dovegreyreader scribbles

Second-Hand Birthday Confessions

Birthdays are lovely days if you make them so and I decided, after a particularly arduous day at work on our wedding anniversary a few weeks ago, that in future I would definitely treat family feast days as special occasions and book the time off midweek.
This can be a trauma in itself, planning who will do your phone cover, who will do the clinic which is bound to fall on that day.The stress rises the day before too, every time the phone rings you just know it's a pending social services disaster or the midwife discharging quadruplets.I was never so relieved to get to 5pm and change the voice mail (I love this moment, very satisfying) I will be on annual leave on...if you need to speak to a health visitor urgently on these days please contact... lock the filing cabinets and I'm out of there.
So we set off into the wild blue yonder and a mooch around Topsham, which is one of our favourite mooching places down on the River Exe.There is a second -hand bookshop which is room after room of heaven and it was our fault really.
We'd gone on a diversion to the Dart's Farm Coffee Shop which is a totally legitimate diversion and I had the white chocolate and strawberry cake and some of Bookhound's chocolate pecan cake because I couldn't decide whether I should have had that instead.By the time we reached the bookshop they were already gearing up to close for lunch. Lunch was thirty minutes away but you could tell they weren't pleased to see us.
I raced up to find some Bernard Malamud's because the new Philip Davis biography is challenging me to read them and there were rich pickings to be had on the Penguin shelves.I left a big gap as I scooped The Natural, The Fixer, The Tenants, The Assistant and Pictures of Fidelman.
But then I glanced at the floor.Stacks of books, about twelve high and four deep lining one wall and obviously a house clearance from a very discerning reader.It was only when I'd sat on the floor and sifted and sorted and slid and shoved the piles around that I realised all the books I had selected, including the Malamuds, were by Jewish writers.
Rummaging through I spotted a nice Grace Paley book, Later the Same Day. Grace Paley, I suspect, a writer I shall come to for the first time now that she has died and wonder where I've been all the years that she's been alive.
Then one of those lucky chance glances, the final dig into the depths of the books at the bottom of the pile in the most inaccessible corner and I caught sight of a new name on the spine of several books, an author I'd never heard of, Aharon Appelfeld. Holocaust survivor and winner of many literary awards and lauded in fulsome tones

"No one surpasses Aharon Appelfeld in  portraying the crisis of European civilisation both before and after the Second World War. He's one of the best novelists alive"

"A small masterpiece...the vision of a remarkable poet"

"Controlled fiction, compresses large themes into small spaces"

I picked up The Iron Tracks, Katerina, The Retreat, Tzili and For Every Sin but with some trepidation.
I don't find holocaust reading easy, but I also feel that for me it's an essential and ongoing foreground to any other Jewish reading I may do, and so I tend to read it at a slant. I was pleased to find this about Aharon Appelfeld in the New York Times

"Aharon Appelfeld's habitual strategy as a writer haunted by the Holocaust is to concentrate on its historical margins, either prelude or aftermath. The horrors to come or just done are a baleful flickering on the horizon of his fictions, while the forlorn figures of the foreground, rendered in muted style, repeatedly intimate that which defies all moral understanding."

I can learn as much if not more from that baleful flickering on the horizon as I can from reading about exact and actual horrors.
Laden with my booty you'd have thought the bookseller might have been delighted with a sale on a very quiet wet Devon day.
Not a bit of it.
We took a broadside for dripping rain onto the counter and were assured that we would have to leave as the shop had to close for an hour so that they could "practice their stage show".
But there's so much else I want to look at I bleated.
To no avail, clearly they are not in it for the money, what a lovely life, except I left the floor upstairs in a terrible muddle so that would have kept them busy all afternoon.

Paul Bailey

One of the really exciting and rewarding aspects of this blog are the e mails I get off-blog with all your ideas for books and writers I might like to try.
I have until the end of the year to take up one challenge to read David Malouf (and it will happen) and last week I had a lovely e mail recommending that I read some Paul Bailey. This was quickly followed up by a wonderfully generous parcel of his books which I've made a very eager start on.
I knew of Paul Bailey from his introductions to many of Elizabeth Taylor's novels and indeed I had quoted him in a piece I wrote about her for newbooksmag last year. I could think of no better way of describing her books than his so I used it.
"The novelist Paul Bailey who has written many prefaces to Elizabeth Taylor's novels sums up her writing succinctly when he refers to it as "her reports from the chintz-bedecked battlefields"
I also discover that Paul Bailey was Elizabeth Taylor's inspiration for the character of Ludovic in Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.
But for some reason he's been a bit invisible down here in the Tamar Valley, never really showing up on my radar as a novelist despite having two books shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Peter Smart's Confessions and Gabriel's Lament and I'm sure Susan Hill has recommended his writing.
I must have spent years walking round in a haze because this keeps on happening, so despite thinking I might be reasonably well-read there's always something to chop your legs off and cut you down to size, it's a very great big book world out there.Writers who have quietly been getting on with it now finding their way onto my shelves and I'm delighted.
I've just finished Old Soldiers which will be on here next week but then selected Paul Bailey's latest book Uncle Rudolf from the pile and am already impressed by the number of literary luminaries who sing his praises, Beryl Bainbridge, Ali Smith, Penelope Lively and Stevie Davies to name a few.
There's another one, I had never heard of Stevie Davies until Margaret Drabble named her as a one of her all-time favourite authors when I heard her talk years ago. I dashed home and ordered everything I could find and leapt feet first into Stevie Davies' writing and have been reading her ever since.Unbridled Spirits Women of the English Revolution 1640-1660 one of those rare and fascinating glimpses into the lost voices of seventeenth century women who spoke out amidst political turmoil and the drama of  headless monarchs.
In fact Stevie Davies worthy of a post of her own I think.
Back to Paul Bailey and already I discover in Uncle Rudolf beautifully measured and gently soothing prose that just flows off the page and into your mind.I'm sitting and reading with that gloriously relaxed and balmy feeling you get in the hands of writer who knows what they are doing.
Invites you into a world you want to share and entertains you warmly whilst you are there.
It's all in stark contrast to some of the really gritty and occasionally disturbing books I've read lately. Paul Bailey quite the perfect bridge for me between the cutting edge contemporary fiction of recent months, which has been a bit like sitting in a cold bath in the comfort stakes, and my nineteenth century rehab.
Now I'm having a huge wallow in that wonderfully reassuring hot scented bath that is the nineteenth century world of Daniel Deronda with a bit of Paul Bailey thrown in, if you see what I mean...what a rubbish analogy baths are, far too much can be misinterpreted there.

The World Through Blunted Sight

I don't know about all of you but pictures like this make me feel a bit queasy.

All that comes to mind is hour after hour of double Physics lessons with Miss Southern. One of those memorable teachers, very very tall and wiry, played the double bass in the school orchestra (properly with a bow and everything, not twanging the strings and twirling the thing around on its spike) and cruelly we called her The GPO Tower. She really was very tall indeed.
Physics never fired me with enthusiasm nor did I ever understood these diagrams and still don't so it could all have been enough for me to close up Patrick Trevor-Roper's book The World Through Blunted Sight published by Souvenir Press, very quickly indeed. I'm glad I didn't because it was a fascinating read and led  me to ask the irrelevant question of  just about everyone I know, "Do you dream in colour?"
Most have had to stop and think and very few people seem to have given it much thought in the past, I certainly still can't decide and Patrick Trevor-Roper suggests the evidence shows that "recognition of dream-colours is relatively rare". A full and fascinating explanation of it all to be had in the book.
Written by a consultant opthalmologist (and brother of Hugh) with a love of art, here is a fascinating study of how visual defects affected many painters, sculptors, poets and writers throughout history and was thus reflected in their work in a variety of ways.
None of it had ever occurred to me before and so every chapter a revelation.Short and long-sight would obviously have an impact on an artist's work, astigmatism too very likely to distort the final image.Paintings re-photographed through correcting lenses suddenly look strangely correctly proportioned.
Patrick Trevor-Roper makes some interesting suggestions, was Constable colour blind? His fondness for autumn tints may indicate that he was.
Was Impressionism the result of a generation of short-sighted artists?
Interestingly how do colour blind writers describe colour accurately with such a limited palette available? Or perhaps they are just very vague about it?
The World Through Blunted Sight one of those books that takes you way off the beaten reading track,a first-rate diversion from standard fare here and now I'm armed with those amazingly unhelpful little nuggets to drop into conversations,
"Did you know that Albrecht Durer had a divergent squint inherited from his mother?"
"Did you know that squirrels, dogs and horses may possess a modicum of colour-discrimination but bulls definitely can't see red?"
"Did you know the male Australian Bower bird spends weeks creating a blue nest to woo his mate?"
And of course "Do you dream in colour?"

Book Club in a Box

Despite the number of books that now arrive here daily I do still spend some time wandering around the online bookshops for ideas and recently I stumbled across the Canadian based Book Club in a Box.
I was intrigued and contacted Marilyn Herbert in Toronto for some more information. Within a week my box had flown in and a selection of titles for me to try.
Book Club in a Box publish a whole series of discussion guides for a wide range of books offering that little bit extra to the reading if you want it, the chance to dig a bit deeper and unearth some of the less obvious connections. I've been to plenty of reading groups down the years where the discussion has dried up very quickly though I'm sure there must be plenty about the book that we've missed.
That said I'm often not a happy bunny when I turn the final page of a book and find myself faced with a page of reader's questions.I know I could close the book and ignore them, but they are there and suddenly those myriad thoughts at the end of a good read that you just want to allow to run free and take you somewhere interesting feel controlled and directed.
Just never satisfied that's me.
After my recent introduction to the latest Alice Sebold it was the guide to The Lovely Bones that I was after and when I've finished the novel I'm going to take a look at the Book Club in a Box book and see what happens. Also in my parcel the books to accompany Fugitive Pieces by Ann Michaels and The Way the Crow Flies by Anne-Marie MacDonald both novels that I've been meaning to read and haven't.
You can buy Book Club in a Box in old fashioned paper book or online in pdf format. With each book a photocopiable leaflet that could be handed round to other group members if wanted.
Of course all this might not be what a book group wants at all, especially if you are a bevvy of free-talking ideas people but I suspect there would be plenty of people either in a group or reading solo who would find these an enjoyable add-on to a good read.
I think Book Club in a Box would be particularly good for those who say they wouldn't join a book group because they think they're not intelligent/talkative/clever enough but still love reading and love talking about books.Book groups often perceived as an elitist huddle but I have an as yet unevaluated theory that we could halve the counselling budget in General Practice if we could introduce bibliotherapy and establish some all-inclusive Reading Groups on Prescription in surgeries.
The trouble at the coalface is that old chicken/egg conundrum.You are prohibited from starting anything new unless you first have the backing of evidence-based research, but to gather the evidence you need to set something up in the first place. I get confused just thinking about it and, though I fully appreciate the need for ethical safeguards and caution, I suspect a great deal of innovation falls flat on its face at this first hurdle.
I'll report back.

The Snow Goose and Angela Barrett

A beautiful new edition of a favourite book arrived last week from Random House, The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico and with illustrations by an even more favourite artist Angela Barrett.
If I'm honest it's an artist's style I will recognise often at the expense of knowing their name, which won't cheer any of them up I suppose, but I remember Angela Barrett because of two books that take me back to way back when.
But firstly Paul Gallico.
I didn't know much about Paul Gallico until I did a bit of searching around about The Snow Goose so I had no idea he was an American, born in New York City in 1897. I'm not sure where I thought he was from but perhaps the US connection surprises me as he has written a seemingly very English book and one of those stories that seem to have been with me for years.First published in 1941, the story of Philip Rhayader and Fritha one of those gently familiar ones with a little bit of Richard Harris and Jenny Agutter flitting in and out so I must have seen the film at some time.
My only other copy a very 1970's 20p Penguin film tie-in edition also containing that other famous little story The Small Miracle.
Certainly The Snow Goose one of those haunting and classically understated, less is more tales of the mysterious stranger, the magical bird and the inquisitive child and all set against  Rhayader's sudden departure to help with the evacuation of the beaches at Dunkirk.
From the Penguin edition I read that in 1936 Paul Gallico settled for a time in a hilltop house at Salcombe in Devon which would have given him plenty of  material for the writing of The Snow Goose except that he hardly needed any material.It's a simple story and by his own admission that was Paul Gallico's exact intention. He saw himself as a storyteller and this one certainly seems like a fusion of fairytale, myth and legend all held together by the threads of realism.
Angela Barrett's illustrations are nonpareil, par excellence monochromes that perfectly reflect the setting of the desolate Essex marshes and when colour is used it is subtle and muted. The faces are utterly exquisite, perfect degrees of chiaroscuro delicately used as the story leads us to expect more detail.
"Frith stared at Rhayader. He had changed so. For the first time she saw that he was no longer ugly or mis-shapen or grotesque, but very beautiful"

And the other two books illustrated by Angela Barrett that take me back to way back when?
These two of course and was there ever a more evocative scene than this? This the book that strangely always makes me want to do odd things like put fresh paper on the shelves in the larder ,and if I ever become a domestic goddess I just might, because I think the last lot has been there since the first time I read this book.

Happy Birthday to...

Told you I don't suit a hat!

Ears on Wheels 3 : I take Bill out for the day

No not Bill Clinton, Bill Bryson.
I dashed into the library last week just to see who was sitting waiting to come out for a ride and there was Bill Bryson waving his hand in the air and looking pretty eager but drat it, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid only available in cassettes so I had to settle for his magnus opus The Short History of Nearly Everything.
Wow, suddenly this seemed like a really good idea.
Much as I love my guests, take a break from all this navel-gazing solipsism and sixteen CD's later I'd know everything I ever need to know about everything there has ever been.This version not read by Bill who probably doesn't have the time and I have no idea who William Roberts is, but give the man a medal because this unabridged version no mean reading feat.He is consistently expressive and interesting and kept my attention, especially given the often rather dry subject matter (for me).
I made an immediate start and by the end of the first day I was well up on atoms, the Big Bang, and super novae discovered by a vicar in Australia. It was all a bit much to take in, space is big and Bill uses good analogies to explain scale and time.Vast quantities of superfluous factual information has harried its way into my grey matter as I've schlepped around the lanes.I'm beginning to feel mildly scientific in that Tomorrow's World crikey I never knew that sort of way, though I'm a little inexact on the fine detail.
Do you know how long it takes for the light from a super nova to reach earth?
Well it's slipped my mind but it's zillions of light years.
Do you know how heavy the earth is?
It's up in the trillions of tons.
Day Two and for reasons best known to the NHS I had clocked up ninety-two visiting miles by the end of the day, that's a lot of listening.
Bill and I have worked our way through planetary explanations then a quick trot through gravity and the life and unusual habits of Isaac Newton. I was lucky to keep the car on the road as Bill described how Newton stuck a bodkin through his eyeball as far as it would go and waggled it around "just to see what would happen".
Then he stared at the sun for hours "just to see what would happen".
Thankfully we've moved on through basic geology and we're onto fossils and the 19th century collector, Mary Anning.Now I'd like to do as Bill suggests and check out her collection at the Natural History Museum, apparently she made little money from her discoveries despite spending thirteen years painstakingly chipping out a whole fossilised dinosaur.
Then, well on my way to knowing everything I was distracted.
A new Fiesta guest arrived in the post and, it would have been plum daft to keep this one waiting too long.
Move over a minute Bill would you and make room for Bob.

Alice Sebold

You may notice (or not) that finally I've embarked on reading some Alice Sebold.
My failure to even have a copy of The Lovely Bones on my shelves down to the powerful hatred of it by a reading acquaintance.Not someone I even really know and no specific reasons given, but a dislike so profound that it really did seem to permeate my thinking sufficiently to make me take against a book I knew virtually nothing about and consequently never really bothered to look at.
Then the lovely ladies at Macmillan sent me a proof copy of Alice Sebold's forthcoming book The Almost Moon. I didn't jump up and down with excitement as many would, in fact, despite the fact it's a thing of beauty, I glowered at it a bit.
"Huh, Alice Sebold".
For a proof copy Macmillan have really pushed the boat out and some.

Outer silver cover, inner silver cover with beautiful lunar illustration and probably worth a fortune one day, except that I've read mine and written all over it and creased the spine. I'm saving my thoughts on The Almost Moon until nearer publication date, 16th October. Booker Prize day an auspicious date for Picador/Pan Macmillan to choose if ever there was one.Books about matricide admittedly not that common in my general reading so this one quite a challenge so on that more soon.
But having read it I knew the time had come to tackle the rest of the Alice Sebold oeuvre and the MacLadies agreed, hastily dispatching Lucky and The Lovely Bones. So finally I look closely at a copy of a book I have barely glanced at despite its best seller status and then I look at Lucky.
I had read about the subject matter of Lucky, this is the book in which Alice Sebold recounts the most horrific physical assault and rape that she suffered as a student and her subsequent recovery.
This had all been enough to convince me that I didn't want to read this one either.
Far too agonising and harrowing.
Am I alone in gathering these irrational prejudices about books I don't think I'll like?
For whatever reason, no matter how open-minded I might like to think I am?
In the end I decide that perhaps you owe the people who've had the courage to write it down the ultimate respect of reading it.
I've managed to sweep aside all ill-conceived prejudices and as you might expect I'm now realising I have missed a great writer and one who most certainly doesn't shy away from some of the most difficult subjects.
Much more about Alice Sebold and The Lovely Bones just a few years later than everyone else very soon.

Sunday Confessions

Coincidences often happen in my reading life and so I shouldn't have been at all surprised, having read a review of a book published by Poisoned Pen Press, then, out of the blue, to get an e mail from them.Titles and catalogue duly arrived and I now have a good selection, Four for a Boy by Mary Reed & Eric Mayer, Sleeping Dog by Dick Lochte and The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R.King.First impressions are favourable, high quality paper and typeface and Sleeping Dog a great starter for ten.
In the same post another trainee, this time The Herring Seller's Apprentice by L.C.Tyler from Macmillan New Writing.
Wasn't there a whole load of hue and cry about Macmillan New Writing a while back? Isn't this the place to send agentless manuscripts, no advance but royalties if you are one of the lucky ones? Looks like another good one and funny too, I could do with a good reading laugh.
I now consider myself lucky enough to be on the receiving end of quite a few first novels from aspiring self-published writers and I will always give them the fifty page test. If they make it past that the chances are I'll read on, love them, finish them and they will make it on here and that's that. I'd love to have the time to offer more suggestions but I'm a reader, that's all, not an editor or a critic, just a reader and a book either works with me or it doesn't.Frederick Lightfoot is the latest arrival and has very kindly sent me copies of Migrants and Immigrants. The first thing I usually spot, since Scott Pack mentioned it, is the weight of a self-published book. I wasn't aware of this but apparently the high quality paper is a feature.Frederick Lightfoot's books are no exception but as I hate cheap scratchy paper his books find favour already.
A selection of titles from Bloomsbury.
I've heard so much about Eat, Pray and Love by Elizabeth Gilbert that it seemed meet and right to give it a try, Britney Spears says she can't get away from it and Annie Proulx suggests the writer has "incandescent talent", who am I to argue.I'm also up for Divas don't Knit by Gil McNeil, this looks like another funny read and after the great but turmoil-inducing Alice Sebold (more tomorrow) I need more funny.It's also got a ribbon bookmark which always appeals.
Agent ZigZag by Ben Macintyre is a true account of the life of wartime spy, Eddie Chapman. I haven't yet decided which side Eddie was on but it looks like both and I'm taking this round to the Tinker for immediate review. He'll love it and give it the war veteran's - eye view before I give it the daughter of the war veteran's- eye view.
Have I left anything out? Oh yes, In Stitches by Dr Nick Edwards, the highs and lows of life as an A&E doctor from The Friday Project. This is life as we know it down the NHS coalmines and I'll need to read it in small doses because it's all so true, especially the bureaucracy bits, and you just end up ranting in agreement at things you know go on but try to ignore on a daily basis.This in order to carry on spreading joy, happiness and healing amongst the nation's sick.Bless the A&E doctors, it's a thankless task.
Writing this earned me a pot of tea I felt, and as I wandered into the kitchen this sight greeted me. If it wasn't so funny he'd be dead meat because cats + kitchen worktops = verbotten here, but somehow I just had to laugh first and shoo next, they just can't resist that swaddled feeling can they?

My wish is his command

Does this happen to anyone else?
You wake up in the morning and just have to go and visit a stately home?
Bookhound thought the way was clear for a day's fishing yesterday until I weakly declared
"But I want to go to a stately home."
He's very patient even under the most trying circumstances so he suggested Buckland Abbey with good reason. It's only twenty minutes up the road and with a fair wind and sail we'd be back and he'd still have time to go fishing.
"No not that one, it's not stately enough, I want posh and grand and perfect."
"Cotehele House?"
Only about thirty minutes along the road but still not posh and grand enough.
"No, I'm really sorry but I think only Lanhydrock House will do today"
You could see him working it out, probably ninety minutes down the road, no fishing.
So off we trolled, stopped at a bookshop in Liskeard, and having agreed that we've been round the house enough times to know it blindfold, we decided to do the tearooms for sustenance and then amble around the grounds.The Robartes family home is certainly magnificent but there's a room that always makes me so sad.
Tommy Robartes died during the Great War, September 30th 1915 at Loos and was recommended for a Victoria Cross for his courage.A few years ago his suitcase was found in the Lanhydrock attics, unopened since the day it was sent back from the trenches after his death. Everything has been laid out on the bed in his old room.
It's all too poignant for words.
It was the necessary beautiful early autumn September day, sunny and warm and everything on the cusp of change and as we strolled down the drive we recalled that day almost twenty-six years ago exactly when we'd ventured out for the very first time with our little tiny first-born.These are scary moments in the lives of new parents and breast-feeding mothers especially, will a baby feed as well sitting in the middle of a car park as it will with you cushioned and propped up on the sofa at home?
Offspringette and I had both had a bit of a near-death, high-tech emergency birth experience and were still feeling slightly bruised and battered and very vulnerable and fragile, so the trip to Lanhydrock was quite a big excursion. As we got out of the car and loaded the little bundle into the baby sling (these were a new invention in 1981) a man with the very memorable name of Giles Clotworthy bounded up to us with a microphone,
"Can we interview you for local radio?" he asked
"Er, yes" we replied at which point he proceeded to ask me all manner of questions about why we visited National Trust properties, did we like them, what did we like best etc etc.
Now anyone who has given birth and then been through a bit of trauma will know that your brain has a habit of going blank, empty, kapputt, nil comprehendo and I couldn't think of a single thing to say.There was a very long silence which they edited out, Bookhound to the rescue with some responses and finally we made our escape with me wailing copiously that my brain had gone to mush and would never be the same again.
They thought perhaps Offspringette may have been Lanhydrock's tiniest ever visitor and doubtless her mother their most stupid.
No radio interviews yesterday but the pot of tea and cake was good, a lovely walk around the outside of a very posh and grand stately home and we discovered bits that we'd always missed before.The miniscule Parish Church was seasonally decorated for harvest, but with my camera on the wrong setting you are going to be none the wiser about that beyond me telling you it looked perfect, and the sheaves of wheat around the altar quite resplendent.
And so my wish for the day was granted without having to thtamp my foot and thqueam and thqueam until I wath thick.

Chim-chiminee

As you may be aware, the man of the house here needs little encouragement to indulge in a bit of DIY and this year, in the absence of a chimney sweep, it was deemed perfectly possible to hire a set of brushes and do it himself.I needed some persuading but eventually and spotting that he was in need of a a bit of a boy's own adventure I relented.
Fear gripped my heart because self-chimney sweeping has been subject to a blanket ban since 1980 which would be the last time we tried it.
Various things just did not occur to us in those heady days of our youth.
Nothing seemed too difficult or beyond our capabilities.We had built, rendered, plastered, plumbed, wired so what could be so difficult about sweeping a chimney? No one had explained to us that a lot, indeed a veritable mountain of soot can descend (except they probably had but we just hadn't been listening) and nor did anyone offer the helpful advice that if you twist the rods the wrong way they undo themselves and your brush remains stuck at the top of the chimney.
It was one of those memorable days, pre-children and in our little old terraced cottage that we had painstakingly and lovingly restored ourselves.A beautiful original old stone fireplace discovered beneath the 1950's hearth and we installed the best woodburning stove we ever had, a Canadian -manufactured Fisher Grandma Bear, which we stupidly sold with the house and regretted parting with ever thereafter.
In the absence of a little boy and in the presence of our very sage and beloved wall-eyed border collie Ben we had hired a set of brushes and Bookhound, after a lot of Mary Poppins-Bert banter between us, commenced the joining and the ascent of the rods while I dashed outside to cheer as the brush emerged from the top of the chimney. Out it popped and I shouted the requisite "chim-chiminee" and waited for it to disappear back down...and waited and waited.
Back indoors things were not looking pristine.
Mary Poppins was not pleased, Bert was not looking "as 'appy as 'appy could be" and the dog was quietly choking because it was abundantly clear that we hadn't really prepared as well as we should have done.As the black clouds settled man and dog emerged surrounded by soot and a smattering of unconjoined brush rods and no brush. After a bit of a conflab, which probably verged on marital disharmony and Ben would have joined in, we decided that short of climbing on the roof to retrieve, the best we could do was to try and join the rods back together and push the brush out of the top of the chimney.
After a lot more soot, a lot of bad language, even more laughter and some more soot we managed it but the ban has been enforced until this very day.I only agreed because chimney sweeps seem to be an endangered species and heaven forbid, were we to have a chimney fire we are more than a very long way from the nearest fire engine.
I am pleased to report that today we have had a successful and controlled evacuation of chimney detritus and the brush returned to base as planned.Ben by the way lived to be seventeen, survived the arrival of three children and several cats all of which he adored, made it to this house with us and died a very happy old dog, there'll never be another like him.

The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs

I'd forgotten all about this until today's post brought in this copy.
Publisher Marion Boyars, publishing The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs compiled by Rebecca Gillieron and Catheryn Kilgarriff, asked if they could use this picture from here on the cover.So here are John McGahern, Adele Geras and Susan Hill gathered in a happy pile.
Even a bit more exciting (though I have heard Adele is beside herself) is a quote on the back from the early days of dgr scribbles and lots more about us on pages 16, 17 and 18.
Actually the other 251 pages that don't mention me but do mention lots of other blogs that we all know and love look just as good, but you'll have to see those for yourselves on October 28th when the book is published.Before then I'll have a proper look and write a far more useful post than this one but I was just a bit overcome and had to tell you all.

The Damned Dictionary

My love for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography still knows no bounds.
Some years ago I heard Henrietta Garnett give the most insightful of talks on The Damned Dictionary and her great grandfather Leslie Stephens' lifetime attachment to the original edition but of course quite expected the new updated sixty volume hardback edition to be just a fraction out of even my book buying league.
That I thought would be that as we were also told of expensive online subscription packages and restricted access.So my delight was complete when I discovered free online access by UK library ticket number and suddenly the doors were opened and I was in.
I've been lurking in there ever since. Manna from heaven for those of us who yearn for occasional access to a well-stocked academic library but find it denied unless we can actually prove we are studying, as if we ever stop.There's plenty of free content too and you can also sign up to have a Life of the Day sent daily to your inbox
I keep the link on my toolbar and head over to the Oxford DNB on a very regular basis so I was intrigued to hear about a new series from Oxford University Press based on biographical extracts from the dictionary.
Pick Up Someone Interesting Today says the publicity info  and these neat and perfect little pocket size biographies will be a godsend for anyone who either doesn't have access to the online edition or doesn't want to print out miles of paper copy.
Eminently readable, rigorously checked for accuracy and now helpfully indexed and sporting eye-catching cartoon style cover designs by John Holder.Those large heads on smaller bodies give the series a slightly amusing and accessible feel as well as a coherent and recognisable look, you'll spot these a mile away.
I've read Queen Victoria in readiness for my 19th Century rehab and am now nicely up to speed on "the one constant feature of the nineteenth century political scene", Albert the love of her life, her offspring, her moods, her involvement in politics, that John Brown chap, the mourning, what went in the coffin with the deceased Queen and the fact that "she was not mad...she was simply sad".
In size very like that invaluable A Very Short Introduction series which covers just about everything and soon to extend to one entitled Bestsellers by John Sutherland. "Lifting the lid on the bestseller industry...examining what makes a book into a bestseller and what separates bestsellers from canonical fiction", can't wait.

Woman at Point Zero

The Islamic reading project still in slow progress and I have now had my introduction to the fabulous writing of Nawal El Saadawi.
I knew the name, not the facts.
Born in Egypt in 1931, unusually for a woman Nawal El Saadawi received an education on a par with that of her brothers and graduated from Cairo Medical School as a psychiatrist in 1955. As Director of Public Health Education she held a prestigious place in the Egyptian government which she lost as a result of political pressure in 1972 eventually finidng herself imprisoned in 1981 for criticising the one-party rule of President Anwar Sadat. Released one month after Sadat's assassination in 1982, Nawal El Saadawi has maintained a high profile in Egyptian politics against all the odds.
Through her writing people like me can get a true idea of what life has been like for women during these years and it is some of the simplest, most powerful reading you could ever hope to find.By simple I mean there are no flourishes, no flowery bits setting out to impress, this is pure words on the page = this is how it is.
You are in the cell, sitting on the floor listening to a woman talking about her life. A woman who makes no excuses, asks for no special dispensations just rationally and objectively tells her story.
Woman at Point Zero translated by Sherif Hatata (who I assume is the same Sherif Hatata who is Nawal El Saadawi's second husband) tells the remarkable life story of Firdaus recounted the night before her execution for the murder of her pimp.
Part true part fiction and as Miriam Cooke says in her introduction
"what matters is that it unfolds a universal tragedy...a place of pain that is utterly particular to the players but also universal"
Firdaus slowly recounts a life of abuse that inexorably drove her to a life of prostitution and eventually to murder but she walks to her death fearlessly courageous, taller and prouder.
In telling the story of Firdaus Nawal El Saadawi exposes the lies and hypocrisy that have blighted her life and in witnessing the final moments of Firdaus's life emerged with
" a need to challenge and to overcome those forces that deprive human beings of their right to live, to love and to real freedom"
There is nothing but nothing else I can say about this book because actually there is too much to say for which there are no more words.
It's another must read and many thanks to Zed Books for a book which I doubt, once read, anyone will ever forget.

Dahl-a-day

Short story collections have defeated me on many occasions in the past as you know.
I made such a good start with Flannery O'Connor recently and things were zipping along nicely, a story a day while the bath was running, another over a cup of tea in the morning.
Individual microcosms of life in the Deep South and then I had a problem.
I came across a short story that wasn't a short story, it was more a small novella and I couldn't read it in the time it took to fill the bath, even slowing the taps to a trickle. Suddenly it wasn't a short story any more, it was like any other book.
So I lost my way and haven't returned.
I loved what I read but my Flannery moment has temporarily passed, Clare Wigfall has been in and sorted me out and now I'm onto Roald.
Collected Stories by Roald Dahl arrived in the most wantable-must have Everyman's Library edition with silky ribbon.
Having read the introduction I was intrigued all over again by Roald and back in Form Vc's classroom as the one copy of Kiss Kiss doing the rounds was being fought over. The school library held nothing so interesting and it was something I read in the introduction to the Everyman collection that made me realise why.
We were the generation of Marty Feldman and Monty Python humour, we swooped on it and embraced it wholeheartedly. Our lives revolved around it and to miss an episode was to find yourself living on another planet at school the next day.
Why is everyone walking funny?
Dead parrots? Pining for the fjords?
Dead bishop on the landing? Bruce? Lumberjacks?
Jeremy Treglown's introduction suggests this about Roald Dahl
" the moral revenges of his fiction bring an enjoyable ruthless comic order to a confusing world"
and then
"Dahl's effects often involve making readers uncomfortable about going along with what they are enjoying.His work is part of the mid twentieth-century revival of gothic, particularly the vogue for 'sick humour'"
Sick humour, there you have it and we adored it from within the tight and constricting stays of the 1960's girl's Grammar school environment, where to rebel meant trimming your velour hat with pinking shears and folding it into four when it got soaking wet in the rain to make it look as tatty as possible.
Wearing the brim down would take you to the very brink of risky behaviour.
Straw boaters in summer loathsome and much less vulnerable to attack and customisation, there was no known way to rebel over a straw boater unless you followed Marjorie Smith's example and allowed it to blow under the wheels of a 408 double decker bus.
If I've embarrassed a child today then I should do the same to myself, this picture should convey what I was up against and yes, it did give me a terrible headache.
So a Dahl-a-Day is the current way and I'll report back on how the sick humour stands up some forty years later, bearing in mind that we now have plenty more to compare it with.

Happy Birthday to...

It's my favourite blog event, yes here it is, Embarrass a Child Day again and so a happy 22nd birthday to the Gamekeeper, the baby of the family but now actually the tallest.
These the very olden days when we went back to the local maternity home and were cossetted and pampered for a whole ten days post-delivery.Here is Baby GK during Week One, 8lbs 6ozs and displaying those enormous hands and feet.
 

And then five years later and his first day at school and this the day that I came home to that empty house for the very first time.

Ears on Wheels 2 : I take Pattie out for the day

No sooner had Clarissa Dickson Wright eased herself out of my car than I had a new guest.
Into the passenger seat like a shot leapt Pattie Boyd and we sped round all day whilst she recounted the highs and lows of the rock chick life, reading her autobiography Wonderful Today, written with the assistance of Penny Junor and published by Headline Review.
Funnily enough there were remarkable similarities between some aspects of Pattie's life and Clarissa's, plus it was revealed that Eric (Clapton) and Clarissa followed the same Minnesota rehab programme.
Pattie also the victim of an unsettling childhood, a degree of abuse and much farming out to boarding schools where she was at her happiest. Both she and Clarissa also found a comforting refuge in cooking and you begin to wonder whether this is about feeding the starving soul as much as providing something for which others will always be grateful and be likely to praise and thank you? Everyone needs to be needed and good cooking is a surefire way of achieving success.
Who can tell, but I was fascinated to hear about Pattie's love for and subsequent marriage to Beatle George Harrison whilst stuck in a terrible traffic snarl up in Launceston again (me, not Pattie). Her life at the cutting edge of the 60's social scene, as a model for Honey magazine initially, particularly impressed me.
Honey was the first grown up magazine I read after years of Bunty, Judy and June & Schoolfriend so I probably spent a lot of time wondering why I couldn't look like Pattie.Lack of long blonde hair and endless legs come to mind as the first problems to be overcome, quickly followed by an unremarkable facial bone structure.
Pattie travelled to India and coaxed The Beatles into the whole meditation thing and some of the finest love songs have been written in tribute to her.
Something by George Harrison one of the memorable early ones.
Wooed and courted (well,chased actually) by Eric Clapton whilst still married to George and torn though she was Pattie made the decision to go and live with the man they called God, eventually marrying him and garnering two more tribute songs in the process, Layla and Wonderful Tonight. Pattie's sister meanwhile was living with someone from Fleetwood Mac so the attraction to rock stars obviously a family trait.
Sadly, thanks to an excess of everything likely to compromise liver function, it all went pear shaped again and Pattie had to rebuild a life of her own out of the shadow of rock stars.
Thankfully she's done it despite seemingly rather miserly divorce settlements from the boys (surely you should be able to claim some of the song royalties if they're about you?) We'd ironed out all the problems of being tall and beautiful and sought after by the rich and famous by the end of the day and Pattie was sounding fulfilled and happy, in fact quite chipper by the time we landed back at base and we'd had a great reminisce through the 1960's.
We had a fair old sing-song on the way round, I did that air guitar solo bit off Layla while Pattie changed the gears for me and steered us round the bends, I was probably showing off a bit just to prove that we all have a little of the wild child in us.
Heaven knows what will happen when I have Eric in the car soon.
If he's going to look at me like that I might just have to sit old Slowhand and his Stratocaster on the back seat of my Ford Fiesta if we're to get around in one piece.
But hold onto your hats, next week it's Bill...

The Visible World

I'd never heard of Mark Slouka which is not surprising given that he is a Professor at the University of Chicago, and a Creative Writing one at that, and I live a few thousand miles away. A bit of background digging and I discover that he was warning about the perils of the virtual world back in the late 1990's.He has since been the subject of some heated online debate over his Creative Writing tenure and the fact it failed to materialize at the University of Columbia.Grumpy Old Bookman was onto that case last year and Mark Slouka's ex-students were not happy bunnies either.
He must certainly be wishing we'd all heeded his advice and paid less attention to computers.
So I'm not sure how he'll feel, should he stumble across it, about my thoughts on his latest novel The Visible World residing on a blog.
But let's ignore all that and take this book, published by Portobello, on its merits and actually to me they are manifold.
First things first, this is a nice squarish book and another sepia cover with those dashes of colour inserted to catch the eye, but thankfully this one gentle enough to do the business.
As soon as this arrived I wanted to read it.
As a child of Czech refugees Mark Slouka seems to have taken a subject close to home in his hauntingly good tripartite novel which is clearly described as memoir, intermezzo and novel.It all feels very mittel-European in tone and pace and we love that here.
Ostensibly the central story is a love triangle between three characters caught up in the wartime murder of Reinhard Heydrich, better known as The Butcher of Prague.A bungled assassination attempt but the job finished off by a bout of fulminating septicaemia and devastating reprisals against the Czech people resulted, so a great deal of fact mixed in with this fiction.
Add in some more facts; Mark Slouka's parents were involved in the Resistance during the war and he grew up in the exiled Czech community in New York and I found myself slipping constantly in and out of seamless bouts of both truth and fiction.
I always home in on books offering an accurate child's point of view with all it's half-glimpsed events only partially understood by child and reader alike and shot through with that innate sixth sense that children have that something's up.
Eve Green by Susan Fletcher always comes to mind as another book that pulls this off well.
Mark Slouka get's it right several times over as he offers different stages in his child's growing awareness as we meet him in the first person narrative aged seven, then nine and so on.Layer builds upon layer and all peppered with those little details that children notice and remember; slowly we piece together what may have happened at the same pace and not a step faster.The whole is brought together in the third part of the book, the novel, and as is often the case with me, a book suddenly glides effortlessly from a good read into a great one.There is a powerful turning point in The Visible World, the solid foundations have been laid and then suddenly you know you are reeled in until the final page.
There is also one of the best descriptions I have read of a subjugated people, the Czech people are suffering mercilessly at the hands of the Nazis

"Validate the other's disgust for you without encouraging it; play the mongrel without incurring the kick...reshaping yourself to survive...It made for an interesting problem: the better you were at the role, the more talent you had for it, the more likely it was that you'd live - and the more likely that you'd lose yourself along the way."

Head here for A Conversation with Mark Slouka  and his own personal thoughts about the book.
Meanwhile many thanks to Portobello because here's a book I don't think I'd have found in a million years, one I'm delighted to have read, and with apologies to Mark Slouka but any publicity must surely be better than none?

Wood Green Bookshop

Open a Bookshop, what could possibly go wrong?
Two blokes, one bookshop, no idea.
I have plenty of links to Bookseller Blogs over here >>>>> and I take great and vicarious enjoyment in reading them because secretly working in a bookshop has to be the best job ever.
Even more I love following the birth of a new bookshop.
Mark and Nicky at Mostly Books kept the most enlightening blog about theirs and I followed every step, offering all my helpful advice for the labour and the birth along the way, don't wrap books and eat Cornish Pasties at the same time, don't stick huge irremovable electronic tracking device patches in the back of every single book etc etc.
So it's good to see another bookshop being hatched and a blog to go with it and this time the birth is to be in Wood Green, London (lads, lads what's wrong with West Devon? All that fresh air and lovely scenery? ) and to replace the rather short-sighted closure of Waterstones there recently.
I didn't think I knew where Wood Green was, except when I looked it up to get my London bearings it would seem I must almost have lived there but clearly didn't take much notice.
It was the 1970's and we lived in a student nurse flat in Haringey right near the dog stadium, so the only time we ended up in Wood Green was if we fell asleep on the Piccadilly line tube after night duty and missed our stop at Manor House.If we were really out for the count then we knew nothing until Cockfosters at the end of the line and that happened more than once.
Hell hath no fury like ex-Waterstone's staff dumped it would seem and Simon and Tim mean business.You can read a guest post over at Me and My Big Mouth.
Wishing them good luck and of course we'll all be urging them on towards opening day, meanwhile the search is on for premises.

It's Jam time

We have blackberries.
No, not those mobile phone contraptions, real ones, thousands of them and all the size of golf balls.
I'm hanging my head in shame because last week it was the Village Show and we entered zilch, nada, absolutely nothing, not a bean, not a carrot, not a sock, not a quilt.
This is terrible after the last two years of triumph but the thinking was that we must let others have a chance, plus the Tinker spent the entire year worried sick he might be burgled and that silver cup would be stolen.
But had we been ready in time I think we could have entered Bookhound's Blackberry and Apple Jam.
This is the very real thing and something of a tradition.
We don't indulge in an excess of measuring or temperature taking, it's all thrown in the preserving pan and quickly up to that rolling boil followed by the test-for-puckering moment and it's done.
For the non-jammers amongst you, this is when you gaze at a sample blob of jam on a saucer for a minute or two and then gently push it to see if it puckers. Apparently this year we were a bit premature on the test-for-puckering and had to go for the re-boil.
As I walked in the door the carnage in the kitchen was just being hosed down, I suspect it had looked a bit like an abbatoir a few minutes before and there will be a few intransigent sticky patches on the floor and the Aga, and strangely up near the ceiling for a few weeks yet.
There can be advantages to going out to work and just leaving them to get on with it, if you saw it in progress you'd probably be hyperventilating.
As this is boy's own you get sticky jars, wonky wax discs, none of those frilly fabric lid covers all neatly done with pinking shears.Cellophane and rubber bands will do fine because it'll be gone in a flash and no labels, you just have to guess the contents.
But I bet every WI judge in the land would have been clutching at the man's apron strings begging for his secret recipe and his method.
As it is they're not getting a look in because we're going to eat it all ourselves.

Homeless old bag finds happiness at last.

Though bookhound usually goes off on the trail of books occasionally he returns home with something else entirely and so I'm never surprised and usually delighted with some of his finds.
So this bag was £1 in a local charity shop.

Not a lot of use as a bag it has to be said, but open it up and here's a sight to delight the knitters among you.Someone's lifetime of knitting and crochet in there.

The non-knitters won't see the joy in this at all, the rest of you would have loved the happy time I spent at the kitchen table sorting through this lot.

No of course I don't need them all, but that's not the point. Some things just have to be rescued and someone has to do it, remember the lace-making muddle I had to airlift to safety last year?

Souvenir Press

You may remember that I wondered whether Ernest Hecht of Souvenir Press would ever forgive me for that cheap jibe about Arsenal football club a while back, well thankfully he did (and he's made one about  Plymouth Argyle in return! )and while I was in London a few weeks ago it was my complete pleasure to stop by and meet him up in his Souvenir Press eyrie opposite The British Museum.
When the Souvenir Press catalogue arrived I was completely mesmerised by such a wide-ranging list.There can't be a single subject that they haven't published a book about and, to my utter amazement, many that I have been unwittingly using and referring too for many years in my day job.It was a pleasure and privilege to talk to Ernest for a couple of hours and browse and talk about the books, so this the first of several posts bringing some unusual books off the Souvenir Press shelves.
The search for the unusual book is unceasing this end and to find so many in one place was quite a treat.Today a bit of a work-related selection.
Vimala McLure for example is responsible for the great resurgence in Infant Massage around the world, establishing the International Association which organises much of the training and with whom I completed mine about six years ago.I rate this as one of the most beneficial skills I have acquired in thirty-five years of nursing practice, few days pass when I don't demonstrate some aspect of the process to new parents.It is a perfect tool for containing and reducing anxiety, the babies love it and you have immediately equipped parents with a useful and very rewarding skill.
Well the handbook that I learnt from and constantly refer to was published by Ernest Hecht at Souvenir.
Then there was Michel Odent.
He of the natural childbirth and water birth school, so radical and controversial back in the mid 1980's but now standard practice at many home and hospital deliveries.I have heard Michel Odent speak, he is a quietly charismatic man and his gentle French accent alone would convince me to swim the channel if it helped the birth process.So imagine my surprise when I discover that it was Ernest Hecht who brought his work to the forefront here in the UK.
There is no question it was controversial and certainly there were aspects of Michel Odent's approach that many felt needed to be moderated slightly.But there was no doubting his passion for a new philosophy of childbirth and we have Michel Odent to thank for taking the flak and defending his theory that mothers play the key role in the birth experience.The introduction to the latest edition offers a balanced and sensible evidence-based approach that encompasses both natural, assisted and caesarian births. All have to be considered as legitimate and necessary but it's the timing of the decisions that is crucial.
Kangaroo Babies,a Different Way of Mothering by Nathalie Charpak is more of the same; innovation that becomes best practice.Kangaroo care is now used in many neonatal units again as standard and I constantly recommend it at home for agitated newborns. It builds on the skin to skin contact between mother and baby as soon as possible after birth and now for a much longer period. In the ensuing weeks I'm always telling fraught dads to tuck crying babies down inside their shirts, next to their skin, it really does work and there is strong physiological evidence to back up the benefits.
To see the shelves at Souvenir Press lined with all the books that have become definitive texts on bereavement, depression, cognitive therapy, inner child therapy and so much more, all now watchwords in the "trade" was like a journey through thirty years of working in GP surgeries.
Finally one that I shall be reading cover to cover because it seems to remain the perennial child-rearing problem out there next to tantrums and toilet training,The Sleep Book for Tired Parents Help for Solving Children's Sleep Problems by Rebecca Huntley.I devour every new sleep book that comes out because anything else that might help the beleagured millions has to be good news.

Sunday Confessions on Thursday

I do have a lovely pile of books to share this week and, now that you've met Jim you can see what the poor man is going through.
A few biographies finding their way in and Bernard Malamud A Writer's Life by Philip Davis has me interested on several fronts.Firstly Philip Davis (if I have the right one) has just taken over from his wife Jane Davis as the editor of The Reader, another of my literary magazine subscription addictions, this one published by The University of Liverpool.The Reader hits a consistently high standard with its articles and I've enjoyed it for many years. I can't say the same about Bernard Malamud because he is but a known name to me. I have never read any of his writing because I tend to pigeon-hole him in the Roth-Bellow department and possibly erroneously as boy's stuff and not for me.
I should know better by now. So here's an interesting angle. I would normally read a literary biography on the back of enjoyment of the subject's writing and thus feel I almost knew them already. The biography would flesh out the real person so this time I'm going to approach it the other way round. Will Philip Davis (or anyone else stopping by here) convince me to read Malamud?
Also from Oxford Blasphemy in the Christian World A History by David Nash.Nothing like extending my horizons and, not least to start with, an understanding of exactly what blasphemy is.
What a seemingly dry (to me) but actually fascinating subject. I keep picking this up and dipping into it and suddenly an hour's gone by and I'm deeply into the arguments that raged around The Life of Brian.I think this rates as one of those academic books that could be read and enjoyed by anyone who fancied some new territory. Or perhaps you're all blasphemy experts and it's just me who didn't really have a clue.
Another biography which does indeed look fascinating My Father, Reith of the BBC by Marista Leishman, Reith's daughter and published by St Andrew Press, John Reith the man credited with the creation of the BBC and I can't do better than Stephen Fry's assessment of this book.
"The dark varnish covering the poular portrait of a patriarchal, dour and humourless Reith has been removed to reveal the twinkle and style of a much more interesting and important man".So far John Reith is shaping up to be quite a dictator both at work and at home and his daughter's perspective, as a sibling to John Reith's other child, the BBC, is a compelling one.
Also from St Andrew Press, one of a new series of Notes on famous composers and I plumped for Mendelssohn.I like the idea of "invaluable erudition, wit and accuracy, laced with racy anecdotal evidence" and though I may be an opera dummy I do love a wide range of classical music but with very little understanding of it. I shall test run this and let you know whether I emerge knowing more beyond the violin concerto and the Hebrides and has it made me want to extend my listening? Also a little book of poetry by Kenneth C. Steven. I thought Iona would make a good reading to the accompaniment of Mendelssohn
Alternative Medicine A History by Roberta Bivins has made a very timely appearance after my course of acupuncture courtesy of the NHS "do patients seek hope, holism or just the thrill of rebellion?" Am I what the world of mainstream medicine labels the "irrational consumer" ? (how very dare they!) I've had a good browse through this one and it's well worth a read if this is of interest.
Many thanks to Valerie Trueblood for a copy of her novel Seven Loves , to Irving Warner for a proof of The War Journal of Lila Ann Smith, both from the US, and to Lisa Glass for Prince Rupert's Teardrop which didn't have to travel quite so far , just up the road from Cornwall. More on these soon if they hit the mark with dgr scribbles.
And that spiral-bound book sitting on top of the pile? A proof copy of The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill and I'm saving this until the fire is lit and the curtains are drawn which won't be very long.I am the dummy that asked if this was proof or real because suddenly spiral bound fiction seemed like really quite a good idea.

The Family That Couldn't Sleep - Portobello Books

Ever the one to be pleased to hear from independent publishers with an interesting list, I was delighted to get my hands on some titles from PortobelloBooks.
The list looks wide-ranging and already I'm two books into the three that arrived and have a few more on request.
The one that I really have to tell you about first to get it off my mind is The Family That Couldn't Sleep Unravelling a Venetian Medical Mystery by D.T.Max.
I have to get it done and dusted because to be honest it's terrifying.
I was glued to this on the morning it arrived and though I haven't read every single word, I've read most of it and what I have read quite unnerved me.
You get immune when you work in a doctor's surgery.Not blase but you need some defence mechanisms in place.Terrible things happen daily and you quickly learn not to think that the unusual patient's symptoms, resulting in a rare and unpleasant diagnosis and discussed incredulously over coffee, actually seem to mirror a whole host of your own that you've just been ignoring or keeping quiet about.
It would be quite easy to have self-diagnosed something rare/fatal by lunchtime every day, imagine it will likely fulminate through the afternoon and you'll doubtless be dead by teatime and with a whole load of records not written up.Trust me, they'd call you back from the dead to write up records.
So I'm quite good at coping with it all in a book, but the unthinkable tragedy of this one just chilled me to the bone,

"The first symptoms begin after just a few nights without sleep, with shaking, sweating and overwhelming anxiety. Several weeks on the insomniac is unsteady on his feet, wracked by fevers, and drifting in an out of delirium as the body's vital organs begin to fail. Finally, after months of agonising open-eyed deterioration, the victim falls into a state of exhaustion resembling a coma and mercifully dies."

Fatal Familial Insomnia and no, I'd never heard of it either.
Now don't panic, it's an incredibly rare, inherited disease which has afflicted one noble Venetian family since the eighteenth century and only a handful of other families worldwide.The cruelty is the fact that it strikes at random once child-bearing years are over, and as an autosomal dominant mutation there is a 50% chance of a child getting it too.
The family agreed to undergo testing to aid the research and though the names of family members who will succumb is known in the laboratories the family agreed they didn't want to be told.
So this all feels quite far and distant from the rest of us until Max reveals that the research has also identified that this is all caused by a rogue protein known as a prion and then suddenly you think it's right on the doorstep because so was CJD or Mad Cow Disease a few years ago.
Having read in tragic detail the implications for the Venetian family, it's therefore tricky to hold your nerve when you read Max's investigation into that whole sorry saga here in the UK. We all remember it well, the incredulity as more and more was revealed and Max can barely disguise his scorn for what went on.
It does not make for comfortable reading and I'll own up I had to skip bits and when I finally reached the end and the hope of some comfort there wasn't a great deal to be had. Max himself suffers from an undiagnosed neurological disease and recounts his own story.
All in all there is not a lot of joy in a book like this, but the truth is there to be told and someone has to tell it so that someone else can read it. The research looks impressive enough and you have to applaud D.T.Max for taking on a subject so close to his personal situation, it can't have been easy.
Thankfully another book from that pile, The Visible World by Mark Slouka was waiting to effect a rescue and I was quickly and gratefully esconced in wartime Prague, but many thanks to Portobello Books for a highly challenging read.

Ears on Wheels. I take Clarissa out for the day

It seems silly to waste the hours and hours I now spend driving halfway round Devon and bits of Cornwall with my new sprawling caseload, so in between some fiction, I've settled on biographies as the perfect stop-start listening and every so often a new guest accompanying me on my travels.
So this last week I eased Clarissa into my Ford Fiesta and off we went. One Fat Lady as in Clarissa Dickson Wright (of Two Fat Ladies fame) reading her autobiography Spilling the Beans.
Clarissa and I trolled along the lanes, she waited in the car while I hopped out and did my visits, and on and off I listened intently to an account of an early life clouded by great swathes of horror.
The youngest daughter of a top surgeon who once saved the life of a young Saddam Hussein, but a violent and sadistic man with a penchant for alcohol, who inflicted huge emotional and physical pain on those who tried to love him. The respected public figure who led a completely different life away from the spotlight.
The effects on Clarissa predictable, by adulthood her standard tipple four double gins and a dash of tonic, but less predictable her journey back from the alcoholic brink all recounted with unassuming honesty and, at the most difficult moments, the most miniscule faltering in her voice (or perhaps I'd driven over a pothole?) Clarissa must be a walking testimony to the durable qualities of the human liver, many of her friends not so fortunate and she has followed the Alcoholics Anonymous programme for years now.Regaining her love and respect for life one of the heartening outcomes of Spilling the Beans.
On the strength of all this I decided not to stop for a pub lunch with her and so we did the usual and parked up in the farm shop car park (the only place I can get a mobile signal and they have nice toilets, all community nurses know exactly where the next lot of nice toilets are) and Clarissa kept talking while I ate my lunch and checked my messages.
The listening-blogging experience very different from the reading-blogging one.
I couldn't keep screeching to a halt to write down a gem of a quote or a reminder to myself to mention something and in the end I decided this is not the best way to review audiobooks.
Much more of an overall impression will be the order of the day, but last week was a memorable one in the company of a fine and humble lady who has much to share and shares it willingly and with a self-deprecating voice that you can't help but warm to.
I was particularly perturbed to read a review of this one over the weekend suggesting Clarissa might be telling porkies.
Now perhaps I am a naive listener because this had never even occurred to me and still doesn't.Yes indeed, plenty of it beyond belief, but real life is exactly that and more and Clarissa has certainly survived some of the worst, but also some of the funniest it can throw at anyone.She does bring new meaning to "seeing the floor of the House of Commons", actually the bit behind the Speaker's Chair, but who with is a well-kept secret.
As the listening progressed road works and traffic lights became unusually welcome, the standard Launceston town centre gridlock an absolute pleasure and the several miles stuck behind a tractor and several tons of straw up around Bratton Clovelly a complete joy.
Clarissa's welcome to hitch a ride in my Ford Fiesta any day of the week.

9/11

It's that day again. 9/11 a sad one for so many but a happy one for us and there I was last year rooting around the house for those hidden pearls as we celebrated thirty years. I'm not sure of the reward for thirty-one years but we are looking forward to lunch at Hotel Endsleigh later in the week to celebrate, that'll do nicely.

The Loudest Sound and Nothing

I mentioned The Loudest Sound and Nothing by Clare Wigfall as one of my sanity reads in the midst of Booker madness and as today is launch party day it seems an apposite moment to post my thoughts.
You may remember I loved the cover, some hate it, but in this world of ever more complex and garish look-at-me jackets this one has been quite a restful treat.
I am not the greatest lover of the short story in the world, in fact I give up on more collections of these than I finish. Once I get a whiff of that "this was a novel going nowhere" aroma, disillusionment sets in and I lose the will to carry on.I was therefore pleasantly suprised to find a collection that caught my interest on the first page, sustained it through to the last page and definitely had me wanting to read more.Each one beautifully complete and the sense that you had just read something as fulfilling as a 300 page novel.
These stories take you everywhere, across the boundaries of time, place and circumstance to the individual worlds of people "all searching for something missing". Nothing is quite what it seems and thus is life revealed to be the complex and strange set of events that most of us know it to be, but rarely is that rendered so carefully on the pages of a book.
Clare Wigfall has written her opinions about the short story here and as I read her thoughts, that each of these story titles held a specific memory for her, where she was when she wrote it, what was happening in her life, what she was reading when she wrote, it was but a hop and skip for me to the obvious analogy with making a patchwork quilt.
As you piece together all the separate fabrics to make a whole and then stitch what is happening in your life into a quilt, then it would seem perhaps a writer does the same with a collection of short stories and doubtless with a novel too. I'd never thought of it quite like that before and, now that I have, I think I am a born-again short story collection reader with a passion and will be looking for many more.
There's been precious little quilting on here of late (sorry been a bit busy) so here's that little wall hanging, 6" blocks and names based on the titles of books I was reading at the time, now tacked to its layers of batting and backing and marked up ready for a winter of quilting ahead.
Plus below, a list of the names of the blocks and the books the block names represented for me, not always obvious unless you've read the book it has to be said (starting top left and moving clockwise)
Lady of the Lake - The Extra Large Medium by Helen Slavin (I love that little piece of chocolate brown in there, perfect for drawing in the eye)
Wedding Ring - Adam Bede by George Eliot
Cat's Cradle - The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill
Magic Cross - My Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Ocean Wave - The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch
Maple Star - The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
Silent Star - The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Father's Choice - Room For a Single Lady by Clare Boylan

All that jazz with a bit of folk thrown in

I really should stick to writing about things I think I know about so why I'm mentioning jazz I have absolutely no idea.
I rarely venture into music on here, possibly the occasional nod to Rachel Unthank and The Winterset or Joni Mitchell.
That reminds me there's an excellent, nay brilliant new Rachel CD out, The Bairns, and I'm loving it. Gutsy, folky, Geordie stuff, themes of drink and violence interspersed with lullabies and songs of love and parting but the music is stellar, the vocals pure and clear and the rhythms splendid. I particularly like the percussion which is "Becky in her high heels". I first heard them singing on Woman's Hour and have been hooked ever since, very unusual harmonies, so Rachel, Becky, Belinda and Niopha, the girls done good.
Then there's a little fusion CD coming up which I'll have on pre-order, Herbie Hancock and River The Joni Letters, a tribute to Joni Mitchell, and I've heard a few tracks already on The Jazz which is my latest digital channel to head for when Classic FM does too much opera. Joni translates well into just about any genre, in fact I'd probably even go and see Joni The Opera if it ever happened.
Has it?
So there we are, I'm in jazz territory and this all started because I was listening to Jamie Cullum's programme on The Jazz. He mentioned the influence of pianist Roy Budd and then played a couple of tracks from the 1971 Michael Caine film Get Carter for which Roy wrote the score.
I was transported back to the early seventies and me at sixteen having moved to a new Saturday job. I think I've mentioned before I had graduated from Woolworth's to being a waitress in a teashop in Carshalton High Street, but I must add a bit more detail. Valerie, my fellow waitress and I, served morning coffee, lunches and afternoon teas, worked like trojans and used to smell strangely of greasy, tainted lard down to the roots of our hair, in fact oozed it from the pores of our skin, by the time we'd finished.
The teashop was run by Joan and Mr H and a kitchen inspection now would have the place closed down with immediate effect.
Joan and Mr H lived together but more than that we knew not, nor asked nor cared.
A moustachioed Mr H held court and ruled his empire very sternly from behind his till. We were NEVER allowed to ring anything up on the till, it was his and his alone and he assured us that only he could fathom its depths.
Joan was the cook and a waste-not-want-not food recycler extraordinaire.
There was absolutely not a thing that couldn't be saved and heated up again the next day...or the day after, either kitchen left-overs or, I'm sorry to say, left-overs from plates...well a whole sausage is a whole sausage after all.
Joan was also a chain smoker and the drooping ash probably added that little extra something to the flavour of the gravy because it happened regularly. One batch of gravy often lasted a week I'm sure, because let's face it why throw away all that left over from the tables?
Just mash in the skin and boil it all up and away you go.Cabbage could go on for ever.
Joan did however teach me a skill I possess to this day (but rarely use), how to balance a loaded tray on one hand whilst serving with the other, and she made me do it from Day One.
No messing.
So I always looked quite the part when a young and very charming Roy Budd used to come in for afternoon tea and cakes.
The plate of six assorted cakes served on a doily, two usually eaten and the rest put back in the window.
The cakes were frankly embarrassingly worse than the gravy and heaven knows how old they were, or how many trips in and out of the window they'd had. Joan made them all, cream horns with confectioner's cream + fag ash + bright red unspecified jam that was several generations removed from its berry of origin, madeleines + fag ash + liberally sprinkled with lots of dessicated coconut, bright pink meringues et al.People used to come in and buy them by the box full (the folding of the cake boxes another skilled task that we were not allowed to do) and you really wanted to say "I shouldn't if I were you" but of course never did.
That said we didn't really know who Roy Budd was (and actually perhaps you don't either) because Valerie was a die-hard Mott the Hoople fan and I was besotted with Simon and Garfunkel, but Joan and Mr H adored him and treated him like royalty.
But he always left us a very generous tip so Valerie and I loved Roy Budd days.

Meet Jim

Postman Pat Jim Postman Pat Jim
  Postman Pat Jim and his black and white cat, here's a picture of him
  Early in the morning, Just as day is dawning,
  He picks up all the post bags in his van.
 
  Postman Pat,Jim Postman Pat, Jim
  Postman Pat Jim and his black and white cat, here's a picture of him
  All the birds are singing, and the day is just beginning.
  Pat  Jim feels he's a really happy man.
 
  Everybody knows his bright red van,
  All his friends will smile as he waves to greet them,
  Maybe .Every day.. You can never be sure, You can always be sure
  There'll be knock...[knock knock] Ring [ring ring]
  Letters Hundreds of books through your door.
 
  [Hee Hee]
 
  Postman Pat, Jim Postman Pat,Jim
  Postman Pat Jim and his black and white cat, here's a picture of him
  All the birds are singing, and the day is just beginning.
  Pat Jim feels he's a really happy man.

And as you can see he really does have to make a special and very big effort to get here every day, there's us just left of centre, in the bottom right hand corner of that field, poor Jim.

Going into rehab

I'm feeling like I just want to talk jibberish today.
All that improving reading has taken its toll, I've overdosed and will need to go onto reducing amounts of contemporary fiction and then I'm going to have to check into rehab. I've had a place booked in the 19th century for several weeks and this has become an autumn tradition.
As surely as shortlist follows longlist so cometh the falling of the leaves, the burgeoning of the sloes and the departure of the swiftswallowhousemartins.They are our constant companions here and have reared their usual two little flocks in the verandah nests.They guard and protect their territory fiercely and even the cats have been too terrified to go out there.
The day the birds leave always feels still and silent and makes me feel quite melancholy.
But it also means that The X Factor is back, Strictly Come Dancing isn't far off and it's time to cast on and knit.
I have been busy gathering supportive assistance for my retreat to the 19th century and wondering where to go this time round.Nothing stirs the mind like a stack of pristine books and my love of Oxford World's Classics remains undimmed from the set texts of Open University days.I've grown attached to the covers, the paper quality, the chronologies and the Select Bibliographies which have set me off on many inspiring reading trails over the years.
Then there are the introductions.
Sufficiently detailed to challenge and allow for some new thinking (and always read after the book here) but not so far off into the academic stratosphere that I can't understand them.
I feel I know my way around an OWC, they are like old friends.
I've been plucking a few off the shelves and I'm going to read them all with a bit of The Moral Imagination in mind because Gertrude Himmelfarb has certainly made her mark here.I expect in the annals of literary theory we're now in the phase of deconstructionist post-moral imagination because time moves on in a week, but this is an informative  and readable book.
So it's Bronte time.
The Letters of Charlotte Bronte have been manna in amongst Booker madness and I'm going to have a reread of a Bronte that I haven't touched in years, Emily's Wuthering Heights plus Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which I've never read. Last year I read Agnes Grey for the first time.
Then I must head for my annual By George read.
George Eliot and I are firm friends but I still have some to read, last year Adam Bede and a re-read after forty years of Silas Marner. This year I hanker after Daniel Deronda and may squeeze in The Mill on the Floss if I'm up to it.
I also have another tiny little treasure of a book from Oxford University Press which was my acupuncture treatment book of the week and is proving an excellent foundation for my rehab, more soon.
That's a whole lot of reading with much potential for excess of initial enthusiasm leading to an eventual slump so I will spread it all over several months, because last year I got hyper-Gaskellitis over Christmas after too much Elizabeth so I must be careful.

Philippa Gregory invites you all to...

An interesting offer for readers of this blog from publishers Simon & Schuster which I'm very happy to share with you all,

Philippa Gregory Live: Simon & Schuster (US) presents a Global Web Event

Philippa Gregory and her US publishers invite her fans around the world to join her for an unprecedented live web event on Sunday, September 16, 2007 at 7:00 pm (GMT Daylight Time).
Philippa Gregory Live will feature a live simulcast streamed through the Internet of the author speaking to an audience in London. She will discuss her historical research; writing process; her latest novel, The Boleyn Inheritance; the upcoming major motion picture based on The Other Boleyn Girl; her next novel, The Other Queen; and much more.
Throughout the one-and-a-half-hour long event, online attendees will have the opportunity to ask Philippa their own questions and interact with other fans and book clubs. 
We are offering DoveGreyReader fans the chance to attend the live web event and be part of the studio audience at the Mayfair Conference Centre, London. The event is free but seats are limited. Send an email to philippagregorylive@simonandschuster.com with your first and last name in order to request a ticket. One ticket per request only.
If you can’t be there in person, as an online attendee, you'll view a simulcast of Philippa speaking to an audience in London, be able to ask Philippa your own questions and interact with other book clubs and fans.  Register now and you'll receive emails with reminders and special content throughout the summer. Visit www.philippagregorylive.com to register to become part of the online audience. 

Four out of six.

Four out of six not bad, and I'm not even dreadfully disappointed by the inclusions at the expense of my choices.
In the end I was having a huge three-way argument with myself  over Docx-Eng-McEwan and finally Docx won on sheer scope and control.But we love less is more here so no complaints and congratulations to Mohsin Hamid too.
But all that aside I'm truly, madly, deeply and a bit wildly excited for Nicola Barker, Anne Enright, Lloyd Jones and Indra Sinha in particular because I loved each of those books with a passion and knew instantly that they would be on my shortlist.
So the final decision on October 16th will be an unusual one for me, possibly a first, because there's nothing on this shortlist that would have me groaning if it won.John Sutherland's timely and perceptive piece in The Independent last weekend (thanks to Kirsty for the heads up) finally resolving any lingering and frankly misplaced prejudices I may have been harbouring about one book in particular.
So at last we can put The Booker Prize to bed for a few weeks and read something else and I have some real treats in store.

The Bookerthon 2007 longlist finishing line.

There is a very interesting analogy on the blog of Howard Davies, the Chair of this year's Booker Prize judges. He is discussing the final meeting where the long list choices were made

"The atmosphere in the judging room was somewhere between a book club and a maternity ward. What could be more agreeable than a freeform discussion of 110 novels, when you know that everyone else in the room has read them all and - even better - is obliged to display at least a polite interest in your exciting views? The only fly in the conversational ointment is that you are under the cosh to deliver 13 favourites at the end of it all.

Around five o'clock we gave birth, with Ion Trewin as an unlikely bearded midwife"

Well you know what's coming next don't you? How useful is that because I can pick up Howard's theme and run with it.
For anyone who doesn't know this, here in the UK once a baby has been born and the midwife has nurtured them along for about ten days she will ring the health visitor (me) and hand the care of the family over onto that caseload where they stay until they are five years old and off to school.
Now I'd prefer not have thirteen newborns handed over in one go and I'll admit I'd probably do a double take if the midwife was bearded down here in Devon, but if the Booker Prize demands such prolific multiple birthing then who am I to argue?
So what to make of this year's longlist?
Well I've loved it and I've relished the reading challenge. I've grown very fond of this manageable row of books in front of me on my desk. Arguments and cynicism rage about the standard and predictable range of the books with their token gestures towards all corners of life, but as a representative selection of what's out there, and some of it less than obvious, perhaps this list ranks as the one that has spawned a new breed of Booker book.
New breed? Well they are all readable for a start, except that memorable one for me and I think I'm probably off A.N.Wilson's Christmas card list (but I don't think I was ever on it) You wouldn't be disappointed to find yourself stuck on a long train journey with these, in fact several make it worth going on one specially so that you could read them cover to cover.
Some have moved me, some have challenged, some have enthralled and some have made me smile but the moment has come for my shortlist, which is probably more of a wishlist, because I'm well aware that the judges may have an entirely different remit to mine.

Darkmans by Nicola Barker
The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
Self Help by Edward Docx
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Animal's People by Indra Sinha

I think it's interesting that John Self over at Asylum and I have come up with almost identical lists.I doubt either of us expected that and many thanks to John for a great joint reading blogventure. Clicking on the titles will take you to my reviews, clicking on the author will take you to John's.
The Gathering by Anne Enright might be an acquired taste for many (but it was spot on for me the day I picked it up) but I can heartily recommend all of these as good, thought-provoking, enjoyable reads, many with hidden depths but not so hidden that you feel like the billy-no-mates who hasn't been invited to the party.
So we await the judges shortlist with bated breath later today.
As for my winner?
Oh no, if I told you that I'd have to kill you, makes you want to slap people doesn't it?
I shall declare on the day and these and a few more thoughts about  Bookerthon 2007 from dgr on The Bookseller website here.

Bookerthon 2007 : Consolation by Michael Redhill

The very final Bookerthon 2007 review and though you will read this as one post I'm writing it in two instalments as the reading progresses with Consolation by Michael Redhill.A nice dinky bag-sized hard back, floppy pages, good start.
I hear from several sources that this is a book of two halves, gets off to a great shortlist start but slows down about halfway through and then possibly loses its momentum.
Perhaps I'll see this book differently?
Perhaps the slowing down will be a nice rest for me in the middle?
Two narratives are alternating through the book.
The 1990's and David Hollis, fighting a debilitating illness is researching a theory that precious and historic information about Toronto is buried under a prospective building site about to be submerged in concrete. All this rather then end his life "rotting in a mechanical god-damned bed".
The mid 1850's and Jem Hallam, an apothecary recently emigrated alone from the UK and struggling to make his family's fortunes in this fledgling and upcoming Canadian city, "he thought perhaps he could dream his life into existence by writing it down".
I am anxiously following both stories, one of those books that informs you early on about outcomes and you eat your way through the pages to try and piece it all together and just see how it all happened.
Well yes, this certainly felt like a book of two halves and though I wasn't disappointed by the second half the pace certainly slowed as all the explanations for the first half were played out towards a twist that didn't have the impact with me that it should have done, I know why and perhaps you will spot it too when you read this one.
I've never been to Canada, let alone Toronto but, as someone mentioned here in comments, if this is your city then this is your book and will be a must read.Toronto becomes the central character with its muffled voice.

" There is a vast part of this city with mouths buried in it...Mouths capable of speaking to us. But we stop them up with concrete and build over them and whatever it is they wanted to say gets whispered down empty alleys and turned into wind. People need to be given a reason to listen"

That said, the themes translated well for people like me who have only ever done Canada from our armchairs.I am a huge fan of CanLit.
Consolation a book for me about common themes, helplessness and ultimately disappointments, loneliness and exile and probably a whole lot of meaning to be extracted from the emphasis on the photographic image and its permanence, capturing of the essence of the moment and preserving what is so quickly lost. A good review by a Torontonian here and also an interesting interview with the author.
A book worthy of the attention that Booker longlisting offers and a good read but will it fill one of the last few places on my shortlist? Well that's for me to know and you to guess and I HATE it when people say that to me.
All will be revealed tomorrow.

Reality check

It's been strange getting back to the harsh realities of my caseload after a week's bookish annual leave and all the excitement that goes with dipping the occasional toe in the world of publishing.
I wrote a piece for The Bookseller Magazine about why I blog which you can find here. Fortunately I don't work in an environment that reads The Bookseller online or I suspect I would have been in for a fair old bit of leg-pulling about this byline,
"A Devon-based health visitor has become one of the most influential literary figures in the blogosphere, courted by publishers and respected by readers"
It takes a lot to impress the world of medicine and probably only a cure for MRSA will do the trick and I'm nowhere near that at the moment.
There didn't seem to be a great reception committee waiting to strew my path with flowers or pat me on the back as I walked into the surgery nor were they cheering "well done good and faithful health visitor." It was a Monday morning and those are notoriously fraught, so it was swiftly back to the world of constipated babies, tantruming toddlers and tired and weary parents and there's nothing like it all for a reality check.
But keep an eye out because The Bookseller are going to be linking to the dgr Bookerthon reviews over the next few days which surely has to be almost the next best thing to discovering a cure for MRSA?

Bookerthon 2007 - Gifted by Nikita Lalwani

Almost at the finishing line on the Bookerthon and Gifted by Nikita Lalwani has been the book that has held up to the very worst sort of reading attention here at dgr scribbles especially as the cover doesn't blend with our decor at all. Taken to work and read for half an hour over lunch in my car, a bit more here and there, a longer read and few more snippets on a train and then the final push for the last page.
To finish a book uninterrupted is one of life's luxuries and if I know it's unlikely to happen I'll put it down five pages from the end and come back to it rather than spoil that moment. I suspect most writers sweat blood over their beginnings and their endings and I like to take my time and appreciate their efforts.
So how does all this relate to Gifted?
Well I suspect that like me this stop-start approach is how many people have to read and so a book that will stand up to this rigorous testing has to be good.This one is and deserving of the Booker longlist spotlight.Pick it up after a gap and you are immediately back in the flow.
Poor Rumi Vasi is a gifted child, a genius at maths born into an Indian family living in Cardiff .Feeling they have much to prove, her parents start her off young on the fateful course that will catapult her into Oxford at the age of fifteen.Numbers become Rumi's way of life and everything else is sacrificed in their relentless path.
It has to implode sooner or later and the blurb tells you as much.
It is like waiting for a road accident on an icy day, you just know it's going to happen, the question is when and how. Not only that but how will Nikita Lalwani handle the obvious when it does happen making it interesting enough to read?
Well to my mind she handles it very well. I was suddenly racing towards the end of Gifted completely drawn into the family's pain as everything unravelled and willing this to happen or that to happen and then settling for Nikita Lalwani's ending with a degree of relief.
Ever since I read The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig (Pushkin Press) and The Miniature Man by r.muir (Snowbooks) any book that blends some of the plot around a game of chess gets my attention.I always think it's neat and I love shaping up the analogies, bishop taken out = spot the religious debate, pawn strikes = look out for the power of the ordinary man, queen under threat = take cover there's trouble brewing.
Ultimately a sad book and a reflection of so much that can go so wrong with very clever children all bound up in the complexities of cross-cultural differences and the need to excel as a means of proving worth.
Gifted academically doesn't equate with gifted emotionally.
At an emotional level these children develop at just the same rate as everyone else, often with far greater potential to be disturbed because they are thrust into peer groups beyond their chronological age.
It all needs very careful management and Nikita Lalwani has flagged it all up very astutely in this book.
So will it make my shortlist? Well guess what?
I couldn't possibly comment and I get really annoyed when people say that too.
Not long to go now.

Bookerthon 2007 - Darkmans by Nicola Barker

Flying in the face of the joys of concise reviewing, you'd better go and make a cup of tea and sit down comfortably because today the decks must be cleared for Darkmans by Nicola Barker.The book that rapidly compromises the circulation to your feet if it rests on your lap, places your wrists at high risk of a bout of tenosynovitis if you hold it up.
Either you delete all pre-conceptions about what a novel should be and go for total-immersion reading, expect fictional expectations to be subverted and assumptions to be challenged, or Darkmans may remain an unreadable mystery.
A huge glimpse of a very small slice of life in Ashford in Kent, a town transformed by the arrival of the Channel Tunnel and for many the beginning of the end of our life as an impenetrable island.
I had to forge ahead, often in a state of complete unknowing, but knew I was reading as truer representation of life both on and off the page as it's possible to find, admittedly with a few strange diversions, but as cinematic as fiction can be.
Real life isn't always explained in the next paragraph and neither is Darkmans, you may have to wait several chapters and this book about far more than it's possible to cover in one post, so I'll focus on it as the ultimate people-watching experience.I suspect I was helped here by the day-job which is exactly that (well, and just a bit more) and I knew that for sure when I read about Dina,

" The Dina Broad Experience, had a technical staff numbering well over a dozen (the doctor, the social worker, the neighbour, the policeman)"...she must have had a health visitor when Kelly was born.

On the surface, people we may judge as stereotypes living life out there on the margins, except to me that always feels so patronising and I suspect Nicola Barker feels the same.
Who's to say where the margins begin and end and who decides anyway?
Rounded, often funny, often sad yet ultimately warm caring people who I felt I recognised.Yes even the cowboy builder Harvey Broad with his three mobile phones kept nestling in his

"builder's buddy, a kind of construction worker's gun holster...this is a prototype, Guv. Have a guess at what kinda hide that is...Pig?! Pull the other one! That's Buffalo, mate. Straight up"

As I have been reading  Darkmans the thought struck me early on that this could be a Dickens of a book.
I'm not saying Nicola Barker is the latest Charles Dickens, because actually I don't want to start some sort of 19th versus 21st century internecine writing conflagration, and though her canvas is as broad her role of players is much more limited, but I held onto one thought and it was sustained from start to finish.
Any reader who chances upon Darkmans in a hundred years time will read it much as we may read Dickens, for a fictional snapshot of  a section of society living in a particular time and place under particular circumstances.
Just as we can tut and tsk over so much of Dickens and say
"My weren't things terrible then?"
"Thank goodness we no longer send children up chimneys"
" At least living conditions have improved"
I suspect anyone who reads Darkmans in a hundred years time may say very similar things
"My weren't things terrible then"
"Thank goodness we no longer have a drug problem"
"At least living conditions have improved"

But Charles Dickens often offered mitigation for some of his trickiest characters, making judgemental assumptions much more difficult and Nicola Barker does likewise. It may often be just the merest hint but the message for me was powerful; laugh with me but please don't laugh at me because I have as much right to be here as you do and there are very real reasons for me being me.
As I travelled back from London on the late evening train last week, I was kept nicely awake by a fascinating book I had been very kindly given by Ernest Hecht at Souvenir Press, The Moral Imagination by Gertrude Himmelfarb, coincidentally a very recent review of it here. It's an interesting collection of essays on the moral imagination in literature and, though it's complex territory to grasp as you plod through Reading, Newbury, Pewsey, Taunton, Tiverton and all stations west at 11pm, it started to crystallise many of my embryonic thoughts on Darkmans.
On Dickens Gertrude Himmelfarb concludes

"He brought the poor into the forefront of the culture, and thus into the forefront of the consciousness and the conscience of his own generation and of generations to come - not as an abstract class but as notable individuals."

Substitute that loaded word "poor" and add something of your own choosing because all the characters in Darkmans are rich in many other ways but the gist is the same.

It is Peta the Ashford forger who summed up the cynicism of our Darkmans times for me

"the truth is...that there is no truth. Life is just a series of coincidences, accidents and random urges which we carefully forge - for our own, sick reasons - into a convenient design. Everything is arbitary...The truth is simply an idea. a structure which we employ - in very small doses - to render life bearable."

And Elen the podiatrist who sums up the simple dilemma for many,

"I couldn't play along because I didn't know what the rules were."

For me Darkmans checks in as the ultimate latter-day social novel, reflecting like a multi-faceted crystal so many aspects of people's lives today and I suspect it's another of those love-hate books on the Booker longlist.
I'm a fully paid-up member of The Loved Every Word Club, all 838 pages, and it's more Nicola Barker for me for sure.
So is it on my shortlist?
In the immortal words of the wonderful Kelly Broad, "Ding-bloomin' - dong!" you bet it is!

Another Darkmans update

Just fifty pages to go on my final read of this year's Bookerthon and it's half killed me but I've put Darkmans down to have a ponder.
Firstly, to digest just why this has been such an amazing read for me, and secondly to see if I can figure out how Nicola Barker is going to wind it all up.Then I'll pick it up again and savour those last pages and may well feel bereft when I reach p838.
The book is covered in pencilled thoughts because so much has struck me as unusual as I've read, prepare for a Darkmans love-in here on Wednesday.

Pippi Longstocking

Some books are just an intrinsic part of the warp and weft of our family life, woven in with the years of raising children.Books and films completely embedded in our consciousness forever.
One little character who was responsible for more than the average amount of anarchy and mayhem here was Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren and probably one of the reasons we have three free spirits who still keep us completely on our toes.Life is never predictable.
In need of a light moment before my final assault on the Booker longlist reviews over the next few days and before shortlist day on Thursday, I was in raptures to find a copy of the latest edition of Pippi Longstocking in the post from Oxford University Press with illustrations by Lauren Child.
Lauren Child's Charlie and Lola series a very firm favourite in my office with all the little people who come in to see me.I have to keep constantly up to date with whatever language the pre-school children are speaking. It was Balamory for ages and Bob the Builder, Fireman Sam and Postman Pat seem to be eternal. It's good because I can still say our favourite Fireman Sam line in that Welsh accent, "Don't dither in the doorway Norman", and be understood.
So as Pippi arrived in the post so did the Kayaker (not in the post, with his washing) and seize it he did because Pippi appealed to the boys as much as the girls here. I doubt he's the target audience for this book but we had a good laugh over his namesake Tommy, and Annika and all those wonderful adventures.The film added to the joy and we can all still sing the theme tune and often do.
I'm sure other families do the same.
On those rare occasions when we are all together it only takes one word to start the whole thing off and we are all singing like crazy, it's good not to have neighbours at moments like this.
Pippi deserves to be re-presented to every new generation of children, she is timeless and still as funny today as the day I first met her as a child and since my children met her.This edition works so well with Lauren Child's illustrations and I particularly love the fact that Pippi's stockings are actually knitted.It all cleverly bridges any divide there may be between a book first published as Pippi Langstrump in 1945 and the world of children's literature today.
The text has magical variations of size and shape and plenty of nicely unusual moments

"Pippi set off up the street. She walked with one foot on the pavement and the other in the gutter. Tommy and Annika fixed their eyes on her for as long as they could see her. After a while she came back Now she was walking sdrawkcab That was so she didn't have to turn around when she came home."

The word backwards is also mirror-imaged, which typepad wouldn't let me do, but it all adds to the allure of the book, as does the lime gree ribbon bookmark, and offers plenty to talk about with children.I'm also completely in agreement with Pippi that pluttification tables are torture and that I too would have shortened my name to Pippi if I'd been called Pippilotta Comestibles Windowshade Curlymint Ephraimsdaughter Longstocking.
Now I'm not sure this is a particularly good PR pic and the Kayaker can but hope that all his mates don't see it, (I won't tell if you don't) but I love that grin because all our children had grins like this and twenty years on this was exactly the one that would be on his face as you yelled "Thomaaaas come here".
Then as sternly as you could manage you'd try to berate him for cutting his sister's hair "because it looked a mess" or burying her Barbie doll "because it had died" or pulling up a neighbour's onions "because I wanted to see what they looked like" or climbing on the shed roof "because it was there" or...or...and it was all hopeless.
Why don't they brush their hair anymore? It used to look so lovely with a nice side parting.

If it's Thursday it must be Foyle's

I know it's Saturday but it's taken me two days to come down from the high that was Thursday and write something even remotely coherent.In the midst of a week's leave from the day job I have had a great week of books and all things bookish but I must tell you about the trip to Foyle's.
Speaking at Foyles?
Probably one of those things to tick off my list of "Things It Would Be Very Exciting To Do In My Life". Foyles was my second home back in the 1970's and a revamp hasn't deprived it of that je ne sais quois for me anyway. It still possesses the atmosphere that I'm sure many other big bookshops would like to buy by the bottle.
I had the most fantastic day but things didn't get off to a great start at Exeter Station when I arrived to find that trains had been cancelled and mine was running an hour late.I have now proved categorically that it is perfectly possible to get from Exeter to London via Glasgow but you must get off the train at Bristol and run from platform one to platform thirteen and the London train in ninety seconds.
As I ambled around Foyles (this is it I was just too distracted to take a decent picture) and up to the Gallery for the Publisher's Publicity Circle lunch suddenly I glimpsed rows of chairs and a queue of lovely bright young things at which point it dawned on me that I was likely to be the oldest person in the room (true I think). Nothing ventured and all that so I took a quick turn around Algebra and Geometry and in I went.
Danuta Kean (journalist) Mark Thwaite (The Book Depository) Philip Jones (The Bookseller Magazine)  and I then did our spiels and answered questions.The combination seemed to provide a fair and represenatative spectrum of the blogosphere all from differing perspectives.
I focused on my background, how this blog started, why I do it and what I try to acheive herein. I'd given a lot of thought to my self-imposed blogethics (I'm sure there's an official Code of these somewhere) but basically it's about honesty, trust and transparency.Developing a warm voice that people felt they could trust all takes time and patience to establish and is something to value and never take for granted once you have it.
I'd done a shocking and sobering calculation of total knowable book expenditure in the last year, all based on the fact that publishers couldn't be expected to send review copies until I'd set out my stall and my writing for a while and they could also be assured that I'm not going to sell them on eBay. I knew if I wanted to tackle contemporary fiction for a start I was going to have to buy the books in hardback on publication in the first instance.
No wonder I go to work, it's up to £2000.
But though it's great to get free books it changes nothing and is no guarantee of a blog post.I must love the book first and be inspired to write about it and share it, it's a responsibility and one I take seriously.
It was good to meet so many of the people who do send me books and a whole lot more who want to, so some exciting times coming up here on dgr scribbles.Camilla at Macmillan, who sent me my first review books during my Bookerthon last year and also from Macmillan, a real Geras daughter, Jenny.This has to be the next best thing to meeting Adele herself.
Also a treat to meet Mark Thwaite of Ready Steady Book, BritLitBlogs and The Book Depository.I condense many of the reviews on here down to 150 words for The Book Depository website and that is a wonderful exercise in getting down to the barest bones of the thing and I love doing them.
It seems a cliche to say it but the language of bookaholics is a universal one and Mark and I put the whole vocabulary through its paces.He just exudes book enthusiasm and has translated it all into an indispensable and respected web presence. Mark's impressions of the day here and I will echo his thanks to Jessica and the PPC for organising the lunch and inviting me.