dovegreyreader scribbles

Make mine a Pym's or three

I hold John Self over at Asylum responsible yet again.
I have finally picked up and read a book by Barbara Pym.
Fancy having to own up that I hadn't read any.
Usual story, books by and about gathered on the shelf and then I see that John Self has read Quartet in Autumn and I think, well that can't be right when here's me never read a single one.
I love a bit of middlebrow but I'll also own up that I often get weary of it, finding it is the one single genre I can easily overdose on, and then I skirt around the middlebrow corner of my library for months afterwards.
I was drawn back to the shelves having promised to loan my priceless copy of Miss Buncle's Book by D.E.Stevenson to Mary Cavanagh. I actually think D.E.Stevenson doesn't even make it into the ranks of middlebrow but I especially adore Miss Buncle who travelled recorded delivery to Mary's to ensure safe arrival. Even the old Fontana paperbacks now fetch £30, that's how precious she is.
What's all the fuss about you might ask?
Here are my 2007 thoughts on D.E.Stevenson
D.E.Stevenson's fiction has dated of course but it's the dating that provides so much pleasure for me because they provide a real and unassuming window on the social realities of the era and likewise Barbara Pym, though somehow her writing in Quartet for Autumn seems timeless.
Sadly 1970's office workers Marcia, Lettie, Norman and Edwin have little choice beyond necessity and habit; same commute, same office, same mundane work but it's all been their 'everything'. So much their 'everything' that no one can really identify their role in the company and replacements will be wholly unnecessary as they approach retirement. The sense of barely-concealed grief and loss is palpable as Marcia trudges to her house and Lettie to her bedsit clutching their gifts, they don't even have friendship let alone plans or a life to look forward to.
My first impressions of Barbara Pym's writing are dangerously good, I'm with Lord David Cecil on this one

'unpretentious, subtle, accomplished'

and Philip Larkin

'Underrated...an unrivalled picture of a small section of middle-class post-war England. She has a unique eye and ear for the poignancies and comedies of everyday life.'

and all suggesting to me a writer who engages so closely with the minutiae of her characters lives that I am given translucent studies of people I feel I know.
Mrs Pope, Lettie's landlady has rules,

'one did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning.'

Tell me no more because I have Mrs Pope cast quite perfectly in my mind.
I've since discovered a book on my shelves published in 1982, Twentieth Century Women Novelists edited by Thomas Staley and a fascinating essay entitled Living and Loving in the Novels of Barbara Pym by Barbara Brothers which suggests that Pym chides novelists in Quartet in Autumn for not telling the truth about women's lives and indeed she does. Letty has given up reading novels because they don't reflect her life as an unmarried, unattached, ageing woman, to read what is true she has turned to biographies. I also warm to Barbara Brother's idea that Barbara Pym is subversive in her use of 'gentle ironies' and her focus on the mundaneness of life and her character's self-deceptions and self-pretensions alongside an insistence that we accept them on their own terms. That much and more is evident in my first read but even more remarkable, these are women's lives in the 1970's.
The final remnants of that wartime dearth of marriageable men clearly identified in Virginia Nicolson's Singled Out ?
Women who the feminist moment has passed by?
So what's the danger in all this you might well ask?
Well it's a huge and ever-present temptation to feast, I have shelves full of Barbara Pym, like a pantry stuffed with rich dark chocolate, I shall gorge and be sick before I know it.
Quick, tell me which one to read next all you Pymites out there.

Domes, tomes and homes

Anne 'with an e' Fadiman will be blissfully unaware of this but she and I are now kindred spirits.Her books are fast assuming biblical importance on that little shelf on my desk where I put "Tomes of Great Import".
The shelf is a tiny angled wooden one with curved ends picked up in a market by Bookhound probably. We have loads of these little free-standing shelves, they just can't be left behind.They come home with us, are cleaned and polished and then we negotiate possession, well I'll swap you those two for that one.
Some are flat but it's the angled ones I love, the way they offer the books up for my delectation.
Though my day to day reading may range far and wide these books tend to be permanent fixtures, touchstones only displaced when some Tome of Even Greater Import comes along.I pick them up and browse them frequently, they bear repeated reading, they are chock full of underlinings and marginalia and some tiny new seed of inspiration is sown with each delving.
Anne Fadiman's books are becoming faithful friends alongside At The Same Time, a collection of Susan Sontag's essays and speeches, Volumes I and II of The Paris Review Interviews, The Singer on the Shore a collection of essays by Gabriel Josipovici and The Emergence of Memory, Conversations with W.G.Sebald.
But I have a vacancy and a new kindred spirit to squeeze into their midst and it is Alberto Manguel. He is my new friend.
The Library at Night to be published by Yale University Press gives me the courage to call my 'book room' a library and be done with it. Somehow it seemed a bit presumptious in that who-do-you-think-you-are way of things, because after all it doesn't have a domed ceiling or pillars, but Bookhound designed it, drew the plans and then purpose-built it and I'm quite sure the planners in the Tamar Valley wouldn't have countenanced a dome, they have enough trouble agreeing to a shed.
Alberto Manguel has written an homage of sorts that will be cherished by all lovers of books and libraries, there is a reverence in these pages as he weaves a history of libraries from Alexandria to Google and threads in his own experience of establishing his collection of books in a converted barn in the Loire Valley. The book is structured around fifteen themes among them The Library as Myth, The Library as Order, Space, Power, Shadow et al and I am relating to every single theme. You can't help but feel warmly comfortable as you drink in this huge glass full of bookaholic's ambrosia and I'm rationing myself to a chapter a day.
Don't be put off, the purpose-built library is not essential in the scheme of things, consider the smallest shelf full of favourite books as equally important.
Alberto Manguel admits that his favourite time in his library is at night and I'd agree with that. One of my windows faces west and as the sun sets over Cornwall a new light and atmosphere descends on the room, and if there is a full moon shining in the windows facing east I bask as did Virgil,

'under the friendly silence of the soundless moon.'

There is plenty to share from this book and when I've turned the final page my sadness will only be assuaged by the fact I can return here and tell you more. Meanwhile, there's a gentle snoring noise coming from the footstool beneath my desk in my library as I sit here typing, and my feet are very warm, which can only mean one thing, today I have a Library Cat.

Don't Let Them Tell You How To Grieve

Down the years I've done my fair share of training in bereavement counselling, both year long and short courses, and in the process you listen to a lot of talking, do a great deal of role play, read a whole heap of books and you learn a great deal, but sometimes a book comes along that imparts far far more than any course ever could.
Grief and loss isn't just about death of course, life's replete with loss at many levels and anything which leads to that whirlpool of reaction can have far-reaching effects. The seven stages of grief often identified as shock, denial, anger, guilt, bargaining, depression and acceptance and the possibilities for getting stuck on any one of these after a significant loss are ever-present. The stages may be experienced as a complete chaos of emotions hence the whirlpool imagery and often people make great leaps across them but when people are sucked down and hindered in the process it can be hugely debilitating.
I was delighted to meet Gina Claye, one of the Oxford Writers over the lunch at The Trout, who kindly gave me a copy of her book Don't Let Them Tell You How To Grieve . Overcome with the excitement of such a lovely gathering I promptly left the book on the windowsill in the pub and didn't realise until I arrived home. If you're looking at which stage I was stuck on over this loss it was the kicking myself stage and I just hope whoever picked the book up has found it useful.
Gina kindly sent me another copy and when you learn about the circumstances that led Gina to write this quietly amazing little book you will realize that she is extremely well-qualified to do so and to give it such a direct but telling title.
In 1987 Gina's elder daughter Nikki, aged nineteen took her own life, just over a year later Gina's husband left. The stresses of a bereavement are profound on any family, a suicide even more so and the losses for Gina started to stack up. Her son Robin went off to university and Gina had to return to work to support the family and trained as a teacher. Once her youngest daughter Rachael had headed off to university there was a house to be sold. More upheaval, more loss.
Then in 2003 Robin, on a trip to Singapore, fell ill and died of encephalitis.
In the two years that followed Gina wrote this book of poems. Previously she had written poems for children published in anthologies by Scholastic and Oxford University Press.
I can only say thank heavens Gina decided to share both the circumstances of her grief and her poetry because she has done something remarkable here. Each poem is accompanied by a brief personal explanatory note from Gina which places it in context and these are all contexts that a bereaved person will recognise with ease.There is nothing mawkish or sentimental about any of it, it's a book that gives anyone permission and the courage to do the agonising but essential work of grieving however they may choose.
Crying over the clothes of the deceased person long after they've died, the full house suddenly empty, the right words from a friend at the right time,

'One foot in front of the other and don't forget to breathe.'

The feeling that the ground may be about to give way beneath your feet, others living a normal life while you think yours may never be so again, the letters that keep arriving addressed to the dead person, the hours of sitting and staring into space and many more.
The profound comfort to be gained from knowing this is all normal and part of the process cannot be over-stated and this book, with its short pieces, is perfect for that brief attention span so often experienced after a bereavement, making it ideal to have alongside.
I would have no hesitation in recommending this book to anyone whether grieving or not, everything within speaks to the many facets of grief and loss, and there are startling moments of such acute and simple revelation making it a book that offers both an understanding of grief as well as endless compassion. I will return to it many times over.
Here's one extract and if anyone would like to make contact with Gina you can e mail her here.

'This photograph of Robin and me stood near the television in the sitting room which I had to go through to get to the kitchen, so I could hardly avoid seeing it. There were other photographs around of course, but it was this particular one, taken not long ago, that seemed to be a focus for my loss.'

The Photograph

At first I almost took the photograph
down. It showed the two of us
together, walking in the Chiltern hills.

We had stopped for a rest. I leant
against you, your arm around me,
my head on your shoulder.

The pain I felt each time I saw it
was so acute, it made me feel
again my overwhelming loss.

But to stare at the space it would
leave would be worse. So it
stayed. And gradually as time

passed, I made a friend of pain.
And now in moments of anxiety,
I stand and look at the photograph.

I lean on you still and will all
my life. Your arm around me.
My head on your shoulder.

Gina Claye
Don't Let Them Tell You How To Grieve
Published by WritersPrintShop
ISBN 1904623441

Sunday Salon - Halfway to Venus

'My mother closed the door and turned towards me, and without saying anything, she made a chopping motion with her right hand above her left elbow. I thought my world had come to an end.'

So I'm wittering on about knitting and quilting on the same day that I am reading Sarah Anderson's truly remarkable book Halfway to Venus , A One-Armed Journey and wham, it hits you right between the eyes, my two-handed and much loved craft activities may be nigh on impossible for Sarah.
How does that make Sarah feel?
How does that make me feel?
How does that make you feel?
However this is not a book about making you feel guilty for having two arms. Thus far it is a book about grief, loss and awareness and much more besides.
In 1957 at the age of ten, Sarah was diagnosed with a synovial sarcoma and admitted to Great Ormond Street for the amputation of her left arm.The surgery was performed by Mr Denis Browne, an orthopaedic surgeon whose name was legend in the corridors of the hospital when I arrived to become a 'nurse in pink' some fifteen years later, so I was immediately fascinated by Sarah's experiences. Even more so because my first, and therefore most memorable, ward placement as a student nurse straight out of Preliminary Training School was twelve weeks on the seventh floor Private Patients where Sarah was treated. I can smell the smell (antiseptic mixed with polish, milk, rubber and gravy) and visualise the rooms and the ward as I type and of course the whereabouts of every single item in the sluice and the linen cupboards where I spent a great deal of those twelve weeks.
That said, nothing but nothing will prepare you adequately for this book other than a personal experience of amputation and to say I've had my eyes opened would be understating the effects of today's reading of the first 100 pages or so.
What Sarah makes clear in her exceptionally well-written book is that if we were to meet, she would be the one to bear the burden of my embarrassment if I said something insensitive, and that's often how it is for  people as they apologise for making the rest of us feel slightly awkward and uncomfortable,

' The burden always seems to lie with the disabled or bereaved person: again and again it is the way the person with the disability reacts that paves the way for other people's reactions...there is a very strong urge to apologise and somehow to take the blame.'

then this and how true it is

'Society certainly does have a way of categorising people and there is an assumption that to be a full member of society there is a 'normal' way to be.'

In my day job, meeting as many different people as it can be possible to meet, I've often pondered who made the decisions about what constitutes 'normal' and who makes that final decision on what 'normal' is ?
Sarah invests with new meaning and clarity that saying we all use when there's something we really want or need...I'd give my right arm to...and suddenly you realise the significance and importance of two arms and hands in ways that may never have occurred. Crossing arms as a way of defending and protecting yourself, thumbs up to signal success, expressive sign language with hands as we speak, I can guarantee this book will make you think and reflect in ways you may never have thought before.
Coming up on the blog this week a couple of  books on grief and loss which have moved me greatly; tomorrow my thoughts on a simple but profoundly thought-provoking book of poems by Gina Claye, Don't Let Them Tell You How To Grieve. Sarah's careful examination of that huge loss in her life at the age of ten and how she has coped with it at the various stages of her life is adding greatly to my thinking in that relay-baton way of reading that I mentioned here recently,

'The reality is that the loss of a body part is equivalent to the death of that part, and grief, depression and anxiety are the universal responses to that death. Denial is one recognised way of dealing with the bereavement; prolonged depression is another.'

Much more on Sarah's book soon but don't even wait that long, add this one to the list because it is a truly astonishing and unmissable read, and here's an article in yesterday's Telegraph confirming it. Whilst she may not wish to become a standard-bearer for people with disabilities because she is completely able, from what I've read so far, I suspect Sarah's book will become a blessing for those who identify any grief and loss in their lives and strive to find ways around the obstacles that it can place in their path.
There is much in here that translates with relevance across the whole broad spectrum that is life.

Sunday Salon - confessions

Not books but socks for now though I am reading a remarkable book today, more of which later.
I often read that line of occupations at the top of this blog and think, well two of them remain steadfast and true week in week out, one other has just been knocked back into shape as I am gradually making inroads on my unquilted wall hangings but what of the other, the sock-knitting?
Well, 'tis a neglected and parlous state of affairs in my sock-knitting kingdom, and having watched Cornflower create beautiful socks through the winter with ease I have finally faced the wool basket and sorted out the mess.
This is how it stands, four completed socks from four different pairs, three matching in various stages of progress and one last not yet cast on. The trouble is I don't watch enough television but in order to get the socks finished I've nurtured an addiction to I'd Do Anything and The Apprentice neither of which require too much concentration if I'm at a K2tog,K1(marker),K1ssk2tog counting moment. So there's a glimmer of a turned heel (k5,ssk2tog,K1, turn) and a grafted Kitchener toe (far too complicated) at the end of the ball of wool and the possibility of a matching pair any day now.

The Famous Five

So here's something I didn't know and it's a good thing I wasn't in charge or there would have been fatalities.
When can we swim the ducklings?
Well we can't yet and the Gamekeeper explains why.
Apparently baby ducklings are given a coating of oil on their feathers from close contact with their mother which waterproofs them, gives them a Gore-tex layer to ensure that they don't get waterlogged, sink and drown, none of which is good for a duck's self esteem. Our little team being motherless are oil-free as a result and so we have to wait until they have feathered up good and proper and are producing feather oil of their own before we can take them swimming.
I'd hate to give them all hydrophobia from a near-drowning experience.
Meanwhile without my helpful interference Julian, Dick, Ann, George and Timmy (blame Offspringette for that) are thriving under the Gamekeeper's wing and here they are before, bedraggled and motherless in a bucket, and yesterday, warm as toast under the lamp and nestling in wood shavings.
Incredible difference in just two weeks.

The Lane in April

They give rain said the Gamekeeper as he cracked a goose egg into the frying pan. He's been given goose eggs this week and he's fast acquiring the taste for something about ten times the size of a meagre hen's offering.
He may only be twenty-two but he is our very accurate human barometer and has been our encylopaedic source for information on the natural world for many years, our local eyes and ears because he's outdoors all day in all weathers. He then tells me that the swiftswallowhousemartins arrived in the Tamar Valley about two weeks ago but no sign of our verandah ones yet. This is good because the wrens claim squatters rights in their old nests for the next few weeks and they are busy dragging moss in by the ton.
But if rain is on the way I must dash out for my Lane in April walk.
Except these walks have become far from a dash.
Taking pictures for here has given me a renewed and refreshing vision of that familiar territory, usually raced along in the car, but in that "what is life-stand and stare" way I pick up my camera and now may take an hour to walk a few hundred yards.
So today out of the gates and turning left (last time we went right)

A funny thing happens immediately and I can guarantee it always does. Offspringette's cat Muffin always appears from nowhere and accompanies me. I have no idea how she knows I've set off or what she might have done if a creature had leapt out of this newly-dug hole. We have massive badger activity very near to the house at the moment which is a first.

As I drive up and down daily I am always aware of the predominant colour of the hedge.It's been yellow and awash with primroses and celandines, soon it will take on that hazy misty blue mantle as first the wild violets and then the bluebells take charge. They are just starting to appear.

Living along a quiet lane you like to think you own it, which of course we don't, but that hasn't stopped us giving every little twist and turn a name.We all know what we mean by The Dip which leads to Primrose Alley. So we've just walked down that hill and this is The Dip and the only decent passing place. In winter that lay-by fills with a quicksand of mud which devours my little car in seconds, so very occasionally it's a long reverse back up that hill, round that blind bend (The Diabolica) and almost back home.

There's a trickling stream running under the lane at this point.

On the way home I spied a prize. Bookhound and I were both I-Spy book fiends as children and both took it very seriously, never ever cheating. That said I'm a bit suspect of his alleged Swallowtail butterfly sighting but he swears on his Big Chief I-Spy certificate that he saw one. My I-Spy book of Wildflowers is in the loft somewhere and I hope when I find it I can hold my head up high and find the wild Cuckoo Pint space blank. It was my dream to find one in a hedge and I never did, they were sparse in London in the 1950's but now I can tick that box with pride.

Meanwhile back in the garden, I'd love to be able to report that we are greeted by a veritable carpet of swaying cowslips, but in actual fact we have but one, and only one, and for some reason always have had just the one.
Here it is and now I can tick that off too.

Playing tag

I love the sociable community that is the blogosphere and Pauline Rowson has been tagged by Scott Pack for Six Random Facts About Yourself and now I've been tagged by Pauline Rowson and I'd better respond. I get really stuck on these and I'm sure I repeat myself if I do them too often, so apologies if these are known Random Facts, I have a limited number available. Anyway, I sneaked a look at Scott's Random Facts just to get some inspiration and to be honest I can't possibly match his exploits

• I was eventually sixer of the Gnomes in the 1st Mitcham Brownies and not knowing my right hand from my left I always led my six off dancing the wrong direction around the carefully arranged central altar of wooden mushrooms when it was our turn to sing our song....Here we come the laughing gnomes, helping mothers in our homes. We then had to turn and turn about and there was a lot of tripping and barging to get ourselves going in the right direction thus adding something decidedly comical to the reverent karma of the Brownie circle and earning us nul points from Brown Owl.

• I represented the London Borough of Sutton in the 800 yards relay when I was 14 instead of my friend June who was school's champion, because the race was on her birthday and she didn't want to do it because she'd been given a new bike and she wanted to go and test it out. I was a sprinter, anything beyond 150 yards was a marathon and in fact I had never run 800 yards before. The first mistake was going to my friend Gill's house for tea before the race because she lived right next door to the track in Ewell. The second mistake was eating Gill's mum's chocolate cake.The third mistake was actually to turn up for the race pretending to be June and blagging my way through the team strategy talk. Sutton came last by a mile that day and you don't want to know what reappeared after that race.

• Whilst on the subject of sporting endeavours I used to row in the coxed fours for Plymouth Ladies.I could 'sit' (balance) a boat along with the best of them and feather my blade very nicely but now prefer to 'sit' an armchair.

• I hate loath and detest fish in any edible form, lovely in a tank, a river or the sea but not on my plate.

• I am currently addicted to The Apprentice, BBC One, Wednesday 9pm.Lucinda is quietly impressing me with her honesty, she seems like a real and genuine person capable of managing a team sensitively and intuitively and that dress sense would cheer the dreariest of meetings, the NHS needs Lucinda far more than S'ralan.


• I'm very fed up with the fact that I can still recite the Brownie song, but even worse Archimedes Principle learnt forty years ago...when a body is totally or partially immersed in a fluid the apparent loss of weight ie the upthrust is equal to the weight of fluid displaced, when I could better utilise the space in my brain for remembering where I parked my car twenty minutes ago.

I now have to tag six others and I hope these six people don't mind being tagged.  The rules, if they decide to play, are:

• Link to the person that tagged you - i.e. me.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Write six random things about you in a blog post.
• Tag six people in your post.
• Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
• Let the tagger know your entry is up.

Kirsty at Other Stories
Armenianodar
And I don't know if they indulge in these but I've tagged all the Alexandrians...this might be cheating but it gets me rapidly up to the six!

The Informers - Juan Gabriel Vasquez

I lose count of the number of times it happens. A succession of seemingly completely different books provide subtle links to each other as one book hands over the baton to the next and we've had no relay handover disasters with The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez and published by Bloomsbury. I might see how many laps we can manage without dropping the baton over the next few reads.Before I say a word about the book I have to comment on the cover. It's good, monochrome, the crowded street with the figures circled in red, but there's something puzzling me.

Could someone explain? Why has that woman, top right, got a basket on her head?

Is that a dog she's carrying?
Is it the dog's basket?
Is this normal for Columbia perhaps?
I haven't got to the bottom of that and nothing in the book seems to explain it but enough of that here's the link to Resistance.
As Britain is being invaded in Owen Sheer's book, over in Colombia the same war is being played out in protagonist Gabriel Santoro's book embedded within the novel, A Life In Exile, written to try and explain the wartime plight of a German Jewish woman and friend of the family who fled Germany in 1938. Gabriel's father, a highly respected university professor gives his son's book a scathing and denigrating review and Gabriel junior determines to discover the reasons.
I'm not very hot on Latin-American fiction beyond some Borges and a bit of Marquez with some Allende added in so I suspect there are themes and trends here that have passed me by, yet every ignoble theme resides in this book. Dishonour, disgrace, treachery, betrayal, retribution and revenge as the existence of the wartime blacklists exposes the "duplicity and guilt at the heart of Colombian society in the Second World War."
Thinking he was writing a brilliant and necessary work of literature, Gabriel is rocked by the effect of his book on his father,

'...in manuscript, these pages had appeared so pacific and neutral that I never considered them capable of making anyone uncomforatble, much less of provoking disputes; the printed and bound version, however, was a sort of Molotov cocktail ready to land in the middle of the Santoro household.'

Gabriel senior doesn't mince his words as he lambasts his own son,

'I cannot prevent other people from speaking if they believe it useful or necessary. So I shall not speak out against the parasites, those creatures who use the experience of those of us who have preferred not to speak for their own ends. I shall not speak of those second-rate writers, many of whom have not even been born when the war ended, who now go round talking about the war...they do not know the courage of those who have preferred not to speak.'

Through Anne McClean's excellent English translation, events of the past unfold and merge with the present as slowly, piece by piece the jigsaw takes shape and both Gabriels are forced to face unpleasant truths about the past. The impact of  'the probable embezzlement of other people's lives' was cleverly paced to keep me slightly on edge as the inevitable unfolded and father and son seek a way through the unexploded bombshells of the past. Bombshells which once dug up have to be examined,explained and somehow defused and it is a strange and haunting conclusion that is finally reached.
In the end there may be no winners and perhaps no losers, the lifetimes of guilt just passed from one to the next, bequeathed to successive generations as each person tries to assuage his conscience and his past. Everyone ultimately traumatised by the far-reaching and seemingly endlessly present tendrils of Nazi Germany and still it all provides an endless river of ideas for authors. A source which Juan Gabriel Vasquez has astutely manipulated from both within and without, I suspect rightly earning his place as one of South America's most promising young writers.

Resistance

Nothing like reading a book such as Deaf Sentence with it's lingusitic subtleties and clever array of puns on death and deaf to heighten your awareness of a single word and its multiple meanings.
Resistance by Owen Sheers has taxed me greatly as I have mulled and mused and held onto the title throughout my reading. So many subtle meanings for the word and the distinct possibility that I may have slowly identified most of them in the course of the book in one form or another.

1. The act or an instance of resisting or the capacity to resist.

2. A force that tends to oppose or retard motion.

3. often  Resistance An underground organization engaged in a struggle for national liberation in a country under military or totalitarian occupation.

4. Psychology  A process in which the ego opposes the conscious recall of anxiety-producing experiences.

5. Biology

a. The capacity of an organism to defend itself against a disease.

b. The capacity of an organism or a tissue to withstand the effects of a harmful environmental agent.

6. Electricity The opposition of a body or substance to current passing through it, resulting in a change of electrical energy into heat or another form of energy.

The year is 1944, the D-Day landings have failed and the unthinkable has happened as far as the British public are concerned; the Germans have invaded British shores and the war is finally rearing its ugly head in a remote and isolated farming community in the Welsh border valley of Olchon.
The women wake up one morning to find all their menfolk have disappeared in the night and slowly the truth dawns; the men had long prepared for this day in a way that the women had not. Previously protected and sheltered from the grim realities, the women must now fend for themselves and cope with the arrival of a German patrol in the valley.
Thus begins the unfolding of a poignant and deeply thought-provoking novel which leaves you constantly asking yourself, well just supposing this had been true...Churchill exiled to Canada, mass death and destruction across the UK.
The landscape of the Welsh borders provides Owen Sheers with that most perfect of geographical locations and with it all that sense of Mabinogian mythology. I'm not even going to pretend to know more than the average person about Welsh history and even less about The Mabinogian, but browsing the new Oxford World's Classics edition I came across an interesting thought in relation to Resistance,

'The basic concept of medieval Welsh histriography was that the Welsh, descendants of the Britons, were the rightful heirs to the sovereignity of Britain, symbolized by the crown of London; despite invasions by the Romans and the Picts, and despite losing the crown to the Saxons,the Welsh would eventually overcome and a golden age of British rule would be restored.'

There is clearly a great deal for the Welsh to defend in that case and I was often reminded of the way Peter Ho Davies had likewise utilized the geography so effectively in The Welsh Girl. Then On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin comes to mind and there must be plenty more.
I wonder whether Owen Sheers' naming of his German patrol was intended to invoke the responses in me that it did?
Albrecht the German patrol leader quickly became Albrecht Durer and I fully expected him to develop artistic sensibilities which he did. Then there was Sebald and I'm thinking Max Sebald (as in W.G.) and then Steiner and I'm thinking George Steiner, the man who has landed me in deep and muddy waters here for taking his name in vain here.
Suddenly, having read Resistance, I am more grateful than ever for the rights of speech, ideas and opinions given to us all in this free country we live in and it all becomes even more precious.
That all became a distraction I quickly had to resist myself because the book is too good to allow your concentration to be diverted, apart from giving in to the suddenly irresisistible temptation one day to scribble over that embossed title as I pondered it.
Constantly thinking resistance into the reading  I found shining examples of every definition of the word, here's just one as a prolonged freeze cuts the valley off and the German patrol starts integrating into the farming life.

'Albrecht had laughed with her, relieved and relaxed by her response.'Well, maybe that's just what we are Mrs Jones,' he'd said 'all of us here. Refugees.'
Her look had cut him dead. ' Oh no, Captain Wolfram,' she'd said, all humour pared from her tone. ' This is our home. This is where we live. We're not refugees from anything, an' don't you forget that.'

Add in the information revealed in the Afterword and I knew I had read a fine book that reverberated long after the final page.
There, now while I await my Welsh visitors to tell me what I don't know and should about The Mabinogion, or that is has nothing to do with any of this at all, resist Resistance if you dare on St George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday of all days.

Deaf Sentence - David Lodge

It's odd how a writer you've once enjoyed somehow slips off your radar and you forget to read them. I'm sorry to have to admit that it was 1992 when I read Paradise News by David Lodge and though I've bought others since on high recommends from friends, they've remained on the shelf.
I think it was all David Lodge's fault actually, because then in 1997 I started the studying and he'd written quite a few of the textbooks and you start to build up a bit of a love-hate thing with the authors of those as you sit at your desk at 2am.
Long day at work, long evening sorting food, washing and ironing and then GCSE and A Level course work with teenagers and then they all troop off to bed and you start to consider the 2500 word essay you've got to conjure up out of the darkness.
You mine the professorial words for quotes to get you out of trouble.
Lodge argues that...Lodge states that... and suddenly you find yourself talking to them...well do you indeed David...are you quite sure about that David? Then you find a brilliant quote that you absolutely have to use and in desperation you try and make the whole thing fit around it and it won't so you give up and go to bed.
So not my fault at all which is good, and when Anne at Bookends in Fowey told me she was sponsoring the David Lodge event at the du Maurier Festival this year, suddenly I remembered. We had a little exchange about his books and I drove home to make a start on the novel David Lodge will speak about, Deaf Sentence. If you're in London then lucky you because you can hear David Lodge speak about the book here .
Professor of Linguistics, Desmond Bates has taken early retirement in the wake of university departmental restructuring whilst his second wife, Winifred (known as Fred) throws herself into her late-flowering career success with her interior design shop.The equilibrium is further tipped off-centre as Desmond struggles with his increasing deafness.
Slowly and inexorably Desmond becomes the Victor Meldrew of his ever-narrowing world as he wades into gladiatorial combat with anything and everything in his path. Nothing is safe from the critical attentions of Desmond as he tries in vain to fill his empty days. From the use of highlighter pen in university textbooks to his hearing aid batteries, from Christmas to a stay at a holiday complex called Gladeworld, the benevolent concentration camp and it's all wry and very funny. Rumbling along ever more silent underneath are Desmond's rapidly failing cilia, those tiny hairs lining the cochlea in the inner ear, the little power houses of the hearing process.
Once they've laid down and died, they've laid down and died.
Though David Lodge treats the subject with a wry eye there is an underlying seriousness to his message; deafness is in many ways a disability of age which is open to much ridicule in a way that blindness never would be.
Seamlessly the all-pervading theme of deafness must fade into a manageable perspective for Desmond and there is a notable shift in emphasis as the book reaches its conclusion. Serious life-events take over and it could be argued that Lodge (sorry, just had to sneak it in, reminds me of the old days) is then writing  something of a treatise on ageing, suffering and death and an acceptance of fate.
This is a quality read, David Lodge's writing has an immediacy to it with an eye completely tuned into life's foibles, I also get the feeling he used this book to get every single grumble off his chest and I loved it. Buried in amongst it all I sensed a finely crafted pearl of wisdom about making the best of what life throws at you because you are a very long time dead and there are some nasty ways to go.
A quote from the journal of Bruce Cummings a naturalist seemed to express the sentiment,

'To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe -such a great universe and so great a scheme of things. Not even death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time...'

and I'd love to share the rest of that quote but I'm not going to, because the impact of the whole passage in the context of the book is one that made my heart jump and skip a beat as the truth dawned... except, all right, here's the last sentence,

'Death can do no more than kill you.'

I like that, and when I'd read the whole paragraph I stopped and read it over and over again, even underlined it.
I was thinking I'd take my copy of Deaf Sentence along for David Lodge to sign whilst he's in Fowey, but I think he'll suffer fifty professorial fits when he sees all the writing in it, so I might not.

Well-Remembered Friends

With inspirational eulogies and readings,sublime organ music and glorious singing from about 800 of us, all still ringing in my ears and resounding in my heart from Saturday, here's a book published in 2004 by John Murray, Well- Remembered Friends - Eulogies on Celebrated Lives  collected into an anthology by Angela Huth. Unheard of here and discovered on a second-hand bookshop jolly last week.

'The eulogy is a literary form like no other: to compress a lifetime into minutes, to summon the person, what they meant to their friends, colleagues and sometimes a wider context; to be moved to grief, laughter, sadness and fond memories, to mix praise for virtue with the acknowledgement of foibles; to choose a few anecdotes from the hundreds available - all this is a very diferent art to that of the dry obituarist.'

I'm not sure I'd ever given the literary form of the eulogy much thought but this book soon set me on the right track and steered me through a strange range of emotions as I read.
Some of them are beautifully poetic, you'd expect no less from Ted Hughes on Henry Williamson as he pays tribute and expresses his own first encounter with Tarka the Otter.

'Tarka put my life under an enchantment that lasted for years and that gradually crystallised into an ambition to write for myself, and to fasten that strange feeling, that eerie sense of the moment of reality, in my own sentences.'

Seamus Heaney on Ted Hughes

' He has become another 'genius of the shore', a guardian spirit of the land and of the language'

Then, as you read on, every single eulogy becomes compelling in its own way. Who wouldn't want to read what Alec Guiness said about Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud on Vivien Leigh, Margot Fonteyn on  Frederick Ashton, Alan Bennett on Peter Cook or Barry Cryer on Frankie Howerd. There are 110 to choose from and they make perfect episodic reading, but I have a runaway favourite to date.
Dudley Moore's Memorial Service was held at Magdalen College Chapel,Oxford on 16th November 2002 and Michael Parkinson did the honours, quickly identifying that one of the advantages of dying is that you don't have to read your obituaries. Thus Dudley Moore was spared the one that pointed out, as if it explained everything,

'For a long time he lived with Susan Anton who was 11 inches taller'.

But there follows the most hilarious account of an evening when Parky had been invited to hear Dudley, a great and gifted musician, play the piano at a club.
Picture the moment.
Parky slightly the worse for being "in drink" as they say these days, accepting Dudley's seemingly impromptu invite to go up on stage and sing Moon River to his piano accompaniment. Far beyond the point of making a wise and informed decision based on the fact he didn't really know the words, and in fact thinking he was indeed Frank Sinatra at that moment, Parky agrees.
Dudley plays magically and Mancini-like and Parky sings...sort of.
Then Dudley changes the key in that Les Dawson way and things start to go very pear-shaped but Parky carries on. Suddenly catching Dudley's huge smile and following his gaze shakily to the first row of the audience, there who should be sitting in the front row but Mr Moon River himself, Andy Williams.
As Parky says, it was the most spectacular set-up of all time but then,

'You see that's how I remember him. Someone once said that when comedians die, when funny men die, all they leave behind is the echo of remembered laughter. Well that will do for me and I'm sure it would do for Dudley Moore.'

There are another 109 like this and they make for splendid reading and, lest we forget, here's one of the moments I grew up on, and Dud and Pete to bid a swift thirty-eight second adieu in their own inimitable style for a Monday morning smile.

The paws have chosen

The paws have chosen and the winner of The Sixpenny Debt & Other Oxford Stories prize draw is.....drum roooooooooooooooooolllllllll...Claire.
Congratulations to Claire but I am also the bearer of more glad tidings.
The Oxford Writers have been so overwhelmed by your response they have very kindly agreed to sign a few more copies for dgr scribbles visitors at their next gathering and will also be sending along signed prize draw copies of their second anthology to be published on June 4th which has a splendid foreword by Colin Dexter too.
So lots more to look forward to and my thanks to The Oxford Writers and everyone who entered.

Duckling update

Sunday Salon reading later today but here's a duckling update...and then there were five.
Sadly there has been a fatality of a Darwinian nature and the weakest of the batch has departed the team.
But hopefully here's a first, it's only a forty second trailer but you won't believe how long this all took.
I was First Best Boy Grip or something and the light's funny because of the heat lamp and the music's been added because halfway through Bookhound helpfully fired up the lawnmower.
Watch them all jump up at the twenty second mark.
Heaven help us when we film the feature-length episode of their first swim on the water trough.

Paws for Thought

My Dearest Adoring Friends,
I have been asked to reveal myself to The Oxford Writers and lest you be concerned, please be assured I have signed off from rabbit chasing duties and am gathering my strength for The Sixpenny Debt book prize draw tomorrow.
I have entered pre-prize draw preparations and find I can compose myself best here on the kitchen windowsill. I employ a complex blend of focalized visualization and meditative techniques and the paw-stretch - breath in - breath out - relax routine is carefully programmed to ensure I don't peak to soon.
Now I'm sure you'll forgive me but distractions can be disastrous to my meticulous state of readiness so I must reconnect with my feline hara centre, this is the level of human relaxation I'm emulating.
I am of course flattered by all attempts at bribery and favouritism but needs must remain immune.
That said dearest friends, forbear ye not, your words of encouragement mean so much; like others who stray beyond the bounds of endurance, my ego is wont to be fragile at times like this.
Regards
Rocky x
PS There is still time to enter the draw, names in comments.

RIP Dr G

I will be at a memorial service today for a retired G.P. colleague who died recently.
The very first G.P. I worked with when I emerged naive and blinking into the bright, exciting and promising new world that was the Primary Health Care Team back in July 1978 and I rolled up at his surgery to start being a real health visitor.
Look at my first ID card, not a wrinkle to be seen. I'm too embarrassed to show you the latest one taken a few weeks ago. When I said I didn't like the picture they refused to take eighty-eight more until I was happy and wouldn't let me revert to this one for some reason.
But 1978, it was high summer, it was sunny, I'd learnt to drive and passed my test in three months because I absolutely had to (Dartmoor on a bike didn't appeal) and just passed a heap of written exams and vivas at the end of the most intensive year of study I'd ever done and I was oddly terrified.
What was I doing here?
Suddenly I was in a strange and surreal heaven, this couldn't be right.
After the hierarchical cauldron that had been hospital nursing for me, to find myself out in the community, free to organise my own work, and drive across some of the most exquisitely beautiful countryside while I did it, seemed like a privilege not to be sniffed at. Indeed as I drove onto high and deserted Dartmoor this week I drank in the space and that freedom in huge gulps.
I always do.
But my first encounter with a GP as a working colleague was going to be an important one and thankfully it was with Dr G who was kindness personified. In retrospect I see that he must have looked at me 30 years ago much as I look at doctors and policeman now; young health visitors were very unusual, most in their forties or fifties then (plus ca change) and all called Betty and Shirley (and now called Lynne).
But Dr G and I hit it off and many's the time he offered guidance and advice that has stood me in very good stead ever since. He was a New Zealander, a family man of deep religious conviction and a real listener, beloved by his patients in that old-fashioned rural way and always inundated with gifts of salmon, fresh eggs, a bunch of rhubarb, half a sheep and more and surrounded by a dedicated team of staff.
Remember the old-style 1970's doctor's receptionists? Full and quietly attentive waiting room, mega-decibels as they answer the phone,
Mrs Smith?
Is that Mrs Smith of Back of Beyond Farm?
You want to see a doctor Mrs Smith ? 
Why?
Is it really necessary?
What's wrong with you?
(Increase in decibels) PILES?
But we let you see the doctor about that last week.
The nurse who would quickly shove her cigarette in a Bovril jar when I went in the room, realise it was me and get it out again.
I've mentioned her before, the Jamaican district nurse - midwife who took me out on my first day to show me the MOST important place I needed to know about. I was mystified as we pulled into a car park, deserted but for a lone ice-cream van and with far reaching views right over the moors and across to Plymouth Sound.
99 or Raspberry Mivvi she said to me and went and bought accordingly (99 for me, never did like Mivvis) and we sat in silence and looked at the view. I was still mystified and asked where the house was that we surely must be visiting.
No no she said, never forget because they won't have taught you this bit. This is where you come and park up when it all gets too much and you need a breather.
Duly never forgotten and my car knows its own way there now.
That was the surgery and the job I left to go off and have babies and I cried a river because it was such a perfect time (not without its moments of course but ideal working conditions) and I somehow knew that it would never be repeated (I was very right) . When I left I bought them a huge teapot because Dr G was always complaining the teapot was too small. That surgery, which I did eventually return to nineteen years later and for eight years until last summer, still has afternoon tea and cake behind reception as instigated by Dr G.
Dr G in fact convinced back in 1981 that I needn't leave, childcare non-existent, we all gave up work. We could put a cot in the corner of the office and you could carry on, we'll look after the baby while you're out he said.
Those of us still around have had little gatherings this week to help the giver of the eulogy, another retired partner, and many laughs ensued as we recalled some of the very funny moments.
Dr G memorably the recipient of what would now be considered a very non-pc April Fool letter actually from us, but on council - headed notepaper (probably illegal to do that now too)  informing him that planning permission had been granted for the establishment of a traveller camp on wasteland right next door to the surgery, in fact right outside his window, and would he accept "this happy band of people " as patients and allow them to use the toilet and washing facilities in the building.
When he dialled the phone number and found it was Dial-a-Recipe he laughed like the proverbial drain but doubtless had it been true he'd have willingly added them all to his list.

The Oxford Writers and The Sixpenny Debt prize draw

I was very fortunate to be entertained to lunch by The Oxford Writers' Group whilst in their manor recently and my thanks to Mary Cavanagh yet again for organising that and for inviting Colin Dexter along too.Marvellous to meet the creator of Morse along with
a delightful group of hardworking writers who are all beavering away doing something they love and providing fantastic peer-group support for each other in the process. We chatted and ate and drank and it was all most pleasurable.
The group have recently published The Sixpenny Debt, an anthology of short stories,

'that sweep across town, gown and countryside. Featuring everything from love, lust, loss and death to tortosie and Tchaikovsky and enthral all those who have a passion for Oxford.'

I've dipped in and read several and have never laughed so much as I did over Jane Gordon Cumming's Education in Action. It is truly wry and hilarious look at adult education and never can it be said has a pair of sandals ever let a body down quite so drastically.

' Dulcie was the scourge of the evening class. Which one? No, I don't mean any class in particular. Dulcie was the scourge of the Evening Class, generic. And I use the term loosely, to include day-time classes, weekend courses, summer schools - Dulcie was the scourge of the lot.'

You'll have to read for yourself to discover quite how a pair of sandals can let you down and plenty more in here to enjoy. This little book has been the best-selling non-discounted book in Waterstone's in Oxford and is a treasure for all lovers of the city. For once I had gone prepared and my thanks to all those present who signed my spare copy of The Sixpenny Debt to give to a lucky reader here who would like it.
Names in comments, draw to follow.

Mostly Books Inspection Report

As my last inspection had to be called off at the eleventh hour, I didn't really give Mostly Books in Abingdon much advance warning that the floors needed to be mopped, shelves dusted and all staff standing to attention as I made my entrance.You may have read about it first here but I needs must publish my own independent findings.
Thanks to Mary Cavanagh, my Oxford chauffeur, (that's Mary with her book and note that hard-working bookseller in the background) I did finally get to walk in the doors of Mostly Books and meet Mark Thornton. I had followed the fortunes of the enterprise from afar as Mark and Nicky blogged about  the gestation of the shop and finally gave birth to it, and I have been desperate to go and visit.
Several things make an immediate impact at Mostly Books besides the books, and those are of course the best selection you could wish to find.
The first thing to note is the shop atmosphere and it's hard to miss this because but it's immediately apparent that Mostly Books has become a real community venue and one that just oozes a warm, welcoming, book-loving friendliness. A steady stream of people all known to Mark by name and greeted accordingly (my local Indie still doesn't greet me even generically as a person, let alone by name, and after all these years and all that money) flowed into the shop constantly and even better bought books.
Result !
But a result that Mark clearly earns. This was no bookseller sitting behind the counter munching a pastie and doing his knitting (doesn't that annoy you?) The man was working like a trojan, it was all a joy to behold; looking up titles, books off the shelf and browsed with customers, staff training in progress (new member of staff, first day, already very accomplished on the till, book lover, agrees unlikely to take home any wages) internet references written down for more customers including me. I have come away having been urged / challenged to read some science fiction and given a list to make sure I do.
My stock inspection took a couple of hours, a pot of tea and some lemon drizzle cake to complete plus I chatted to a lovely customer about all the books we'd read, but I was beyond impressed.
I decided not to deplete the book stock but I did buy this as the perfect souvenir of my first real trip off the blog and out into the Big Wide World to be seen, and it seems entirely appropriate as a fitting memento of the whole Oxford Literary Festival event.
My good wishes to Mostly Books, long may they sell books.

And a PS for all the Endsleigh Salon-ites who are frantically pondering next month's read which is usefully themed as Science Fiction, here is the promised list that Mark was feverishly scribbling down in the background
The Time Traveller - H.G.Wells
War of the Worlds - H.G.Wells
Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury
Darwin's Radio - Greg Bear
Blood Music - Greg Bear
The Man in the High Castle - Philip Dick
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip Dick Now Wait for Last Year - Philip Dick
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenso
The New World Order - Ben Jeapes
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut

Dream Babies

Following on from yesterday's veiled threat to read a book on parenting here it is.
I have long subscribed to the school of thought that cites (or it might be my own school entirely) that parenting has become increasingly difficult over the last few years with so much information and advice out there about everything that can go wrong, plus an emphasis on the myriad potential pitfalls seemingly lying in wait for the unsuspecting. Add to that the new and different pressures on parents in 2008 to those of years ago plus the plethora of childcare books and it's all a recipe for confusion.
Tom and Ann, in Novel About My Wife, were certainly in uncharted territory and blatantly nervous about what parenting would involve and how it would change them, and for them the consequences were ultimately tragic.
Therefore it is incumbent upon me to finally check out Dream Babies Childcare Advice from John Locke to Gina Ford by Christina Hardyment. I bought this one at The Oxford Literary Festival and here's yet another great review of several events there by Sarah Laurence.
As I occasional allude to, but try not to dwell on here, change is rife in the UK health visiting profession at the moment and I'm certainly beginning to feel positively palaeolithic, or at least as if I have been around since 1693 when John Locke's book Some Thoughts Concerning Education first appeared. I'm too nervous even to mention Gina Ford's The Contented Little Baby Book on here because that got netmums into serious trouble, suffice to say it's horses for courses and plenty of families I know are devoted to Gina and have had great success with her methods. Every childcare book has its advocates and beneficiaries and its detractors and victims so I have to know their contents and remain open-minded about them all bar the obviously and patently dangerous.
From where I stand it's more about assessing a situation and advising on the right book for the circumstances if requested.Then I add a caveat, there might be plenty in there of no relevance but you might just find the one bit of advice that helps.
However where Dream Babies is concerned, I do seem to have been offering childcare advice contemporaneously alongside a hefty chunk of Christina Hardyment's through-the-ages guide.
It leads me to ponder at a tangent why in some professions a lifetime of experience at something equates to being seen as old-fashioned and out-dated whereas in others it is venerated ?
Or is that just me getting older and my perspective changing?
But it's my own fault, I certainly was around in the good old days advising the Neanderthals on Feet to Foot and Back to Sleep cot death prevention advice as applied to their woolly mammoth fur-lined cots...no sorry, perhaps I might respectfully suggest, best not to use woolly mammoth fur because the baby will overheat. Thankfully woolly mammoths now extinct before I get into trouble for even suggesting such a heinous crime as to kill one for its fur.
Think on it, if only the Neanderthals had heeded my advice we'd be enjoying woolly mammoths even now.
If however you should come across a stray woolly mammoth and you do skin it please don't lay your baby on the fur, think of the germs.
If however you decide to wash the fur first please don't use biological soap powder, think of the allergies. Fabric softener may also give your baby a rash.
If having washed the fur you then lay your baby on it please ensure there are no loose tufts that your baby could ingest.
If your baby does ingest a tuft of woolly mammoth fur please ring NHS Direct where you will be advised on the best course of action...I shouldn't jest, I know it's all become very serious and worrying, but the caveat list has become endless.
I'll be very interested to read Dream Babies and examine Christine Hardyment's overview of it all. My hope is that in the end the outcome will be generally to let common sense and instinct prevail, and with it a confidence in parents' own abilities to do what feels right for their family.
But I'll let you know about this one and isn't that cover, in a slightly deeper shade of what is now called Daphne Red here, quite perfect?

Novel About My Wife - Emily Perkins

It is to Emily Perkins' complete credit that I read half of Novel About My Wife pre-Oxford and picking it up about ten days later, was right back in and finished it. I can't say that about every book which has the misfortune to become a dissected read but this one survived admirably.
Emily Perkins, I discover, is a young New Zealand writer with several prize nominations to her name already and, for this novel, benefited from a very generous-sounding fellowship providing both accommodation and a stipend.
If Lisa Glass writing on the Picador blog was looking for a less-than perfect heroine with a verucca, then Emily Perkins has created just the one,

'And her feet weren't perfect: they were long and dry, with knobbly toes and a verucca on one heel which never went away because she refused to do anything but laugh about it.'

This is our page one significantly past-tense introduction to Ann the sculptor, married to Tom the screenwriter, living in the their first house, a semi-derelict affair in the East End of London and expecting first baby.Convinced that she is being followed by a local homeless man, Ann slowly disintegrates as Tom retrospectively peels back the layers of their life together as this novel, billed as a psychological thriller, slowly unfolds.

'If I could build her again using words, I would: starting at her long,painted feet and working up, shading in every cell and gap and space for breath until her pulse couldn't help but kick back into life.'

The book's opening line haunted me mercilessly for the next two hundred pages as I wondered and anguished and fretted about where this book was going and about what will happen to Ann. It seemed to take as long as the pregnancy and, being well-prepared for the fact it will be tragic, I was therefore watching in on Tom and Ann's life together in that strange symptom-clue-spotting way as the chain of events unfolded.
A device I enjoy; a writer as a character in a book writing a book within that book to help fill in past events and if the trick is as accomplished as it is here then it works to great effect. Tom's document curiously titled N.A.M.W. and an effort to try and distance himself from events in order to recount them in the third person but within the framework of his first-person narrative which makes up most of the novel.
Heavens I've made that sound hopelessly confusing but it all works and plunges you into a welcomingly different perspective every so often. A gentle drip drip of clues helped me fill in the full story and there are thankfully some wry funny moments too which all help to balance what you know must come.
Going to a party at the rather sinister Kate and Simon's Hampstead home in those ante-natal days, Tom reflects on the guests who had

'the feverish look of parents who hadn't been out of the house for months. The cumulative babysitting fees from the kitchen alone probably ran to a thousand pounds.'

Then a telling comment which segues effortlessly into another book I'm currently reading,

'The first pregnancy is a long sea journey to a country where you don't know the language, where land is in sight for such a long time that after a while it's just the horizon - and then one day birds wheel over that dark shape and it's suddenly close and all you can do is hope like hell that you've had the right shots.'

More about that book tomorrow but meanwhile it's worth adding Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins to your psycho-suspense reading list, it's not quite a thriller to my mind but a good read all the same.

Holding my Breath - Sidura Ludwig

My run of family therapy reading has continued with a lovely book that Margaret Forster describes as

'The perfect antidote to the many agonised family novels around. A pleasure to read.'

Holding My Breath by Sidura Ludwig, published by Tindle Street Press and the title alone reminded me instantly of another book I read a few years ago and I wondered if there would be a remote connection, The Water-Breather by Ben Faccini. This latter was in the days pre-blog and pre- the now very extensive scribbles that mark everything I read. But they are both about children in families learning to cope with an adult world. In the event they are not remotely similar but it all made me go and find Ben Faccini's book on the shelf and add it to my growing list of books that do a child's point of view very well.
Beth Levy is growing up in Winnipeg, Canada in the midst of a strong extended Jewish family largely made up of women, and as the future slowly unfolds it is infiltrated by a largely unspoken past and Beth has to somehow piece together what has gone on in her family down the years.

'I feel as if I have spent my life piecing things together - stories I have heard, conversations I shouldn't have. I have become my family's narrator; I take everything I know, and I make this framework of a puzzle that when completed is my family's story. (And then I guess mine.) And then I fill in the middle with my imagination, with the details no one was willing to share but need to be there for everything to make sense. Isn't that how we create modern myths ? '

Poor Beth destined to spend her days wondering what's going on and why.
There are her aunts, sisters Sarah and Carrie, like chalk and cheese and then their brother, Beth's Uncle Phil tragically killed in the Second World War but his memory largely confined to the photo albums in the basement and Carrie's evident grieving. Beth takes up the mantle of Phil's interest in astronomy much against her family's better judgement and astronomy could be seen as a theme that defines the book.
As the family grows and moves around the fixed constellations of home and tradition there is a fine blend of the predictable versus the unforeseeable, the permanent versus the transitory much like the eternal permanence but constant rearrangement of the night sky. Occasionally a comet or a shooting star whizzes in to the action to grab the attention briefly, leave its trail and disappears again as the Levy family absorb and cope with its passing and it's all a true reflection of family life. Most families do cope in this way and Margaret Forster's right, they rarely feature in fiction these days. We are conditioned to expect abuse, drama, violence and the rest.
I'm uncertain about the cover but let nothing detract from the fact that this is a well-written coming-of-age novel and a complete pleasure to read a book that offers a deeper gentler look at the simple complexities of family life. Simple from without, highly complex from within and often incredibly difficult to break away from. Beth must strive to find her own pathway through life, Goldie her mother has other ideas and the resolution is both moving and heartening as Beth's hopes at the beginning of the book are slowly fulfilled,

'Somewhere, at the end of all this, I should emerge a full and complete individual, someone sure of where she's going because she knows where she came from. This is what I'm waiting for.'

Bugle Boy prize draw winners

We merged the two lists and have just had the prize draw and all I can say is goodness, aren't some people are having the luck of the Irish here:-) But we stick firmly to first names chosen because rules is rules. The Tinker sits with pen poised and the winners of the five signed copies of Bugle Boy have already been e mailed for their addresses.
Thank you very much to everyone who entered.

Sunday Salon - When we were orphans.

That's the nearest I can get to anything remotely bookish this morning because the gamekeeper has come home with a bucketful of bedraggled little orphans and there has been much scurrying around to find heat lamps and things. Sadly Mother of the Orphans had been run over and this little brood of ducklings were huddled by her side in the middle of the road.
Bless the little creatures, they are chirping away in the warm in temporary quarters up in the summer house, rapidly bonding with their new surrogate father and it will be on pain of death should a cat venture near.

Sunday Salon

Sunday Salon reading later today as it happens, I have more good books in progress than is good for me.

du Maurier country

It doesn't seem to happen very often, that I read a book and live near enough to the locality to visit in a day, but I'm in clover with Daphne du Maurier and Justine Picardie's book was enough to cause a firing up of the chariot and a trip down to Fowey. It's a bare forty miles from here and we must have chosen the warmest sunniest day of the year to visit. The light in Cornwall is genuinely something very unique and as we approached Fowey it fair dazzled the eyes.
No wonder Dawn French and Lenny Henry have bought a fabulous clifftop house here.
St Ives is the other place to have the same effect and we'll be due our annual pre-holiday season trip down there for lunch soon. I also know there's a book coming out any minute from Oxford University Press citing all those literary places to go in the UK, it will become my vade mecum.
But Fowey was heavenly, though you do have this little sense of foreboding as you leave your car at the top car park, rope up and struggle to stay upright on the steep walk down to the town. You know the ascent is going to be painful but nothing is ever as bad as Clovelly so mustn't grumble.
Here's our first glimpse of the river as we made the descent.

Lovely narrow steep sided Cornish streets

Lunch from the deli and sat in the churchyard to eat it.

The church bathed in sunshine and displaying its stained glass to best effect.

Then without more ado it was into the bookshop Bookends and a lovely meeting with Anne who knows all there is to know about Daphne du Maurier and the local area and made me so welcome. A fantastic selection of du Maurier books, by and about, though the first edition of Rebecca could not be gazed upon as it had just sold. I settled instead for the slightly cheaper Virago edition of The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte. Anne is a bookaholic like the rest of us so if you go to Fowey be sure to pay her a visit in the shop, you will come away enthused and informed and longing to sit down and read any Daphne du Maurier book you can lay your hands on right that minute.
This was all a practice run for my trip down to the du Maurier Festival in May I can't wait. I've booked for Justine's talk on Daphne and then back a week later for David Lodge talking on his latest book  Deaf Sentence. Bookends are sponsoring this event and Anne reminded me what a fascinating and humorous academic and popular writer David Lodge is. I'm already buried in Deaf Sentence and enjoying it immensely.
Nor could I resist slotting in a talk by the inimitable art critic Brian Sewell who would probably have a hissy fit at the very idea of being mentioned on a blog...a what?
I'm going to meet Justine and will take the blog with me so that you can all share in the events and meanwhile it's much more Daphne reading for me.

Booker 40th

When it comes around I won't be able to ignore it, the Booker Prize is sadly entrenched in my genes, I have to read the books and this year will be no different, so I was a cert to attend the Booker 40th event at the Oxford Litfest. Let's also hope we get an updated souvenir book to match the Booker 30th, because mine and Juliette's are always off the shelf. Things have certainly moved on in that time, Michael Portillo Chairman of the Judges now a blogger too.
Informatively chaired by Ion Trewin (who sat in my chair!) with Ruth Scurr and Peter Kemp to assist we were treated to a retrospective of the last forty years since the prize was established in 1969. That all happened on a golf course apparently and I'm sure Ion said Ian Fleming was involved. Booker had started to buy up book rights as an investment and it was gently suggested to them that they might like to put some of their profits back into the literary world.
Forty of the forty-one winners (there was a tie for the prize on two occasions, 1974 and 1992 ) remain in print which is seen as a test of the standard of the books and we, the book-buying reading public, will be able to vote on a shortlist of the Best of the Booker to be announced on May 14th.
There was some discussion about the impossibility of reconciling taste and fiction and the fact that the whole thing frequently generates rows and thereby its own valuable media oxygen.
Ruth Scurr and Peter Kemp then offered their own personal six favourites
Ruth chose
The True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey
Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Then controversially decided to subvert the judges decision and award the prize to
The Master by Colm Toibin instead of The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollingshurst
The Gathering - Anne Enright
Disgrace - J.M.Coetzee

Peter chose
The Bone People - Keri Hulme, a book that is "mad to page forty" and then comes to life and there were some fascinating anecdotes recounted both about the discovery of this book and the actual awards ceremony.
The Ghost Road - Patricia Barker
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
Rites of Passage - William Golding
Last Orders - Graham Swift
Staying On - Paul Scott

They forgot to ask for my choices.
So two fascinating lists and will this be the year that I lose my 100% record of never choosing the winner?
My head often makes the right choice (last year The Gathering by Anne Enright) but I always choose my winner from the heart, Bookerthon 2007, Darkmans by Nicola Barker, Bookerthon 2006  Carry Me Down by M.J.Hyland, the year before that 2005 and pre-blog, A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry.
Whilst not wishing to preempt any final dovegreyreader decisions for Bookerthon 2008, I'm tempted to put £10 on His Illegal Self by Peter Carey, this early in the day, it's already strangely captured both my head and my heart.
There that was stupid, I've gone and said it now.

More book bag winners

More book bags arrived from publisher Allison & Busby,many thanks to them for adding to the booty and so Rocky has deigned to draw four more names.
The first two bags on their way to America and now here are the next batch of winners who should all have received an e mail
Cathy Dobson
Bookaddict
Maureen
Kerry.

The draw for signed copies of Bugle Boy will happen this weekend and the Tinker is standing by to sign them and dedicate to named people if the winners so wish.
Not too late to enter, just add your name to the comments here and we'll add you to the post-it notes/cat's paw process, as you can see he's approaching peak fitness again.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Garden

The moral of this story is as follows,
Never let this highly trained gundog called Ben out of the kennel to run around the garden and then turn your back on him while you chop some logs,

having left your mobile phone to hand because you are expecting a call.

Disquiet - Julia Leigh

I am assuming the fact that Faber have pitched this book, to be published in May, as a novella immediately disqualifies it from THAT literary prize which is a shame because, to my reading eye, Disquiet has THAT literary prize longlist at least, writ large all over it.
Firstly I knew nothing about Australian writer Julia Leigh and then discover that her first novel, The Hunter, did make it onto various prizelists. Then even more interestingly, Julia Leigh was chosen as one of 30,000 hopefuls to be mentored by Toni Morrison in the Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative , which has to suggest mega-promise. Both Julia Leigh's and Toni Morrison's accounts of the year make fascinating reading.
Toni Morrison's assertion, 'our obligation is to do first rate work and pass it on' has acute resonance with her thoughts on Julia Leigh's writing,

'Julia Leigh is a sorceress. Her deft prose casts a spell of serene control while the earth quakes underfoot.'

and goodness, does that earth quake.
There is little I can tell you about plot without giving away the essence and I would humbly suggest avoiding reviews until you've read Disquiet for fear of finding out what you'd rather not. Impact is all and Julia Leigh does impact in a quiet and controlled way scattering echoes and reverberations in her wake. Except everything in this book, no matter how bizarre it seems, can and does happen in people's lives, so no suspension of disbelief required, read and believe.
Olivia and her two children arrive at her childhood home, a rambling French chateau having escaped a violent marriage. Her mother is there awaiting the arrival of Olivia's brother Marcus and his wife Sophie who are returning from hospital following the birth of their baby.
So this disparate family are reunited and at pivotal life moments. Throughout Olivia is referred to as 'the woman', and her children as 'boy' and 'girl', for me a clear indication of the detachment and the extent of their lost identity as a result of the trauma they have fled.
Olivia whilst swimming in the lake starts to rediscover her deepest self

'She floated - she appeared - she was - a simple life-form, with no mind other than mind-through-body, a nerve net, and with each new breath, each new shocking breath, she was reborn; it would take an aeon for her to be human. The lake let her be.'

But bearing the scars and having fled one trauma Olivia has walked headlong into more.
Classic less-is-more writing, economical and spare, often bleak and sparse but with unspoken depths interspersed with moments of acute focus and clarity. As if briefly Julia Leigh lifts the veil and allows in a chink of light, a glimpse of this intimate, largely hidden world, revealing in a few words much that this family would strive to conceal.
I've already mentioned the off-centre left margin paragraph-pausing etching tailpiece as an unsettling visual device to my orderly eye, and the entire book refused to let me settle comfortably. Writing of the highest standard which left me adding so much more in my own mind. As I turned the final page and searched again for my centre of gravity, I realized it's a strange thing to acknowledge that you have such a thing as you read and one you are unware of until a book tilts you right off balance.

I've returned to the interview with Toni Morrison in Volume Two of The Paris Review Interviews and this about writing

'...it seemed to me that describing what it looked like would distract the reader from what I wanted him or her to experience, which was what it felt like...it sort of falls off the page, or it's a glance or a reference...you must practice thrift in order to achieve that luxurious quality of wastefulness...you shouldn't overgratify, you should never satiate. I've always felt that that peculiar sense of hunger at the end of a piece of art - a yearning for more - is really very,very powerful.'

What a fantastic experience Julia Leigh must have had and how well she has clearly listened and responded to Toni Morrison's sage and kindly mentoring.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Bronte

The critic who described Anne Bronte as 'the Bronte without genius' got it very wrong indeed. That's how strongly I feel because now that I've finished The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, my first thought is that the book is riven and shot through with great big lightning bolts of genius.
Sorry, is that a bit excessive?
I wonder if it's because I can see so many contemporary parallels with Anne Bronte's subject matter?
Or is it because, for me this has proved to be the most readable of Bronte novels?
Whatever it is I'm kicking myself for leaving this book unread for so long and will urge this on all and sundry the minute the Bronte name is mentioned with the words "which one shall I read?" and all in the same sentence.
Admittedly I've focused on my sphere of interest which didn't include the religious themes this time round and many may find these slightly overbearing, but the issues of alcoholism and gambling addiction coupled with women and children trapped in abusive and violent marriages remain of the moment and contemporary. Anne Bronte's perceptive insights stand up to close scrutiny in the light of today's dilemmas as much as they must have done in 1848 when the novel was first published.
The mysterious tenant, Helen Graham arrives with her young child Arthur at Wildfell Hall amidst much neighbourly speculation regarding her past, and local suitor Gilbert Markham makes a beeline. Helen displays an acute fear and sensitivity to his amorous advances and at this stage I really wanted to book young Gilbert in for some anger management classes. He little realises that this approach will not cut the mustard with Helen who remains remarkably uncowed by the pressures and increasingly protective of her young son.
As the narrative voice changes from that of Gilbert, remarkably delineated by Anne Bronte, to the voice of Helen via the pages of her diary, both Gilbert and reader learn exactly what has forced Helen into this seemingly extreme position.Through her trials Helen transforms from fearful and down-trodden wife of Arthur Senior to an empowered and assertive woman in her own right and a loving and caring mother who knows exactly what is right for her child, taking steps to protect him from the abuse accordingly.
Social Services would have applauded Helen, Women's Aid would have employed her as a counsellor.
You can but imagine how much this all reflects Anne Bronte's own heartfelt concerns over the plight of women in the nineteenth century.
The moments of perception are many and some of the scenes of emotional abuse are quite breathtaking in their intensity, the mental cruelty abhorrent, yet in truth it still happens to women today. The entrapment is the same, the control as stifling, the means of escape as difficult and the effects of the abuse just as profound on all who experience it whether it be 1848 or 2008.
Anne Bronte doubtless had brother Branwell in her sights as an alcohol-fuelled living breathing example of all that she attempts to expose, and her method for ensuring that Helen's young son Arthur aquires an aversion to alcohol could well do with making a successful comeback.The social pressures to drink alcohol as great then as now.
Yet Helen harbours more common sense than ill-feeling and by the same token you sense Anne Bronte did too. There are some moments of genuine pathos as Helen effectively becomes the counsellor to her estranged husband's cronies as they too attempt to escape his controlling grasp and Helen exposes the most besotted of her suitors in their true colours.Emerging with a real understanding of what makes the chaps tick and which aspects could do with a little improving, there's little doubt that Helen Graham will make a new man of the one she eventually chooses.

Love Marriage - V.V.Ganeshananthan

The Tinker travelled extensively courtesy of the Second World War and as I was growing up it became a family joke, whenever a country was mentioned he'd pipe up 'I've been there' and Ceylon was one of them. But Ceylon and Trincomalee in particular was one of his favourites so it's a place name etched in my mind from many years ago.
Then I was recently tuned into 'that teardrop country' Ceylon - Sri Lanka again having read Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, . Love Marriage by V.V.Ganeshananthan, and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, makes the most perfect companion read to that as the history of a fractured and changing family mirrors the turmoil of a country blighted by ethnic violence, social class inequalities and doubtless the remnants of colonial rule. A new generation breaking with the old traditions and all reflected in the changing face of marriage

'In this globe-scattered Sri-Lankan family, we speak only of two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage. In reality there is a whole spectrum in between, but most of us spend years running away from the first toward the second.'

Yalini's uncle has finally left his native country and returned to be with his sister and her family to die and gradually the truth about his past is revealed.

'It would be false to say that there is a beginning to the story, or a middle or an end. Those words have a tidiness that does not belong here. Our lives are not clean. They begin without fanfare and end without warning. This story does not have a defined shape or a pleasant arc. To record it differently would not be true'

Indeed this story is written in a series of many short extracts, fragmented parts of the whole and it works really well. This is how events happened and it's that useful imagery of the patchwork or the jigsaw that prevails as slowly all the gaps are filled.

It was the female characters who somehow prevailed for me in this novel,

'Sri Lankan women are always trying and failing to bring order to a world of men'

and there are some real moments to cherish. After a long wait for a child Yalini's U.S.exiled parents finally set eyes on her,

'It's a girl the nurse said to Murali, at last my father. I was swaddled in blankets and placed in his arms. I immediately caught hold of his Heart with both tiny fists.'

On the same day in 1983, and across the other side of the world the family's kith and kin are being slaughtered as anti-Tamil violence breaks out on the streets of Colombo.
Narrated by Yalini, and based for much of the novel in Canada, a country which opened its doors to Sri-Lankan Tamil refugees, there is much to learn here about the history of a country about which I'll own up to having been vague. In the interests of self-preservation and in order to change, many have surrendered the battle and left their homeland and I am now much clearer, albeit through a fictional account, of the origins of the Tamil Tigers about which I knew little.
Books like this which offer insights through fiction are hugely successful with me and several come instantly to mind, The Golden Age by Tahmima Aman, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer
This was a slow and ponderous read, so much to appreciate and through a beautifully written story I immersed myself completely in the culture and traditions of Sri-Lanka over several freezing cold grey and stormy Devon afternoons. With notions of loss of homeland, displacement and diaspora ever-present it was but a hop to be led right back to browse W.G.Sebald's The Emigrants  at the same time.

Clear - Nicola Barker

Nicola Barker really doesn't have to work too hard to impress me, my love of Darkmans through last year's Bookerthon faithfully recorded here for posterity and, on the strength of that, I'm not sure why I didn't immediately pick up and read everything Nicola Barker has ever written.
Perhaps it's that fear, the next book you read won't be so good, will taint what's gone before? Happens often enough, though equally I've often read my introduction to an author's oeuvre, been swept away on the crest of their wave and the quality of that has been sufficient to sustain my faith in their writing through their lesser moments.
But what am I rabbiting on about, nothing like this has happened with Nicola Barker, au contraire, Clear might just be as good as Darkmans and one thing's for sure, once I'm into the uniquely effervescent narrative style my only disappointment is at a mere 300 pages when I want at least 800 now.
Clear is one of those books that recounts one of those gimmicky publicity-drawing stunts,events that you remember vaguely and didn't take too much notice of at the time but now wish you'd followed some of the analysis and commentary that it spawned. The event is David Blaine's forty-four days in a perspex box dangling aloft near Tower Bridge in London in September 2003.
For the record and because I have the record, at the time I was reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Brick Lane by Monica Ali, The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith and Four Dreamers and Emily by Stevie Davies and everything else I could find by Stevie because I'd just discovered her. But I wasn't paying a good deal of attention to David Blaine.
Thankfully Nicola Barker was and the evidence is Clear ...sorry, that was a chance to good to pass up.
As the blurb and this picture from the BBC reveals, the facts are most certainly clear, David Blaine got in the box and came out forty-four days later a convenient four stone lighter, the question is why?
Twenty-eight year old Adair MacKenny would dearly like to know why too and explores all the avenues with mixed results. Often hilarious, often poignant Nicola Barker has nailed realistic dialogue which I think Kirsty over at Other Stories and I have agreed is both internal and external, in spectacular fashion. This is the sort of dialogue that read aloud, resounds with the honesty of real chatter and the brackets contain all those thoughts, the bits you'd like to say but don't and they work. Adair's life working in a mundane London office job, clad in the latest, or not so latest designer gear is often a life of manic spontaneous madness and the social scene down at Blaine's box is delineated with that clear crystal eye that I now associate with Nicola Barker after Darkmans.

'Modernity's like a badly trained dog: try and make it heel, even for a moment, and it turns and bites the hand that fed it.'

The analysis of the way Brits take to a peep show like this, and handle spectacle whilst maintaining British reserve, is done to a turn. We'll either go to just see what's going on, but really we'd prefer not to be associated with it, but we'll go just in case we might miss something or we go and embrace the whole thing, take a guitar and a primus, camp out, have a party and wave a flag or in David Blaine's case it would seem fling an egg. Failing all that we have the journalists to deride it all.

'...what a ridiculous ass the magician is...our unstoppable British urge to ridicule and debunk him - our cocky, cockney lawlessness, our innate willingness to lampoon and pillory.'

Meanwhile Nicola Barker, through her usual array of fabulous characters, is also digging away quietly at all those unseen and unwritten social prejudices, then add in her take on consumer items like the gerbera as the 'Number One flower of insider choice', and the priceless moments just start to stack up.
Yes the gerbera is, and no I hadn't noticed, and how exactly do they get that bit of wire through the stem to stop them going floppy? Easy to pre-judge Adair but he subjects the whole spectacle to some surprisingly careful analysis which in the end made everything clear to me too. Images of transparency and entrapment abound alongside allegories of starvation of every sort in a world of plenty, pseudo-death and real death, and Adair sees right through it all to the nearest approximation of the truth he's likely to find and certainly helped me to do likewise.
Goodness am I delighted to have read this one, one of those refreshingly different and unusual palate-cleansing reads and grateful thanks to dark peak images for permission to use this nice gerbera picture because actually I didn't have a  gerbera to hand today.

Sunday Salon - Snow, The Scapegoat and Disquiet.

We woke up this morning to a light smattering of April snow, the Gamekeeper has gone off to the point-to-point to make our fortunes, we all send him with £5 and last year mine came back as £40 and we'd also forgotten it was the Tavistock Book Fair. I hardly need to go buying books but we had a leisurely Sunday morning browse and I did make a purchase.
I don't own a Daphne du Maurier book in the original Gollancz version and so this edition of The Scapegoat, much read, with that smooth old well-thumbed feel to the pages and costing no more than  a new paperback edition, was too tempting to leave behind. I've defined a sad but accurate way of assessing this proprietorial need. I put the book back on the shelf, wandered off and turned to see someone else browsing it. I was overcome with entirely shameful feelings of possession and it was a hard task to watch and wait and then not swoop in undignified fashion when the book was replaced.

Home to a peaceful house and crackling fires and this lot had already grabbed their pitches for the day.

You Know Who was you know where.

I then abandoned other immediate reading plans and settled down to a new novella from Faber, Disquiet by Julia Leigh. Wanting to comment on the use of that tiny etching that books often use as a header or footer for each page, I realise that I don't know what "that tiny etching" is actually called.
But in this book "it" is used to great effect.Usually placed centrally and symmetrically on the page, pleasing and decorative to the eye, here "it" is used to unsettle, or at least it unsettled me and that is completely in keeping with the read. No chapters but occasional pauses bear this "it" to the extreme left of the page, not tucked inwardly and safely in the gutter margin, oh no, this plot could fall right off the page if I wasn't careful.

As I read I was constantly equally on edge as my eye begged this "it" to be in the middle.
Perhaps this says more about me than about the book? After all I was trained to ensure that all the wheels on every bed in the ward faced the same direction before the Bishop came to visit.
But this tiny device successfully and completely denied me access to my centre of gravity as I read, I was teetering on the brink all the time and constantly wondering whether it might move to the centre as the book progressed and let me relax, breath deeply and be happy.
All in all a strange new reading experience, one I've never had before and one that served to enforce the very nature of this book.
Currently my thoughts are in that post-book whirl but much more about this one soon.

Sunday Salon - Catching up

A hectic week and I'm completely out of step with my reading, so today will be a book immersion day and a bit of quilting too before I go back to work tomorrow. Two weeks' annual leave gone in a flash and who knows what surprises await me at my desk? The first thing I always do, before I even look at the in-tray or check the phone messages, is take my annual leave form out of the drawer and book the next lot.
Have I got my priorities right ?
Lots of new books in to browse but I had completely misunderstood my deadline to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte for a project and so have read that, and only that, this last week. More about it very soon but I am deeply impressed and moved by Anne Bronte's book and will be waxing uber-lyrical about it once I have sifted some fascinating latter-day parallels. I'm only cross with myself for leaving it unread on the shelf for so long and delighted that someone has finally made me read it. If like me it should lie unread on your shelf I can't recommend it highly enough. The links to Daphne by Justin Picardie and Daphne du Maurier's biography of Branwell Bronte all tie it in nicely with current reading trails too.
Capuchin Classics " Books to keep alive" , is a new publisher keen to keep good books in print and I have the first four looking very tempting indeed. I've made an excellent start with An Error of Judgement by Pamela Hansford Johnson. Beyond knowing that she was married to C.P.Snow, Pamela Hansford Johnson is a new writer for me but there is a great deal about her writing that is impressing me and I suspect I won't be able to put this one down today and will want to read more by her.
Future publications from Capuchin include Green Dolphin Country by Elizabeth Goudge and there's an old favourite. I still have my original battered and much-read copy, and a feature I think works so well with these seemingly forgotten novels are the introductions by 'a relevant figure of note or specialist knowledge'. Ann Widdecombe has written the introduction to my current read, Griff Rhys Jones to another one thus proving that for many the books haven't been forgotten at all and well-deserve to come back into print and find a new audience.
More later and there's some of the Tinker's birthday cake left so that'll do us nicely for afternoon tea in the Sunday Salon.

Litfest Book Bag Winners

Still waiting on the arrival of perhaps more bags but with Rocky getting impatient to get out for another night roaming and hunting across the fields, (though we have a sneaky suspicion he just heads straight for the woodshed and sleeps another eight hours) he has performed the Oxford Litfest Book Bag draw and the two winners are Jade and Lisa.
As and when more bags arrive he will be prevailed upon to draw more names from the same list.

Happy Birthday to...

...the Tinker (father of dgr) who is a whole eighty-three years young today.
I was in real trouble a few weeks ago, believe me.
'So what's a Jane Austen sequel got that my book hasn't then?'
'Why aren't five copies of my book being given away in a prize draw?'
So today, to redress the balance, I have five signed copies of Bugle Boy by Len Chester to give away as a birthday treat for you all.
That little memoir with a great big heart, the fourteen-year old little Tinker, knee-high to a grasshopper and going off to war in 1939.
We must also send good wishes to his publisher Susan Hill for the day's other big party celebration as The Battle for Gullywith is launched. My thoughts on the book here and a great interview with Susan here .
The Tinker loved it too.
Rocky is on stand-by to make the Bugle Boy prize draw in a few days time, so names in comments as usual, and here's the Tinker's favourite extract just to keep him happy.

My Debut

The first time Mum and Dad said they would come down
to Eastney to see me filled me with excitement. I knew
they would feed me and make me financially sound for a
short while and, of course, I could show off in my new
uniform. I suppose it was a month after I had arrived but
it had taken at least three weeks to assemble all my kit.
The accoutrements were no problem but the uniform had
to be specially made, after all at 4’ 8” I was not exactly off
the peg, besides which we had to be trained in how to
comport ourselves when out of barracks. In those days,
when a Royal Marine went out he wore white cotton
gloves and carried a silver-headed cane, something I was
sorry to see discontinued, it made you feel a little special;
but there was a drill to it all that had to be learnt before
you were allowed out.
It was a Sunday, as I remember, and they would meet
me at the barrack gate at 2 p.m. by which time I had
cleaned my buttons, boned my boots to the best possible
shine for a new pair and starched my cap cover. We never
had white-top caps then, just blue caps, but we donned
cap covers between 1 May and 1 October and they had to
be starched. A word about my boots; they too had to be
made, by the cobblers in the barracks, from greased cow
hide that took weeks and weeks of boning before getting
the required polish. They were size six and each boot had
116 hobnails, a heel plate and a large toe plate; when I first
put them on I felt like a deep-sea diver.
Two o’clock came eventually, I left it for a few minutes
to make sure they would be there to see me march up to
the Sergeant on the gate, and there they were, in earnest
conversation with the Sergeant. Drawing myself up to my
full height, I halted in front of the Sergeant.
‘Po/x 3943 Boy Bugler L. Chester, permission to leave
barracks Sergeant.’
My father was bursting with pride and my mother had
tears in her eyes; I was terrified. Whilst I stood there with
my proud parents watching, he did a 360-degree inspection
of me, including a bird’s eye view of my cap cover,
because I’m sure he was 7’ 6” tall.
‘You have dust in the welts of your boots, go back and
clean them properly.’
My father’s pride at that moment knew no bounds, my
mother shed some more tears and I was completely
humiliated. I have said that after three weeks we were
completely streetwise, we had ways and means for all situations.
For this one I went back to my barrack room, sat
on the bed for ten minutes then walked back again.
‘Why didn’t you clean them like that the first time,
laddie?’
In those halcyon pre-World War Two days, I’m sure
that was the way of the Royal Marines, more so with the
recruits: they endeavoured to break your spirit and then
proceeded to build you up to what they wanted – sheer
blind obedience. It worked, unless you were as cunning as
us boys who had nothing to break down in the first place. 

 

Corpus Christi - behind the right door.

Finally, after all those years of peering in behind half-open doors and signs saying "Closed to Visitors" and at last I get a sight of the college world behind the dreaming spires. Possibly taken for granted by those who have spent a few years there, possibly not, but for those of us who never made it, here are a few early morning stolen glimpses of Corpus Christi.

The quad and pelican sundial just feet away from the road but a secluded and completely private world.
Through a few tiny gateways and I discover the cloister

Slightly flummoxed by all the Latin inscriptions but thankfully this one was in plain English.

Suddenly look upwards and see this most unusual of roof windows,

and realize I am outside the college chapel

Beautiful silent space and at the far end countless In Memoriam boards bearing all the names of the war-dead from the college. As I studied the rows and rows of names surrounded by that early morning silence, I had that strange feeling again that I experienced when I first read Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain. A shockingly truthful understanding of exactly how vast the impact of the Great War had been, and how many of our future movers and shakers may have been lost. Looking at all these names confirmed it.

But also good to see recognition for the working man and one with a famous namesake too.

Out to the gardens where I come across a beehive. Lots of bee activity on this warm sunny morning so a good sign that this colony have over-wintered well, Corpus Christi honey will be on the toasted crumpets again this year. Then one of those unusual garden seats with a simple dedication carved on, this one to Kit Molloy 1934-2005 A Prince Among Men, what truly magical secret places these colleges are, all who tread there are very fortunate indeed.

Free book bag prize draw

I managed to procure just two of these very special Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2008 book bags for dovegreyreader visitors.
Names in comments as usual and Rocky will do the draw tomorrow evening because we have another prize book draw on Saturday and he'll complain about being over-worked.

The Mystery of the Keys

Lots of good debate around the blogs about Blogging the Classics here, here, here, and probably elsewhere too.
One point made by John Carey has stayed in my mind; how valuable and insightful it would have been had we had a record of the voice of the 18th and 19th centuries or even earlier and how important it will become to future generations to have the voice that bloggers, amongst others, are offering now.
Whilst up in Oxford  I met Simon from Stuck in a Book for lunch which was a real pleasure, and thanks to Mary Cavanagh went to do an inspection at Mostly Books in Abingdon, the most brilliant and friendly of bookshops and more on that soon.
But now I've come down from being up at Oxford.
I was entertained most kindly apres tent event by Other Stories and friends.
Academic Friend of Other Stories very kindly, and above and beyond the call of duty, offered to walk back to Corpus Christi College with me where I was staying. Oxford in daylight with my glasses and a map is manageable,Oxford at 11.30pm was likely to be impossible.We chatted away as we walked and I asked A.F. all about her PhD on Irish Literature.
I'm so pleased that all Oxford colleges look the same to Oxford residents too because as we halted outside the door of Corpus Christi there was a problem. The main door was ancient and massive with a little entrance door within which was locked but it was OK because I had a key, except there was no keyhole. There really was no keyhole and short of standing on A.F.'s shoulders to check the upper levels we couldn't see one anywhere.
We did a bit of knocking and coo-eeeing and bell ringing to no avail and A.F. even got the number of the lodge and rang them on her mobile, still no reply. By this time I'm regretting having drunk about three pints of lime and soda, noting that my renal system has performed its task with rapid efficiency.
This was all a mystery fit for Inspector Morse and I was also suddenly recalling all those fictional Oxford murders as I contemplated a night out on the pavement. Eventually it was decided, with great shared intelligence, that we'd just walk up and down Merton Street until we found a keyhole that fitted my key and it was sometime and several colleges later that we realised we'd actually been trying to get into Merton College with the key to Corpus Christi, but of course there are no signs to tell you that.
The hug that A.F. and I gave each other in farewell was out of all proportion to the fact that we'd only met about an hour before but the relief was palpable, what would she have done with a homeless blogger ? With that my need was pressing and I dashed off because I still had to find my staircase and negotiate it.
My sincere thanks to A.F. for being there. Later the next day some American tourists stopped and asked me which college was Merton; as if I'd lived there all my life I confidently pointed to that one in the picture, hoping I was right, or at least close.
And talking of Morse, yes you guessed, it was entirely my pleasure to have lunch with the Oxford Writer's Group and their great supporter Colin Dexter, the author of Morse, at The Trout on Monday.
More about that soon but here's the proof.
I think we'll just give in and write this whole week over to Oxford and book thoughts will be back next week as will that thing called work.
I took a secret stroll behind the walls of Corpus Christi and some lovely pictures, and my thoughts to follow on that peaceful and secluded world, usually hidden from sight. Plus there is a special birthday to celebrate on Saturday and someone, not wishing to be upstaged by a Jane Austen sequel, has offered signed copies of his book for a prize draw.
Rocky will be busy and insufferable yet again.

A view from a different window

It's always the same, after the event you always think of the things you could have said, so this time instead of brief notes I decided to write a 'proper talk' to read out.
A write-up of the event at The Times here.
More later on all the actual and online discussions because some important points have stuck in my mind, but in the meantime, while I go and get the washing on, here's what I actually said.

So how in heaven’s name has this happened?

What on earth is a bookaholic sock-knitting quilter from Devon who happens to be a community nurse in her spare time doing on the platform speaking at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival?

And what from all that qualifies me to talk and write about literature as I do on dovegreyreader scribbles? Not a great deal you may think, in fact let me tell you, there is great consternation that I will unwittingly slip into my more familiar territory, my highly acclaimed talk on Negotiating with Terrorists, How to Manage Your Toddler’s Tantrums...in fact if things get tricky up here it might all come in handy...

But I’m very grateful for the opportunity to speak and like my blog, this overview will be entirely personal and subjective, I make no apology for that, perhaps it will help reach a consensus.

It seems mildly sycophantic to launch right into a quote from someone else on the platform but you know me, sometimes I just can’t stop myself, John Carey said it first and I must sneak it in before he does, 

‘ Like all criticism of art or literature, my judgements are camouflaged autobiography, arising from a lifetime’s encounters with words and people that are mostly far too complicated for me to unravel.’

Me too John, but please bear with me as I unravel a few to clarify and explain my position. Anyone who visits dovegreyreader will already know quite a lot about me, for those who don’t here’s a very brief resume.

I was a coronation year baby, grew up in a typical post-war 1950's family. I would pass the 11+, go to a Girl’s Grammar School and I would be a nurse, it was all decided quite early on. My mother’s theory was that a degree was training for nothing; the war had deprived her of a career so I would be trained for something.

Some of us still did as we were told in the 1960’s. I did go to Grammar school and I sailed into two years of English A Level classes with my student nurse place at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital assured, and a delightful teacher called Miss Maud who left me to love the books whilst everyone else sweated over Oxbridge entrance. I have lived to bless those two years. My essays were terrible, but my love of reading since the age of five had been woven inextricably into my adult life. I took that love of reading with me into my nursing career, marriage, motherhood and finally, in 1996 along that early path not taken.

With three teenagers and a full time health visitor caseload of about 400 children under the age of 5, I decided to do that degree in English Literature in my spare time. My motive was simple, I hungered for a deeper understanding of what I was reading and I wanted to read so much that I felt I had missed. Someone was going to have to make me do it and it wasn’t the NHS, fortunately the Open University did and mostly at 2 o’clock in the morning for the next six years.

With that understanding, came a language with which to explain what my heart had always known but my mind had never quite been able to articulate, but I was really not a lot better off. Once all that literary theory had sunk into the mud and the useful stuff had risen to the surface, the view of the Tamar valley from my window looked no different; it remained outstandingly beautiful but had not overnight become the hub of the literary universe. Suddenly I felt I had a voice I could use but one which just echoed back at me from the pages of my hand-written reading journals. As my mother had so wisely said, a degree is training for nothing; I needed to put it to good use.

Dovegreyreader was born of a selfish desperation to share a lifelong passion for reading and a love of books that I had enjoyed, and I was hopeful, but not certain that perhaps a few people might read it. I had recently read all Margaret Atwood’s novels in succession; surely someone somewhere wanted to talk about Margaret Atwood? 

I have never pretended to be a literary critic and nor do I really class myself as a book reviewer; both require an element of objective and controlled detachment which I get in spades from the hours of 9-5. I spend my working days listening to people’s narratives, often very traumatic stories, which I then have to write up in a very objective, factual clinical format. Fiction gets me into trouble. My job is not to pass subjective judgement, I have to make calm, rational and professional assessments; you develop a detached empathy towards the grim realities of life to protect yourself. 

To be a rounded human being there has to be a balance to that, books and reading allow me to access my inner Tigger with impunity. When it comes to books, yes, I’m a hopelessly demented bouncy, flouncy, trouncy, pouncy Tigger, and I’m afraid a blog has let this Tigger loose on the world.

I wanted a recognizable voice and the only one I can do is mine, so what you read is me. I wanted to write it as a conversation about books and in a very different way from the review pages, much less about this-happened-then-that-happened and much more about

· how had a book affected me?

· why was it special ?

· what had grabbed me ?

· what else did it remind me of ?

· what would it make me want to read next ?

· why would I press this book on you if we met in the street ?

· You probably know enough now to run in the opposite direction!

Again I return to the fact that what I bring to my reading is camouflaged autobiography, my life events, my memories, and I share those too on the blog and often snippets of rural life, because though my reading slots into my context with ease, that may not be the same for everyone and I try to justify that.

Everyone has a unique eye, thirty years as a health visitor has given me mine.I wanted to offer some analytical depth closely allied to my perceptions of everyday life, but not to the point where readers felt inadequate or excluded by literary language or any sense of elitism or pomposity. Pomposity on a blog invites death by a thousand comments. I decided very early on that I would not do excoriating criticism. Life is galloping by, why waste valuable time panning books for which I’m the wrong reader when there are so many for which I’m the right reader ? My reading is for pleasure after all

But writing anything for the public domain is not without its responsibilities. In my day to day work I’m professionally accountable and have to work to high ethical standards and a written code of conduct, most professions work in a similar fashion these days so why should the world of literary criticism and book reviewing be any different? I may profess to do neither, I’m sharing a love of good books but if I want my blog to be taken seriously, if I am pushing personal opinions out into the ether then I must be responsible and accountable for them too, no matter whether people see it as yammering or follow its every word and quote it in the press. That might all seem excessive but it’s very important to me.

I take it seriously, and from the outset trust, honesty, transparency and humour have been paramount. If there is an interest to be declared then I will declare it. Let’s suppose next week Ian McEwan takes me out to dinner at The Ivy just as I am about to read and then share my thoughts on the blog about his latest book, of course I’d have to tell you.

What ??? The Mrs Merton of the Litblog miss an opportunity like that! What was he wearing? Who was sitting on the next table? The food, was it any good? Oh, yes and the book, let’s not forget the book.

I never wanted to box myself into one literary corner and as a result I no longer feel I have a reading comfort zone. This has been exciting and challenging, new and unexpected doors have opened and the blog has expanded my reading horizons to infinity, but best of all I have returned to the Classics with huge enthusiasm. Suddenly I feel grown up enough to cope with them and I know I’m not alone.

I share honestly my literary trials and tribulations, there are some brilliant writers I have struggled with for years and others struggle along with me until we crack it. Unmoderated comments facilitate a conversation with anyone and everyone, readers, authors, publishers, even with ‘bored of Ireland’ who thinks this is all ‘a load of trivial rambling rubbish’. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Blogs are often accused of being unedited, off the cuff, thoughtless ramblings, indeed mine might look like that to many, especially ‘bored of Ireland’ but here’s the reality.

I devote a lot of time to writing it, hours and days, book thoughts are rarely written and published instantly. I am a compulsive book scribbler as I read and I write my first thoughts down as soon as I can, then there follows a process of researching, honing and editing, I will often wake up at 3am and think “good grief, I can’t say that!”.

Reading trails often open up as a result. Bringing lesser known books into the limelight is a blogger’s speciality and sharing those and getting ideas from others is always exciting. Indeed sharing the passion of reading and spreading news of good books across the world in a matter of minutes is a privilege and one I never take for granted.

This is all not much of a battle cry I hear you mutter disappointingly; where’s the spilt blood on the platform? Well I might be over-simplifying arguments about the dumbing down of culture but those are for others, to my mind there isn’t a battle to be fought because this blogger is offering something different, subjective yes, but hopefully as meaningful to a reader, as the literary critic or the professional book reviewer. In the NHS it’s called skill-mix and we learnt to deal with it years ago.

Having started with a quote from John Carey I was going to apologise for not using one from John Mullan, but we’re OK, I’ve found one.

“Each novel reader has an experience of the novel to describe and even mere partisanship can generate a kind of critical analysis.”

I feel semi-vindicated.

But the final word must go to Virginia Woolf

‘I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesman come to receive their rewards- their crowns their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble – the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms,

“Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.”

 

 

 

 

Back Home

Phew, it's 11.30 pm Tuesday, back home and what lovely house guests you've all been, not a crumb in sight. My grateful thanks to Justine for being here and talking so wonderfully about Daphne.
My thanks also to those people who visit here who turned out for the Event in the Tent. Excellent to meet you all and I'm only sorry it was so brief. I knew who you were because, through those million watt arc lights focused on my retina, I could see people giving me great big encouraging beaming smiles.
Much to share with you all in real time later on, including a picture of me arm in arm with a famous Oxford writer and I was fortunate indeed to have lunch with this one and a group of lovely Oxford writers too who made me so welcome, so what a treat to have finally met the writer of...sorry, I'm so sleepy I can't type another word.

Post-Daphne therapy

If you do plan to read Daphne brace and prepare yourselves, plan ahead, because a book like this can only add to anyone's enthusiasm for the subject. I've already checked my du Maurier shelves for completeness and found The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte absent without leave, you might want this one to hand as you turn the final page. Likewise expect an exacerbation of any latent Bronte symptoms, I've had the Haworth and  Parsonage guide books out for a wallow already and dived right into The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Then there's the oft forgotten J.M.Barrie-Llewelyn Davies connection to cope with and that sends me straight to Andrew Birkin's J.M.Barrie and The Lost Boys and then that half-read Hide-and-Seek With Angels by Lisa Chaney, and then, well it goes on and on.
Lurking on my shelves I find a copy of The Daphne du Maurier Companion edited by Helen Taylor. This is well worth a place on anyone's shelf and if, like me, you think you'd like to revisit Daphne du Maurier's novels or are reading them for the first time here's the book to guide and inform.
More Bronte this, Bronte that, plus a book of Bronte poems and then an ancient Penguin picked up in Haworth on our last visit, Haworth Parsonage by Isabel C. Clarke looks interesting.
All enough to keep me busy for now.