I said that will you because it’s getting to that time of year when he pops off to the river and I say I’ll just about manage here on my own for a few hours, and I’ll think of ways to cope with the peace and quiet that descends.I’ll even feign mortification when he rings to say the fish are biting, there’s a big one in the pool, he’ll be there for a few hours more.

My Latest Grievance

Elinor Lipman is the latest new (to me) writer to gallop into my reading arena and very grateful am I that she has.I've stopped by at her excellent website and all I needed to read was that one of her books is currently being made into a film starring Colin Firth.Say no more.
The world in My Latest Grievance revolves around the precocious but strangely likeable Frederica Hatch the only child of Dewing Girls College houseparents and professors David and earth-mother wife Aviva.
This is 1960's Massachussets.
With her "psychologically astute" parents Fredrica has had one of those open and honest, listen-to-the-child upbringings on the campus surrounded by college life and eating every meal with a 1000 other people.On her birthday she is allowed to decide which charity will receive a cheque in lieu of a birthday present.
Definitely the ultimate in cringe-worthy parents.
Things are certainly going to spark off when David's first wife, the very glamorous Laura Lee arrives as a resident house-mother.
The humour is witty, wry and quick fire, the dialogue brilliant and with it Elinor Lipman manages to expose every which way that Frederica's life has been abnormal, yet given her by far the most sensible head on the shoulders of anyone on the Dewing College campus.
This is one of those books to gladden the heart,a completely enjoyable read and I will be searching out as much Elinor Lipman as I can find, these fill a gap for well-written nicely paced humour that hardly seems to feature at all on my shelves.
Any more suggestions? Don't say Terry Pratchett.

Just one more thing...

Just a bit more feedback on the Endsleigh Whodunnit reader’s evening and I should probably issue an apology to any hotel guests who may have wondered what all the hysterical laughter issuing forth from the salon room was all about.

Look at the wallpaper in there by the way, hand blocked original 1800’s and listed so we were careful not to wreck the place.

The laughter was all down to Three Bags Full A Sheep Detective story by Leonie Swann and many thanks to R who unintentionally had us all weeping at the greatest round of sheep crime puns ever invented by man.It started with “I bet that was a good yarn” and things went rapidly downhill from there.

There was a wide selection of reading around the crime theme, Robert Goddard, Reginald Hill, Val McDermid, Jed Rubenfeld, C.J.Sansom and Lyndsey Davies but one crime writer stood head and shoulders above all other choices and at least 5 people had read a Henning Mankell.A great debate then ensued about all things Kurt and Swedish.

We note just about everything and so we started to read out all the one liners on the front covers (I think these are called puffs?) and have decided that The Guardian has a monopoly, no book worth its salt unless The Guardian likes it. Hilary Mantel coming a close second in my own reading of late, Helen Dunmore scraping home in third place.

 

Dartmoor Book Fair

Into Tavistock for the Dartmoor Book Fair last Sunday and the Town Hall full of book sellers all reading the papers and drinking coffee while the good people of the town browsed and bought.There is always a hushed, reverential atmosphere at these gatherings in these superb surroundings on a Sunday morning.
I always vaguely feel, on Easter Sunday of all days, that really I should be across the Square and sitting in the choir stalls of the Parish Church singing the anthem.I sang in the choir there for years but finally decided to leave the ranks when we moved out of town and into rural isolation.
My book purchasing down to an addition to the collection of old nursing and childcare manuals. I always keep an eye out for these and this one an 1879 edition of Hints to Mothers for the Management of Health During the Period of Pregnancy and in the Lying -In Room.
Books like this are often full of a surprising amount of wisdom but all combined with suggestions and advice which make your hair curl in 2007.
First browse and I learn that deafness in a nurse is an evil to be avoided, she won't hear when you call for her at night.
I now have the job description and person specifications for employing a wet nurse.
Age 21-30, vigorous, well-formed and of robust constitution with no taint of consumption, must have amiable disposition etc etc.
The wet-nurse "also has the propensity to derange the order of the nursery" so care must be taken to assign her place and duties whilst not looking on her as a "living dairy".
There's a helpful recipe for purgative biscuits but first go pick your jalap.
The formulary of over the counter medicines for babies would now be locked in the controlled drugs cabinet, accounted for daily by two people and an official record signed to that effect with witnesses.The truth was however starting to dawn and there are dire warnings.
Syrup of Poppies is "nothing more than a decoction of poppy-heads"
Mrs Winslow's Soothing Syrup (trade name Quietness)
Godfrey's Cordial - a mixture of infusion of sassafras, treacle and tincture of opium (56 deaths recorded)
One druggist in Manchester states "I sell in retail about 5 gallons per week of Quietness and half a gallon of Godfrey, the former preparation so strong as to contain 100 drops of laudanum in an ounce".
Some handy advice on leeches, when, where and how, and I think I could sort out a poultice too. If properly made "you might throw it up to the ceiling and it would come down again without falling in pieces"

What Was Lost

Crockatt & Powell raved about it, Susan Hill loved it and the Orange Prize judges have seen fit to longlist it, so crumbs and crikey that means this poor little book would have to work very hard to win me over.
Nothing like being perverse but I will often set out NOT to be impressed when a book comes ready-draped with accolades.
I'm acutely aware that I probably set up the same dilemmma with all of you for all the books I mention on here. I don't have time to waste on reading books I'm not enjoying let alone trying to define why I don't like them and then telling everyone. So what you end up with here is an entirely subjective look at books I have loved for whatever reason.It may not always be the most fantastically plotted highest quality writing, it may be something else completely but it will have touched a chord and pinged up a 3/4/5* rating and be worth sharing.
So What Was Lost.
Well this is indeed high quality writing and innovative plotting as the losses rack up and on just about every level from the physical tangible objects, to the people, to a way of life, to the basics of human existence.You can pick and choose and I suspect it would be possible to delve quite deeply into this book and emerge with a blueprint for life.
You'd be particularly clear about what you'd prefer not to happen.
I meet and talk in depth to my fair share of depressed people in an average working day and they can eventually identify a loss of some description that it may or may not stem from, but will invariably have had an impact.
There are mysteries and ambiguities along the way in What Was Lost and to a certain extent this is one of those books you read in a state of negative capability right to the end until suddenly that welcome eureka moment.All the pieces slot into place and I sat there thinking well that was clever.Then I retraced my steps, re-read a few passages and realize that even with the best guess in the world, and to Catherine O'Flynn's eternal credit, I don't think I'd have spotted it.
I love any book that creates a deft and believable child's voice and personality and the little heroine Kate is done to heart-warming perfection and with a beautifully wry narrative voice to match. There are moments of  keen observation that confirm a writer who watches and knows people in just about every varying shade of light and dark and can translate that onto the page.
Susan Hill has certainly uncovered a book that will translate across the generations,and though it may or may not have been aimed at the older teens apparently now it is and they'll love it.Good smattering of reality language and events for everyone to identify with and I sincerely hope it makes the Orange shortlist because it definitely deserves to be read.
What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn now on its way to my two BAFAB winners, both Stateside, one East, one West so we've done our bit here to spread the word.

These I must share

It would be churlish of me not to share a few pictures of the scene that greeted us for our first daylight evening at our local monthly reader's evening at Hotel Endsleigh. We've had six winter months toiling up the long drive in thunder, lightening and torrential rain and dashing in to tuck ourselves up around the log fire and talk books.
Suddenly the sun shines and we can see the gorgeous views and the stunning Humphrey Repton gardens.
Next month we read Mistress of the Arts, Rachel Trethewey's fascinating book about Georgina, Sixth Duchess of Bedford and how she came to build her little holiday cottage in Devon.Then we will have a wander around the house and the grounds and follow in the irrepressible Georgie's footsteps.

Endsleigh Whodunnit

Life is just flying by like a real page-turner. No sooner one great Endsleigh Salon book evening enjoyed than it's time for the next one and tonight's theme is Crime & Whodunnit.
While I think of it check out great crime fiction blogs It's a Crime here and Euro Crime here.
I wanted something completely new and preferably a series that would create one of those nice gorge-like addictions where you really get under the skin and sense the personality of the investigator and feel the atmosphere of a setting that perhaps you don't know very well. That way you get a bit of armchair travel thrown in for free.
I was spoilt for choice when I checked the shelves.
Should I catch up with Adam Dalgliesh? I had a massive P.D.James binge back in the 1980's and then lost track.
Should I finally make a start on Rebus? I have been long promising myself that I should at least read the first one which is why I haven't made any progress because the only one I have is the fifteenth one in the series, Fleshmarket Close and I only bought this because I was in Edinburgh and had just walked up there.
Same with Veronica Stallwood, goings on at the Bodleian and I'd just been to Oxford.
What about finding out what all the fuss is about and investigating Dr Kay Scarpetta? Never read a Patricia Cornwell, was I in the mood for New York?
Perhaps a trip back in time and catch up on all those Sherlock Holmes stories I haven't read? The Tinker is a real Holmes buff after we bought him the complete stories on CD for his 80th birthday but I'm nicely behind in all things Sherlock having not read any seriously since my teens.
There again should it be Brunetti, Venice and Donna Leon? Enough of these to keep me going for months and Random Jottings won't let me off the hook much longer after I made her read The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency.
But no, perhaps this is finally a chance to try and crack Jasper Fforde? I have had a complete and frequent failure with The Eyre Affair but I keep feeling I should try harder, I've bought, sold on Amazon and bought again, more copies of this book than I care to admit to. I think I'm missing the point with these but what am I missing? Could someone explain?
There was however an eventual winner and I'm delighted to have finally made the acquaintance of Andrea Camilleri's wonderful creation Inspector Montalbano and to have taken a trip to Sicily in the process.There's a very informative article by Paul Bailey here and his comment that characters generally win over plot in Camilleri's police procedurals is spot on but that was exactly what I was looking for.
I've done quite a lot of serious reading lately so I've been weaving in some humour here and there.Excursion to Tindari was a perfect combination of serious crime investigation coupled with sardonic but very funny humour matched with a priceless main character who you can't fail to warm to.
Stephen Sartarelli's translation is perfect, capturing the nuances of the language in an unobtrusive but unique way that had me reading sentences out loud and actually sounding like any mafia godfather should.
I'll also enjoy any writer who is sufficiently self-effacing to write

"This entire book - names, surnames (especially surnames), situations - is invented out of whole cloth. Any coincidence whatsoever is due to the fact that my imagination is limited"

Lastly perhaps I should also declare that the cover won me over instantly, you know me by now, every bookseller's dream customer.
You can diagnose a Jeff Fisher book cover at sixty paces now, ever since those early Captain Corelli's Mandolin days and they haven't lost one iota of their appeal for me, I love them.Seemingly random but chock full of detail and an artistic style that just urges me on to like the book.
So fickle in fact am I that another three Inspector Montalbano's are on their way because The Book People (shhh, don't tell) had a special offer, £4.99 for three.I tried to make the order up to £20 for free postage but TBP prices are so rock-bottom it almost works against itself. It would have meant about fifty books arriving, even I can't cope with that right now but I can cope with any amount of Inspector Montalbano.
But I would be negligent not to issue a health warning.
Beware these books are very high in calorific value, the food is so effectively tossed, drizzled and served throughout the book you really do have to go off and find a bowl of pasta with a nice sauce, dash of balsamic, few pine nuts, throw on some olives, grating of parmesan...quite often.

Penelope and Susan

I've had so many lovely comments about Penelope Fitzgerald both on and off the blog today that I have prevailed upon Susan Hill to do a piece on her blog about meeting her.This featured in the very early days of Susan's blog and if you missed it you'll be delighted to be able read it later this evening.

A Painter's Progress

Well a man's got to do what a man's got to do and he could look at it no longer.
The north side of the house takes quite a hammering from the weather and only sees the sun very early in the day.Once we'd worked out when it was last painted and thus why it was looking so weary, Bookhound was up that ladder and has been therapeutically stroking on the paint ever since.
Old cottages like this (originally two farm cottages knocked into one back in the 1970's) need careful and constant loving attention and this one had been sadly neglected and horribly botched when we adopted it thirteen years ago.We have done a vast amount to try and restore its equilibrium.
Most of it we (as in the royal we) do ourselves, just calling in the experts when we need them (we're not that good at electrics and our plastering's a bit dodgy) which isn't often because Bookhound, though I say so myself, is an expert at most of it.

Penelope Fitzgerald

I have an online reading friend across the pond and south a bit who is sending eager messages saying she has just "got" Penelope Fitzgerald and is busy buying the entire oeuvre, so this is a moment of great rejoicing because not everyone gets Penelope Fitzgerald. Also a self-indulgent excuse to stroke my treasured first editions, some signed, and I don't go to these extremes for many writers.
I witter on about her endlessly and tirelessly to all and sundry and t'will ever be so, but people often come back to me and say "so what was that all about then?" I used to shrug and so "oh well never mind" because it's actually quite difficult to define, but that's not good enough now I'm a book blogger so I'll have to do better.
I found my way into Penelope Fitzgerald's writing via The Bookshop. It must have been one of those days when the reading planets were aligned in my favour but I emerged after finishing the book in one sitting knowing that I had discovered a truly great writer.
It was a strange feeling.
I may have cracked it by happenstance and just by starting with exactly the right book and I'm beginning to think there is a method to this with many writers.Look at my lifetime of issues with Beryl? Then suddenly along comes Master Georgie and perhaps I've finally unlocked the Bainbridge enigma.
It's difficult to encapsulate what it is Penelope Fitzgerald does so well and that I admire so much, but baptizing a new convert is always a good moment to reflect.
It's clearly many things but in amongst them I think it's all about what isn't said.Thrifty and sparing with her words, nothing to excess and I realize now that this is a real gift of respect to her reader.Sufficient offered for the reader who is tuned into the right frequency to pick up everything left unsaid and fill in the gaps for themselves.
So you'd think being such a fanatic I'd read everything she's ever written wouldn't you?
Well not quite, I've rationed and saved two knowing that what we have is all there is and nothing can quite replace that elation of a first read of a Penelope Fitzgerald book.With a new and keen convert nipping at my heels to talk about the books I could feel myself weakening by the day, The Blue Flower or Innocence?
I settled on The Blue Flower and have been transported back into that perfect literary world that only Penelope Fitzgerald can create.I read it slowly (never rush a Penelope) in two languorously self-indulgent sittings.More about this one soon.
I have on hand a book by Professor Peter Wolfe Understanding Penelope Fitzgerald and it's a godsend for anyone wanting to delve a little deeper into the work of a writer who "has a great gift for imagining herself in other people's shoes without patronizing them" and whose "art rests on a bedrock of knowledge as firm as it is wide".
Pre-requisite for me before any delving was to have read all the books once for the sheer scale and enjoyment of a writer of great but unassuming intellect.Now I plan to start back at the beginning and follow the progression and development in Penelope Fitzgerald's writing as well as plumbing the hidden depths.
I'll share my new understanding on here as I go, first up The Golden Child and, with the return of the Tutankhamun exhibition to London later this year, what could be more appropriate.

PS I've had a lovely e mail off-blog reminding me about this great interview on Amazon by Kerry Fried with Penelope Fitzgerald. It was the first piece I found when I had put The Bookshop down and started to look up anything about this amazing writer and it was reading this interview that made me realise I had to read more.
Thanks Kerry you did me a great favour that day!

Update-I love horses now.

Not only BAFAB winners chez dovegreyreader.
The house has been variously Bedlam and Marie Celeste this weekend but in amongst the happenings I sent the Gamekeeper off to the Point-to-Point yesterday with a fiver of mine and the command to gamble wisely my son and turn it into a fortune.
So now I adore Jungle Jingoes who came in at 8-1 in the very last race with my fiver riding on him.
This is some compensation for the fact that Cambridge won the Boat Race and it will take more than a miracle for England to win the cricket.

BAFAB winners

So where's the star when you need him?
Off out hunting that's where, so the independent ajudicator brought in Rocky's stunt double Muffin who did a very ladylike and delicate judging job and after two runs we have our winners.Post-its neatly flicked off back paws.
First off the paw and winning a copy of What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn is WENDY (aka caribousmom)
Second off the paw and winning the signed copy from Tindal Street Press is NAN.(aka lettersfromahillfarm)
If you could both e mail me your addresses off blog I'll do the rest.
Many thanks to everyone who entered and I'll look forward to another BAFAB draw in July.

BAFAB draw, last call for entries.

Here he is preparing for his BAFAB book judging later today.
Just time for any last minute entries to win one of two copies of What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn, one of them signed by the author and kindly donated by the publishers, the other a gift from me.
Leave your name in comments here if you haven't done so already.The winners will be selected later this evening by the tried and tested method;names on post-its sticky side up on the floor and off he walks.
Who sticks wins.

Sunday Confessions Part Two

Most purchases made on a trip down to Truro last week. We did a road inspection too for the benefit of those of you who head this way on holiday and live in dread of the Bodmin to Indian Queens stretch.The new bit of the A30 is all but ready.
Truro is definitely up with the best for Cornish shopping and we timed our visit for Flea Market day which is always worth doing because the book stalls are unusual.
I hadn't really explored Nonsuch Publishing , probably down to a mental block because I went to a school of the same name (Nonsuch, not Publishing), and nor have I quite been able to figure out the pedigree or who this publisher belongs to.The books seem to be in a similar design league to Pushkin Press; compact and unusual classics and one stall had a huge selection of them which suggests bankrupt stock from somewhere.
I opted for The Slave Son by Mrs William Noy Wilkins. Written on the back of the commercial success of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, this book is set on the island of Trinidad in 1832.The book is worth it for Mrs Wilkins introduction alone which is a perceptive treatise on the injustices of racial inequality.
The next stall along had the most unusual selection of war books and I spotted The Patriot's Progress by Henry Williamson.He's been on my list to look out for.Local to Devon and so his books are plentiful down here. I read Tarka the Otter eons ago but I had no idea until recently (an Endsleigh Salon recommend) that he had written so much about The Great War having fought at the Battle of the Somme.This book arrived quite some time after the first flush of post-Great war fiction and was hailed as an unsurpassed masterpiece for its honesty "an overwhelming, unanswerable indictment of the institution of war". It also has the most striking set of lino cuts by Tasmanian artist, William Kermode.
As you jump out of the flea market you can hop into Waterstone's and there is something very odd going on in there.
The selection of 3 for 2's was unbelievable, I could have easily chosen 12 for 8 and that is a real first.
Spoilt for choice I plumped for Ice Trap by Kitty Sewell which Scott Pack recommended ages ago and then Dark Fire by C.J.Sansom because I have been keen to start his Shardlake trilogy.This series comes highly recommended (again at the Endsleigh Salon) and so to this end it would have been good if I had been paying attention and actually bought the first in the trilogy Dissolution and not the second one. I finally added in Disobedience by Naomi Alderman which I recommended to myself because I love these insightful funny Jewish family sagas.
In the post a lovely lovely copy of Adele Geras' latest book Made in Heaven which I am really looking forward to, it's all pink and flowery and you just know the coming together of these two families is not going to be in the least bit straight forward or smooth.
Finally my copy of Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonard Tsypkin which Susan Sontag posthumously tipped me the wink about in her book of essays At the Same Time and I'm delighted that the hardback edition that I tracked down contains her introduction.

Sunday Confessions Part One

Who?

It's a strange world this one of book recommends and at its most odd when a writer you have seriously never heard of is mentioned over a period of months by several unconnected people in entirely different settings.
Next thing, without really trying you notice the books on the shelves.
Then you pick them up and put them back and decide to think about it for a bit longer, perhaps say to yourself, right the next time I hear that mentioned I'll get it.
Life goes on and then you open the literary pages and there's a glowing review of the latest book. How on earth have you missed all those other reviews that there must undoubtedly have been.It's actually quite a memorable name, one you'd have thought would have stayed in the mind.
Then the final camel-back-breaking straw a great review over on another blog of the latest offering with words like
"I first came across ..........in 1985 when....... a quite remarkable novella, won the Carnegie Medal.  I knew then that I would need to read everything he wrote, but amongst a brilliant output ........ shines out as the brightest light of all."
1985!!!
Won the Carnegie Medal!!!
Brilliant output!!!
Just where have I been to miss out on all the fun? Clearly with my head in a sack sitting in a darkened room down here in rural Devon.
But thanks to the glories of the warp speed Book Depository fairy I can emerge blinking into the light as I excitedly await the arrival of his great trilogy and then I'll explore a few more.
Oh and who am I talking about?
Well with grateful thanks to Angela at the Endsleigh Salon and Ann over at Patternings it's Kevin Crossley-Holland of course.

Mostly baby

I've managed (by a minor miracle) to add a direct feed to the posts on the mostlybooks blog over on the sidebar here >>>>>>.I'm going to make this third feed a regular and changing Blog of the Moment slot featuring a blog for a week or so at a time just to share some of my favourites with you.
Firstly sending dovegrey congratulations to Mark, Nicky and proud brother Alex on the birth of the Mostly Baby, Timothy James arrived on 4th April and he's a lovely weighty tome at 9lbs 10ozs already.That must be at least equivalent to several volumes of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
If you have a minute nip over and read the post entitled "Some bookshop magic" and share in a real heart-warming moment about just what bookshops can do for people and check out the latest shop assistant while you're at it.
We started blogging at about the same time in March 2006 and somehow I stumbled across them and have had great pleasure following Mostly Books via their blog, from Abingdon book shop opening birth pangs last July and through an innovative and well considered first year of planning and then trading.
It was very revealing to read Mark and Nicky's thoughts as they took on the seemingly dying art of independent book selling and breathed new life into it and it must have taken great courage to do that at a time when the chips were well and truly down.Indies closing by the week.
I know about as much about book selling as I do about horses, hoof all, but I do know more than has ever been forgotten about book buying having made it my lifetime's work to excel, and all the indie bookseller blogs that I link to on my sidebar give me the impression that they care about their customers and love the product they are selling.
They also keep me in the loop about what's going on in the book world.In fact C&P win this prize, if it's happening you'll hear it there first and even if it's not you'll still hear it.I love them, poor Waterstone's Piccadilly may be less enamoured after last week's C&P declaration.
Safe to say the MostlyCrockattCrow&Wenlock method of Indie book trading is bucking the trend and giving the buyer the honesty and credibility that they want.
God bless them every one and one of these days I'll go on a Grand Tour.

Sunset

Perfect end to a perfect day and I'm not sure we've sat and watched a more breathtaking and spectacular sunset in a very long while.

Buns and bulls

Well we've polished off the hot cross buns, as predicted no time to get the camera out.
The mist has lifted and the sun is beating down

and Prince Charming has returned to the back field today.Currently standing about 20 feet from my desk but thankfully with two rows of fencing separating us, however the sight of him has reminded us that, with apologies to all vegetarians, it could also be the moment to dust off the barbeque.

Mist in the valley

I think we are in for the finest of Devon days today, the French windows are open already, the sunbrella is up, the garden table is poised ready for coffee.
Here's the Tamar Valley from the bedroom window, still shrouded in mist this morning but I'll post another picture later.
It's looking glorious underneath all that.

Buns and Balls

I should be posting about hot cross buns on Good Friday with a lovely picture but we'll have been into town and bought and eaten them before I could even get the camera in focus.
Since we've lived here Ellis Bakery have opened for a few hours from 8am on Good Friday morning for the sale of fresh baked hot cross buns, and you buy a baker's dozen of course.This used to be quite unique and they would be the only shop open.Times have changed and now it's a normal busy shopping day but it goes against the grain. As children we were never allowed out to play on Good Friday, it was always a quiet day and I still don't like going shopping.
Tavistock, our nearest market town, has an ever-changing and very eclectic round of shops;old favourites disappearing, intrepid new souls braving the high street and this week I ventured into Second Nature, the new organic eco-friendly everything shop that has just opened. Apparently they've been virtual for a while and have now gone reality but I had never heard of them.
I'm sure there's a whole science to all this organic clothing but I haven't quite got to grips with that or how much I or others will benefit or make a difference by wearing it, but as they will soon be stocking Seasalt Clothing I shall probably quickly see the point.
But I was prepared to be persuaded about eco-friendly washing powder, in fact so eco-friendly there's no washing powder at all.
I emerged from the shop with a set of sputniks containing oxygenating pellets plus refills that will last for 120+ wash cycles and will apparently negate the need for the three tons of Persil Non-Bio / Persil Silk & Wool / Ariel Biological we seem to get through per month.
I walked up the road pondering what I had just bought for £14.99.Two plastic balls and a load of pellets.Just watch Bookhound put a comment along the lines of "HOW MUCH!!!!!"
Was I being nice because they've just opened and you really want to support a new and enterprising small business venture in the town? A lovely vibrant Devon market town but one where the landlords now ask mega-bucks in rent and the national chains sit like vultures in the wings waiting to snap up every available retail space?
Except Waterstone's that is, why can't we have a Waterstone's? I'd stop moaning about them for a while if they opened a black and gold fitted shop and gave me a Saturday job.
As it is I'm very open to suggestions about laundry balls right now.
I had already been converted to balls for the tumble dryer; sputniks that by their design alone have dispensed with the need for ridiculous amounts of fabric softener to somehow fulfill that addiction for the newly washed clothing aroma.The clothes come out just as crease free and and the towels equally light and fluffy and no lint in the filter.It's the initial cost that seems crazy but you have easily recouped that in a few weeks if you are as daft as I am about Lavender Flavoured Aromatherapy Sleep Inducing Never Iron Anything Again Lenor.
But what about these washing balls?
Ghastly, and I mean revolting gamekeepery clothing goes through our washing machine especially after a deer stalking expedition or a rabbit lamping night and I couldn't believe that these two happy looking balls would do the trick.
Trust us said the delightful couple in the new shop and I did; they have rugby playing sons and assured me they came out of the wash pristine.
Cynicism was waiting to greet me when I returned home with my balls and why is there never any dirty washing when you want some?
Surely you've got something I can wash? I'm offering to do your washing, go out a get dirty now.
So I've waited patiently and now I'm a very impressed ball convert.Give them their due they do exactly what they say on the box, the clothes are spotless and I think the septic tank may be giving thanks.
Have you all been using these for ever and just not told me?
Is there something I don't know?
Shouldn't these just do away with the need for soap powder all together and wouldn't that be a good thing?

Happy Birthday to....

I have to say Happy 82nd Birthday to the Tinker, father of dovegreyreader, almost first-time published author, before I do anything else today.I spent a happy hour in the loft yesterday rummaging amongst the pictures and came across this delightful one of the Tinker with his own grandad.We are assuming that's the shed behind them and not his house but I can't spoil the surprise by asking.I have a feeling Grandad Chester kept pigeons and that might be very fancy avian quarters.That garden looks like his pride and joy and I reckon this must have been taken in about 1930.
The Tinker is of course very special to everyone who knows him and that might be quite a lot of people soon, but here he is with a 2 week old well-packaged and bonneted me.I expect he'd just pegged those nappies out too.
He will always be the one who used to deal with the sharks that I was CONVINCED were swimming under my bed at 3am for weeks after I had watched too much Armand and Michaela Denis on TV.
Then half an hour later he'd be called back in because I was CERTAIN that the folds in the eiderdown were snakes.
Fifteen minutes after that there were DEFINITELY tarantulas everywhere and he'd be back in to catch them all.
Thanks Dad!

Dark Hearts of Chicago

I've done it, I'm a bit out of breath but I've reached the end of Dark Hearts of Chicago by William Dunmore & Helen Rappaport in time to post on publication day and I haven't read a book like this in ages, historical thriller.
Firstly I must offer health advice for the first-time reader of this one and if big fat heavy books put you off you just need to gather some special equipment. Some of us managed it with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.You need to just sort out your book prop pillow (here's mine from Levenger webstore...but possibly no longer available )because it's another premature baby size tome.Just keep wiggling your toes to avoid loss of circulation to your extremities and take regular strolls around the armchair.Beyond that perhaps flight socks and drinks to hand and just settle down for your journey to 1890's Chicago without the bother of going to the airport or getting on a plane.
I can't begin to imagine what it takes to write a book like this, steady historical detail, often refined down to a sentence or a brief reference but you feel certain it will all have been verified to within an inch of its life.
Emily Strauss, cub reporter and very much on trial with the Pulitzer newspaper empire is on the trail of the disappearing women at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.The meat packing giants Darke & Hartz (get it?) have a lot more going on than the distribution of hog chops around the US and you quickly realise there is a sinister underworld at work with links to the local asylum and much more.
I was easily drawn in by the action and the historical detail which I'll admit can sometimes be off-putting in a book if it's too overt, but in this case it blended wonderfully and I was quickly enjoying and expecting it.
There is one very clever device in Dark Hearts of Chicago which I was a bit slow to cotton on to, at the top of each page you have the date and the time of the action on the page.
I spent ages missing the point and wished I'd sussed it sooner.
There are regular mentions of the time within the linear narrative and as the plot started to race along and I became more and more engrossed, and less and less able to put the book down, I suddenly realised that I was using the clock to tell the time within the book.
Someone would say "Meeting at 5.30pm" and my eyes would flick to the top of the page, 3.14pm, great they've got time to do this or go there. It added a surprisingly enjoyable element to the reading.
I'm hoping Chicago-based Bluestalking Reader will soon be onto this one and I'm holding my breath to hear what she thinks.To me it was a great read laden with what I suspect is very accurate 1890's Chicago detail, but what will our intrepid Windy City resident feel?
I'm sure she'll tell us soon but meanwhile congratulations to William and Helen on such an excellent collaboration because I think we'd be hard-pushed to write a joint shopping list here without a bit of a conflagration, so 630 pages is no mean feat.
You can read William Horwood's blog here for more details.

A Golden Age

Thanks to A Golden Age Tahmima Anam earns her place for me amongst the ranks of  daughters telling the stories of the parents alongside Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and to an equally high standard. Adichie's family experienced the war in Biafra and from this comes her latest book reviewed here last year Half of a Yellow Sun
A Golden Age is Tahmima Anam's fictional account of the Bangladesh War of Independence in which her family were heavily involved.
Having just flogged the Tinker (Bugle Boy father of dgr) into action to save me the trouble I suspect this telling of family history is something daughters care about and do well. I'll leave all the sons who stop by here to redress the balance in comments. I'm sure sons care too.
In amongst fictional journeys to Chicago, the Crimean war and the Deep South of the USA  this book was going to need to convey a keen sense of time and place to keep me returning and I'll own up that initially I was seduced by the World's Fair and seedy goings on back in Chicago. A gap of a couple of weeks and I picked up A Golden Age again at about p70 and to its complete credit I knew exactly where I was and read through until the end.
This is the book I mentioned with that haunting opening line "Dear Husband, I lost our children today", you can't help but read on to find out and once this heart-wrenching early part of the story has been told the action quickly moves on to 1971 and to what was then East Pakistan in turmoil.
The widowed but quitely determined Rehana and her grown up children find themselves caught up in the war and all its brutality (largely understated and hinted at apart from one or two episodes of sparse but essential and gruesome details) but set against a backdrop of the most intense sights,smells and sounds of this unique country. A land of great beauty and a microcosm of weather, religion and food all delineated to perfection by Tahmima Anam with the last remnants of colonialism resonating quietly in the background.Time and again, you feel you have been drenched by the rain and sated by the food. I could almost smell Rehana's mango pickles ripening on the roof.
Choices must be made, sides must be taken and it is the women who take centre stage as they all search for their less certain roles in the conflict.It is the mothers we come to understand, through their fears for their children and always, churning away beneath it all, the effects of Rehana's early experiences which she can never quite leave behind.
Another good and highly recommended read.

 

Master Georgie

If anyone out there is reading No Place for Ladies by Helen Rappaport or Mrs Duberley's Diary then for goodness sake dash off and read Master Georgie too.I have no idea where Beryl Bainbrdige did her research but Susan Hill was right, it makes a perfect novel alongside both these books.
Here's my copy with a fascinating cover illustration that has really kept my attention.I've looked at it closely and spotted more detail each time I've picked the book up.
I've already held my hands up to a lifetime of  the Battle of Beryl and try as I may I've failed where others flourish, until now and this is the book. Perhaps it's because I'm now so clued up on Balaclava, Sebastopol and I'm half Liverpudlian so it all helped me follow on the trail of four memorable characters as they travel from the streets of Liverpool to the battlefield of Inkerman.
Once I had overcome initial confusion about narrators and quickly realised that the identities were staring me in the face, I was completely involved with the sheer cleverness of this book.Different perspectives on each other and sparse details with hints and clues dropped here and there.The plotting is perfect, back and forth building up the picture, reminding us about past events and the full horror of war dealt with in a very pragmatic way. Limbs and entrails all over the place and a quote about Georgie, who is working as a field surgeon (ie doing amputations 24/7), that ties in perfectly with something I mentioned about Mrs Duberley's apparent compassion fatigue

"There's a sameness about death that makes the emotions stiffen - which is for the best, else one would be uselessly crying the day long...dealing with the dying,one must either blunt the senses or go mad"

Master Georgie is another read that dispels any myths that may still be lingering out there about British military pride during the Crimean war, how any could be salvaged despite Tennyson's brave poetic attempts I can't imagine.
No wonder when you read, courtesy of Mrs Duberley, about the good old Knitwear Generals; Lord Cardigan forbidding his men to wear their cloaks at night because it looked effeminate or Lord Raglan (fancy having a sleeve named after you when you only had one arm, nothing like rubbing it in) and his punishing training schedules that left the troops decimated and exhausted before a shot had even been fired.It might actually have been Lord Stocking Stitch I'm starting to get confused, but anyway you realise what an unravelled unrivalled shambles it all must have been.
Mrs Duberley certainly spotted all that and Beryl Bainbridge has added more.
Great read, so now that I'm a born-again Berylite I'm off to see just what she did with the Titanic and Captain Scott and I note from a stroll around The Book Depository that some of the books seem to be going out of print, surely not?

BAFAB update.

BAFAB blog draw update.
The lovely people at Tindal Street Press have very kindly offered a signed copy of What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn as well as my blog standard book fairy copy so there will be TWO winners next Sunday.Just leave your name in comments here to be entered in the draw and the rest will down to the cat.
Rocky is looking suitably excited I'm sure you'll agree and we've just sent him off on a training run.

Firmin the vermin

It's taken me quite some time to get around to reading Firmin by Sam Savage published by Coffee House Press, but strong reviews around the blog world and  the fact it was the Litblog Co-op chosen read last Autumn are enough of an endorsement for me to investigate.
What probably finally prompted me was news from The Gamekeeper (son of dgr) that we can expect a plague of rats this spring after such a mild winter and his new sideline of poison-free and humane vermin control by old fashioned tried and trusted cage-trapping methods is already in demand.
Rats in the wild just prey on the worst primeval fears in most if us I think. We get very nervous about them (correction, I verge on hysterical ) with all the associations of plague and disease, not least here in the countryside where they can take up residence with very little encouragement.Having your own exterminator around is handy; word has spread around the local vermin community and any rat that sets foot here now is both brave and foolish.
So I was pleasantly surprised to find that Firmin is a rat with a difference.
Born the runt of the litter in the precincts of a Boston bookshop in the 1960's, Firmin's early desperation diet of books invests him with the unusual (for a rat) power of language, read not spoken, and he proceeds to make his way through the literary canon.The bookseller becomes his unapproachable hero and Firmin becomes almost human, and there's the rub, because you gradually realise you are reading an account of  "what it means to be human in an often inhuman world" (Robert Gray review Eclectica Magazine)
It all sounds ridiculous but it's definitely not.
I've no plans to pursue a rodent readathon on here but Andrew Friedman has written a a great piece on rodents and fiction for The Believer magazine citing various authors who've used the theme, amongst them, Art Spiegelman, Haruki Murakami and now of course Sam Savage.
Anyone who read Mr Thundermug by Cornelius Medvei last year will recall how effective the genre of life through the all-seeing eyes of an animal can be.
This book is redemption for the rat as reviled species, (unless you keep them as pets I suppose) a rat's eye view of US city life and the world between the pages of a good book in the 1960's which is both entertaining and poignant.
So poignant in fact that I've had to have lengthy and protracted discussions with The Gamekeeper and puppy dog Sticks about what constitutes humane.We've hammered out a settlement and I think I've negotiated better terms for the rats.
Once he's caught the little Firmins The Gamekeeper will read them poetry just to lift their spirits and then Sticks will howl sing to them which will certainly ensure they meet a welcome, quick but ultimately  happy end.